Table of Contents: 2026

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.

How has the Film Industry Shaped the Public’s Perspective of Baseball?

Madeleine Poirier

Annotated Bibliography

Bhaswi Singh

Butter Chicken, Curry, and the Global Kitchen: Authenticity, Adaptation, and Power in Indian Cuisine

Bhaswi Singh

Attachment Theory & Intersectionality in Interview with the Vampire

Callum Wright

Exploring Experiences

Our individual experiences are often the most compelling sites from which we begin to tackle larger issues – complex, unpredictable, or even just confounding. In addition to providing fertile ground for a writer, all these experiences also play a powerful role in shaping how we see the world around us, and how we see ourselves in that world. The writers in this section embrace the curiosity that drives them to build those personal experiences into foundations for deep reflection, research, and explication – all to bring the reader alongside their own meaning making.

All About Mindfulness

Alexis Fridman

Mourning a Monster: Grief and Betrayal in Gaiman Fandom Following His Sexual Assault Allegations

Kaitlyn Hartings

Latina is Who I AM

Adriana Perla

Unraveling the Complexities of Self by Writing

S.M.

Interrogating Culture

Often, writers look carefully at the cultural texts, practices, trends, and systems for insights into how the world works, or how we belong (or not) to it. As another ripe location, these focused looks at how cultural phenomena manifest and get used offers us new understandings that we may not notice otherwise. In this section, our writers all settle their gaze on some cultural particularity and proceed to guide their readers through considered observation and inquiry-based conclusions.

Who Pooped? A Saga of Liars

Yonah Bates

A World of Our Own Making: Using Dungeons and Dragons to Better the World

Katelyn Calfee

Melting, Left in the Pot

Sophia Diaz

“Fair Bodies of Young Men and Women, as Temples, to Rear Their Monstrous Generations”: The History of Race, Eugenics, and Modern Medievalism

Kaitlyn Hartings
Writer as Witness Essay Competition Winner

The ‘Cultish’ Power of Bad Bunny’s Fandom

Nina Jones

Food as Power: Thai Cuisine’s Impact on Identity, and Cultural Development

Tovy Udomtanasub

The Complexities and Dangers of Female State Representations

William Underwood

Constructing Extended Arguments

Sustaining large-scale writing projects requires that writers tackle many paths of inquiry: negotiating multiple conversations through layered research processes; self-reflexivity regarding prior knowledge and experience; questioning the assumptions of their own intended audiences as well as those in their research; even considering form and genre for their own final product. The writers included here engage on all counts, and what results are pieces that open provocative questions and offer insightful (and sometimes surprising!) conclusions.

“Ye Who Enter Here”: Justice and Mercy Across Christianity and the Criminal Legal System in Wake Up Dead Man, and Theories on the Problem of Hell on Reimagining Incarceration

Megan Miller

Multimodal Project: Baseball Movies