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.

See the Remediation

My paper is addressed towards an audience of environmentalists; it is essential that environmentalists are taught about overfishing so they can teach others

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.

Julia Ducournau’s Grave views sisterhood rivalry through a bitingly horrific lens. The power hierarchy delegated by le bizuntage – the hazing culture of French university – along with the “sadomasochistic” and “gory” nature of a sisterhood carved down to its most primitive form stages Alexia’s violent and abusive relationship with her older sister Justine (Ducournau, 2017). Despite being placed at warring opposition in revulsive scenes of cannibalism and tactile horror, the two sisters’ mutually destructive behavior only strengthens their sisterly bond.

The romance “Student Yi Peers Over the Wall,” written by monk and scholar Kim Si-Sup in 15th century Korea, bears a remarkable similarity to “Ying-ying’s Story,” an account probably based on a true story (Yu 183) written by the politician Yuan Zhen in the Tang dynasty of China. Due to its psychological depth, “Ying-ying’s Story” marked a key point in the development of Chinese fiction—Gu argues that with it, Chinese fiction came of age (82)—and became so popular it inspired countless other works in the Chinese tradition, including the famous Yuan dynasty Romance of the Western Chamber.

“Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your eyes any more, you always look at yourself through their eyes,” explained Hans Zimmer, when asked to discuss his approach to composing the score for the 2014 film, Interstellar, a film of whose plot he knew nothing. Zimmer’s words strikingly relate to the ways that narrative, plot, and content interact in “Black Museum,” the final episode of the dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror.

“Bear with me and I will speak, and after my speech you may mock.”
Iyov 21:3

Western feminism has always had a tendency to “other” women in the global South. In Burdens of History, Antoinette Burton discusses the role of 19th and 20th century British feminists in othering Indian women in particular. She argues that “Victorian and Edwardian feminist writers relied on images of Eastern, and especially Indian, women to bolster a variety of arguments about female emancipation” (63).

When I was nine years old, I traveled from my home in the state of Maryland to visit the state of Kerala, 8,000 miles away in India. There, nestled in the lush jungles of the Western Ghat mountain range, rests Sabarimala, one of the largest Hindu pilgrimage sites in the world. Considered the home of Lord Ayyappa, the Hindu god of growth, the temple welcomes over 40 million devotees every year from all over the globe, with one notable demographic exception: young women. In honor of its patron deity, the state of Kerala instituted a ban in Sabarimala on women of “menstruating age” in 1965.