Schedule of Events

Mark Twain, William Goulding, and F. Scott Fitzgerald—names etched in literary history, revered for their enduring impact on classic literature. Yet, within their revered works lies a pattern of perpetuating gender disparities, often at the expense of female characters, as they elevate the male protagonist. This trend is starkly evident when comparing the portrayals of gender in bildungsromane: the stark contrast between the harrowing "Lord of the Flies' ' and the relatively subdued "Little Women' ' underscores this imbalance. Additionally, the inclusion of female rivalries—such as Jane and Bertha in "Jane Eyre '' or Daisy and Myrtle in "The Great Gatsby"—further accentuates this bias. The dominance of the male narrative within academic discourse does not go unnoticed. My objective for this project is to dissect a selection of pivotal novels within the Western literary canon, probing their foundational qualities while shedding light on the underrepresentation of female authors. Moreover, I plan to delve into the rise of the "feminist dystopia" during this epoch. To approach this project, I plan to conduct comprehensive research that will unearth prevalent feminist narratives in contemporary curricula and unveil their historical and modern significance. In my attempt to do so, I will introduce a handful of literary works, spanning from scarce female-authored narratives within the canon to the burgeoning feminist dystopian genre. My hope for this project is to foster an appreciation for literature by female authors and advocate for their inclusion in the revered literary canon. 

Pollá Pathos, also known as “many emotions” in a direct translation from Greek terms, is a narrative that explores the difficulties of love, specifically from the context of the historical culture of Spartan warriors, as well as the philosophies of Ancient Greece and the Pantheons that were worshiped throughout their lifetimes. Through my characters, I wish to explore the themes of Greek love as explained through the context of Ancient Greek philosophers. The various characters and the relationships in my story will explore these different definitions of love. I will go through the various good and bad practices of Ancient Greek culture while exploring the idea of mental health through the lens of Spartan warriors. The biggest influence on my narrative came from playing video games in high school, specifically the God of War series by Santa Monica Studios. I took inspiration from the recent duology’s representation of a father-son relationship between characters Kratos and Atreus with the hopes that my audience can find common ground with my characters through the many emotions portrayed. My story is meant to be enjoyed by a variety of age groups and hopefully will show the audience that love comes in all shapes and sizes.

Spiral Bound: Diving into the Doubting Disorder is Jazzy Colbert’s poetry book about her story of living with OCD for over 20 years. Now fighting for a fulfilling life eight years since her diagnosis, Jazzy utilizes this project to dispel common misunderstandings about obsessive-compulsive disorder, which prevent struggling individuals from having their symptoms validated so they can seek the treatment they need. Her friend Cia Atkins contributed 16 original OCD-related illustrations to capture the atmosphere of her poems. By sharing her work with like-minded friends and magazines since 2018, she was inspired to create her own interdisciplinary major “Psychology for Writing and Communicating” to advocate for others who have felt trapped by their symptoms. She plans to serve a mental health organization as well as continue publish more books about her own and others’ stories. Her classes have opened her up to a variety of potential career paths, including writing, public speaking, public relations, journalism, group leading, event planning, fundraising, marketing, mental health survey analysis, and social media management. This project is the culmination of her major, and includes a final paper recounting the experience of writing, publishing, promoting, and presenting selections of her book at an open mic which she held at the organization Diversity Collective’s Ventura County space on March 30. She will continue to share poems on her Instagram @spiralboundbook and monitor the resources and forum on her website SpiralBoundOCD.com … Spiral Bound’s print and eBook versions will be available on Amazon as of April 22! 

A writer’s mindset is something that is very important for each and every writer to develop if they want to make their mark in the literary world. There are a few components of a writer’s mindset that every writer needs in order to succeed in that world. These components are things that I am starting to learn myself as a beginner fiction writer. My goal is to explore all the pieces that are composed of my writing mindset. I plan to do so by mostly analyzing my writing process and how that ties into my identity as a writer. This process will be seen from my current young adult fiction novel. The novel will highlight insights from one of the chapters that I have recently completed, displaying an advanced look at how a story like mine would improve from a start to an end of a chapter. This would allow me to compare and contrast my current work with a writer’s published worked, as a way to view how my writing mindset is with another writer’s. This entire process will allow me to understand how a successful author’s mindset is, and how I could prosper in the writing world. For any other passionate writers out there, I hope my process will shed some light for those that would like to create their own writing mindset.

