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The North American Dostoevsky Society is delighted to announce the results of its 2026 Undergraduate and Graduate Student Essay Contests. This competition included entries written during 2024-26.
UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY CONTEST RESULTS
The Undergraduate Essay Contest committee was led by Vladimir Ivantsov and included members Melanie V. Jones and Chloë Kitzinger. Their report is as follows.
The 2024-26 Undergraduate Contest Winner is Maya Davydova of Bard College with the essay “Subversion of Victimhood in Dostoevsky’s Demons through Marya Lebyadkin.”
The Committee was impressed by Davydova’s choice of Demons, one of Dostoevsky’s most challenging (and gloomy) texts, as an object of study. Focusing on the techniques Dostoevsky uses to complicate Marya Lebyadkin’s role as a victim, through nuanced analysis of her plotline and characterization, Davydova argues that “[t]hough undoubtedly a victim, Marya is not as powerless as she seems, and paradoxically, she largely contributes to the ultimate downfall of the [nihilist] movement.” Davydova convincingly demonstrates that Dostoevsky subverts reader expectations of victimhood in multiple ways. In spite of her being framed by most of the novel’s characters solely through her mental and physical impairments, Marya also appears as an insightful and strong person. As Davydova argues, “[w]hile Marya contributes greatly to exposing the corrupt ideology just with her words,” her agency manifests itself, in particular, in “her taking up the space and becoming visible, by getting out of the dark of Fillipov’s house and bringing herself to light.” Moreover, Davydova stresses how Marya Lebyadkin physically fights with her murderer, a small but important (and typically overlooked) detail suggesting that Marya “sees life as the highest value, unlike characters who have been corrupted by poisonous ideology, such as Kirillov and Stavrogin.” Davydova’s tracing of the connection between Marya Lebyadkin and Shatov, highlighting Shatov’s potential for “accessing the truth,” struck the Committee as one of the essays’ particular strengths. As its ultimate achievement, Davydova’s essay helps us see how in his Demons, Dostoevsky gives agency to a disabled woman, and, while still portraying her as a victim of an oppressive society, turns it into a powerful counterpoint to the destructive and predominantly male world that Dostoevsky associates with nihilism and spiritual corruption.
An Honorable Mention is awarded to the essay by Alexander Feeney of University College London, on the topic of free will in Notes from Underground
In this essay, the author has found a fresh approach to a conventional (and well-researched) topic: the polemics between Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky on the question of the existence of free will and determinism. Through close reading of key passages from both Notes from Underground and What is To Be Done?, Feeney’s essay convincingly exposes the ways in which both Chernyshevsky (in the character of Rakhmetov, who serves as an exception in “a system that cannot afford exceptions”) and Dostoevsky’s underground man (who is unable to enact his professed freedom other than through performative suffering) expose the flaws of their respective system of beliefs.
The Committee would like to thank all the participants for their submissions.
GRADUATE ESSAY CONTEST RESULTS
The Graduate Essay Contest committee was led by Fiona Bell and included members Brian Armstrong and Greta Matzner-Gore. Their report is as follows.
We are delighted to award first prize in the 2024-2026 NADS graduate essay contest to “The Poverty of the New Word: Borrowed Language and Consciousness in Crime and Punishment,” by Jiwon Jung (Northwestern University). This essay offers a convincing, original, and elegantly written analysis of Raskolnikov’s “borrowed language” in Crime and Punishment. While the protagonist imagines he is proverbially uttering a “new word” to humanity, Jung shows “the words that actually leave his mouth are someone else’s entirely.” With excellent close readings of Raskolnikov’s lack of memories, lack of interest in art, and lack of original speech, this essay connects Dostoevsky’s novel to today’s debates on large language models in the humanities. “In an age when language circulates and erodes at unprecedented speed,” concludes Jung, “returning to Raskolnikov’s borrowed words, his abstracted confessions, his utterances devoid of memory” is illuminating.
We are also delighted to award an Honorable Mention to “Staging National Origin in Crime and Punishment: Raskolnikov and the Nomads” by Jake McClure (University of Toronto). By situating Crime and Punishment within the intellectual history of the 1860s, this essay asks why Raskolnikov’s spiritual rebirth in the epilogue begins not with his assimilation into the Russian narod, but rather with his gaze at the Asian “nomads” across the river. Playfully introducing the essay as a “whodunit” analysis of this crime novel, McClure argues that Dostoevsky “stages Raskolnikov’s identity as an issue of national genealogy, of Russia’s ethnic origins,” which are located not necessarily in the Russian narod but in Asia. Surveying the motif of migration in Russian intellectual history of the 1860s, the essay reads Raskolnikov as a nomad/wanderer, who finally finds his true home with the native peoples of Siberia. The essay is a promising contribution to the study of Dostoevsky as a writer of Russian imperialism.
Warmest congratulations to Jiwon and Jake on their exciting work, and thanks to all who submitted their work to this year’s competition.
On behalf of the North American Dostoevsky Society, thank you to the committee chairs, members, and all of the students who participated in the contest. The winners will be invited to present their papers on the biennial NADS research forum to be held at the end of 2026/beginning of 2027. Stay tuned!