Fall 2017

• Scott Eklund
• Danielle Griffin
• Nabila Hijazi
• Valerie Johnson
• Katherine Joshi
• Tamar LeRoy
• Shaun Russell
• Emily Smith
• Joshua Weiss

Dear reader,

2017 was a special year for the University of Maryland's Academic Writing Program: we, along with our Professional Writing Program and Writing Center, received the Conference on College Composition and Communication's Writing Program Certificate of Excellence. This national award recognized our program for its outstanding core writing instruction, among other qualities. The selections for this year’s issue of Interpolations showcase this brilliant teaching and the dedicated student writing it inspires. Chosen from 170 submissions, these pieces reveal commitment to inquiry, research, and thoughtful argumentation. I’m delighted to present them to you in the spirit of celebrating the success of our program.  

In the first piece of the issue Garett Unger offers a summary of “Virtuous Arguments” by John Duffy. In his summary, Unger reveals the moves of Duffy’s argument, a case for connecting first-year writing to civic discourse. The Inquiry selection, “Who is the Real Expert?”by Lucie Ugarte, takes up an insightful investigation of the “academic-practitioner divide.” She raises questions about how knowledge circulates (and doesn’t) and the relationship between class and recognized expertise.    

The Rhetorical Analysis essay presented here offers a nuanced look at Susan Cain’s Ted Talk, “The Power of Introverts”. In this piece, Jacob Friedman reveals how Cain situates her argument in relationship to a spectrum of personalities, from the most introverted to those who identify as total extroverts. The Digital Forum by Salma Ghorab offers a look at the goals and strategies of two different phases of the black freedom movement, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and Black Lives Matter in the present.  

Finally, Evan Silvera’s Position Paper, “Linking Eating Disorders, Stigma, and Media,” tackles the issue of the relationship between the media and eating disorders. Silvera demonstrates that this connection is often overemphasized to eating disorder sufferer’s detriment and concludes there is merit in considering the eating disorders in a broader perspective that attends to environmental and biological factors.  

I’ll conclude this letter with a word of thanks to our fabulous Editorial Board: Scott Eklund (our managing editor), Danielle Griffin, Nabila Hijazi, Valerie Johnson, Katherine Joshi, Tamar LeRoy, Shaun Russell, Emily Smith, and Joshua Weiss. I’m grateful for their time and service in addition to their commitment to excellent teaching and writing.  

I hope that you enjoy this outstanding student writing!  

Elizabeth E. Miller
Editor-in-Chief, Interpolations