Mythology has long been a staple of humanity, acting as an explanation for creation, experience, virtue, and sin; a common ground for a community to come together. Storytelling is an essential thread in the human tapestry that connects generations throughout the years and establishes a united sense of humanity. I hope to harness the idea of everyday magic of mythology and storytelling to craft a tale of magic and humanity that any reader can enjoy. The upcoming inaugural novel in my trilogy, Rebirth follows an eclectic group of characters connected by a deep, complex destiny and sets out to set up a tangible and fascinating universe, emphasizing worldbuilding. More specifically, the first chapter follows the character Azelina, who, in introducing a reader to the world’s system of magic, also confronts her own story of personal darkness and eventual sense of self through both the literal and metaphorical ideas of death. Taking inspiration from the mythologies of cultures worldwide, such as the Greek and Roman pantheons, the Egyptian and Hindu gods, and Celtic and Nordic legends, Rebirth sets out to merge fantasy with mythology to establish a new and open-ended world. By creating a spectrum of multifaceted thoughts and emotions surrounding multiple religions in Rebirth, I intend to mirror the human ideas of belief and community. Themes of mortality and morality along with the concept of the self will intertwine within the setting of the novel, studying the repercussions of human behavior along with the mysticism of magic. 

I grew up in a small suburb just outside of Los Angeles where my dad coached football at a local high school. As the ball boy, I spent hours a day with the young men on the field. I had free rein to run around and play all day without any restrictions. As I grew up and became a young man, I started playing football in high school and college. What stuck with me from my ball boy days was my love for the game of football and other sports. However, balancing the demands of education was a challenge that often crushed my soul. The academic struggle was real, and sometimes I felt like no one understood what I was going through. I felt that I was alone in the process of pursuing an education and developing as an athlete. I believe there is a better way to address the needs of college athletes. Through researching scholarly articles, having anecdotal conversations and drawing from personal experiences, I aim to develop an understanding and gain wisdom on how to serve the academic needs of the college athletes. Public high schools have programs like AVID, Puente, IB, AP, Special Ed, and EL, to serve unique needs of individual students. An athletic academic early intervention program might be what students need, especially in low socioeconomic communities. I predict that a program that serves athletes’ academic needs early will yield positive results, and college graduation rates will rise across the board.

As writing centers have established themselves in the past 50 years, they have become havens of scholarship among universities, allowing them to challenge, question, and inform the academic institutions they reside in. Recently, writing center professionals have called out the lack of awareness surrounding marginalized groups who are traditionally underrepresented in academia, one of those being the LGBTQ+ community. Although in the past two decades there has been a notable influx of scholarship produced by and about LGBTQ+ writing center professionals and tutors, there is still a major lack of diversity when it comes to transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) perspectives. The transgender community often goes unmentioned within queer scholarship, or is treated homogeneously along with other queer topics and issues. 
In response to this lack of transgender voices, my hybrid essay addresses trans experience in writing centers and academia at large, taking inspiration from the work of other scholars. As a transgender man and a writing consultant of two years, I have incorporated my own personal narrative sections in tandem with my research on the challenges TGNC people face. I hope to raise awareness for the unique obstacles and experiences that transgender consultants encounter in writing center work, while also fostering empathy and understanding for trans issues in higher education as a whole. I believe that the unique position of writing centers in their institutions make them well suited to provide needed support for TGNC students and student workers.

Throughout history, many Chicano voices have echoed cries of struggle and trauma. However, their voices are also beacons of hope and change, and their stories shed light on the tumultuous experience of living in the United States as a Mexican-American. Inspired by this same history I share, “Mamá, You Sing With the Sun” is a collection of prose and poetry I have written in honor of the experiences my grandmother had faced during her immigration to the States in 1981 as a single-mother, accompanied by her nine children. I never took the chance to interview my grandmother about her story before she passed in 2020, so for this project, I conducted a series of interviews with her eldest children in order to piece together her life. I formed each memory they shared into a poem or a short piece of prose influenced by both lyrical poetry and the lyrical essay— pieces focused on feelings, thoughts, and emotions. My collection also closely follows themes of struggle, determination, family, and love, all highlighted by my grandmother’s  tremendous strength. Inspired by other prominent voices of Chicano poetry— such as Javier Zamora and Ariana Brown— the collection brings full attention to the Chicano experience and struggles as my grandmother navigates a new, unknown world, ultimately finding peace. I intend to capture the essence of my culture as a whole, showcasing everything that both sets us apart and ties us together, through the shared blood and the shared history of my peoples’ sheer perseverance.

The complexities within the student-teacher relationship are ever growing and diverse. Being at a crossroads on how to engage the students, serve the boundaries of the educator and successfully teach the discipline, this paper attempts to find the intersection between the student-teacher relationship and how the boundaries that diverge and splinter this relationship stem from the unacknowledged intelligences of the two. Using research from Parker Palmer’s, The Courage to Teach, Charles D. Morrison’s Sage on the Stage’ to ‘Guide on the Side’: A Good Start, Lori Price Aultman, Meca R. Williams-Johnson and Paul.A Schutz’s research from Boundary dilemmas in Teacher student-Relationship: Struggling with “the line” and Howard Gardner’s book Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, along with small excerpts of my personal experiences as a student in the classroom, I hope to shed light on the ways in which the student-teacher relationship can be strained, or strengthened , by the effects by the perceived dynamics between students and teachers, share examples of how to potentially engage in these three factors through “creative chaos” and contend with the impossible solution to this universal dilemma.