The Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies
Awards for Best Course Essay and Best BA Thesis
Each year the Greenberg Center runs two competitions for undergraduate work in the area of Jewish Studies. One award is given to the best essay written for a course; the other is given for the best B.A. thesis. The competitions are open to undergraduates across all academic units of the University, and student submissions are judged by Greenberg Center faculty members. The winner of each competition is listed on the College Awards website and each receives a prize of $500, through a generous gift from the Gemunder Family.
Award Winners 2021
Jonah Lubin, who majored in Jewish Studies, Germanic Studies, and Comparative Literature and was also the editor this year of the undergraduate journal mkwm, received the Greenberg Center award for Best Course Essay. His paper, written for the course Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, was entitled, “Megillah Novella: Bakhtinian Polyglossia and Contact with the Authorial Present in the Book of Esther.” Jonah is currently exploring graduate programs in comparative literature, semiotics, and linguistics, and has already received a DAAD grant for a two-year master’s program in Germany. He is also revising the manuscript of his English translation of the German expressionist novel Spuk by Klabund, which will be published with Snuggly Books in 2022.
Dikla Taylor-Sheinman, who majored in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, received the Greenberg Center award for the best BA Thesis. Her submission was entitled “American Jewish Feminists of the 1970s and 1980s and the Question of Palestine,” a version of which can be read in the undergraduate online journal mkwm. This fall Dikla will return to the University of Chicago to pursue her passion for her research in the master’s program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.