2016 Undergraduate Essay Prize - winners announced
Competition for the first Merton College Undergraduate Essay Prize was so tight that the judges have not only named joint winners, but have chosen a runner-up as well. Sharing the prize are first-year PPEist Dan Snow and second-year historian Tom Thorne, and the runner-up is Molly Clark, a second-year English student; their three essays were indicative of the differences in both subject and methodology of the many entries received:
Dan's essay discussed the contention that the method by which voters choose a party to support is largely unchanged from 50 years ago - he concluded that this is not the case, and that whilst older voters are still very partisan, and vote according to habit and party loyalty, younger voters are less influenced by parental partisanship, and choose party loyalty not based on their place in society, but by rational consideration of the benefits that can be produced by different parties in power.
Tom looked at Culture and Anarchy, a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. In this work, Arnold expressed fears common to much of Victorian intellectual society: fears of civil unrest, of religious sectarianism, of moral disintegration. His proposed solution to these problems was the 'perfection' of English society through the teaching of 'culture.' In his essay, Tom considered whether this solution is a satisfactory one, and argued that in a number of aspects it comes up short, leaving the reader with a number of unanswered questions: Who is to decide what 'perfection' looks like? Is there even such a thing as a single ideal for either individual or society? What is the 'right reason' which Arnold believes culture instils, and why should the State be trusted to employ it? According to Tom, Arnold's narrow view of what 'culture' actually entails ultimately fails to satisfactorily solve the perceived problem of 'anarchy.' But he recognises that Arnold raises a number of fascinating questions about conflicts between the need for cultural order and the creative potential of chaos.
Runner-up Molly Clark's essay was titled '"I'll have some china too": Consumerism in Restoration Comedy' and considered the ways in which the permeation of social interaction by the language of commerce was reflected in the plays of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. She looked at three works: George Etherege’s The Man of Mode and William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, both comedies of the 1670s; and George Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem of 1707. She demonstrated that, as theatre-going in the period was itself an act of buying and selling—buying entertainment, prostitutes, and other theatre products, and selling yourself, marketing the image you wanted to project—drama was the perfect medium for the discourse of commerce, which runs in an undercurrent throughout all three plays.
This is the Undergraduate Essay Prize's introductory year, the competition being trialled in Humanities and Social Sciences. It was open to all current Humanities and Social Science undergraduates, with a single prize of £150 for the winning essay. The essay had to be one which had already been submitted for a tutorial, and could be no more than 3,000 words in length.
The entries were judged by Merton’s Junior Research Fellows in Humanities and Social Sciences, who considered:
- clarity of thought and expression;
- logical and effective organization of ideas to build a coherent argument;
- effective integration of supporting evidence, where appropriate;
- effective use of elements of style to enhance meaning;
- independence of judgement; and
- accurate referencing, appropriate to subject-specific conventions.
The Senior Tutor, Dr Rachel Buxton, extended congratulations to Dan, Tom, and Molly, along with a warm thank you to the JRFs for giving their time and expertise to the judging, and ensuring that this first year of the competition was such a success.
