“Where Am I: The Representation of Others in the Outdoors and in the Environmental Movement”

This essay was a capstone project I completed during my senior seminar for the final year of my undergraduate. The theme of my senior seminar class was environmentalism, and as our class approached the end of the term, I chose to focus my final project on exploring the relationship between minority groups and the environmental movement. My goal was to examine how minority groups’ perception of nature may impact their ability to advocate for the environment. Using literary texts like Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Carolyn Finney’s Black Faces, White Spaces, and Lilace Mellin Guignard’s When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild, I explained how historical plights can drive much-needed minority activism away from protecting nature and joining the environmental movement.

As my final essay, I wrote this academic paper during my British literature class. This British literature class focused on British dystopian literature from the late 1800s and early 1900s until modern times. Therefore, we read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in this class. It contained some interesting themes of religion, race, and technology, which fascinated me and directed me to write this essay. This essay is about how Huxley’s 1932 British liberal views of erasure and eugenics insert themselves into his text as Brave New World is centered on a dystopian London where there is limited experience with multicultural people or those of other races. Additionally, those multicultural people in the text are usually discriminated against, villainized, or mistreated. In my essay, I claim that even as we read Huxley’s 1932 opinion on improving humanity and stabilizing society, we should be wary of and mindful that such thinking has not necessarily left our society as there are still eugenics programs and efforts to eliminate the multicultural person. I highly enjoy reading, researching, and writing research papers like the one above, and this paper is an example of my passion for research and writing, and of my ability to do it.

I wrote this paper during my film theory class as a final exam, where I had to apply scholarly film theory articles to two films we watched during the semester. I analyzed John Milius’s 1973 film Dillinger and Dominic Sena’s 1993 movie Kalifornia. By applying the terms and theories I learned throughout the course and the ideas of film theorists Susan L. Feagin and Murray Smith, I explored how these directors use film elements to create atmospheric spaces for their audiences within the films’ universes. This essay displays my ability to research, analyze, and present information by applying themes or findings to certain concepts.

For this next assignment, our professor tasked us with writing a profile on an environmental organization or a group or individual making strides in the environment and outdoors. For my profile, I chose to focus on Full Circle Everest, a group of climbers who, in 2022, were the first all-black group to summit Mount Everest. In this essay, I discussed the team members, their history, goals, and plans. I chose to focus on Full Circle Everest because of the inspiration and message they send to the world and black individuals. This paper showcases my ability to profile a group or individual and share meaningful reports on or about certain subjects.

This final project was for my Introduction to English class. This class specifically focused on science fiction and digital rhetoric; therefore, for our final project, we created websites that showcased our understanding and analysis of course reading and ideas discussed throughout the class. For my project, I focused on philosophy, applying philosophic elements like utilitarianism to the concept of artificial intelligence and technology. This project included videos, images, and other digital features to visualize the topics in my blog posts. I also used WordPress to create my website, so the document above is my planning document for my blog posts. I essentially used this document to outline what I would post on my website. This project showcases my ability to apply concepts and different information to specific situations and examples.

During another British Literature class, our professor tasked us with finding art or illustrations that could go along with the reading we did during the semester. The document above presents my work. I chose drawings that could reflect or go along with Virginia Woolf’s “The Lady in the Looking Glass: A Reflection” and William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.” In this document, I explained and analyzed the drawings. I also described how they aligned with the texts, despite the illustrations’ creators not making their pieces for these works. In this assignment, we also peer-reviewed each other’s work and made revisions based on the received feedback. Therefore, a revision statement is at the bottom of this document, describing my changes and goals for my assignment. I believe this work shows my ability to accept and utilize critics to improve my work and connect concepts.

The document above is a final paper I wrote during my history class. For this paper, I analyzed the assigned prompt to respond to Bernard Lewis’s ideas in his “Eurocentrism Revisited.” Lewis discusses how society forces Western and European nations to bear guilt over the historic spread of Social Darwinism and imperialism in his work. In my response to Lewis, I described how the modern world would be severely different had it not been for Europe’s advancements and imperial spread. However, the world still suffers from the harmful concepts that came with modernization and European advancements, which is a guilt Europe should bear. I believe this essay displays my ability to develop a counter or opposing argument that is still professional, respectful, and recognizes the ideas of the source material.

The essay above is an essay from during my sociolinguistics class. In this paper, I analyzed linguistic features of Thurop Van Orman’s cartoon The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. For our projects, we were supposed to analyze and identify different types of speech in media and how these types of media handle sociolinguistics. For my paper, I described how the show’s linguistic features display the characters’ economic differences. By focusing on a cartoon, I believe my essay showcases my ability to apply academic concepts to nonacademic environments and use things like mainstream or modern shows and pieces of entertainment as academic and professional material.

The essay above is from my early British Literature class. Here, I discuss how Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and John Donne’s The Flea present the humanist ideals beginning to take shape during their times. In addition, I explore how these literary works challenged common thinking during these authors’ lifetimes, like questioning the Roman Catholic church, learning through observations, and using satire to expose individuals and institutions. This essay is somewhat historical, and I believe it displays my ability to contextualize historical information and movements to explain them via a report to others, which may be required in any writing or reporting situation.

I wrote this academic essay in my early British Literature class, and in it, I explored and discussed the role of women in Beowulf and Marie de France’s Lanval. As this course focused on early medieval literature, women’s roles in these works presents early depictions of women and their societal roles. I examined the positive portrayal of women in Beowulf and the negative portrayal in Lanval. Though these are mixed views of women can reflect how women in medieval society were viewed as advisors and manipulators simultaneously. This writing is one of my early academic writing pieces, and I believe it displays the beginning and growth of my writing skills.