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)

Literary autobiography

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