College Essays
7/20/2012 Editor's Note: Below is a collection of all the essays I wrote in college that I care to share, and maybe even a little more. You're welcome to use my work as a source in your essays, but remember kids, don't plagiarize. Your professors can (and have) caught you ripping off passages from this site.
AIS 157 -- American Indian Archaeology
Term paper: Mississippian Maize Agriculture: Not Merely a Staple Crop, but a Way of Life
ARTH 241 -- Twentieth Century European Art (Spring 2009)
First paper: Seeing with Both Eyes: Combining Two Theories of Art Criticism*
Second paper: Looking Both Ways: Modernity as Contradiction and Paradox
CINE 261 -- Survey of World Cinema I (Fall 2007)
First paper: Harold Lloyd, Hal Roach, and Captain Kidd's Kids
Second paper: Soviet Comedy: The Kuleshov Effect in The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
Third paper: Hitchcock's Knack for the Psychological Thriller in the Early Sound Era, as Evidenced in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
CINE 262 -- Survey of World Cinema II (Spring 2008)
First paper: Nights of Cabiria: A Neorealist Work, but is it Realistic?
Second paper: Godard's Marxist Message
Third paper: Slow Motion Misogyny in Raging Bull*
CINE 466 -- Japanese Cinema (Spring 2008)
First paper: Kurosawa's Combination of Tradition and Innovation
Second paper: Lady Snowblood: A Pulpy Yet Meaningful Samurai Film without the Samurai
Third paper: After Life as a Study on the Line between Fiction and Documentary
Final paper: Top-knots and Afros*
CINE 495 -- Cinema and New Media (Fall 2008)
Cinema Beyond Cinema post: Life as a Movie
Comic Life project: Adventures in Jump Cutting, with Jeff & Tim* (PDF download)
Mixed Media post: Curious Gump*
Understanding Media by Understanding Comics: Closure in Persepolis: How Comics and Films on the Same Subject Work Differently
ENGL 101 -- Introduction to Poetry (Fall 2005)
First paper: "The Fish": A Struggle for Survival
Second paper: Ignorance is Bliss
ENGL 199 -- The Novel in the City (Fall 2005)
First paper: So We Beat on
Second paper: Listen to me: You Were Not Hired to Think
Third paper: In Denial
ENGL 200 -- Intro to Lit Study for Majors (Fall 2006)
Poetry paper: Whitman's Free Verse: Untraditional, but Not Unskilled
Drama paper: The Soothsayer's Indictment of the King
Fiction paper: Whipping M. Gilbert Porter's Critique with My Displeasure
ENGL 202 -- Medieval Lit (Spring 2007)
Cruxbuster 1: The Song of Roland
Cruxbuster 2: The Poem of the Cid
Cruxbuster 3: Erec and Enide
Cruxbuster 4: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Cruxbuster 5: The Inferno
Cruxbuster 6: The Book of Margery Kempe
Cruxbuster 7: Troilus and Cressida
First paper: It's All about the Benjamins: The Cid and His Quest for His Enemies' Riches
Second paper: The Inferno and the Hellish Rite of Unholy Baptism*
ENGL 256 -- American Lit Survey II (Spring 2006)
First paper: Not Just Digression
Second paper: Strange Night Gowns, or Lack Thereof
Third paper: The Television Behemoth: An Eminent Force in Fiction and Reality
ENGL 300 -- Modernism and the Machine Age (Fall 2007)
First paper: Whitman's Dual Realities of Invention and Poetic Vision
Second paper: Hemingway's Photographic and Cinematic Style of Prose
Final paper: Visible and Invisible Technologies in The Great Gatsby and the Third Policeman
ENGL 301 -- Critical Approaches to Lit (Fall 2007)
First paper: The Boatswain as the Proletarian Sailor with Relative Autonomy
Second paper: Racism against Us and Them in "Yoneko's Earthquake" and "The Toughest Indian in the World"*
ENGL 401 -- History of English Language (Spring 2007)
First paper: A History of My Language
Term paper: Different, Not Worse: A Study in the Change in English-Language Oratory Techniques
ENGL 418 -- Shakespeare I (Fall 2007)
First paper: Revised into final paper
Second paper: Laughing at As You Like It's Ending, Not with It
Final paper: The Power of Submission in The Taming of the Shrew
ENGL 441 -- Modernist Romance (Spring 2009)
Final paper: The Futile Struggle for Assimilation: Anthony Blanche and Rex Mottram in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited*
ENGL 451 -- American Lit 1914-1945 (Fall 2007)
First paper: Amy Lowell's "St. Louis" and Yearning for the New England Past
Second paper: Hemingway's "The Battler"
Third paper: The Phallic Gun as Masculine Confidence in "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"*
GWS 260 -- Intro to Gender & Women's Studies (Spring 2008)
Term paper: Ernest Hemingway: In Limbo between Sexism and Feminism
HIST 141 -- Western Civilization I (Spring 2006)
Term paper: Weak, Perfidious, Wicked, and Cunning: The Many Perceptions of the "Other"
HIST 142 -- Western Civilization II (Spring 2007)
Book report one: Chaplain and Orou's Dialogue
Book report two: Comparing Diderot's Tahitians with Equiano's Africans
Book report three: The Relationship between Frankenstein and His Creature
Book report four: Figner's Progression from Reformist to Radical
Final Exam, essay one: The Myth of Western Progress
Final Exam, essay two: The Possibility of Poetry and Western Civilization
IB 109 -- Insects and People (Spring 2006)
Term paper: Inspiring Insects: Ants as Sources of Literary Afflatus
SHS 171 -- Evolution of Human Communication (Spring 2006)
First paper: Contrasting Human and Animal Communication
Second paper: Physical and Cultural Changes Leading to Language