ENGL 203: Science Fiction and Fantasy with Dr. John Pennington
Does a Cold War Culture Dream of Destruction?: Sixties Paranoia and Philip K. Dick
This essay was the final assignment for the class. My piece ended up being a research paper on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and how it reflects the paranoid people and ideals of America in the 1960s.
ENGL 221: American Short Story with Dr. Sarah Schuetze
In a Dangerous Defense of the Masculine
This is the last paper we wrote for the class. We were required to take multiple short stories we read during the semester and connect them along one common thread in a research paper. My essay discusses Jorge Borges’ “The South,” Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”–and their characters’ portrayals of defense mechanisms for the sake of preserving masculine images.
ENGL 235: Survey of U.S. Literature 1 with Dr. AnaMaria Seglie
The Vital Vitality of the American Wilderness
This assignment was very unique: we had to create the introduction for an anthology of our choosing, based on the works we read over the course of the semester. My anthology focused on the American wilderness, and the significance of its presence both historically and presently. The introduction includes a public engagement preface, critical context, and argument for my cause.
ENGL 307: Fiction Workshop with Dr. Laurie MacDiarmid
A creative and not academic work, this is the final short story of my fiction workshop portfolio. The only requirement for the assignment was that it stretch beyond 1000 words. I wrote a version of my third novel’s prologue, turning it into a standalone short saga for my protagonist.
ENGL 226: Survey of English Literature 2 with Dr. John Neary
America’s Account for the Artistic
This short essay was designed as an opinion piece based on the two teaching philosophies found in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. We used evidence from our own education experience to determine which ideal America’s own teaching philosophy is closest to.
ENGL 305: Literary Theory and Writing with Dr. Andrew Scheler
The Sadistic Don’t Discriminate: Hamlet’s Feelings toward Ophelia through a Freudian Lens
One of six literary theories we were required to tackle during the semester, this paper represents the Psychoanalytic Critique of a Shakespearean work. In it, I take a look at the methodology provided by Sigmund Freud in “Mourning and Melancholia” and attempt to utilize it to account for the sadistic and hypocritical way Hamlet treats Ophelia within Hamlet. More information on this essay and course can be found in the other tabs of this WordPress site.
ENGL 339: Shakespeare’s Drama with Dr. Edward Risden
The Lamentable Comedy of Hermia and Lysander
While I am proud of my final paper in this class, this assignment reflects my favored writing style: creative prose. For this midterm, we were allowed to tackle any issue in the Shakespeare plays we had read so far, in any format of our choice: essay, short story, play, etc. I chose to write a short story exploring the idea of the “play within a play” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. More information can be found in the author’s note attached to the document.
ENGL 425: Advanced Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature with Dr. Laurie MacDiarmid
This is perhaps the crown jewel of my writing assignments at St. Norbert College. Our final for this course was to create a chapbook of the creative piece we spent the semester workshopping. My piece is the first section of a novel I am currently working on, Cloud 9, and follows the troubled brother of the protagonist from “Ashes to Ashes.”
ENGL 489: Dickens Seminar with Dr. John Pennington
Coming Home: Bleak House and London’s Necessary Return to the Home Sphere
This paper is the final capstone essay I have written as an English major. For this paper, we were required to take on any topic of our choosing in relation to the Dickens novels we had read in the semester, and prove that we could sustain a sophisticated literary argument over the course of 15-20 pages. I decided to run with Dickens’ views on empire as seen through the characters and structure of Bleak House.