STUDENT PUBLICATIONS

1. ENGLISH LITERATURE BA PAPERS

Since 2010-2011, the English Literature section of the Department of Literary Studies has awarded an annual prize to the best BA paper in the field of English literature at Ghent University. The prize, a book voucher with a cash value of 50 EUR, was generously sponsored by J. Story-Scientia until 2014 and Boekhandel Limerick from 2015 to 2018. From 2018-2019 onwards, Paard van Troje will be sponsoring the award.

The winning BA paper and the runners-up are published below in PDF format. Intended as a reward for the efforts of the students concerned and as inspiration for their successors, the award and the online publication round off the English Literature seminar, a preparatory course for the BA paper that simulates the process of conceiving, researching, and writing a scholarly article.

  

2022-23 

Lucie Detaille and Camille van Pottelsberghe were declared joint winners for the 2022-2023 academic year and received their prizes in September 2023.

Lucie Detaille, “Telling a Story You Don’t Have the Language For: Exploring Queer Abuse and (Mis)citation in Carmen Maria Machado’s Memoir In the Dream House(Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens) 

Camille van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, “Among Fallen Women, New Women and New Men: An Exploration of Changing Gender Stereotypes in the 18th and 19th Century” (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Amann)

 

2021-2022 

Beau Serrus was declared the winner for the 2021-2022 academic year and received the prize in September 2022. 

Beau Serrus, “'Demons of Wickedness': Deconstructed Childhood Innocence in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse" (supervisor: Dr. Cedric Van Dijck)

 
2020-2021

Maurane Pieters and Cato Rooryck were declared joint winners for the 2020-2021 academic year and received their prizes in October 2021.

Maurane Pieters for "Looking for Absence: Pandemic Depictions and Calamity Form in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marco Caracciolo)

Cato Rooryck, "'I will be free / even to the uttermost as I please in words': The Power of Language and the Battle of the Sexes in The Taming of the ShrewRomeo and Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Andrew Bricker)

 
2019-2020

Nina Waegemans and Jena Osselaer were declared joint winners for the 2019-2020 academic year and received their prizes in September 2020.

Nina Waegemans, "Understanding Rupi Kaur's Instapoetry as an Expression of Online and Celebrity Feminism” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Delphine Munos)

Jena Osselaer, "In Search of Female Identity through the Death-and-Rebirth Pattern in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Ariel” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Johanna Wagner)


2018-2019

 Flora Van Canneyt was declared the winner for the 2018-19 academic year and received the prize in March 2019.

 Flora Van Canneyt, "Act Natural: Metadrama and Theories on Play-Acting in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Guido Latré)

2017-2018

Vanessa Van Puyvelde was declared the winner for the 2017-18 academic year and received the prize in February 2019. 

 Vanessa Van Puyvelde, “Mary Wollstonecraft and the English Jacobin Novel: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentalism in Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman (1798)” (supervisor: Dr. Koenraad Claes)

2016-2017

Eline Vandewalle was declared the winner for the 2016-2017 academic year and received the prize in February 2018.

2015-2016

Tine Kempenaers was declared the winner for the 2015-2016 academic year and received the prize in November 2016. 

2014-2015

Bert Biesbrouck and Stephanie Van Renterghem were declared the joint winners for the 2014-2015 academic year and received the prize in May 2016.

  • Bert Biesbrouck, "Horrors of the Mariner and His Author: Boundary-Crossing and the Traumatized Mariner’s Unreliable Testimony in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor)
  • Florine De Keyser, "Sassoon's Anti-War Perspectives in Contrast to Civilian Poets" (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor)
  • Stephanie Van Renterghem, "Gothic Representations of Women in Ann Radcliffe and Nathaniel Hawthorne" (supervisor: Dr. Gero Guttzeit)

2013-2014

Mahlu Mertens was declared the winner for the 2013-2014 academic year and received the prize during the first class meeting of the English Literature seminar in February 2015.

  • Esther De Baecke, "Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales" (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Koenraad Claes)
  • Matthias De Groeve, "Reflections of War in John Buchan's Fiction" (supervisor: Dr. Kate Macdonald)
  • Lenore Lampens, "Individualism in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis and B. F. Skinner's Walden Two" (supervisor: Dr. Marius Hentea)
  • Mahlu Mertens, "Mnemonic Dramaturgy in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie" (supervisor: Dr. Sarah Posman)

2012-2013

Simon De Craemer, Meike Meulebrouck, and Michelle Verdonck were declared the joint winners for the 2013-2014 academic year and received the prize during the first class meeting of the English Literature seminar in February 2014.

2011-2012

Maarten Luyten was declared the winner for the 2011-2012 academic year and received the prize during the first class meeting of the English Literature seminar in February 2013.

2010-2011

Alexandra Cousy was declared the winner for the 2010-2011 academic year and received the prize during the English Literature info session for BA3 students on 5 October 2011.

2. SIMILE

Simile is:
- literary terminology: an explicit comparison indicated by words such as 'as' or 'like';
- a place to compare and bring together Belgian and English-speaking cultures and literatures;
- an acronym (sort of) for Student Magazine of Literary English, because that's what we are!

For more information, follow us on www.simile.ugent.be, drop us an email at or find us on Facebook!

Creative Team:
Michelle Verdonck (Editor-In-Chief)
Jorin Carpels (Prose Editor)
Matthias Opsomer (Review Editor, Lay-out and PR Design)
Caroline Tilleman (Artwork Coordinator)

Staff assistance from:
Joanna Britton
Nils Smeuninx

Simile 2012 (pdf)

Simile 2011 (pdf)

Simile 2010 (pdf)

3. CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION

In 2012-2013 the English section ran a creative writing competition, in two categories (prose and poetry), on the theme of 'crowds'. This was open to all UGent students. The entries were judged blind, so it was with great surprise that, after deciding on the winners, the judges (Professor Gert Buelens and Dr Kate Macdonald) found that the same person had won both poetry and prose categories. The winning entries are attached as pdf files.

Prose
1) Dinah Wouters 
2) Esther De Baecke 

Honourable Mention: Lisen Maebe 

Poetry
1) Dinah Wouters 
2) Mathijs Debaene 

The next competition will be announced in September 2013.