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An Ecocritical Look at the Long Eighteenth Century’s Presentation of Wild Spaces

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I have come to recognize that the challenges that climate change poses for the contemporary writer, although specific in some respects, are also products of something broader and older; that they derive ultimately from the grid of literary forms and conventions that came to shape the narrative imagination in precisely that period when the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere was rewriting the destiny of the earth.
– Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement

Spring 2021

Journal Information

Spring 2021 Essays

General Essays

Stop Overfishing

Transportation Revolution: The Future of Public Transportation in America

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Americans are at a crossroads: Should they choose to support public transportation development over highway development?

Given the rising American population, which is typically finding itself in urban areas, a reform on transportation is imminent. What investment is the most prudent for the future of transportation in the United States: investing in highway improvement, or investing in public transportation?

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A Caution Against Current Transgenic Mosquitoes

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     It was a couple of years ago when I had my first truly troubling experience with the family Culicidae. Of course, mosquitoes have been a constant annoyance in my life, making me itch ever since I was little. However, I had never contracted an illness from these small flies. It was only when my little cousin, age 9, caught Dengue fever while on a family trip to India that I got to witness one of the many pestilences mosquitoes transmit first-hand. Seeing him in excruciating pain and running an incredibly high fever was scary to say the least.

Rhetorical Analysis

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In the essay “On Being a Refugee, an American – and a Human Being,” Viet Thanh Nguyen defends the presence of refugees in American society. Nguyen published “On Being a Refugee…” shortly after 2016, the year the global refugee population rose to an all-time high of 65.6 million people (20 People).

Academic Summary of “The Implicit Punishment of Daring to Go to College When Poor”

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In his New York Times opinion piece titled “The Implicit Punishment of Daring to Go to College When Poor” (2019), Queens College (NY) senior Enoch Jemmott contrasts the recent college admissions scandal, in which wealthy parents paid for their children to get into universities, with the difficulties of trying to get into college for low-income students. Jemmott explains that the flaws of the college admissions system cause low-income students to struggle when navigating the college admission process, much less the financial aid process if they manage to get in.

Addressing the Elephant in the Composition Classroom: Let’s Talk About Race

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 The first text I thoroughly analyzed in my Academic Writing course at the University of Maryland was “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” a rhetorical essay by Gloria Anzaldúa in which she demands her Chicana identity be recognized and appoints cultural influence as a primary driver to organized social hierarchy.

The Issue of Overfishing in the United States

Implementing Safe Injection Facilities to Combat the Opioid Crisis

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an average of 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose (“Understanding the Epidemic”). This alarming statistic is a product of the United States’ opioid crisis, which involves the misuse of and addiction to prescription pain relievers and illicit drugs.