The Center for Middle East Studies at UCSB is proud to announce the recipient for the 2025 Nancy Gallery Best Undergraduate Essay Prize is Abigail Rizqallah. Rizqallah is a third year undergraduate student, majoring in Middle East Studies and Archaeology. Her awarded paper, “Palestinian Hunger Strikers and the Israeli Matrix of Control,” was written for Professor Adam Sabra’s course, “Undergraduate Research Seminar in Middle Eastern History.” The paper draws on W. B. Yeats’ play, The King’s Threshold, and its representations of the Irish tradition of cealachan, to elucidate hunger strikes as a form of Palestinian resistance. The faculty review committee lauded Rizqallah’s innovative analytical framework, thorough research, and clarity of writing.
The Nancy Gallagher Best Undergraduate Essay Prize in Middle East Studies is given annually for undergraduate papers on topics in Middle East Studies. Awarded papers are conducted with careful research producing imaginative arguments. The prize is named in honor of UCSB Professor Emerita Nancy Gallagher, a historian of the Middle East and North Africa, who helped build the thriving intellectual community that is CMES.