undergraduate academic writing

"A tree falls on a tyrant in the middle of a lonely forest, but there's no one around to hear it– does it still make a sound? And is this justice? This rather unlikely scenario operates in the spirit of the larger philosophical tradition of descriptive meta-ethics, which aims to determine underlying presumptions of normative moral practices. It is particularly useful in testing our retributive instincts because it does not ask us to evaluate the appropriateness of punishment. We are not asked how we can create justice because it has ostensibly already been achieved– here, we are more directly challenged to assess our existing internal requirements to declare justice served. I bring this example up to emphasize the definitive role of observers in justice processes. To a witness for whom the tyrant is just a man, his untimely death is completely random, whereas for, say, a victim of the despot's brutal conquests, the accident is morally laden. In that sense, there are multiple ways to turn an unjust situation just— occurring through the observers, rather than through more established means such as punishment, victim intentions, or overall social welfare."

""Hoeflation is real" is an anonymous text post from popular online forum 4Chan, in which the author details their frustrations with increasingly unattainable standards for men, coupled with the ostensibly declining quality of women over time. Notably, the author's resentment against women is rerouted from anxieties over finance and appearance. The rhetoric in "Hoeflation is real" is emblematic of the larger, well-documented phenomenon coined by scholars as the "manosphere." The manosphere is a network of online communities that emerged in the early 2000s, dedicated to the belief that men are oppressed by modern feminism. I contend that the contemporary discontent propagated by the 'manosphere' is fundamentally a response to American deindustrialization, particularly regarding changing labor norms and conditions. In defending this view, I will show how "masculinity" has been destabilized and subsequently updated in the wake of broader economic and social shifts by comparing modern manosphere rhetoric to Sinclair Lewis' 1922 novel Babbitt. I argue that Babbitt captures a similar moment in American history through its intricate portrayal of the effects of American industrialization on masculinity. Although fictional, I assert that the concerns raised in Babbitt address real, ongoing questions, which is further upheld by Lewis' propensity to evoke the "sociological imagination." While gender in the American mainstream has been thought of as a normative, unchanging fact of human existence, I posit that the uneasiness surrounding masculinity displayed in Babbitt and the manosphere demonstrates that gender in practice is intuited to be dynamic and ever changing. Additionally, upheavals of social institutions, and especially with one as deeply entrenched as gender, are rarely straightforward. I illustrate how men have sensed masculinity's vulnerability, and then opted to (re)affirm their masculinity through misogyny."

"In this paper, I argue that the explanatory power of this course's three primary urban theories: the strength of community, the hope for change, and the power of structural inequality, is amplified when the themes are allowed to coexist. So, instead of selecting one explanatory angle, I will show that overlaying multiple urban narratives results in unique insights into the nature of Chicago and cities at large. Put another way, I believe that we miss much when we try to solve puzzles from just one piece, and learn more when we acknowledge that we still only have the pieces. In order to answer the spirit of the prompt while pluralizing urban narratives, my analysis does two things. First, I identify how our three themes are expressed in course readings. I find that, though each story paints vastly d ifferent versions of Chicago, these discrepancies are more like a piece of music's variations on a theme than contradictory lab results. That is to say, variance within one theory enhances rather than weakens it. Secondly, I will sketch out the limits of a lone theme by placing each alongside its two counterparts. I chose this approach in order to avoid the pitfall described by Napong Rugkhapan: "We cannot call the city complex, diverse, layered, or multidimensional, and expect to understand it from one paradigmatic angle." I find that, because of this class's interdisciplinary, mixed-methods nature, it is a particularly good starting point to rejecting the singular framework approach. The way we understand the world also determines how we go on to live in it; a broader imagination of Chicago and urban life is necessary in effectively designing for our futures."

"The life cycle of a cryptocurrency investor is elegantly outlined by Reddit user u/itsallfuckedthough: "You start rubbing hands together picking the paint job for your Lambo, and then before you know it you're wanting to bring down traitorous institutions and you're thinking about raising a family and getting a farm." Posted in the r/Cryptocurrency discussion forum, u/itsallfuckedthough's comment describes a new activism, in which revolution looks like investing in cryptocurrency. Even so, "taking down traitorous institutions" is the cry of a longer anti-Establishment storyline across American history: said "traitorous institutions," regardless of their reality, belong to a greater rhetorical tradition of railing against the Establishment. u/itsallfuckedthough's institutions are Andrew Jackson's "Many-Headed Monster," Louis Brandeis' "Financial Trust," and Barry Goldwater's "vast Government machine." Accordingly, to understand the crypto-current vision of the future, it is necessary to notice its anti-Establishment software. There is already extensive scholarship noting how Cryptocurrency inherits rhetorical practices from preceding movements, but this anti-Establishment throughline is far from static."