{"id":35665,"date":"2026-09-08T20:33:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/2026-student-essay-contest-results\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T20:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:33:17","slug":"2026-student-essay-contest-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/2026-student-essay-contest-results\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Student Essay Contest Results!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The North American Dostoevsky Society stands with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See our statement\u00a0<\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The North American Dostoevsky Society is delighted to announce the results of its 2026 Undergraduate and Graduate Student Essay Contests<\/a>. This competition included entries written during 2024-26.<\/p>\n

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UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY CONTEST RESULTS<\/p>\n

The Undergraduate Essay Contest committee was led by Vladimir Ivantsov and included members Melanie V. Jones and Chlo\u00eb Kitzinger. Their report is as follows. <\/p>\n

The 2024-26 Undergraduate Contest Winner<\/strong> is\u00a0Maya Davydova<\/strong> of Bard College with the essay\u00a0\u201cSubversion of Victimhood in Dostoevsky\u2019s Demons<\/em> through Marya Lebyadkin.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Committee was impressed by Davydova\u2019s choice of Demons<\/em>, one of Dostoevsky\u2019s most challenging (and gloomy) texts, as an object of study. Focusing on the techniques Dostoevsky uses to complicate Marya Lebyadkin\u2019s role as a victim, through nuanced analysis of her plotline and characterization, Davydova argues that \u201c[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.\u201d\u00a0 Davydova convincingly demonstrates that Dostoevsky subverts reader expectations of victimhood in multiple ways. In spite of her being framed by most of the novel\u2019s characters solely through her mental and physical impairments, Marya also appears as an insightful and strong person. As Davydova argues, \u201c[w]hile Marya contributes greatly to exposing the corrupt ideology just with her words,\u201d her agency manifests itself, in particular, in \u201cher taking up the space and becoming visible, by getting out of the dark of Fillipov\u2019s house and bringing herself to light.\u201d Moreover, Davydova stresses how Marya Lebyadkin physically fights with her murderer, a small but important (and typically overlooked) detail suggesting that Marya \u201csees life as the highest value, unlike characters who have been corrupted by poisonous ideology, such as Kirillov and Stavrogin.\u201d Davydova\u2019s tracing of the connection between Marya Lebyadkin and Shatov, highlighting Shatov\u2019s potential for \u201caccessing the truth,\u201d struck the Committee as one of the essays\u2019 particular strengths. As its ultimate achievement, Davydova\u2019s essay helps us see how in his Demons<\/em>, 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Honorable Mention<\/strong> is awarded to the essay by Alexander Feeney<\/strong> of University College London, on the topic of free will in Notes from Underground<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/em> and What is To Be Done?,<\/em> Feeney\u2019s essay convincingly exposes the ways in which both Chernyshevsky (in the character of Rakhmetov, who serves as an exception in \u201ca system that cannot afford exceptions\u201d) and Dostoevsky\u2019s underground man (who is unable to enact his professed freedom other than through performative suffering) expose the flaws of their respective system of beliefs.<\/p>\n

The Committee would like to thank all the participants for their submissions.<\/p>\n

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GRADUATE ESSAY CONTEST RESULTS<\/p>\n

The Graduate Essay Contest committee was led by Fiona Bell and included members Brian Armstrong and Greta Matzner-Gore. Their report is as follows.<\/p>\n

We are delighted to award first prize <\/strong>in the 2024-2026 NADS graduate essay contest to \u201cThe Poverty of the New Word: Borrowed Language and Consciousness in Crime and Punishment<\/em>,\u201d by Jiwon Jung (Northwestern University).<\/strong> This essay offers a convincing, original, and elegantly written analysis of Raskolnikov\u2019s \u201cborrowed language\u201d in Crime and Punishment<\/em>. While the protagonist imagines he is proverbially uttering a \u201cnew word\u201d to humanity, Jung shows \u201cthe words that actually leave his mouth are someone else\u2019s entirely.\u201d With excellent close readings of Raskolnikov\u2019s lack of memories, lack of interest in art, and lack of original speech, this essay connects Dostoevsky\u2019s novel to today\u2019s debates on large language models in the humanities. \u201cIn an age when language circulates and erodes at unprecedented speed,\u201d concludes Jung, \u201creturning to Raskolnikov\u2019s borrowed words, his abstracted confessions, his utterances devoid of memory\u201d is illuminating.<\/p>\n

We are also delighted to award an Honorable Mention <\/strong>to \u201cStaging National Origin in Crime and Punishment<\/em>: Raskolnikov and the Nomads\u201d by Jake McClure (University of Toronto).<\/strong> By situating Crime and Punishment<\/em> within the intellectual history of the 1860s, this essay asks why Raskolnikov\u2019s spiritual rebirth in the epilogue begins not with his assimilation into the Russian narod<\/em>, but rather with his gaze at the Asian \u201cnomads\u201d across the river. Playfully introducing the essay as a \u201cwhodunit\u201d analysis of this crime novel, McClure argues that Dostoevsky \u201cstages Raskolnikov\u2019s identity as an issue of national genealogy, of Russia\u2019s ethnic origins,\u201d which are located not necessarily in the Russian narod<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Warmest congratulations to Jiwon and Jake on their exciting work, and thanks to all who submitted their work to this year\u2019s competition.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0The 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!<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The North American Dostoevsky Society stands with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See our statement\u00a0here. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":35666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bloggers-karamazov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky.org\/society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}