{"id":1236,"date":"2026-04-22T11:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2026-04-22T16:17:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T20:17:43","slug":"editorsnote4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/2026\/04\/22\/editorsnote4\/","title":{"rendered":"Editor’s Note (Issue 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Issue 4 of <\/span>Deerfield<\/span><\/i>! This journal contains exceptional projects created by undergraduate students in Boston University Writing Program courses from 2025, selected by an Editorial Committee of faculty and students. This year\u2019s selection of publications draws from a wide range of WR courses and highlights the interdisciplinary and multiple genres our students are writing in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Across this issue, a set of shared concerns emerges: questions of identity and belonging, the ethical dimensions of representation and technology, and the ways power operates through institutions, media, and personal narrative. Whether through academic analysis, multimodal design, exploratory research, poetry, or public-facing genres like op-eds and TED talks, these writers consistently return to how lived experience intersects with larger systems\u2014cultural, political, environmental, and technological. The result is a collection that is deeply attentive to voice and form, and equally invested in asking how writing can intervene in the worlds it describes.<\/span><\/p>\n

From WR 120, <\/span>Mason Dols<\/b>\u2019 academic essay \u201cKeeping Knowledge or Face?: Activated Spectatorship, Site Specificity, and Performativity\u201d is a nuanced analysis of Alan Michelson\u2019s MFA installation that uses theories of site specificity and activated spectatorship to examine how art, place, and viewer engagement reveal the museum\u2019s complex relationship to Indigenous visibility and its colonial legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

WR 120 alternative genre projects include the following projects: <\/span>*Betelihiem Tecleab<\/b>\u2019s \u201cSo American,\u201d our 2026 Tony Wallace Award for Writing Excellence Winner, is a compelling personal narrative that examines racism and xenophobia in the United States through her experience as an immigrant child, centering on a Fourth of July classroom scene that powerfully illustrates her rejection of a socially imposed racial identity. <\/span>Robert Rodriguez II<\/b>\u2019s \u201cSplit in Two\u201d narrative essay powerfully intertwines the excitement of leaving for college with the quiet fear that immigration enforcement could disrupt his family\u2019s life at any moment, showing how abstract labels and policies cut into deeply personal, everyday experiences. <\/span>Darlene K. Adusei<\/b>\u2019s \u201cCarrying the Weight of Legacy: The Mental Health Toll on First-Gen Daughters\u201d is a compelling op-ed that centralizes the author\u2019s experience as an eldest daughter in a Ghanaian immigrant family to expose the emotional weight of expectation and argue that mental health in diasporic communities must be confronted rather than silenced. <\/span>Eddy Liulin<\/b> transforms an academic essay on the ethics of generative AI into an interactive, decision-driven website \u201cGenAI: Author or Plagiarist?\u201d that turns readers into participants while modeling transparent, ethically reflective use of AI in the creative and design process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also in this issue, we\u2019re pleased to publish a range of writing from our WR 15x curriculum, including a number of fascinating and interdisciplinary research essays.<\/span><\/p>\n

From WR 151: <\/span>*Chloe Avil\u00e9s<\/b>\u2019 \u201cThe Silent Teacher: The Unspoken Impact of Code-Switching on Second-Generation Latinos in the United States\u201d is a thoughtful, mixed-methods study that combines personal experience and sociological analysis to examine how parental code-switching shapes the identities and experiences of second-generation Latino immigrants within a racially stratified society. <\/span>MaKenzie Elliott<\/b>\u2019s \u201cEnhancing the Student Experience Through Teaching and Learning Internal Quality Assurance: Development and Pilot of the SIITE Method Faculty Survey at Boston University\u2019s STEM Department\u201d combines original survey design and sociological analysis to propose practical, evidence-based strategies for improving university teaching effectiveness while critically engaging with broader questions about the purpose and impact of higher education. <\/span>Jacob Hise<\/b>\u2019s essay \u201cYou’re Born Naked, and the Rest is Capitalism: The <\/span>RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race <\/span><\/i>Franchise\u2019s Effect on the Politics of Drag Artistry through the Dissemination of Gay Assimilationism\u201d argues that contemporary drag culture\u2014exemplified by <\/span>RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race<\/span><\/i>\u2014has shifted from its activist roots toward commercialization and assimilation, raising concerns about the dilution and appropriation of queer cultural practices. <\/span>Madeleine Lam<\/b>\u2019s \u201cCompulsory Heterosexuality and Gothic Lesbianism in \u2018My Visitation\u2019\u201d is a research project that analyzes Rose Terry Cooke\u2019s \u201cMy Visitation\u201d to argue that its Gothic elements create space for representing suppressed queer desire, connecting 19th-century literary strategies to ongoing questions of visibility in contemporary queer media. <\/span>Jose Ramirez<\/b>\u2019s \u201cThe Changing Path to Pop Stardom: Reconsidering The Role of Institutionally Controlled Success And The New Growing Independent Decentralized Pathway to Mainstream Success\u201d argues that social media platforms like TikTok are reshaping the music industry by prioritizing authenticity and direct artist\u2013fan connections, challenging traditional record label promotion and redefining pathways to success in pop music.<\/span><\/p>\n

