We are so excited to celebrate our Winter 2024 Lunsford Award and Boothe Award winners! These students were honored in ceremonies in May 2024. You can read their award-winning essays and watch recordings of their presentations through the Boothe Prize and Lunsford Award websites.
Winter 2024 Boothe Prize Winner: Juliet Bell.
For "'I'm Like Literally Addicted to This': The Implementation of Emotional Manipulation Strategies in Digital Advertising." Instructor Agnes Hong.
Juliet plans to major in Communications with minors in Art History and Spanish. She is from New York City, and is interested in studying media and how the media we consume affects both ourselves and how we interact with one another. In her free time, she loves crocheting, being outdoors, and spending time with friends.
"One of the greatest takeaways that I have gotten from my PWR 1 class is that I truly learned to have fun when writing," she told us. "Through the three primary writing assignments in this class, I was encouraged by my professor to experiment with structure and rhetoric and to venture away from the structure and style of writing I learned in high school. When I reflect on my time in PWR 1, I am filled with appreciation for all that I have learned in the class and pride for the work I have produced.
"For my RBA, I wanted to explore America’s all-consuming culture of consumerism and how living in that world affects one’s mental health. I wanted to approach this broad topic from the perspective of marketing, and how and why modern marketing tactics are so effective. As I began doing my research, I noticed a lack of scholarly articles and research on social media marketing, and I realized that my RBA would be a great opportunity to conduct my own research and analyze it.
"When talking about PWR with upperclassmen at the beginning of the quarter, the main piece of advice that they all shared was that you will get out of the class what you put in, and I honestly thought that idea was merely a cliche. After finishing the class, though, I now understand that they were completely right. I have grown so much as a writer from this course and I learned to really love writing, which I would not have gotten to experience without this class."
Winter 2024 Boothe Prize Honorable Mention: Yannick Mofor.
For “Curing National Amnesia: The Next Steps Needed for Britain and South Africa to Create a Fulfilling Public Memory Culture.” Instructor Peter Tokofsky.
Yannick Mofor is interested in pursuing computer science, data science, or symbolic systems. He is originally from Houston, TX, and is interested in how technology can interact with policy and be leveraged to solve pertinent social problems, especially in population health. Yannick will work as a research assistant this summer in the Stanford Language and Cognition lab. Outside of school, Yannick enjoys playing the viola in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, volunteering with the Cardinal Free Clinics, and exploring the sights the Bay Area has to offer.
He writes, "I have loved the process of writing research papers since junior year. My dual credit English teacher Mrs. Hibbitts showed me the excitement of going into a research topic with an open mind and letting the knowledge steer you in whatever direction it takes you. As a child of Cameroonian immigrants, I am constantly thinking of the lasting socioeconomic, spatial, and mental impacts that colonization has on the Black Diaspora. After exploring the discourse about stolen Cameroonian art in British museums for my TiC, I became more interested in the relationship between formerly colonized countries and their colonizers in general. Writing about this from the South African British perspective was a new and fun challenge for me to learn about a portion of the diaspora I was less familiar with.
"I will cherish the experience of writing this essay for the rest of my academic and professional career. I’ve learned how to ask better questions and dig deeper when finding a solution to two opposing ideals felt impossible. I was hesitant at first to write about a topic embedded in so much nuance and discourse, but I learned to seek the knowledge of academics, politicians, and citizens to guide me to potential solutions. I am now more cognizant of how the legacy of colonialism manifests itself in facets of all of our lives, and I feel ready to ponder more difficult questions, eagerly awaiting the new paths to be revealed as I pursue the answers."
Winter 2024 Lunsford Award Winner: Annabelle Davis.
For "Outside the World: Community, Culture and Utopian ideas in Antarctic Stations." Instructor Gabrielle Moyer.
Originally from Hopewell, NJ, Annabelle is majoring in Earth Systems at Stanford. Her academic interests include marine science, natural resource management, the environmental ethics of space, utopia in science fiction, and fiction writing.
Here is what she wrote about her experience in Dr. Moyer's PWR 2 class "All of Us or None: Rhetorics of Belonging": "Science fiction novels contain some of the most thought-provoking and interesting ideas on how to live our lives and shape our world, but I have often felt like there was a gap between the visions of worlds I read about in novels and the concrete ideas and principles of politics, economics, and society I learned in classes. I am so grateful to Dr. Moyer for encouraging me to think creatively and expansively about community, isolation, and utopia in everywhere from fictional planets to Antarctica to our own lives."
Winter 2024 Lunsford Award Winner: Krystal Li.
For "State of the Arts: What It Means to Create Alongside Technology." Instructor Mutallip Anwar.
Krystal is majoring in Symbolic Systems (Human-Computer Interaction Track), with a minor in Art Practice. She is from Miami, Florida. Her academic interests include product design, as well as the intersections of art and technology. Outside of her schoolwork, she is passionate to be a member of the Asian Women's Alliance, which creates an inclusive space and community for Asian and Asian American women on campus. She also contributes to Design For America, which partners with local community organizations to offer design help.
