Category: 2021-2022

Equipment for conducting the Voight Kampff test in a dimly lit room. A lone eye unsettlingly stares forward from a monitor.

Complementary Cyborgs

WGSS 07.01: Gender in Science Fiction This was written as a final unit reflection essay. The stories we have studied for the cyborgs unit of our class are…

Amazon warrior woman from the future wields a whip, while other female members of her society run in the background.

War, Work, and Love in The Left Hand of Darkness and “When it Changed”

WGSS 07.01: Gender in Science Fiction The term “utopia” was born from Thomas More’s fictional world of Utopia in 1516. More’s Utopia is fundamentally a political experiment in…

Woman in red sci-fi outfit bravely defends a man (out of frame) with her laser pistol.

Alien Amazons: A Reflection on the Representation of Women in SF

WGSS 07.01: Gender in Science Fiction Science fiction is a hard genre to pin down with respect to social issues. In the beginning, genre SF assumed a sort…

An oil painting of Jordan, Mari, and Clark, backlit in dark clothing. They look intimidating.

Painting 1: Final Proposal

SART 25: Painting 1 Going into the end of the term, I want to continue the figurative work I began in my eighth-page studies. I was more engaged…

A yin-yang symbol, where the smaller dots have been extended into gendered pictograms. The stark contrast between light and dark suggest a binary view of gender.

A Struggle Towards Androgyny in The Left Hand of Darkness

WGSS 07.01: Gender in Science Fiction Is the The Left Hand of Darkness feminist? If Ursula K. Le Guin is a feminist author, why does she imagine a…

An extremely round Avogadro Project sphere suspended in a big machine.

Permissivism: Possibilities, Presuppositions, and Pragmatism

WRIT 5.04: What is Knowledge? Uniqueness vs. Permissivism Sometimes it is helpful to think about our cognition like a machine. Perhaps we are engineers making a machine that…

A confusing map of a (somewhat) flat earth model. The model is well-drawn, creating doubt as to whether it could actually work.

Conspiracy Theories and Fallibilism

WRIT 5.04: What is Knowledge? Our day-to-day life is largely dependent on our knowledge. I know that the air is safe to breathe when I go outside. I…

A delicious chocolate cake the reader might be tempted to eat.

Cake, Cumin, Candy, and the Stakes of Pragmatic Encroachment

WRIT 5.04: What is Knowledge? What does it take for a belief to be justified? Most would agree that justification requires some level of evidence, internally accessible information…

Exterior view of the Remnant Fellowship Church, an imposing brick structure.

Media Analysis: A Remnant of Gwen Shamblin’s Power

REL 1.02: Contemporary Religion The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin was produced by Campfire and Huntley Productions and released on September 30, 2021;…

A foreboding Scientology "E-Meter" rendered nearly devoid of color. It feels sterile and clinical.

From Dianetics to Divinity: A Case Study of Scientology

REL 1.02: Contemporary Religion Scientology, an ideology that can be represented as a science, therapy, and religion, was developed in the 1950s (Kent 97). It grew to operate…