Synaptic

By K.E. Daft '19 & Marin Harrington '21

Welcome to the 39th edition of The Writing Anthology.

By Brandon Rosas '20

Tsitsi Dangarembga writes her debut novel, Nervous Conditions, with a liberatingly dense style. Unlike that of many other African writers, Dangarembga’s periphrastic, prolix prose harkens back more to that of Charles Dickens than to that of Chinua Achebe.

By Christian Warner '20

Jacques-Louis David’s Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, or The Tennis Court Oath presents us with a chaotic scene. In this unfinished painting, there are hundreds of people clustered together, seemingly in a frenzy. Yet, there is no physical violence in the painting. Although there is a sense of chaos from the sheer volume of people crammed in the tennis court, there is also a sense of communion—communion in the sense that all the people in the painting are together and regard each other as brothers or allies.

By Delanie Donovan '19

The Irish Sea breeze blew my hair, tickling my face and ears as it danced in the wind and I swore I could taste the sea salt on my lips.

By Bailey Anderson '18

Postmodernist novels famously defy convention and resist unifying theories or ideologies. They lack conclusionary details and the most bizarre occurrences are often left “up in the air.” Even in the novels themselves, readers are sometimes advised against trying to make too much out of the stories they tell.

By Molly Timmerman '18

La Casa en Mango Street de Sandra Cisneros es narrada por una joven chicana llamada Esperanza. Durante la historia, Esperanza tiene doce o trece años y vive en Chicago, en un barrio pobre con muchos otros latinos.

By Amelia Howard '19

What exactly is foreign policy and why does it matter?

By K.E. Daft '19

Willa Cather has been hailed, for decades, as an advocate for Bohemian culture.

By Braden Furness '20

Bioluminescence is a key part to many organisms and their lifestyle, both on land and in the ocean.

By Marin Harrington '21

I knew it was Katharine’s birthday the next day. I had been celebrating it for years, as she was of my closest friends, and one of the few left from high school I still communicated with now that we were dispersed across the United States at different colleges.

By Marina Paul '21

When asked to think about learning challenges in elementary school, it would be safe to assume that many people would reflect on the difficulties of mathematics.

By Matthew Wells '18

A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (GOT) is a laudable effort to put in players’ hands the chance to exercise their inner Machiavellian in a (hopefully) nonviolent fashion.