Catherine Holder Wins Academic Prize

Catherine Holder, a Hellenic College senior from Centennial, Colorado, has been named the winner of the Hellenic College Humanities Paper Prize. The prize is awarded annually by the faculty of the Literature and History program. Catherine won the award for her outstanding work in two areas within the field of humanities, scholarship and creative writing, having written both a paper and a collection of poetry.

Catherine’s prize-winning paper, titled “Know Thyself: Mortality and Acceptance of Place as a Way to Self-Knowledge in The Iliad,” was submitted for consideration by Dr. Stamatia Dova, Director of the Classics and Greek Studies program, in which Catherine is a major. Catherine wrote the poems for her Literature and Vocation course in lieu of a paper. The professor, Dr. Kathleen Ryan, was so impressed by the work, titled “Philology: A Seven-Poem Cycle on Discerning Vocation,” that she felt it too should be eligible for the prize and the review committee agreed.

Asked how she felt on learning of the double recognition, Catherine says, “I was totally surprised–and so happy!” After she receives her bachelor’s degree from Hellenic College in May, Catherine plans to go on to graduate school to continue her studies in classical philology.