Essays
A collection of comparative, analytical, and scholarly essays written throughout my 3rd, 4th, and 5th years as an undergrad student. Here can be found a selection of short and long form papers that look to our contemporary world as it stands, but also as it is depicted in film and translated within literature. I hope each paper is not only enjoyed, but also encourages whomever reads it to think along with me!
A filmic analysis on how Alice Wu's coming of age comedy The Half of It presents ways queerness and the concept of "coming out" are interpreted from a non-Western perspective.
A close reading of Victorian poet Robert Browning's Porphyria's Lover and how hyper-femininity is a method of brutality used against women to affirm the existence of hyper-masculinity.
A comparative reflection about how climate exploitation is shown within children's animation by analyzing contrasts in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender.
A two-part analytical essay that looks at how Western conventions of growing up relate to the disconnection human beings have with the natural world, and what is implied by the narratives of childhood, nature, and adulthood.
A comparative film essay between David Fincher's Gone Girl and Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman that looks at the how female rage and revenge is articulated within contemporary cinema and how this has contributed to the ever-growing genre of "Good for Her" films.
A filmic analysis of the messages Bong Joon-ho's Parasite has on the morality of money and what ambiguities arises when individuals who do not benefit from the structures of capitalism attempt to climb up the economic ladder.
An essay that interrogates the philosophical implications of ethical veganism within the modern Western world and how the contemporary motivations of climate activism unintentionally fault the working class and racialized groups with analytical support from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto.