Writing Center

Julia Walton, ’21 is a senior concentrating in English and pursuing certificates in Creative Writing, Humanistic Studies, and East Asian Studies. She is from Berwyn, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Her creative and critical work has previously appeared in COUNTERCLOCK, The Foundationalist, The Paper Shell Review, Tortoise: A Journal of Writing Pedagogy, The Nassau Literary Review, Questions: Philosophy for Young People, and The Best Teen Writing of 2016. Currently, beyond working on her two senior theses, she serves as a Student Representative for Princeton Arts Alumni and Editor-in-Chief Emerita for The Nassau Literary Review. This passage is excerpted from her Junior Paper for the English Department, which was awarded the Emily Ebert Junior Prize. Julia wrote this essay as a senior.

Diane Yang, ’23 is a sophomore from Yorktown Heights, New York. She is pursuing a concentration in Electrical Engineering and a certificate in Entrepreneurship. On campus, Diane serves as the Fundraising Chair for Princeton Racing Electric and the Director of Finance for the Princeton University Energy Association, in addition to working as a Fellow in the Writing Center. Diane wrote this as a sophomore.

Evidence, Spring 2021

“Does it have to be complicated?”: Technologically Mediated Romance and Identity in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People

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In a Tortoiseshell: In this close-reading of Sally Rooney’s work, Julia Walton’s junior paper explores the role of technology-aided communication in complex romantic entanglements. This excerpt deftly engages with evidence to provide compelling analysis on the significance of mirrors and photographs in Rooney’s Conversations With Friends.

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Narrative, Spring 2021

Agents of Change: Hollywood Agents and Gatekeeping

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her Junior Paper, Jacy Duan explores the role of Hollywood agents in perpetuating a lack of racial diversity among actors. She carried out seven interviews with agents, which she draws on here in order to explore whether agents recognize their role as gatekeepers controlling the presence (or lack) of diversity in the industry. Jacy establishes a strong motive in her introduction and then weaves together the individual opinions of the agents into a broader narrative about diversity in Hollywood. Jacy’s treatment of narrative ensures that her argument is both accessible and engaging.

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Evidence, Spring 2021

The Futile Female Fight

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In a Tortoiseshell: In a paper for the Humanities Sequence, Noori Zubieta strikes a balance between carefully working through her evidence, orienting her reader, and building to a nuanced thesis in a close reading of a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

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Non-textual sources, Spring 2021

The Feminized Male Lead Dancer: How Chinese TikTok Dances are Redefining Gender Roles

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay, Julia Zhou uses an unconventional primary source to argue that while male-led Chinese TikTok dances engage in gender subversion, they do so by operating within an artistic framework that welcomes innovation. To help readers engage with her analysis, Julia carefully describes key choreographic techniques, then orients readers to the significance of each technique. Having made the dances legible to her readers, she then engages in a rewarding close reading of their choreography.

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Spring 2021, The basics

Limits of the “blowfish effect”: Exemplar variability outweighs atypicality to support basic-level generalization during word learning

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In a Tortoiseshell: In the concluding section of her final project for Cognitive Psychology, Kennedy Casey adeptly discusses her research on generalization during word learning. She clearly summarizes her findings and their limitations, while also defining her contribution to the scholarly conversation and calling attention to her global motive. Continue reading →

Narrative, Spring 2021

Pedagogy in the Playhouse: The Role of Hans Krása’s Opera Brundibár in Modern Holocaust Education Through the Arts

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In a Tortoiseshell: In this paper, written for a Freshman Seminar, Julie Levey demonstrates how a powerful sense of narrative can enliven an academic paper and make it both convincing and compelling. As she build towards her thesis, she presents varied and conflicting perspectives and pieces of evidence before presenting her own view.

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Cross-disciplinary analysis, Spring 2021

Quantitative Analysis of Intensity, Saturation, and Hue in Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her paper, Maya Chande pairs mathematical and historical analyses in order to provide a possible explanation for the higher concentrations of yellow in Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. By conducting a cross-disciplinary analysis based on van Gogh’s letters, biography, and a mathematical examination of van Gogh’s use of color, Maya concludes that the higher concentrations of yellow can be attributed to shifts in van Gogh’s personal life. This excerpt highlights the way Maya weaves together scholars from various disciplines in order to create a clear scholarly motive and then skips to Maya’s conclusions. Continue reading →

Spring 2021, Thesis

Monstrous Consumption and Resistance in The Vegetarian and “Eight Bites”

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her final paper for a class called Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities: Ancient Plots, Modern Twists, Paige Allen examines two texts, a novel and a short story, to explore the intersection between consumption, humanity, and monstrosity in the context of restrictive eating. As she orients her reader to the central ideas of her argument in this introduction, she explains the ways consumption habits have a long cultural history of being linked to “human nature.” The claim of this essay, that the texts in question present instances of something Paige calls “resistant monstrosity,” is a strong example of the lexicon term thesis. Continue reading →

Cross-disciplinary analysis, Spring 2021

Too Good to Be True: MyFitnessPal’s Gamification of Weight Loss and Its Dangerous Consequences

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In a Tortoiseshell: In the final paper for her Writing Seminar, “Gamification,” Theresa Lim argues that gamified elements of the MyFitnessPal app push users towards the unhealthy end of the eating behavior spectrum. Her cross-disciplinary analysis creatively combines scholarship in psychology, nutrition, and game theory. By carefully defining relevant key terms from these disciplines, and by clearly illustrating how the concepts she defines intersect in the MyFitnessPal app, Theresa arrives at a nuanced argument and makes important contributions to the scholarly conversation. Continue reading →

Feature, Spring 2021

Women We Buried: Female Entrapment and Storytelling as Agency in Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped

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In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay on Jesmyn Ward’s Men we Reaped, Cassy uses a clear and evocative prose style to convey her motive, using key words and well placed quotations to construct incisive analysis. Through her essay, she convinces her readers not only of the depth and texture of Ward’s original work, but also that academic writing, when done well, may possess a strong argument and thesis without wholly giving up the lyrical poignancy of a creative piece. Continue reading →