Stage 4

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Broader Scope of Research
What's your Purpose of the Research
Current articles in the Course

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Broader Scope of Questions

History
- first mention of or first narrative of
lineage or parentage
- What lineage of theories does your work connect to?
- If not lineage, does your work hinge on a specific theorist or theorists
Genesis of interest
- What sparked an interest in this research
Bring the sexy
- What causes others to be alerted to your presentation
- What is enticing, intriguing, enigmatic, or curiosity piquing?
What does your research add to others' understanding of your topic?
What would professors and teachers get out of your presentation?
- People like to take ideas from PCA back to their classroom
What's the main point you want your audience to understand
- Above all else, what one idea should they understand from your research?
What's the most interesting story or anecdote from your research?
So what?
- Why do your research findings matter and to whom do does it matter?

What purpose does your research serve?

Undergraduate level Literary Device Paper: Applied Concepts and Devices
- Unacceptable for PCA.
- Applies an older, traditional concept or narrative device to a narrative.
- Using symbols, metaphors, motifs, etc.
- The Literary Devices, which are basic Middle School or High School concepts.
Undergraduate Level Theory Driven Paper: Applied Theories
- Unacceptable for PCA.
- Applies an older, traditional theory to a narrative, such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Sartre's concept of Dread/Angst, or Veblen's Conspicuous Consumption.
- Level 1 through Level 8 theory papers written in my Composition 2 course.
Shaping Popular Discourse through Professional Writing: Adding to a current discussion among the Literati.
- Like memes, there are usually ideas du jour among the Literati. Sometimes these last for weeks; sometimes for years. Sometimes they rise out of more academic work; sometimes they are just a discussion that someone starts, and the discussion roils forth.
- Currently, Artificial Intelligence is one among many Literati ideas du jour
- Another Literati du jour ideas is automation, such as the article "Forget Fears of Automation, Your Job is Probably Bullshit Anyway
- Former Student's PCA research on the Death of Adulthood in American Culture added to a Literati discussion from a few years ago that concerned the lack of mature (40+ year old) characters in TV shows.
- Literati: See Stage 2 for the list of popular Literati sources.
- These literati ideas du jour are not what's in the swiftly churning 24-hour news cycle or what is "trending" or what is the latest hot button, open-nerve, twitter-esque/ tumbler-speak fleeting and flitty mindscape.
Shaping Popular or Academic Discourse: Travelling an idea across disciplines.
- Uses an idea/concept/theory from one discipline (such as Psychology) to apply to another discipline to create a new are of research.
- Such as Hailey's research of personality disorders on female characters in Sci-fi & Fantasy.
- Or, this idea that uses psychology in the chapter "The Psychological Process and Cost of Killing in an Undead Wasteland" The Walking Dead Psychology: Psych of the Living Dead
- Or, this article that uses a concept of Risk Society from economics to apply to post-apocalyptic stories.
Master's Level Work to Shape the Discipline: Amend/Update a current theory
- Uses an existing theory but updates/ amends that theory toward a more applicable use concerning narratives and/or an era/worldview.
- Sonnel's grief cycle inferred from hero films rather than pulled from psychology and applied to films. While this is a new cycle, she amended/updated current psychological grief cycles in relation to hero films.
- This concept of Anthrop-scene in "The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed"
PhD Level Work to Shape the Discipline: Creating and utilizing a New Theory

Created a new theory to analyze narratives, sometimes including how that helps us analyze our world in a new way.
A new theory can help shape a discipline (such as Humanities, or English Literature, or Film)
Guitton's research (using the burn chart on He-man characters) created a new method by which we can see the limits of creativity.
Matt Hudson's extension of Barthes' idea of the Enigma and the idea of Primary and Secondary characters to create the concept of the Enigmatic Tertiary character.
Kristina Hill's revision and new theory of the term "cultural infiltration" allows us to understand a new subversion of/about power, knowledge, and how films can enter/ irrupt into a broader market.

