At the Center for Arts & Language, our mission is to fortify and amplify artists’ and designers’ voices at RISD and in the world. We believe that expression through words as well as work is empowering and edifying, enabling artists and designers to tell their own stories and make vivid contributions to scholarly and public discourse. We understand and honor language as a representation of diverse identities, experiences, and beliefs. As an expression and extension of these values, A&L invites students to participate in the inaugural Redefining Writing Essay Contest.
This writing contest seeks stand-out examples of essays composed by RISD undergraduates that push the boundaries of genre and challenge the traditional limits of scholarly discourse. Submissions should be focused on an idea worth sharing—a specific argument or point of view. They should therefore include some form of research, whether bibliographic, autoethnographic, experimental, or something else. We especially encourage multimodal and/or plurilingual submissions. Multimodal essays combine forms of communication: text, video, images, etc. Plurilingual essays use more than one language and/or multiple styles/dialects/forms of English: global Englishes, Spanglish, African American Vernacular English, etc. All of these stretch the boundaries of “standard” or “traditional” scholarly writing, and we look forward to seeing how RISD students use them to better convey ideas.
One winner will receive $100 in RISDBucks and have their submission published in A&L’s online archive and in the student publication v.1.
Honorable mentions will receive $50 in RISDBucks and have their submission published in A&L’s online archive and in the student publication v.1.
See the full call for submissions for more information, including the list of judges and how to submit.
