Senior Bryant Francis and Assistant Professor Todd Schack are this year's recipients of the Park School Writing Award.
A panel of Park School faculty whose professional expertise represent scholarly writing, journalism, and screen/scriptwriting reviewed the nominations and selected the winners.
Student Award:
Bryant Francis, a cinema and photography major, won for his feature-length screenplay, The Legend of Jackson Hull.
This science fiction western set in an alternate version of the 19th century—a retro-futuristic Wild West—pits a Pinkerton Agent against both scientists and cold-hearted criminals to not only save his wife but Nikola Tesla, the real-life inventor.
Francis has written a fast-paced, well-structured screenplay that, in the words of nominator Professor Steven Ginsberg, is “both imaginative and professional and bodes well for his writing future.”
Faculty Award:
Todd Schack won for his article “Twenty-first-century drug warriors: the press, privateers and the for-profit waging of the war on drugs,” published in the journal Media, War & Conflict.
The committee couldn’t say it better than the author himself: the original research and theoretical foundation of this article together represent a “devastating critique of the mainstream media’s handling of a dire situation.” This article has powerful implications not only for current and future research, but also for making the public aware of this issue.
Schack teaches in the Department of Journalism.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20120507151600276