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Best Integrated Writing Fall 2026 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

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Combing Out The Kinks Of Identity: Why Black Hair Is More Than A Personal Choice, Christina Jouthe

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Christina Jouthe is a Public Health major from Boston, Massachusetts. As a Black woman, she is drawn to subjects that allow her to examine Black culture, identity, representation, and femininity. Her essay gave her an opportunity to enter a discourse grounded in her own experiences while also expanding her understanding through research. Christina explains that “this semester allowed me to realize that writing can be fun and personable.” Previously, she had often been required to write about subjects that did not interest her or to follow formats that left little room for personal perspective. This particular project encouraged her to …

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Fuck The Academic Filter, Ana Swanson

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Ana Swanson is an Anthropology major from Warwick, RI. Ana explains that writing papers has always been challenging for her, not because of ability, but because of boredom. “I just don’t enjoy writing in a strict, buttoned-up tone—or the academic filter, as I call it in this essay,” she shares. Discovering that she didn’t have to conform to that filter felt revolutionary and opened up a new way of approaching her work. Returning to college after leaving her studies twice, Ana came back with a renewed sense of purpose and a focus on anthropology, a subject she genuinely loves. Writing …

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Writing Is Really Really Scary, Brian Coughlin

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Brian Coughlin is a biology major from Melrose, MA. He believes that “everyone has the capacity to write something beautiful, but so many people are turned off of it because they think of some boring English essay they had to write about The Catcher in the Rye in eleventh grade.” Brian’s goal in this essay is to show that writing is “so much more than cracking open a thesaurus to impress your teacher.” This piece of writing is important to Brian because it was one of the first essays he wrote while trying to break away from the conventional writing …

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Texts In Conflict, Adia Samba-Quee

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Adia is a Political Science Major with a Minor in Africana Studies from Springfield, MA. In writing this essay, Adia was able to “reflect on my relation with writing and how I am perceived as an individual through my writing. I consider letting go of my prideful and embarrassing ego a huge factor in my development.” Like many students, Adia felt the remote learning semesters to be “historically bad on my mental health.” Efforts and interest in school fluctuated wildly and “I didn’t think I’d made much of an impact on my professors this year.” But, Adia is “learning a …

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The Marginalization Of African Americans In Educational Institutions Through Race And Language, Aneika Robinson

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Aneika is a sophomore and an undecided major who lives in Springfield, MA. She came to the United States from Jamaica when she was three years old. In this paper, Aneika wanted to address some of the subtle ways that “institutional racism is found within the foundations of schools in the United States.” She says that this essay “became something that was very special to me because it addressed a social issue that I am very passionate about. I care for equality of all people of color, as I believe that the color of a person’s skin should not determine …

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American Arms: A Soldier's Perspective, Steve Prochniak

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Steve is a political science major from Andover, Massachusetts. Steve’s experience in the military had given him an understanding of the practical aspects of the weapons he was trained to use, but his essay came out of a desire to understand the societal impacts of these weapons. Writing this essay both helped Steve develop a better understanding of this complicated issue, and helped him find his passion in exploring “issues and topics that face my community.” In addition to exploring these complex issues, Steve enjoys science fiction, exploration, and just hanging around in the city of Boston.

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Subscribe, Follow, Save: Podcast Preservation In The Platform Era, Ben Pettis, Jeremy Morris

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Podcasting has produced a glut of cultural content. Collecting and saving these sounds for future study, however, remains challenging. This article asks: “How are recent developments in the platformization of podcasting threatening the ability of users and researchers to save, study, and sustain podcasts and the cultural insights they offer?” To answer, we focus on a podcast preservation project, PodcastRE.org, and discuss strategies for creating an (un)stable repository for future studies of podcasting. While new developments challenge preservation efforts, they also offer archivists opportunities to prioritize the cultural significance of podcasts, rather than the economic motives of the podcast industry …

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Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Some of the most influential pronouncements on world literature have been made by the kind of authors who are most likely to emerge as representatives of world literature once we agree on a definition, including Goethe, the young Marx, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and the distinguished signatories of the manifesto for a world-literature in French. Breaking out of this vicious circle by referring to the authority of pure theorists of world literature is not the solution, as this would only pull us into a new vicious circle where most of these theorists would mostly remind us of the names that …

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A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …

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An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The Vsemirnaia Literatura publishing house was founded in Petrograd by Maxim Gorky less than a year after the October Revolution. Aligned with the objectives of the new regime, its mission was to translate and publish a substantial body of European and Asian poetry and prose, thereby contributing to the broad cultural education of the emerging Soviet generations. These ambitions clearly reflect a key element of Gorky’s conception of culture as well: for Gorky, culture in its broadest sense (encompassing literature, art, music, and science) had the potential to unite humanity under the ideals of peace and harmony. Within this new …

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Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Book Review: Yamin Hu, The Contemporary Construction Of The Chinese Form Of Marxist Literary Criticism , Paul R. Patton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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