Undergrad Student Spotlight: 2025 Kirmser Awards

Our Undergraduate Student Spotlight typically features a single student reflecting on the experience of English at K-State.

Today, we feature the four undergraduate English majors who have been recognized with a 2025 Kirmser Undergraduate Research Award for their success in research and writing.

The Kirmser Undergraduate Research Awards “recognize students who have used library resources to complete a research project for a K-State course during the current academic year.” Established in 2014, the awards “recognize and promote outstanding scholarship among K-State’s undergraduates”;  they are “funded by a gift provided to K-State Libraries by Philip and Jeune Kirmser.”

Here are the four English majors who were honored earlier today for their research papers:

• Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25, English), “‘You’re just making up sounds’: Radical Creative Possibilities Through Translanguaging in Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Grand Prize Winner, Continuing Research Category. Faculty nominator: Anne Longmuir, ENGL 698 “Capstone: Love and Money” (Fall 2024); McNair faculty mentor, Mary Kohn.
• Allison Meerian (BA ’26, English), “The Implications of Setting in Zadie Smith’s Wife of Willesden,” Honorable Mention, Continuing Research Category. Faculty nominator: Wendy Matlock, ENGL 660 “Geoffrey Chaucer and Zadie Smith” (Fall 2024).
• Emma Rupprecht (BA ’28, English Education), “Branching Out Of Grief: Ada Limón Navigating Grief Through the Use of Trees,” Grand Prize Winner, Freshman Category. Faculty nominator: Wendy Matlock, ENGL 310 “Introduction to Literary Studies” (Fall 2024).
• Harrison Jones (BA ’28, English), “‘Love Letter to Those Who Cannot Say “I Love You”‘: Ada Limón and the Deconstruction of Gender Roles in Favor of Masculine Love,” Honorable Mention, Freshman Category. Faculty nominator: Wendy Matlock, ENGL 310 “Introduction to Literary Studies” (Fall 2024).

Congratulations to our four undergraduate majors on their 2025 Kirmser Awards, and many thanks to faculty mentors Wendy Matlock, Anne Longmuir, and Mary Kohn!

— Karin Westman, Department Head