In a Tortoiseshell

Using the health benefits of drinking Chinese tea as a case study, this paper explores how cultural tradition and modern science jointly shape what societies recognize as truth. A comparative analysis of Lu Yu’s The Classic of Tea and contemporary biochemical research shows that scientific findings often substantiate longstanding cultural observations rather than displace them. These texts are put in direct conversation with both Western and Eastern scholars, ultimately demonstrating that “truth” emerges through shifting knowledge conventions relevant to its cultural and historical context. 

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Excerpt

An Eastern Harmony of Science and Tradition 

While historical tea literature associates tea with spirituality, modern scientific analysis reduces the healing effects of tea to its quantifiable levels of catechins and antioxidants. Spirituality-based tea literature and scientific analyses rely on different frameworks, even though they both conclude that tea contains health benefits, thus making it difficult to interpret them with a single lens. In recognizing this tension, it is essential to contrast the Western framework’s intuitive separation between scientific knowledge and cultural tradition with Eastern scholarly philosophical perspectives, which assumes seamless transition from lived experience and quantitative reasoning. Xinyan Jiang’s work “The Relationship Between Chinese Traditional Culture and Modern Science” offers insight that expands upon the patterns observed in historical Chinese tea literature. She directly challenges Daston and Galison’s Western assumption of inherent tension between tradition and scientific inquiry, arguing the fundamental unity between the observer and the observed: in this paper’s case study, the tea drinker’s cultural experience and the tea itself (Jiang 63). 

Revisiting Lu Yu: Health as Mind and Body 

This philosophical foundation notes that Chinese traditions typically employ “holistic thinking” that “emphasizes the unity of humanity and nature” (Jiang 65), which manifests in Lu Yu’s text through his metaphors linking tea to natural processes. In The Classic of Tea, Lu Yu presents tea as a restorative force tightly woven into the rhythms of human life and health. He writes that tea soothes “aching of the brain, smarting of the eyes, troubled in the four limbs or afflicted in the hundred joints” (Lu Yu 60), offering a catalog of bodily pains that tea can ease.

His language employs concrete, visceral descriptors: “aching,” “smarting,” “troubled,” “afflicted”, which emphasize direct, sensory experience rather than abstract theorization. The phrase “hundred joints” invokes totality through hyperbole, suggesting tea’s comprehensive healing power. When describing tea’s effects, he states it will “dispel an evening’s unproductive lassitude” (Lu Yu 115), where “dispel” suggests an almost magical banishing of fatigue, while “lassitude” elevates everyday tiredness to a condition deserving reverence and attention. This language establishes tea once again as not merely medicinal but spiritually transformative, capable of altering one’s state of being through sensory engagement. 

Modern scientific research begins by explicitly acknowledging tea’s deep cultural lineage, calling upon Jiang’s point that truth is not a matter of falsehood, but rather, a difference in approach to knowledge (Jiang 70). A 2014 paper in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine opens its abstract by highlighting that “historical texts and legends have long associated tea with health benefits”, pointing to Lu Yu’s Cha Jing (Tea Bible) from the Tang Dynasty (Yang et al.). The paper also references the Xin Xiu Ben Cao of the Tang era, which describes tea as “bitter and sweet, slightly cold and with no toxicity,” able to “eliminate thirst, heat, and phlegm,” and the Ming Dynasty’s Ben Cao Gang Mu, which credits tea with strong anti-inflammatory properties (Yang et al.). By foregrounding both legend and classical medical literature, the scientific paper signals that its inquiry is not a rupture from cultural tradition but a continuation significant to the context of the society and time period in which the inquiry exists. 

Yet today’s scientific experiments offer another layer of meaning to Lu Yu’s observations, connecting symbolic understanding to material processes. Revisiting Lu Yu’s healing properties, modern research provides a biochemical understanding of what the Chinese virtue of balance means at the molecular level. The research explains that white tea’s catechins and polyphenols act as “scavengers of reactive oxygen species,” help “prevent cellular damage,” and exert “anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and neuroprotective activities” (Yang et al.). Here, the language shifts markedly: terms like “modulate,” “interfere,” and “regulate” describe precise molecular interventions, while “scavengers” personifies chemical compounds as active agents maintaining bodily equilibrium. This scientific framing grounds the symbolic cultural meanings Lu Yu described, anchoring centuries-old conventions about tea’s healing effects within material reality. 

