Model Papers from the Disciplines

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 Writing Center essay contest [1]. We hope you find some of these helpful for expanding your writing repertoire.

It can be even more valuable to ask your professors for sample essays that they admire. In fact, if your field is not represented below, please encourage your professors to send us a model paper in that discipline.

Currently, we have winning essays posted from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years. 21-22 and 22-23 will be posted during Spring 2024. If you are looking for earlier essays, they won’t be available online again until January 2025, but please email Alfred Guy if you are looking for specific essays or genres. (You may see more essays listed near the bottom of this page, but those links are currently not working.)

Rachel	Ababio	ENGL120	o⑁ɔ⑁oɔ [2]
Zawar	Ahmed	ENGL120	I want to be Clean, Pretty, and White [3]
Jared	Brunner	CLCV211	Morality in Carnivalisque Literature [4]
Grace	Bu	DRST 006	Tradition: Another Casualty? [5]
Claire	Chang	ENGL 114	Should We Settle for Miss Saigon? [6]
Alex	Dong	DRST 003	A Stressed College Student [7]
Lucy	Ellis	HUMS255	Old Enough to Drink? [8]
Andre	Faria	PSYC235	The Effects of Social Rejection [9]
Alexandra	Galloway	ENGL 128	Shakespeare in the Post-Colonial Imagination [10]
Christine	Ho	E&EB 335	Chlamydia-Caused Infertility in Women [11]
Eileen	Huang	ENGL127	Not a Whole Body [12]
Mia	Jackson	ENGL 121	What One Small Primary Care Center Tells us About Healing [13]
Heidi	Katter	HIST467J	Evading the Map [14]
Abby	Lee	ENGL 455	Blue Ridge Bounty [15]
Cameron	Lugo	PHIL 443	On the Very Idea of an nth Dogma [16]
Jonathan	Oates	ENGL114	Time’s Up! [17]
Katie	Painter	DRST002	Reclaiming the Fragments of Human Identity [18]
Annie	Radillo	EDST 238	Campus Theater Stages Plays with no Stage [19]
Hongyi	Shen	DRST 002	Can Hume Abstract Time? [20]
Hannah	Shi	ENGL 120	Heart of a Place [21]
Alexandra	Stanger	HIST 103	The Black O’Connell [22]
Alexis	Teh	LITR 332	A Return to Primordial Chaos [23]
Ran	Wang	ECON 375	Asymmetric Average Inflation Targeting [24]
Andy	Zhao	ENGL 120	Behind our Bathroom Habits [25]