The Academic Writing group at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong Joint Institute focuses on developing reading, writing, and research skills that enable students to navigate many forms of communication at the university and beyond. Since its founding in 2005, it has been a place for students to push the limits of their writing skills and take pride in their accomplishments. In the required two-course sequence, VY100 and VY200, students select sections designed around topics in each professor’s specialized academic discipline. By the end of the sequence, students combine their skills to produce a polished evidence-based argument paper. The courses enable students to succeed as critical thinkers, writers, and researchers at some of the top corporations and universities in the world.

The JI Academic Writing Competition was started in 2019 as a means to showcase some of the top essays from our courses. Pieces are nominated by professors and judged anonymously by both senior students and faculty to determine the winners. The criteria for the judges are the same that inform the curriculum in academic writing: analysis, argumentation, research, and organization. All the professors in the department take great pride in the students and are glad their work can be shared with a larger community.

Vy100 Winners

Click the arrow at the bottom-right corner to flip the card and read.

First Place

Liu Xiaoyu

“A View of Tunnel Deficiency from Environment and Cyclist Identity”

Blurb

This essay is for the true SJTU insider. Why do students on campus avoid Tunnel 3? Liu has the answers

Second Place

Jiang Yuchen

“The Inevitable Death of An Impossible Creature: An Attempt to Understand Freeman’s ‘Luella Miller’ Using Thermodynamics Concepts”

Blurb

Jiang makes the surprising argument that the concept of entropy has a lot to say about why gothic fiction represents so many people dying

Second Place

Assel Surshanova

“The ‘F word’ and 18th- and 19th-Century Heroines of English Novels”

Blurb

Surshanova asks which female character in three classic English novels is truly feminist.

Vy200 Winners
First Place

Pan Zixuan

“A Neuroscience Explanation for Self-Identification Alternation in Virtual Reality”

Blurb

Virtual reality can give us a whole new sense of our bodies, but how do our brains receive this new information? Pan argues “mirror neurons” offer an important clue.

Second Place

Assel Surshanova

“The Soviet Sherlock”

Blurb

Surshanova reveals how the Soviet Union adapted Sherlock Holmes to meet people’s desire for friendship.

Third Place

Pan Jiayi

“Wordsworth on Capitalism: Powerlessness”

Blurb

William Wordsworth is often thought of as the famous Romantic poet of Nature and the Imagination, but Pan reconsiders him as a man troubled by economics.

Past Contests