The Sweetland Center for Writing awarded the 2021 Matt Kelley Prize for Excellence in First-Year Writing to Audrey Tieman, an undergraduate at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance. Audrey created a Tik Tok essay about “Ratatouille the Tik Tok Musical” as her final research project for Comp Lit 141: "Great Performances".  

A Graduate Student Instructor and Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature, Lis Fertig encouraged students in her discussion section to develop multimodal writing in response to a performance. 

Lis nominated Audrey for the Sweetland Writing Prizes because “Audrey’s outstanding video essay not only makes full, innovative use of the medium—incorporating clips from other Tik Tok creators, as well as original props and costumes in the narration segments—it is also a brilliant meta-reflection on the medium itself. The argument is complex and convincing, the structure is intricate and energetic, and the result is thoroughly fun to watch.”