KPU English department hosts first annual Intersectional Social Justice Essay Awards

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Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s English department held a mixer on Wednesday in the Surrey campus library to celebrate a new academic season and the success of students who won the first annual Intersectional Social Justice Essay Awards. 

Three students won the award and four received an honourable mention based on their essay in an English class that touched on the topic within intersectional social justice. 

Prizes were categorized by first year, second or third year, and fourth year. Students were nominated by their instructors for their topic and strong argument within their essay through the previous academic year. 

Jenny Boyd, Olivia Peters, and Sean Kirk were the recipients of the award, and Pearl Meredith, Leticia Fox, Lauryn Beck, and Tim Troupe received an honourable mention. In addition to the award, their essays are published in the Arts Research, Scholarship and Creativity Network, a KPU created group that encourages and advocates for educational excellence. 

Norton Press, KDocsFF Outreach, and the Canada Research Chair program were the donors of the prizes. 

“This series of prizes seeks to recognize the best essays on the topic of intersectional social justice broadly interpreted,” said KPU English instructor Kris Singh at the award ceremony. “The question of social justice is not easy to address, especially when you have to interrogate your own positioning in these systems.” 

Intersectional social justice is the idea of equal distribution of opportunities and rights within society for everyone. 

“It’s a way to think about how systems of oppression may overlap, but also how identities may overlap,” Singh says in a follow-up interview with The Runner. “Social justice asks people to think about how society affects each individual differently based on their multiple identities.” 

“And by addressing those power imbalances in a sort of nuanced way, can we really build towards a more just society?” 

Winners of the first and second or third year categories received a gift certificate to KDocsFF, the university’s documentary film festival. 

The fourth year winner is offered a research internship with KPU English instructor Dr. Asma Sayed to help them learn more about theories of social justice and further their career goals. Sayed is also the Canada Research Chair in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies and chair of the KPU Anti-Racism Task Force. 

“The award was conceptualized as a way of furthering English department’s students’ engagement with issues of social justice,” Sayed wrote in an email statement to The Runner. 

“I had the privilege and pleasure of serving as an advisor on the awards committee given that much of my research, which is funded through the Canada Research Chair program, focuses on intersectional social justice especially in the context of literature, film, and media.”

KPU English instructor Julia Grandison says the idea of the essay awards came around the 2020/2021 academic year and began working on it throughout the 2021/2022 year. 

Singh and Grandison were part of the awards committee in addition to English instructors Jennifer Williams, Deborah Blenkhorn, Kirsten Alm, and Blair Hemstock. Sayed was one of the inspirations of creating the award due to her work focusing on intersectional social justice. 

“This award provides ENGL students with an opening to explore topics that are not always easy to work on and be supported by their instructors as they embark on writing about challenging topics,” Sayed said in her email. 

Fox, a fourth year creative writing major at KPU, wrote her essay titled “Voice and Body as Diasporic Expression,” which is based around “The Test,” a chapter in Canadian author David Chariandy’s book I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter. 

“[I’m] just basically talking about how there’s discussions on … verbal expressions on identity, resisting as a marginalized person in other countries, in new homelands, automatically became a guide for it,” Fox says. 

“It’s like an [embodied] experience, and even as you try to suppress these expressions of your places that you come from, even trying to suppress them you’re so enraged….” she adds. 

Fox says that in her English class, she was given a couple different ideas from her instructor and wanted to explore this topic as it seemed interesting. 

The KPU English department plans to have the award annually, and will be looking for nominations from instructors this school year. Singh says he hopes students learned from the event that their ideas and work matter. 

“When professors receive their work, the important thing for us is that we recognize the thought, efforts, and energy put into these submissions,” he says. 

“I want the students who receive this award to continue to grow as scholars, but also as people who lead society into better places.”