Posts Tagged ‘winner’

• 2008-09 Winner: “The French Lieutenant’s Woman: The Underscore on “Freedom” within Restriction, Fowles’ Bridge between Realities” by Prisca Youn

  Date: 2010.04.17 | Category: Selected Essays | Response: 0

  “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” by Prisca Youn PDF

  Fiction usually pretends to conform to the reality…But the chief argument…is to show one’s readers what one thinks of the world around one…
  –John Fowles

  The vast verdure, the whispering sea, the azure of the heavens; Lyme Regis in all its deceitful beauty, masking the harsh and bitter reality of Victorian society, is a fixture of John Fowles’ multi-layered, artfully crafted novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  The social struggles within this small pocket of Victorian Britain distinctly portray a much darker image. Fowles weaves the unspoken boundaries of the nineteenth century throughout his work just as they were nuanced in the Victorian attitude. The elements of postmodern literature, such as multiperspectivism, allow The French Lieutenant’s Woman to break through the limits of the Victorian social infrastructure and bring forth the evolutionary characteristics of Charles and Sarah. As the reader pictures their struggles with a twenty first century framework, Fowles’ twentieth century perspective grapples with distant Victorian society to create a bridge between three centuries of shifting ideologies.

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• 2007-08 Winner: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Inquiry and Report of a Controversy” by Shima Houshyar

  Date: 2009.04.17 | Category: Selected Essays | Response: 0

  On October 27, 1992 Petty Officer Allen R. Schindler was brutally murdered in Japan by his shipmates in an anti-gay hate crime. This event, and many other cases of harassment of homosexuals within the military were brought to the attention of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. The Committee held hearings to change regulations regarding allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military. On November 30, 1993 President Bill Clinton signed the anti-gay bill, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” into law. This policy prohibits investigation of servicemembers by the military for the sole purpose of finding out their sexual orientation and it also bans servicemembers from revealing their own or inquiring about others’ sexual orientation. Those whose sexual identity is revealed or discovered can be discharged on the mere basis of being gay, lesbian or bisexual. For fifteen years since the signing of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law, countless organizations have conducted research, investigations and polls to ascertain the morality and benefit of this controversial law. Based on information from these polls and research studies, it is long past time to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” for three main reasons: it is a discriminatory law, not supported by civilian and military opinion, that forces gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to hide their identities; the ban is detrimental to the military’s reputation and our national security by drawing a plethora of anti-military sentiments from all across the nation; and finally, the gay ban is hurting the military financially and unnecessarily costing the taxpayers millions of dollars.

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