ESSAI
Volume 13 (2015)
Created in 2002 by a cross-disciplinary faculty, ESSAI, The College of DuPage Anthology of Academic Writing Across the Curriculum is an annual academic journal that represents a unique but inclusive discourse community of student writers; it fosters student success through writing across the curriculum and in all levels of learning at College of DuPage. It rests on our belief that writing empowers and prepares our students for meaningful careers and advanced academic pursuits and that, to realize such goals, the entire college community is responsible for incorporating writing into their courses as a vital part of the academic experience at our college.
Like all the past volumes, this Volume XIII continues to harvest our belief in fertile cooperation with our cross-disciplinary faculty who implement writing to learn and promote discipline in their teaching. Some of the published essays, therefore, have resulted because our students made use of journals, logs, microthemes, and other informal writing assignments encouraged in the classroom. In this way, students wrote frequently and improved their writing skills enabling them to comprehend better and to retain information longer. Others – expository work such as reports, article reviews, criticisms, research papers – attest to students’ successful participation in academic discourse according to the conventions of language use and style expected in specific disciplines.
That we practice the philosophy of student success through good writing will become even more apparent in the journal’s name. It harkens back and pays homage to Michel de Montaigne whose seminal style of writing “essais” connoted one of trials and attempts. Thus ESSAI chronicles our students’ intellectual trials wherein they dialogically encounter diverse culturescapes, critically weigh various issues at hand and then engage in analytical exercises, while each evolving from a personal to a public writing self. The resulting published work is their expanded cultural and epistemological self endowed with talent, sophistication, and fresh scholarship, all expressed with clarity, eloquence, and grace.
We continue our editorial tradition in making the best selections for publication. The most exemplary of the year’s submissions are those that:
- Are completed according to assignments’ purposes
- Have mechanics, grammar, and other technical points in place
- Are imaginative, creative, logical, and risk-taking with respect to assignments’ purposes
- Exhibit clarity of writing with respect to purposes
- Follow the disciplinary format
- Include relevant literature reviews where required
- Demonstrate analytical abilities
- Generate interest
Join with us in honoring the exceptional talents of our student authors and our student artist whose graphic design adorns our cover. And watch for Volume XIV of ESSAI which will be published in 2017. We appreciate your readership. Through your interest and support, our anthology will keep growing.
Prefatory Notes
Front Cover
Tyler Johnson
Selections
The F-Word: Do We Still Need Feminism in 2016
Brittany Anderson
Biotechnological Uses of Spider Silk
Omar Bashqawi
The Mexican Influence Shaping Present Culture in Chicago and Modeling Patterns for the Future
Odette Benitez
Holding Other’s Hands Up High
Hayley Dantona
Package from Marjane Satrapi
Kevin Dwyer
The Controversy Surrounding Cheap Energy
Naresh Ganduri
An Undeniable Cost
Valentina Guarino
The effect of mycorrhizae on seed germination, development, and reproductive yield of Rapid Gro Radish
Valeria Gutowski
Antibiotics – Society’s Hidden Epidemic
Danielle Johansen
Bartleby the Marxist
Laura Kaczmarczyk
Safe and Secure
Nathan Kiehn
Prisons are the New Black
Paolo Mazza
The Savagery of it All
Antonio Mendez
Youth, Sexuality, and the Cost of Archaic Modes of Thinking
Seraphina Nelson
The Captain’s Daughter and the Dual Relationship of Dueling and Honor in Historical Times of Europe
Sarah O’Connor
Outside the Wire
Michael Orsay
Cheap Energy
Sumera Patel
Cultivating Environmental Stewardship in the Suburbs
Parker Rechsteiner
Palmieri Mourns in Public
Philip Reyes
No Does Not Mean No Anymore
Lindsey Roussel
No Drill, No Spill: The Truth About Fracking
Christine Sampson
The Legacy of Emiliano Zapata
Kotryna Staputyte
Dubliners Class Discussion on Male-Female Relationships
Meghan Wonderling
Back Matter
Editors
- Graphic Design
- Brian Blevins
- English
- Franz Burnier
- Chemistry
- Richard Jarmin
- Philosophy
- Keith Krasemann
- English
- Sarah Magin
- Biology
- Lynda Randa
- History
- Ben Whisenhunt