Cultural Studies

The Aura of Mad Men

I wrote this first paper during my Junior year as an assignment for English 403. The course was dedicated to cultural studies and the assignment was to incorporate the work of a cultural theorist into a discussion of a pop culture phenomenon. I chose to discuss the AMC hit series Mad Men through the lens of Walter Benjamin's theories on "Aura." Mad Men is one of my all time favorite TV shows and discussing it in an academic light provided me with one of the most interesting and entertaining writing experiences of my college career.

The Who’s “My Generation”: More Punk than Punk

Audio Presentation [mp3]

This next piece was also done as an assignment for English 403. For this project, we were instructed to analyze one of our favorite songs utilizing the works of the contemporary musical theorists that we had been discussing in class. During the last week of the semester we presented our work in the form of a speech with our song playing in the background. I chose to analyze The Who's My Generation via the theories of Kier Keightly, Motti Regev and Lawrence Grossberg. This assignment was both fun and incredibly thought provoking. In the two links above, I have included the text of the speech and an audio recording of myself presenting the speech in order to convey the full context of the assignment. This work comprises the oral presentation section of my portfolio.

The Maltese Falcon and Film Noir as a ‘Flaneur-Maker’

As a Senior, my final Honors Seminar is a class on Detective fiction. We have read novels by all of the major players- everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Dashiell Hammet. We have also watched several of the famous detective films. One of our first films was The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston and based on the novel by Hammet. While this class isn't specifically tailored around "Cultural Studies," we have discussed Walter Benjamin's work regarding the flanerie in Paris Arcades as it pertains to the private detective. As I had spent a prior semester studying works of Benjamins in English 403 and as his theories serve an integral role in my Senior thesis, I decided to write my midterm paper using Benjamin's theories on the "flanerie" and the art of film to dissect The Maltese Falcon as a whole, and film noir in general. This paper can be found in the link above.

Night Spots of The Arts: Norman Rockwell’s Prom Night Vs. Vincent Van Gogh’s Night Café

This last piece contains a certain sense of sentimentality for me as a writer. My Sophomore year, I was taking an art history class. It was my first real exposure to art in an academic sense and I became fascinated by the volume of material there was to discuss in a single painting. I wrote this paper in order to compare the style and technique of Norman Rockwell's Prom Night with Vincent Van Gogh's Night Cafe. After she graded the paper, my professor pulled me aside and told me that if she had an extra day to lecture, she would create a lesson based on what I wrote in my paper. This assignment is what truly sparked my interest in the area of cultural studies and was one of the reasons I chose the classes I did for the remainder of my college education.