some of my projects
The Impossible Costs More
2026
click here to read
Blowback: Politics and Culture in the Creation of Conspiracy Theories
2025
A litany of studies have been done into the psychological profile of the ‘conspiracy theorist,’ someone who (apparently) can be defined entirely along the lines of the ‘conspiracy theories’ they believe in. Psychologists have argued for specific neurological patterns and behaviors that lead to ‘conspiratorial’ thinking, and these findings have been published in major media outlets like the New York Times. What if that isn’t the whole story? How do we account for when those who are apparently psychologically predisposed towards conspiratorial thinking turn out to be right? What do we do when a conspiracy theory stops being a theory and becomes history? These are questions posed and answered in this paper, which I wrote for a class called Perspectives on 9/11: Religion, Politics, and Culture, taught by Kristin Sands.
click here to read
The Vague Dream: Personal and Collective Memory in the Poetry of Mao Zedong
2026
Most American and British scholarly work on the poetry of Mao Zedong has claimed that Mao’s poetry concerned, more or less, the collective political experience of China during his lifetime, rather than reflecting on his own personal memories. In this paper, I refute the idea that Mao’s writing was more collective than personal, arguing instead that his poetry experiences and recounts personal memories through the collective experience of China, which does not diminish the personal nature of his poetry.
click here to read