Congratulations to the 2025 HSS Student Prizewinners

The Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to present the 2024–2025 student prizewinners.

Sophomore Katherine Avanesov was selected as the winner of the Hallett Smith Prize for her paper, "An Exploration of the Tangible and Intangible in Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher." The prize was established in 1997 to commemorate Professor Smith's long career as one of this century's most distinguished Renaissance scholars and recognizes outstanding essays on English literature.

The Gordon McClure Memorial Communications Prizes are awarded to undergraduate students for their academic writing in three categories: English, history, and philosophy. The 2025 winners are junior Elizabeth Won (English, "Reliable Unreliability – Narrative Bias in Autofiction"), junior Luke Kottom (History, "Beyond the Battleground: T.H. Huxley's Complex Vision of Science and Religion in Victorian Britain"), and senior Edward Speer (Philosophy, "The Good Life+: Well-Being in Virtual Worlds"). Speer graduates today with a double-major in computer science and philosophy.

Established in 1946 by Samuel P. McKinney, the Mary A. Earl McKinney Prize in Literature promotes proficiency in writing and is awarded for the best original poetry and fiction. The humanities faculty selected junior Sreeyutha Ratala for her fiction piece, "A Forgotten Flame," and senior Chi Cap for her poems excerpted from a collection titled, "mother and father." Cap graduates today with a degree in astrophysics.

The 2025 Rodman W. Paul History Prize went to junior Mia Mutadich, following a nomination from Assistant Professor of History Danielle Wiggins. Since its establishment in 1986, the prize is awarded annually to a junior or senior with an unusual interest in or affinity for the past.

First year Mariana Vale Taveira received the Alexander P. and Adelaide F. Hixon Prize for Writing, and she was nominated by the faculty in both of her first-year humanities courses. Her winning essays were "From Carbon to Silicon: A Philosophical Case for Surviving Through Mind Uploading" (for Professor Hitchcock's Knowledge and Reality course) and "Dot, Letter, Legend: Johann Bayer's Graphic Code" (for Dr. Gaida's Visualizing the Heavens: Images and Instruments of Early Modern Astronomy course).

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics, nominated graduate student Kexin Feng to receive the Eleanor Searle Prize in Law, Politics, and Institutions. Named for the late Edie and Lew Wasserman Professor of History at Caltech, the prize honors an undergraduate or graduate student whose work in history or the social sciences exemplifies Searle's interests in the use of power, government, and law. Feng, who graduates today with a PhD in social sciences, completed a rigorous dissertation project on trade in China from 1900 to 1930.

The social sciences faculty awarded the David M. Grether Prize in Social Science to senior Sulekha Kishore, who earns a BS in computer science and political science today. Flintridge Foundation Professor of Political and Computational Social Science Michael Alvarez nominated Kishore for her work on the development of an extremely fast methodology for probabilistic record linkage (in collaboration with social sciences graduate student Jacob Morrier (PhD '25)). The application removes duplicates within large administrative datasets, specifically voter registration databases, which the team hopes to implement widely in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

The John O. Ledyard Prize for Graduate Research in Social Science rewards the best second-year paper by a graduate student in social science or social decision neuroscience. A committee of social science faculty members selected Guillaume Wegmueller as the 2025 recipient for his paper titled, "Dockside Knowledge versus Lloyd's Grades: Pricing Marine Insurance in Liverpool (1804-1805)."

Congratulations to Katherine, Elizabeth, Luke, Edward, Sreeyutha, Chi, Mia, Mariana, Kexin, Sulekha, Guillaume, and the graduating class of 2025!

Updated October 7, 2025.