While Western scholars like Kimmerer and Latour often frame the relationship between science and culture as fraught with tension, the case of Chinese tea shows an alternative: one where science and tradition work in complementary harmony. Science here does not challenge cultural knowledge; it extends it, providing new layers of meaning that support long-held conventions. 

Conclusion: Redefining Truth as Shared Convention 

My analysis challenges Western frameworks – those of Daston and Galison, Latour, Martin, and Kimmerer, which assume an inherent tension between science and culture. Drawing on Xinyan Jiang’s insights and revisiting research papers which reference historical cultural texts to preface chemical analysis, the inclusion of Eastern perspectives embraces unity between empirical observation and cultural meaning. Ultimately, the simultaneous pursuit of poetry, spirit, science, and quantitative systems funnels into the desire for convention and collective truth. “Truth” becomes no longer a guarded entity, but a universal human desire to understand our relationship with the natural world and with each other. After all, “truth” is dictated only by what is seen, believed, and lived by.

Works Cited

Carpenter, Francis Ross, translator. The Classic of Tea. By Lu Yu, Weatherhill, 1974.

Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. Zone Books, 2007.

Jiang, Xinyan. “The Relationship Between Chinese Traditional Culture and Modern Science.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, vol. 8, no. 1, 2013, pp. 59–70.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, 1993.

Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Beacon Press, 2001.

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Author Commentary / Alice Xu 

My writing process for this paper began with a much more straightforward academic research question. I aimed to examine the health benefits of drinking different Chinese teas, something I grew up consuming regularly. In my childhood, tea was often described as a drink that could cleanse the soul, heal the body, and improve blood circulation. My original research plan was to investigate these claims scientifically by examining modern research on antioxidants in different types of tea and correlating these findings with medical recommendations. I expected the paper to focus primarily on biochemical data and graphs showing the relationship between antioxidant content and health outcomes.

However, as I began researching tea more deeply, I encountered historical texts that shifted my curiosity. I discovered The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu, which was written in the eighth century Tang Dynasty, and is widely considered the first comprehensive book devoted entirely to tea. While the book presents itself as an authoritative guide on the “correct” way to produce, prepare, and drink tea, it concurrently contains no statistics, experiments, or numerical evidence. Instead, Lu Yu relies entirely on sensory experience and poetic description to establish tea’s value and healing properties. I was fascinated by the text’s authority seemingly derived from sole lived experience and cultural recognition rather than empirical measurement. 

This realization led me to reconsider the central question of my research. Rather than asking whether tea is scientifically healthy, I began asking a broader question: what makes something “true”? I read works from many Western scholars who comment on the definitions of objectivity and perception such as Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, and Bruno Latour. These scholars highlight how modern science strives for objectivity while simultaneously recognizing that knowledge is shaped by cultural context. I also noticed, however, that these scholars often frame science and cultural meaning as existing in tension with one another, always at an arm’s length away. 

I then shifted to reading some Eastern scholars, who in contrast suggest a different relationship between tradition and scientific understanding. Rather than opposing each other, cultural knowledge and empirical investigation seemed to function as complementary ways of describing the same phenomena. This perspective was fascinating and blatantly clear when put in conversation with my case study of the health benefits in drinking Chinese tea, as both Lu Yu’s The Classic of Tea and modern research papers become equally “truthful”, just reflections of the knowledge conventions in their respective time periods and societies.

