College writing community celebrates launch of The Jack’s 2015 issue

Lindsay Brents’ 16 reads her award-winning essay, “Constantia Dudley, Sophia Courtland, and Martinette de Beauvais: Ormond’s Subversion of Heteronormative Gothic Characteristics.”

Randolph students and faculty gathered Tuesday evening to celebrate the launch of the College’s literary magazine, The Jack. The event, held at the student-run Red Door Café, featured special awards as well as plenty of hot drinks and sweet, locally made treats.

Published annually since 2010, The Jack showcases Randolph’s award-winning papers and lists students deemed as exceptional writers by faculty. The Jack is named in honor of Theodore Jack, a former president of the College committed to keeping the writing curriculum in step with the modern world.

At the launch party Tuesday, students recognized in the 2015 issue were honored and excerpts from their papers were shared.

Lindsay Brents ’16 received the award for Best Arts and Letters Paper for her paper, “Constantia Dudley, Sophia Courtland, and Martinette de Beauvais: Ormond’s Subversion of Heteronormative Gothic Characteristics.” Heidi Kunz, English professor and assistant dean of the College, nominated Brents’ paper for the award. Brents wrote the paper in Kunz’s English course, Radical Turns.

“I have enormous respect for students who sign up for this course because it’s kind of a wild ride through a lot of non-traditional texts that definitely are outside the canon,” Kunz said. “Lindsay did an extraordinary job on this paper. I was really pleased with what she did because she used a number of things that had come up in class and crafted a sophisticated analysis of some pretty challenging ideas in a messy text, and for me that makes an excellent paper.”

For her essay, Brents researched the three major female characters in American novelist Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond. “I was interested because the narrator and protagonist are both female, and that doesn’t usually happen in literature,” Brents said. “I wanted to analyze why that might be.”

Katy Boyer ’16 won Best Social and Behavioral Sciences Paper for her “Tutoring Essay #1,” which highlights the value of Randolph’s writing tutors. She was inspired by her own experiences as a writing tutor. Though Boyer was unable to attend, Kiaorea Wright ’16 read her essay.

Claire Sumner ’15 won Best Senior Paper for the 2014-15 academic year for her essay, “The Search for Fame: Tracing the Iconography of the Fame Armour of Guidobaldo Della Rovere.” Sumner’s senior paper was nominated for the award by art history professor Andrea Campbell, and explores the details behind the armor and mask of Duke of Urbino, Italy Guidobaldo Della Rovere, during the 16th century.

Also recognized during the event was Trey Padgett ’15, whose artwork is featured on the cover of the 2015 issue of The Jack. Inspired by a traumatic car accident, Padgett’s untitled painting received the 2015 Rachel Trexler Ellis ’44 Prize.

Each issue of The Jack can be viewed at https://www.randolphcollege.edu/academicservices/writing/jack/