An opinion piece discussing the state of Real Madrid following the team's 2021-22 Champions League victory over Paris Saint-Germain in a dramatic second-leg comeback. A deep dive into the consistency on which Madrid's recent success has been founded, its role in the future, and how it almost brought everything toppling down against PSG. Part tactical analysis. Part criticism. Part feel-good piece.

A speculative piece about some oddly-timed injuries at Real Madrid. The narrative being publicized by the club seemd too convenient given some unfavorable behavior on behalf of the athletes in question, leading me to suggest that the club was covering up punishments to those footballers.

This paper focuses on the relationship between humor and love throughout Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: how Shakespeare uses love and his time's perception thereof as the foundation on which to build comedy. Focusing on the overwhelming use of schadenfreude, I draw out the conne topicction between pain and love as more than a means to dramatization and character development, shedding light on the humor of the time and the period's conception of love. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shakespeare's humor shares many elements with its modern counterpart, explaining why many of today's romantic comedies find their bases in Shakespearean plays like Twelfth Night.

A collection of work meant to capture the essence of people long gone—to allow the dead to live again as breathing figures on the page and in the minds and hearts of those who read it. Though it was completely unintentional, I now realize that all the people whose stories called for me were in some way artists. My job was just to listen. I tried to capture these artists' spirits and to embody their inspirations in these pieces written for Professor Jeffrey Sharlet's "Raising the Dead" course at Dartmouth College.

A short piece that applies Edmund Burke's ideas in "The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others" to William Wordsworth's "The Last of the Flock." In exploring the connection between sympathy, distress, and pleasure across the two texts, I uncover a public-health crisis of sorts—the suggestion that functioning society prevents and treats depression as well as the realization that England seems to be lacking in this department.

In this short comparison between The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," the complicated relationship between ancestory and identity is parsed. One's ties to his own blood raise up similar existential questions of personhood in both texts. However, what is at stake with uncovering the answers to those questions seems to differ greatly based on the color of one's skin. Though one's blood might be on the hands of the other, the thickness of the skin separating that blood makes a world of a difference.

As a play in many ways inspired by the tradition of commedia dell' arte, Ben Jonson's Volpone and its staging must be understood with respect to its characters' identities and their masks. Though the play, was likely performed without masks, given it wasn't strictly a commedia, imagining it as such brings about some provocative dilemmas due to the play's focus on transforming identities and hidden romances. This piece argues which characters would warrant a mask and which could not be thus confined in such a rendition of the play.

An analysis of the first half of Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem, "My lute awake!" This paper focus on the lute itself, arguing its involvement in a kind of love triangle—expressing its own versions of love despite being violently abused, unheard throughout.

A comparison of Geoffrey Chaucer's, "The Miller's Tale," and The Book of Margery Kempe, arguing the two texts' positions as hagiogrophies. In the process, the piece unravels the elusive boundaries between righteousness, illness, and intimacy.

The end of the 19^th century, often dubbed the Fin de Siècle, marked a period of transition in the human understanding of the greater powers that be: medicine (and science at large), religion, art, and technology among others. As society shifted from a more spiritual, metaphorical view of the world to a more technical, rational way of thinking, a unique stepping stone bridged the gap, marked by a millieu of mysticism and pseudoscience (phrenology, etc.). The boundaries between science, religion, and art seemed to blur and intersect, paving the way for confrontations with newly exposed aspects of humanity. This piece explores the transcendence of treatment with respect to mental, physical, and spiritual ailments—from ennui to criminality to race, ethnicity, and genealogy—focusing on the relationship between man and machine, the transfiguration of man, and the role of bodily fluids.

This essay focuses on the definition of dream within "Sleep-Worker's Enquiry," breaking down this keyword's importance to the theoretical text and arguing its relevance to a hidden hope within a seemingly hopeless manifesto.

In this paper, Professor Alysia Garrison, "invit[ed the class] to read a theoretical text or text(s) by one or more authors as 'praxis' (situated knowledge production) in relation to a work of art (a literary, cultural, or artistic text). [Our] task [was] not merely to apply the theory as a 'lens' to read the work of art, but to show the ambiguities, paradoxes, contradictions and challenges each text brings to the other. . . . How is the art always alreadyd oing its own theoretical work, and how do its forms challenge the theory? . . . How the does work of art show the “literariness” or aesthetic conventions of the theory?" I chose to focus on Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text" in relation to the liturgical reading of the Acts of the Apostles in the Coptic Orthodox church. I argue the implications of Barthes's theory on writing and literature when the Word in question isn't just God's, but God Himself.

The New Yorker hosts a weekly, cartoon caption contest online. An uncaptioned cartoon is provided; contestants submit a single caption for review. Three finalists are chosen before readers vote for their favorite. Given the number of contestants, its unlikely I'll ever win . . . but a boy can dream, right? In the meantime, at least you can enjoy my submissions.