Undergraduate News

Photo by Kristen Taylor.

Distinguished Majors

Each year, the Department admits a small number of students into its Distinguished Majors program.  Students in the program write a thesis over the course of the academic year, a thesis which is then evaluated by a Departmental committee that awards several levels of honors based on the quality of the thesis and the general excellence of each student’s work in the major. Students then receive their degree with Highest Distinction, High Distinction, or Distinction.

At the Department’s degree ceremony on May 18, Elliot Woods was awarded the BA with Highest Distinction.

The following students were awarded the BA with High Distinction:

Danya Atiyeh
Sean Hamidi
Caitlin Harpin
Katherine Hilliard
Honor Jones
Jessica Kirzner
Willie Lin
Sarah Stuntz
Corrie Williamson

And the following students were awarded the B.A. with Distinction:

Anne Harden
Allison Hoover
David Kirk
Tatyana Krimgold
David May
Katharine Ogle
Charles O’Toole
Francesca Tarant
Corrie Williamson
Sara Yenke

Other Awards and Honors:

Jessica Kirzner won the Wagenheim Prize for the best literary essay by an undergraduate English major for “Jewish Whiteness and the Other in Philip Roth’s ‘Eli, the Fanatic’ and Grace Paley’s ‘Zagrowsky Tells’”

Willie Lin is the winner of the Rachel St. Paul Poetry Prize for the best group of poems by a U.Va. undergraduate for your group of 14 poems. 

Rober “Will” Wiliams, Jr. won the Wagenheim Prize for the best short story by an undergraduate English major for his story “Bitch-Fish Gumbo”

Sarah Yenke won the Hanna Kahn Poetry Prize for the best poem by a fourth-year English major for her poem “Geotropism”