From WR 152: <\/span>Adi Jalan<\/b>\u2019s \u201cThe Cost of Looking: The Ethics of Photographing Familial Trauma in Margaret Bourke-White\u2019s <\/span>The Great Migration <\/span><\/i>(1947)\u201d critically examines Bourke-White\u2019s photo-essay to question the ethics of depicting vulnerable families, arguing that while such images powerfully document trauma, they risk erasing individual voices and require viewers to confront their own responsibility in responding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two authors transform their WR 152 research into new rhetorical genres for new audiences: <\/span>*Mairead Peel<\/b>\u2019s \u201cThe Wood Wide Webb\u201d is a multimodal website project that uses research on fungal networks and Suzanne Simard\u2019s \u201cMother Trees\u201d to argue that forests operate as deeply cooperative systems, challenging human-centered, competitive models of nature and urging a shift toward understanding humans as embedded within ecological interdependence. <\/span>Brianna Perales<\/b>\u2019 \u201cTrust in the Machine: Between the Lab Bench and the Algorithm\u201d is an exploratory reflection on AI in medical research that uses lab experience to probe the tension between innovation and responsibility, ultimately arguing that there are no fixed answers: only an ongoing struggle to keep human judgment at the center of technological decision-making.<\/span><\/p>\n

From WR 153, we have a selection of deeply personal and political creative writing: <\/span>*Lana Ghazale<\/b>\u2019s \u201cLearning to Live\u201d is an emotionally courageous creative nonfiction essay about a homeland under siege, arguing that \u201cbody voice\u201d writing rooted in grief and sensory detail fosters empathy and resists the dehumanization of others by connecting writer and reader through shared human experience. Two noteworthy collections of poetry: <\/span>Alexandra Cross<\/b>\u2019 \u201cTo my brother, To me, To the world.\u201d explores her brother\u2019s death to consider the complex, enduring nature of grief, highlighting its personal and social dimensions while emphasizing how poetry can bear witness to both individual loss and the broader impact of the opioid epidemic and <\/span>Emma Mullay<\/b>\u2019s \u201cThey Will Simply Continue to Sing\u201d is a politically engaged collection that blends personal inquiry with a critique of censorship and systemic failures, ultimately affirming the resilience of free expression and the enduring power of collective voice.<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally, from WR 318, <\/span>Aanya Chauhan<\/b>\u2019s TED-style talk “Sorry For Your Loss… and Other Awkward Things We Say” is a profoundly impactful and transformative speech in which, drawing on her own recent loss, she powerfully demonstrates how personal experience can offer unmatched insight into supporting those who are grieving.<\/span><\/p>\n

This issue showcases not only a range of genres our students are working in, but also the intellectual flexibility our curriculum prioritizes. Across these pieces, writing emerges as both inquiry and intervention: a way of making sense of our complex world while also reshaping how we see and engage with it. We are proud to share this issue with you and we hope you enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our cover illustration was created by <\/span>Rania Shah<\/b>, a sophomore at Boston University double majoring in Neuroscience and Biology with Specialization in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology & Genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences. She explores artistic expression through creating visual art, creative nonfiction writing, and discovering new music, with an emphasis on the emotional and cultural dimensions of lived experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

Gavin Benke and Courtney Pina Miller<\/span><\/h4>\n

*The Editorial Committee selected these authors as our 2026 <\/span>Deerfield<\/span><\/i> Award winners.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Issue 4 of Deerfield! This journal contains exceptional projects created by undergraduate students in Boston University Writing Program courses from 2025, selected by an Editorial Committee of faculty and students. This year\u2019s selection of publications draws from a wide range of WR courses and highlights the interdisciplinary and multiple genres our students are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,1],"tags":[30,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}