ESSAI
Current Volume: Volume 17 (2019)
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 XVII 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 XVIII of ESSAI which will be published in 2021. We appreciate your readership. Through your interest and support, our anthology will keep growing.
Prefatory Notes
Front Cover
Aleksandra Szwagulinska
Selections
Are There Really That Many Fish in the Sea?
Layla Aldaas
A Theory of Freedom
Ghena Almostafa
Virtual Reality: The Latest Bridge to Empathy
Kelly Grace Bast
Good Theory Gone Bad
Ryan Bonn
White Feminism Falls Short
Caitlin Brennan
Misconceptions About Ninjas
Timothy Bull
Breaking Down the Fixing Up Industry
Josiah Cohn
The Dark Money of Climate Change
John Geary
Hot Spot Research Paper: Algeria
Frank Giunti
Euthanasia and Desire Theory: The Ethical Case for Assisted Suicide
Melissa Gutierrez Garcia
The Clean Power Plan
Syed Habibullah
Exploring the Auteur Elia Kazan
Savannah Hink
The Significance of the Haymarket Tragedy Then and Now
Veronika Janas
Box from Iran
Fahad Ullah Khan
The Origins of the Opioid Epidemic
Faye Koch
Film Auteur Sergio Leone
Jake Kola
Fragmentary Survival
Bart Kubiak
The Clean Power Plan
Matas Lauzadis
From Miasma to Microbe
Jade Maestas
Help Heal Our Heroes
Rosanna Martinelli
Fighting the Rise of the Anti-Vaccination Movement
Savannah Santos
The Effectiveness of "Money as a Weapons System"
Andrew Scranton
Comedy and Controversy: A Close Look at "South Park "and Its Unique Approach to Satire
Jacob Williams
Back Matter
Editors
- Graphic Design
- Brian Blevins
- English
- Kris Kowal
- English
- Sarah Magin
- History
- Sam Mitrani
- German
- Miglena Nikolova
- Library
- Kenneth Orenic
- Biology
- Lynda Randa