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Model Papers

Professional writers often read works by other writers to think about new techniques. Although reading a good paper cannot teach you everything you need to know about writing in a given discipline, it can be enormously helpful. The papers below are past winners of the Poorvu Center Writing Contest. We hope you find some of these helpful for expanding your writing repertoire.

Consult the expandable headings below to view a more extensive list of downloadable model papers within the selected department or discipline.

“Neurometabolic Biomarkers for the Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease” by Ludivine Brunissen ’19

“The Sooner, The Better: Modeling Evolutionary Recovery Following Isolated Incidents of Environmental Pollution” by Laura Goetz ’17

“The Antagonistic Pleiotropy between Innate Immunity and Alzheimer’s Disease” by Emma Healy ’18

“Visualization of localization and expression of Arabidopsis thaliana gene AT1G52340, an ortholog of Tasselseed2” by Kevin Hochstrasser ’15 et al.

“The Construction of a Universal Entry Vector to Facilitate Genetic Modification of Rhizobia” by Sarah McAlister ’16 et al.

“Do Octopuses Think Like Vertebrates? A New Comparative Test” by Dakota E. McCoy ’13

“The Influence of Egg Crypsis on the Broken-Wing Display of the Killdeer” by Casey McLaughlin ’15

“The Hygiene Hypothesis and the Increase of Cancer in the 20th Century” by Stacy Scheuneman ’14

“Treat the Problem, Not the Disease: The Necessary Shift from Vertical Programs to Horizontal Programs for Treating HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa” by Xiuqi Cao ’17

“’The Moral Meaning of a Pause’: Ethics Committees and the Cloning Debate” by Lindsay Gellman ’12

“The Limits of Moral Ideology in Foreign HIV/AIDS Intervention” by Akielly Hu ’19

“Occupy Wall Street: Creating a Successful Movement from a Chaotic Structure” by Kelsea Jeon ’20

“Muahaha!: Defining Evil Laughter” by Spencer Katz ’13

“The Camera as Dictator: Photography and Fascism at Abu Ghraib” by Stephanie Lynch ’09

“The Curiosity of Humanity” by Michael Rodriguez ’10

“The Opposition to Israel’s Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip: Legitimizing Civil Disobedience from Both Sides of the Political Map Name” by Aya Shoshan  ’10

“The Corrective Lens of Satire” by Benjamin Solarz ’09

“Commonwealth v. Sharpless and the Invention of American Obscenity” by River Sell ’25

“Avoiding the sublime: Photography and the ongoing legacy of nuclear technology” by Colin Hemez ’18

“Dancing with Knives: Voguing and Black Vernacular Dance” by Eliza Robertson ’18

 “Entrepreneur, Democrat, Patriot: Sameness and Difference in Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum” by Jordan Cutler-Tietjen ’20

“Having Her Pie and Eating it Too: Sara Bareilles’ Representation of Women through the Convergence of Singer-Songwriter, Stage Character, and Composer in Waitress: The Musical,” by Sofía Campoamor ’20.

“Ignoring the Call to Murder: The Evolution of Surrealist French Cinema by Christopher Adler ’09.

“ ‘That’s What It Is’: Musical Potential and Stylistic Contrast in Act One, Scene One of The Most Happy Fella,” by Dan Rubins ’16.

“Walking With, Moving Through,” by Holly Taylor ’17.

“A World Neither Marvelous Nor New: Aleksei Balabanov’s Of Freaks and Men as an Anti-Avant-Garde Film,” by Elise Lieberman ’22

“The Samuel and Mary Attempted Piracy Outside the Port of Cephalonia: A Case Study of Piracy Law as a Transitional Factor Away from Lex Mercatoria” by Michael Gousgounis ’06

“Thomas Clap, Ezra Stiles, and Yale’s First Revolution” by Thomas Hopson ’16

“Following Thread: Understanding History and Materiality in Frida Kahlo’s Clothes” by Deborah Monti ’19

“Privatization as Violence: Iraqi Oil and a Contractor Army” by Rosa Shapiro-Thompson ’19

“Managing History: The Federalist Attempt To Shape the Hartford Convention’s Legacy” by Nathaniel Zelinsky ’14

“The Ptolemies, the priesthood, and P. Grad. 4: The Impossibility of P. Grad. 4 in the Thebaid and Implications for Ptolemaic Rule” by Jennifer Barrows ’12

“Whales, Oceans, Ships, and Colonial Power: The Workscape of Yankee Whaling” by AJ Laird ’24

“The Governess Question: Modes of social engagement in Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre” by Helen Knight ’13

“Whither Hast Thou, Fortune, Led?” by Daniel Pollack ’16

“The Limited Potential of True Reform” by Bianca Yuh ’12

“When Hell Freezes Over: Dante as Pilgrim and Poet in Inferno XXXII” by Lukas Cox ‘19

“ ‘A Pattern of your Love’: Sainthood as Erotic Example in ‘The Canonization’ and ‘The Relic’ ” by Eve Houghton ’17

“License to Build: Readership and Authorship in Pynchon and Melville” by Marc Shkurovich ’19

“Vision, Voice, and Women in The Winter’s Tale” by Oriana Tang ’19

“Obscuring Gender into Oneness: in Canto 21 of ‘Song of Myself’ ” by Minh Vu ’20

“The Selfish Motif: Bridging Folklore and Evolutionary Theory with a Motif-Centered Approach” by Austin Theroux ’24

“Rising from the Ashes: Queer Theory and The Phoenix” by Simon Van Der Weide ’24

“Telling a Lie to Save a Life: Kant’s Moral Failure and Mill’s Mere Suitability” by Brian Earp ’10

“The Moral Meaning of a Pause: Ethics Committees and the Cloning Debate” by Lindsay Gellman ’12

“Charlotte’s Finite Web: Causality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics” by Anya Richkind ’16

“The Prisoner Dis-Analogy as a Defense of Stem Cell Research on Spare Embryos” by Ilana Yurkiewicz ’10

“Save Yourself from Yourself” by Ryan Hollander ’12

“Federal Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research” by Jurist Tan ’09

“Feel Like a Natural Human: The Polis by Nature, and Human Nature in Aristotle’s The Politics” by Laura Zax ’10

“An Odyssey of Theodicy: Descartes’ Journey from the Perfection of God to the Error of Man” by Isabel Arroyo ’25

“Perfect and Imperfect Friendships in Nicomachean Ethics” by Lukas Bacho ’25

“Epicurus, Death, and Indifference: Is Death Really ‘Nothing to Us’?” by Enza Jonas-Giugni ’25