Below is listed everything that I have converted for publication on this site which I have written in the past several years. It is all either fiction or essays; if you are interested in my media articles, try instead the media articles section.

• Cities and Systems: Portland  

  I love Portland, as I think is obvious from the content of this website. But it's hard to explain. This essay sets out in words everything I love about Portland, and why I feel exiled in Chicago. As magical as a new place is, there's something about the rawness of the wilderness and the urbaneness of the city I know and love that draws me to it. Portland! Say it with me: Portland!

• Rolling Stone's Political Coverage Compared

  My faît accompli from History and Issues of Journalism, a paper comparing Rolling Stone's political coverage across two periods, 1968-77 and 1978-87, prior to and after the move of the magazine from San Francisco to New York. I'm not going to tell you what I concluded; you'll have to read it. One of my better works, I think. Potentially heavy on statistics.

• The In-Group Ethnic Joke as a Mechanism of Differentiation and Preservation of Culture

  For my (English-language) German film class about humor and the nature of the comic, a paper about in-group ethnic jokes and how they're used to both undermine stereotypes and create favorable stereotypes for an ethnic group within and without the group.

• Why Terrorism Is the Greatest Threat to the United States Today

  An essay written for my International Relations class which explains my theory about terrorism and how to deal with it, drawing heavily on the cosmopolitan theory of horizontal identities. Heavy on theory.

• Diego Rivera's The Weaver

  The paper that, I think, earned me an A in Art History; it was a lot better than the formal analysis, which is not included here because it is woven neatly into this. It's all about how Diego Rivera's The Weaver is a metaphor for what he sees as the essentail creation of the future of Mexico as a nation. Read it; I think you'll enjoy it. Photograph of the painting, although probably illegal, is included with the Web-ified version of the paper.

• Persistence of Existence

  The classic adventure story with a twist. All about where things go when you lose them, and what happens to all of those frames that you don't see when you're watching movies, and a little exploration of time and alternate universes. Pretty cool stuff, although that could just be me pumping myself up.

• When Projections Come True

  A comparison of Aldous Huxley's predictions in Brave New World to Eric Schlosser's observations in the real-life Fast Food Nation. Worth a read, to scare you and because my senior English teacher in high school said, "This is the finest research-comparison paper I have ever read. Great work!"

• Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and the Death of Media

  An essay for my English class all about what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have to teach us in the media, what with the Death of Media imminent and such according to the pundits. Incidentally, I put it here rather than in the 'Media' section because it's an essay for my English class.

• Northwestern University Personal Statement

  This essay could well have been pivotal in my acceptance. I could have said the same thing if I'd been rejected. On the one hand, it was a far better essay than any of my essays for other schools, but Northwestern was also the most selective of all the schools I was applying to. Give it a read. It's about Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Last updated: 17 May 2003, 23:40 CST
Permanent URL: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~mwm223/writing-articles.html
Mirror URL 1: http://www.magnesium.net/~gregsamsa/writing-articles.html
GPG Key: http://www.magnesium.net/~gregsamsa/gpgkey.asc
Copyright: Wes Meltzer (mwm223), Webmaster, 2002