Current Articles from the Course

Name	Article	Article Summary
Carlee	Durn, Sarah "The psychology behind why identical twins inspire fascination and fear"	About the history of twins, our fascination with them, and how such we not only fear ourselves but also project that fear onto twins.
Carlee	Pomeroy, Ross Are America’s distinct accents dying out?	about the dying out of southern accents and the possibility of a comeback. Explains how the popularization of social media in mostly western states with different accents plays a role in the diminishing of the southern accent.
Carlee	Keim, Brandon"What if animals find beauty in the world, just like we do"	Article focuses on whether animals receive gratification from experiencing beauty in the world as we do and encourages us to think beyond the hierarchy imposed by us in order to ponder if humans and other animals are more similar than we like to believe.
Logan	Kruger, M.I."Asteroid economics: why we’re shopping our way through Armageddon"	focuses on the human pattern of how, in response to strife – and this strife can be economic, political, societal, or any other variety – that indicates an imminent collapse of civilized structure, people will not attempt to conserve and save their future, but instead buy in on impulse as if there is no future at all to be fighting for, even while solutions to the problem are being presented.
Aubrey	Kemp, Luke “The Reward of Ruins.”	The Rewards of Ruin” discusses the experiences that most of the society faces during the fall of an empire or society, and how and why it differs from the traditional post-apocalyptic view. Individuals are given an opportunity to hold more power over their eating habits, wages, access to resources, and overall lifestyle and wellbeing, leveling the wealth inequalities present by society pre-collapse.
Aubrey	Low, Nicholas. “Beyond Food and People.”	Breaks down the idea that the traditional view of comfort; suffering is harmful to genuine entanglement between humanity and the nature world. Discusses Friedrich Nietzsche and his book “Beyond Good and Evil” that sought to “translate humanity ‘back into nature’, hoping to create a healthier and more intimate relationship to earthy life.” Nietzsche disagreed with the modern view of suffering, rather believing that suffering is necessary and unavoidable for humanity to continue to grow and change,
Stephanie	Fisher, Richard. “Should We Edit Nature”	Outlines both the potential benefits (e.g. making organisms more resilient to climate change, rescuing ecosystems, saving coral reefs, controlling invasive species) and the risks (unintended ecological effects, ethical issues around agency, ownership, impact on local communities, and “playing God”). Farrier argues that the question is not simply can we edit nature, but how do we do it, who makes decisions, what values are at stake, and how those decisions shape what it means to be part of the living world.
Stephanie	Marks, Rebecca. “Defining Gothic: A Brief introduction to Gothic Art and Literature.”	Situates the Gothic in contrast to the rationality and harmony of the Classical tradition. Gothic is characterized by ruins, mystery, supernatural beings, and dark emotions, and it spreads from literature, to paintings, and modern pop culture. ‘Dark Academia’, ‘Vampire’, ‘Romantasy’
Stephanie	Didino, Gianluca. “Out of the Fog”	Historical Romanticism as a raw experience, the sense of longing, the search for freedom, the sublimity and mystery of the natural world. The Jena Circle dreamed of a world that would one day become our own, inventing new ideas of freedom, self and nature, authenticity and irony. They were also the first to think of the individual genius as necessarily opposed to an oppressive society
Stephanie	Fuerstein, Michael “Sometimes Democracy Works”	Democracy is an open invitation to the ignorant and at the same time, a visual instrument of social progress. John Dewey states that we should think of democracy not just as framework for decision making but as a way of life centered on a particular ideal of community. The Future requires understanding that problems can be repaired through policymaking or education.
Stephanie	Dickinson, Kevin. “Why Today’s Publishers Fear Goodreads More Than Government”	Creating a culture of self-censorship where even progressive authors are being silenced. Even with the good intensions of promoting diversity and sensitivity the movement has risked stifling free expression. explores the connections between the government and its role in banning books across America. In a movement for more diverse and sensitive books we must be careful in censorship, or we will simply alienate the very people who want to write and read these books.
