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Pictured: Deanna Zarcone, Garrett Phillips, and April O’Rand

By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director

A recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, the psychology of child development, and the author of the recent book, How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint, are all in agreement. Stories are powerful. Studies show that humans have a very active and positive hormonal response to good stories, and that stories are an exemplary way to promote memory and engagement in learning.

For their work shaping thesis-driven stories this past fall semester, three students of American history at 91����� will receive premiere Emma Cunningham Awards for $25. April Renee O’Rand, Garrett Lee Phillips, and Deanna Grace Zarcone, all from Titus County, completed 2,000-word original essays in a dramatic format, and each participated in a classroom effort to act out their stories, putting them on YouTube.

O’Rand’s story concerned the way the Plains Indians used the horse as a “palliative remedy.”  Horse-obsessed cultures such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and Lakota, were able to postpone displacement for two generations as they avoided agriculture to live completely though hunting on horseback. However, the story has a tragic ending as the giant Indian horse herds competed with their main source of food—the buffalo, for forage, and as Americans wiped out the buffalo.

Phillips’ tale was a unique take on the history of Transcendentalism.  The inspirational Swedish philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg, formed a church without wanting to, that still exists to this day.  But Ralph Waldo Emerson who educated Americans during his lifetime on a new religious sensibility, never inspired an enduring religious movement.  Phillips’ story ends with the traces of “toxic individualism” in Emerson’s writings, and the negative reaction many Americans had to the movement.  Emerson essentially disliked groups, and group pressure. His ephemeral following constituted the “church that never was.”

Deanna Zarcone’s story provides another novel twist, in this case, on the history of urbanization. Her essay, “Thomas Cole was Right,” begins with a horrifying look at modern-day urban pollution. She next examined the paintings and philosophy of the English-American immigrant painter, Thomas Cole, who in the early nineteenth century predicted that big cities would be a bane to American life. Zarcone then chronicled all the ways large urban centers were already by the time of the Civil War poisoning their residents.  One of the chief curses was horse manure that made streets and the outdoors in general, vile cesspools of filth and disease.

The Cunningham Awards are given in memory of Emmalea (Shaw) Cunningham, a Presidential Scholar (2015-2017), who during her time at 91����� published a memorable story about integration in Northeast Texas in the state journal, Touchstone. Cunningham also went on win a Guistwhite Award on the national level, and present her work at the National Collegiate Honors Council. Cunningham recently received her doctorate in physical therapy at the University of North Texas Science Center in Fort Worth, and is now a licensed therapist practicing in Georgetown, Texas.

Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, notes: “although O’Rand, Phillips, and Zarcone were not members of Honors Northeast this past semester, their creative dramatizations were noteworthy markers of student excellence.  They performed their stories in class with a sense of dash and interest as they developed the drama in their projects.  I was not only elated by their work, but entertained by the narratives they were able to tell with such verve.”

Anyone interested in the stories of O’Rand, Phillips, or Zarcone, or in the pioneering work of Cunningham on the story of racial integration in Northeast Texas should feel free to contact Dr. Yox at ayox@ntcc.edu.