Languages, Literature and Mass Communication Projects

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Track 7A - Performance

“Alone” is a post-apocalyptic horror fiction piece that I am working on. It is a novella with the hopes of becoming a full-length story in the future. It is currently in progress. The story focuses on a young man named Isaac and his struggle surviving in a fallen Earth. He must endure several conflicts and challenges that the new world has left for him when all of his friends and family have left him. The extinction of humans has caused nature to take back what it is in new horrifying ways. Isaac will have to make tough choices deciding what is worth fighting for when he is all alone.

The poems in this original reading present two dimensions: one being the literal experimentation of language, and the other being the social impact of language in everyday life. In a literal sense, I choreograph diction, syntax, and the physical structure of the poems. To express the influence of language, I use the literary devices of voice, personification, and juxtaposition. With these elements, I am exploring relationships between the abstraction of words and the physicality of human life as a code through my experiences. ”Living in Language” represents the hold that language has on me, and this concept that language comes from experiences with others as well as inner thoughts, and has a hold on us all.

This fictional piece is a short story that follows the childhood of a young girl with a vivid imagination suppressed and scrutinized by biased perceptions of adult figures in her life. Drawing from instances within the author’s own life, this piece showcases an issue felt by many children of unsupportive parents but takes it a step further to show how one’s talent can be misunderstood and manipulated. This piece employs thematic patterning to help amplify the main character’s recurring attempts to individualize herself. For the presentation, the author will give a brief introduction of the story to address its purpose and meaning, followed by a reading of the full text as it is only 1500 words.

There’s only one planet earth. So, it is not too far of a stretch to believe that every living being, every human, every fish, mammal, lizard, and willow tree carries and expels energy that can affect the world in unimaginable ways. We are all connected, and therefore one person’s life may alter or reflect off another’s without even knowing. I have always been fascinated with this idea that the choices I make in life are affecting the world around me in ways I will never know in my lifetime- as if the world is one giant lake and we are all tossing our pebbles in at the same time, our ripples expanding and blending together to the point where untangling them seems impossible. This excerpt I will be reading for Student Showcase is from a collection of short stories that I have been working on all spring. Each story follows one individual and is completely whole on its own but the connections between stories within the collection add another layer. They reflect and refract off of each other to produce a new meaning: how all of our breaths are weaved together.

Track 7B - Performance

The piece I will be reading is an excerpt from my larger senior writing project; however, it is, in and of itself, self-contained. “Throwing Pottery” portrays an adult version of myself having a flashback to my child self witnessing the destruction of my father’s sacred pottery barn.

Track 7C - Oral Presentations

For more than seven centuries the Ancestral Puebloan people, or Anasazi, flourished in the desert climate of the Four Corners Region. They built grand pueblo complexes at Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Cedar Mesa, and numerous other locations. However, only a few decades after achieving the pinnacle of their most significant accomplishments, they abandoned their long-time homes. For a century, archaeologists, anthropologists and researchers have argued the causes for this departure, yet much remains in contention. This oral research presentation examines various theories, from the establishment to the outliers, aimed at explaining the exodus of an elaborate agriculture society from their long-occupied homeland.

This piece focuses on the roles of Emilia and Desdemona in Shakespeare’s play, Othello. In a society where women were governed by the goddess/ whore dichotomy Emilia and Desdemona recognized the social constructs placed on them and in order to break free both sought a path to empowerment through her sexuality and attempting to occupy a liminal space between the two extremes.