Editor Commentary / Irene Kim 

While, naturally, we may approach what we know to be untrue with suspicion, Alice nudges us toward the groundbreaking possibilities in approaching seemingly conflicting beliefs with cultural sensitivity. Through her exploration of the tension between Western and Eastern literature on tea, Alice supports that  “Truth” is inextricable from the sociocultural paradigms that produce it. She engages the method of comparative analysis, first through orienting readers on the supposed tensions between the “objectivity” of Western literature and the spiritual, moral, and emotional essence of of Eastern literature on tea: 

“While Western philosophy emphasizes the separation between observer and observed—laying groundwork for the “objectivity” that Daston and Galison problematize—Chinese philosophical traditions emphasize what Jiang calls “the unity of subject and object” (Jiang 63).”

Then, Alice challenges Western scholars’ understanding of science and culture as oppositional through highlighting Western science’s endorsement of Chinese traditional practices.  

“…they begin by acknowledging cultural wisdom before elaborating on its material basis. The scientific language does not replace poetic metaphor; it provides a complementary vocabulary that enriches rather than dismisses traditional understanding.”

Through drawing consistencies between Western and Eastern literature, Alice disproves the notion that Eastern literature is “unscientific”; in doing so, she advocates for a positioning of Western scientific literature not as “superior nor ignorant of historical culture and belief.” While the beliefs posited by Western and Eastern scholars may appear in tension, Alice’s comparative analysis demonstrates how the same “truths” may be communicated differently through contrasting cultural frameworks. As Alice proves, “Truth” must be approached as deeply dynamic, indicative more of its cultural foundation than what is objectively true. 

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Author

Alice Xu ’28 is an Electrical & Computer Engineering major, Technology & Society minor from Chinatown, New York City. Growing up between Chinese and Western cultural frameworks, she is interested in exploring how distinct traditions and disciplines intersect, such as in visual art and technology, fashion design and engineering, and science and culture.

Editor

Irene Kim ‘28 is a sophomore majoring in Sociology and minoring in Gender and Sexuality Studies, African American Studies, and Journalism. On campus, she is the founder and head of queer publication Passionfruit Magazine, a Mellon Mays Fellow, and a Writing Center Fellow.

In a Tortoiseshell

This excerpt is from my final paper for HIS394: Thinking with Nature – Histories of Ecology & Environmentalism. The assignment asked students to explore a topic in environmental or ecological history over the twentieth-century. In my essay, I examine how predators have been represented in twentieth-century wildlife documentaries, tracing their evolution from feared killers to emotionally compelling keystone species. This shift reflects broader changes in environmental values, scientific understanding, and documentary storytelling techniques.  

Excerpt

If Disney’s True-Life Adventures moralized predators as villains, victims, or noble heroes, ecological science ultimately rewrote their narrative role. Beginning in the 1970s, ecologists increasingly conceptualized predators as keystone species crucial to ecosystem stability,¹ and filmmakers began adopting new cinematic technologies that enabled intimate, minimally intrusive observation.² These developments were exemplified by David Attenborough’s BBC series Life on Earth (1979) and The Living Planet (1984), which presented predators not as spectacles, but as ecological participants embedded in ecological relationships.³

To understand this shift in representation, it is first necessary to consider the ecological concept of the apex predator. An apex predator occupies the top of a food chain and has no natural predators, yet its significance lies in its ecological influence. Apex predators regulate ecosystems through top-down control, shaping the abundance and behavior of other species.⁴ Robert Paine demonstrated this principle in his foundational studies of the ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus), whose predation on mussels maintained species diversity along the Pacific Northwest coast.⁵ Later research by James Estes and colleagues on sea otters in the Aleutian Islands revealed similar dynamics: when otter populations declined, sea urchins proliferated and devastated kelp forests.⁶ Such trophic cascades illustrate that predators function as keystone species, a term Paine coined to describe organisms whose ecological influence is disproportionately large relative to their numbers.⁷ In this view, predators are not defined primarily by violence but by the ecological equilibrium they sustain. 

Attenborough’s documentaries drew directly on this ecological paradigm. Reflecting the systems-oriented perspective described by environmental historian Donald Worster, these films framed animals as interdependent components of dynamic ecosystems.⁸ In Life on Earth, predators are introduced less through mythic imagery than through morphology and evolutionary adaptation. Sharks, for example, are presented in terms of energy efficiency and sensory design. The hammerhead’s widely spaced eyes are explained as an evolutionary adaptation that improves prey detection,⁹ while the basking shark, drifting with its mouth open, exemplifies an energetically efficient feeding strategy.¹⁰ Narrative emphasis shifts from dramatic confrontation toward ecological explanation. 

