Note: Written in June 2021 as a final exam for Making of the Modern World 15 — the last course in the sequence, submitted online, at the tail end of my sophomore year and what felt like the tail end of coherent reality. The question was essentially: how do you fulfill social responsibility while staying autonomous? I had Sartre, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mike Davis, and a year of pandemic fatigue to work with. The essay is more honest than most because exam conditions have a way of

Note: Written in May 2021 for Making of the Modern World 15 — a media analysis assignment examining how English-language journalism covered the Indian farmer protests. I was a sophomore, watching the protests unfold from a distance, trying to separate the framing from the facts. The essay argues that most coverage was slanted, sensationalized, and not necessarily reflective of an actual human rights violation. Modi repealed the three farm laws in November 2021, six months aft

Author's Note: Written in December 2020 — the tail end of a genuinely chaotic year — this essay is addressed, loosely, to the incoming Biden administration, using historical analysis of imperialism, labor hierarchies, and racial ideology to argue that the United States needs to reckon with its past in order to navigate its present. It pulls together King Leopold's Congo, Heart of Darkness, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism, and Ernest Renan's theory of nationhood