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Amy Cass ’20 is a senior at Princeton concentrating in History of Science. She is currently working on her thesis, which looks at the role of religion in the development of scientific naturalism in Victorian Britain through the work of physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter. Outside of academics, Amy is very involved in the dance community on campus as a member of two student companies. She wrote this paper as a senior.  

Paige Allen ’21 is a junior in the English Department from Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, pursuing certificates in Theater, Music Theater, Humanistic Studies, and Creative Writing. Her research interests include Gothicism and otherized bodies and minds, particularly in nineteenth-century literature and culture. She is the president of Princeton University Players, an editor for The Daily Princetonian, an Orange Key tour guide, an LCA Peer Arts Advisor, and a student intern with The Wesley Foundation. She is also a member of the Edwards Collective and the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows. She wrote this as a junior. 

Close Looking, Spring 2020

A Fragmented Reality: Taiwan Behind Glass

In a Tortoiseshell: In her East Asian Studies essay on the Taiwanese film Terrorizer, Amy Cass uses close looking techniques to analyze how the film presents photography as a way of seeing and understanding urban reality. Amy uses her engagement with the visuals of the film through careful close looking to provide the evidence for her arguments, which stretch beyond description of the film and into bold, motivated claims.

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Feature, Spring 2020

“These my Exhortations”: Reading “Tintern Abbey” as a Lesson to Dorothy

In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay on William Wordsworth’s famous poem “Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” Julia Walton enters the scholarly conversation with an against-the-grain reading of the function of William’s sister, Dorothy, in the poem. After establishing a clear motive for her reconsideration of this text, Julia combines meticulous close reading with evidence drawn from period sources to support her original thesis. Julia’s essay has been selected as our feature piece; it is published in its entirety to show how Julia’s many pedagogically successful moves work together to create a full, well-written essay. Continue reading