This scientific reframing was reinforced by a restrained aesthetic that contrasted with earlier wildlife films. Attenborough’s documentaries minimized dramatic musical scoring and moralizing narration, instead favoring ambient sound, extended takes, and subdued voiceover. As Ursula Heise argues, narrative restraint in environmental storytelling can disrupt the moral binaries that historically structured nature cinema.¹¹ In The Living Planet, for instance, a lynx stalking prey in the northern forests is filmed in near silence, the camera following it without rapid editing.¹² When the lynx drags a deer through the snow, the narration simply notes that the kill will sustain the entire lynx family.¹³ This stylistic restraint carries across species and habitats. Polar bears hunting seals are described in terms of thermodynamic and evolutionary adaptation rather than emotional drama.¹⁴ Even disturbing behaviors, such as adult bears killing cubs during periods of scarcity, are presented as ecological realities rather than moral transgressions. Attenborough frames animal behavior through a behaviorist lens shaped by environmental pressures rather than humanlike motivations.

The rise of this ecological style also reflected changes in the institutional landscape of wildlife filmmaking. As Gregg Mitman observes in Reel Nature, Life on Earth appeared at a moment when American wildlife television was undergoing a crisis of identity.¹⁵ Earlier programs, such as Wild Kingdom, relied heavily on spectacle and confrontation between humans and animals. By the late 1970s, however, educators and broadcasters increasingly criticized these formats for prioritizing excitement over scientific understanding. There was concern that the slower pacing of British natural history documentaries would fail to capture American audiences accustomed to spectacle-driven programming.¹⁶ Yet when PBS broadcast Life on Earth in 1982, the series proved both popular and influential. Because PBS operated under a public service mandate rather than commercial profit pressures, it could support long-form natural history storytelling oriented towards education.¹⁷ In this context, wildlife documentaries evolved into “blue chip” productions: visually sophisticated films designed to appeal to mass audiences and educational institutions.

Technological innovation also played a crucial role in enabling this transformation. Earlier wildlife filmmakers often relied on staged scenes, captive animals, or intrusive chase techniques to capture predation on film.¹⁸ By the 1980s, however, advances such as telephoto lenses, stabilized aerial platforms, and remote camera traps allowed crews to observe animals at greater distances and over longer periods without disrupting their behavior.¹⁹ These tools made it possible to document elusive predators in remote environments, from snow leopards in Himalayan cliffs²⁰  to nocturnal desert hunters.²¹ Film scholar Derek Bousé describes this development as the emergence of “visual ecology,” a cinematic approach that situates animal behavior within environmental systems rather than isolating dramatic moments.²² The pacing of these documentaries, marked by long shots and minimal editing, mirrored the ecological principles they depicted: respect for environmental context and the complexity of life in the wild.

Footnotes 

1. Robert T. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability,” The American Naturalist 103, no. 929 (1969): 91–93.  ↩︎
2. Bousé, “Chapter 3: Science and Storytelling,” 105–110.  ↩︎
3. Life on Earth, directed by David Attenborough (BBC, 1979), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/life-on-earth-1979; The Living Planet, directed by David Attenborough (BBC, 1984), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/bbc-the-living-planet. ↩︎
4. Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Apex Predator,” last modified February 20, 2024. ↩︎
5. Robert T. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability,” The American Naturalist 103, no. 929 (1969): 91–93. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability.” ↩︎
6. James A. Estes and John F. Palmisano, “Sea Otters: Their Role in Structuring Nearshore Communities,” Science 185, no. 4156 (September 20, 1974): 1058–60, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4156.1058. ↩︎
7. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability.” ↩︎
8. Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 345–350. ↩︎
9. Life on Earth (Episode 5: Conquest of the Waters, 11:47). ↩︎
10. Life on Earth (Episode 5: Conquest of the Waters, 16:42). ↩︎
11. ​​Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 57. ↩︎
12. The Living Planet (Episode 3: The Northern Forests, 7:01). ↩︎

