Table of Contents: 2022
Locating the Conversation
Early in the process, writers engage with other perspectives, “listening to” sources and seeking connections to their own ideas—and thus creating new meaning and knowledge. In this section, writers reveal how they engage in the important work of rhetorical invention by summarizing, synthesizing, and responding to others’ ideas.
Annotated Bibliography: Period Poverty
Katherine Bongiovanni
Annotated Bibliography: Indigenous Food Sovereignty
Lindsey Ricci
Casual Instagram: Proposal & Video Annotated Bibliography
Abby St. Jean
Not-So-Sexy: The Negative Impacts of Sexual Content on Both the Participant and Viewer
Evin St Laurent
Practicing Metacognition
Metacognition – reflection on your own thinking – is essential for any writer. After all, writing and research are about rhetorical choices, and we make the best choices when we are aware of how we think and learn. Whether to look back at what you’ve done and see how to improve, or to look ahead to strategize the best way to approach your work, thinking about writing starts before you begin and ends after you finish any one piece of work. This section shows metacognition in action.
Semester Reflection
Maddie Gerber
Semester Video Reflection
Faith Massey
Seven Somers
Eero Somers
Blending the Personal & Research
Our experiences shape how we react to the world around us. However, academic writers vary in the extent to which they allow the personal to manifest in the written products of their research. That said, bringing the personal to research, if done adeptly, is an effective way of not only making one’s work more convincing, but also boosting one’s own motivation for doing research. These essays move beyond initial, gut-level responses to issues to investigate them in new, meaningful ways
On the Nature of Reality
Kaitlyn Chesleigh
The 2019 Christmas Cookie Contamination
Maddie Collart
The FACES of Hunger: How Weekend Backpack Programs Can Better Support the Children They Serve
Audrey Magill
What’s in a Word: The Disaccord of Dykes
Olivia Mills
Shoes Off, Please
Henry Su
A Letter to My Sister
Sulakshi Ramamoorthi
I Used to Walk on the Sidewalk
Quentin Stalker
Writer as Witness Essay Competition Winner
Writing Culture in Multiple Modes
Writers often find their topics in the world around them, including the popular culture that informs so much of our waking life. In this section, authors raise meaningful questions about popular culture and explore those questions in modes beyond the traditional essay.
Financial Opulence and Moral Bankruptcy: Jho Low and our Obsession with Wealth
Nicholas Chen
Hungry Kids Can’t Learn
Rosalia Dalton
Menstrual Equity in the United States
Julia Landick
Redefining Gossip Culture
Maddie Gerber
TikTokFeminism
Ciel Smith
Critically Analyzing Texts
Perceptive writers question what they encounter, interrogating a work’s meanings, its claims, and the quality of its evidence. A critical analysis may draw on the writer’s personal experiences or knowledge of other works, yet the foundation of the essay is grounded in the text itself. These essays help the reader understand the merits and limits of their examined texts, and also how individual elements contribute to their power and significance.
What’s in a Slogan? An Analysis of AOC’s Met Gala Dress
Wendy Eldred
Folklore: Eco-Folk Protest Music Edition
Zoe Kramer
The Film is the Future Podcast
Kamryn Olds
TikTok Tragedy?
Berkley Pelletier
Investigating the Scholarly Conversation
It may sound challenging to craft original ideas so early in your academic career. Yet in this section, writers demonstrate how to engage scholarly research so thoroughly, they effectively engage the ongoing conversation. In doing so, they are able to generate new ways of thinking about their topics.
The Paradox of Subgenre: How Relabeling Art Fails to Remove Institutional Racism
Prisca Afantchao
Man and Machine: Chess Engines and the Psychology and Beauty of Chess
Henry Goodwin
Lost in Interpretation: An Analysis of Subjectivity in Translation
Nicholas Iadeluca
COVID-19 and Contagion: Reassessing the Outbreak Narrative in a Post-Pandemic Vocabulary
Michael D. Poulin
Judicial Review: Assessing Clarence Thomas’s Commitment to Equal Justice
Izzy Dacones Rowland
Stop Relying on That Body: The Sexual Objectification of the Pit Crew on RuPaul’s Drag Race
Evin St Laurent