1. Robert T. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability,” The American Naturalist 103, no. 929 (1969): 91–93. 
2. Bousé, “Chapter 3: Science and Storytelling,” 105–110. 
3. Life on Earth, directed by David Attenborough (BBC, 1979), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/life-on-earth-1979; The Living Planet, directed by David Attenborough (BBC, 1984), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/bbc-the-living-planet.
4. Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Apex Predator,” last modified February 20, 2024.
5.  Robert T. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability,” The American Naturalist 103, no. 929 (1969): 91–93. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability.”
6. James A. Estes and John F. Palmisano, “Sea Otters: Their Role in Structuring Nearshore Communities,” Science 185, no. 4156 (September 20, 1974): 1058–60, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4156.1058.
7. Paine, “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability.”
8. Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 345–350.
9. Life on Earth (Episode 5: Conquest of the Waters, 11:47).
10. Life on Earth (Episode 5: Conquest of the Waters, 16:42).
11. ​​Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 57.
12. The Living Planet (Episode 3: The Northern Forests, 7:01).
13. The Living Planet (Episode 3: The Northern Forests, 7:53).
14. The Living Planet (Episode 2: The Frozen World, 37:52).
15. Mitman, “Chapter 6: Domesticating Nature on the Television Set,” 153–56.
16. Chris, “Chapter 3: Wildlife, Remade for TV.”
17. Mitman, “Chapter 6: Domesticating Nature on the Television Set,” 158-160.
18. Mitman, “Chapter 6: Domesticating Nature on the Television Set.”
19. Bousé, “Chapter 2: A Brief History of  Neglected Tradition,” 105-110.
20. The Living Planet (Episode 2: The Frozen World, 09:16).
21. The Living Planet (Episode 6: The Baking Deserts, 8:41–10:44). 
22. Bousé, “Chapter 2: A Brief History of  Neglected Tradition,” 112-115.

Works Cited 

Bousé, Derek. Wildlife films. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 

Encyclopædia Britannica. Apex Predator. Last modified February 20, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/science/apex-predator.

Estes, James A., and John F. Palmisano. “Sea Otters: Their Role in Structuring Nearshore Communities.” Science 185, no. 4156 (September 20, 1974): 1058–60. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.185.4156.1058. 

Heise, Ursula K. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. 

Life on Earth. Directed by David Attenborough. BBC, 1979. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/life-on-earth-1979.

Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Vancouver: University of Washington Press, 2014. 

Paine, Robert T. “A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability.” The American Naturalist 103, no. 929 (January 1969): 91–93. https://doi.org/10.1086/282586. 

The Living Planet. Directed by David Attenborough. BBC, 1984. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bbc-the-living-planet.

Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 

Author Commentary / Maya Cabrera 

When I began planning this essay, I struggled to settle on a topic because the prompt was very open-ended. I knew I wanted to write about animals in visual media, but I was unsure how to shape that interest into a focused analytical argument. At first, I considered examining how animals were portrayed to children, yet I found that direction less compelling because it did not allow me to engage with the scientific and historical dimensions of environmental storytelling that interested me most. Since I have always enjoyed watching wildlife documentaries, I began to wonder how those films have changed over time, particularly in their portrayal of predators. As I started researching and encountering both film scholarship and ecological ideas, this curiosity developed into a clearer focus on the historical evolution of predator representation in twentieth-century wildlife documentaries. 

One challenge I faced during the writing process was balancing cultural analysis with scientific explanation. Because my topic sits at the intersection of media history and ecological thought, I often found it challenging to determine how much background information was necessary in each section. In earlier drafts, some passages became overly descriptive of specific film scenes, while others leaned too heavily on technical ecological concepts. Revising the essay required me to think more carefully about structure and progression. I ultimately organized the paper chronologically so that readers could follow how documentary styles, scientific understandings, and cultural values shifted over time. This structure also helped me to clarify my own argument, especially as I worked to connect individual film examples to broader intellectual developments. 

The excerpt I selected represents a turning point in both the essay and my writing process. In this section, I move from discussing symbolic and dramatized portrayals of predators to explaining how ecological science reshaped their narrative role. Writing this passage pushed me to synthesize multiple strands of research and to position my interpretation in relation to existing scholarship. Rather than simply describing documentary techniques or historical context, I begin to explain why these representational changes mattered for how audiences understood predators and their ecological significance. 

Overall, this excerpt captures what I found most meaningful about writing the paper: recognizing how media representations are shaped by evolving scientific knowledge and cultural perspectives. It marks the point where my initial curiosity about wildlife documentaries developed into a clearer analytical framework. Throughout this process, I gained a stronger understanding not only of my topic but also of how sustained engagement with a multitude of sources can help refine and strengthen an academic argument. 

Editor Commentary / Aanya Kasera 

Reading Maya’s excerpt, I was struck by how she uses framing to shift the way we understand predators. Rather than portraying them as villains or heroes, Maya shows how ecological science and documentary filmmaking work together to present predators as keystone species essential to ecosystem balance. She consistently connects scientific studies to Attenborough’s documentaries, guiding readers to see animals in terms of ecological function rather than drama or morality. For instance, when Maya writes that “predators are introduced less through mythic imagery than through morphology and evolutionary adaptation,” it highlighted for me how perspective can shape understanding. 

The examples she chooses make this framing clear. The explanation of the hammerhead shark’s widely spaced eyes as an adaptation for prey detection stood out—it’s a small detail, but it demonstrates Maya’s point that Attenborough emphasizes ecological reality over spectacle. Similarly, the line “Attenborough frames animal behavior through a behaviorist lens shaped by environmental pressures rather than humanlike motivations” helped me see how framing guides interpretation, even for behaviors that might seem harsh or shocking. By including sea stars, sea otters, and polar bears, Maya shows that this perspective applies across ecosystems and species. 

Maya also highlights how style reinforces framing. She notes the use of long shots, minimal editing, and subdued narration, which mirrors the ecological principles being described. The connection she draws between technological advances, like remote cameras and telephoto lenses, and the ability to film animals without disrupting them made me appreciate how framing can be both conceptual and practical. 

Overall, Maya’s excerpt shows how framing shapes meaning through evidence, style, and structure. Her careful choices invite readers to reconsider predators, focusing on ecological significance rather than spectacle. This analysis helped me see the essay as more than a summary of science or film. It is a deliberate argument, making it a strong example of Lexicon close reading. 

Author 

Maya Cabrera ‘27 is a junior from San Antonio, Texas, majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in Visual Arts. Her research interests include host-parasite dynamics, ecoimmunology, and behavioral ecology. She serves as co-president of the Princeton Beekeeping Team, is a Science Outreach fellow, and participates in the Princeton Conservation Society. In her free time, she enjoys exploring the outdoors, reading, creating ceramic sculptures, and observing animals. 

Editor

Aanya Kasera ‘28 is a sophomore at Princeton majoring in Molecular Biology with minors in Neuroscience and Global Health & Health Policy. She is active in the Writing Center Program, conducts research in the Wang Lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and serves as a Peer Health Adviser. In her free time, she enjoys reading, baking, creative writing, playing the piano, and listening to Enhypen.

These excerpts showcase how scholarly breadth is another way of creating scholarly depth. While these two research strategies are sometimes viewed in opposition to one another, with detailed source engagement being sacrificed for a wider conversation between seemingly disparate subjects, the path that these papers trace between their areas of focus actually results in a more insightful and deeper analysis of their subject, likely more than could have been achieved with a narrower focus. Maya Cabrera’s analysis of the evolution of predator representation in wildlife documentaries places filmmaking technique in conversation with ecological history, tracing shifts that can only be fully understood through a synthesis of these fields. And in Alice Xu’s Writing Seminar paper, she interrogates and deepens the very concept of scholarly knowledge, by drawing on both Eastern and Western constructs of truth-creation. 

— Jordan Fraser Angel ’27