Stephanie	Douglas, Alexander. “Essence is Fluttering”	Role of identity and whether people are born with an identity or if it is something that changes over the course of our lives. Confucius stated that identity is something we are all born with. Since then, several people have challenged that belief, including Zhuangzi who believed that we as humans shouldn't aim to be other people, and that the ultimate person has no self.
Stephanie	Graham, Carol. “Society Needs Hope”	Discusses the mental health crisis of our youth in the US. Exploring the Economic theory that hope is a key factor in mental health and longevity. The youth today have lost hope in the deep seeded uncertainty about their future and ability to get a job that enables them to support families and have a reasonable quality of life.
Stephanie	Moynihan, Thomas. “Mirror Life and the Recurring Nightmare of Scientific Apocalypse”	Discusses the potential creation of “mirror life” and what that would look like in our world today. Earlier this year researchers retrieved material from an asteroid containing amino acids and nucleobase which was not uncommon in and of itself. However the form those molecules took were what brought concern: roughly half of them where a perfect inverse – a mirror image – of the way those building blocks appear on earth. The fear is mirrored by microorganisms: capable of infecting our cells and feeding on them, but also potentially entirely invisible to our immune systems.
Christian	Biever, Celeste. “I, Robot.”	Biever references the theories of Bernard Baars surrounding consciousness as a concept, with his initial ideas being that the brain constantly absorbs information with dwells within the “unconscious” and surfaces to the “conscious” mind when we become aware of said information. Biever also references the ideas and work of Pentti Haikonen, specifically his work with robots and a robot’s “perception.”
Christian	Friston, Karl. “The Mathematics of Mind-Time.”	States that evolution is a process that inherently uses “inference” and is a process of inference, despite not possessing the capabilities of reason, as when a creature evolves, it must infer and evolve in a way that best fits its environment on basis of evidence regarding its surroundings. Friston then poses that consciousness also a process of inference, stating that consciousness performs inference by selecting among different states of the same creature, particularly the brain.
Christian	Wallace, Kathleen. “You Are a Network.”	Wallace posits that instead of a single self, people and their “selves” are made up of their relations and relationships with people, ideas, things, and time, creating a “network.” Wallace states that that most traits that make up a person’s self can be categorized into three subsections: bodily, personal/familial, and social.
Christian	Frank, Adam. “Why Science Hasn’t Solved Consciousness (Yet).”	50 points, banked*
Kombe	Stier, Andrew.	Urban Scaling Theory is Stier’s idea that the lower depression rates in larger cities have more to do with individual factors, rather than the size of the city. Stier discusses personal experience switching from a total urban life to something more rural and ow it led him to his findings.
Kombe	Bunting, Tim	Shugendo is a Japanese practice similar to Stoicism. Shugendo shares the idea of acceptance of one’s life but adds on total submission.One of the common rituals is akinomine, or autumn peak ritual, where the individual walks through forests surrounded by mountains covered in blue robes and repeating the word Uketamo, which translates to I accept.
Naylees	Gotlib, Anna. Main Character Syndrome.	Main Character Syndrome or MCS is a worrying problem in our modern world. Individuals think of themselves as the only person of any importance, and those around them as NPCs, who are more of props to their life than full human beings in their eyes. This sentiment is worrying, Gotlib states, because to understand who we are, we need to engage with others fully and not view them as someone who isn’t their own person.
Naylees	Hong, (Ze) Kevin Cultural Taboos Arise from a Basic Feature of the Human Mind.	There are many different suggestions for how taboos are chosen in society, such as desires we have or simply a mechanism to maintain the social order. Hong states that these perspectives often don’t take into account the cognitive process that happens when taboos are set in society. Taboos are often created because of an “invented belief” in society.
Kombe	Smith, Jordan Fisher. "How to Wander."	celebration of wandering, through aimless adventure. Smith recalls his days as a ranger being taught not only to wander but to wander with a mission. As a ranger, wandering is a positive, but in the “regimented world” as Fisher states it, it sounds unfocused. “How to Wander” correlates wandering with happiness, acting as a guide on how to wander physically and emotionally.
Kombe	Burgis, Luke. "How to Know What You Really Want."	problematization of the word desire. Burgis connects this innate desire to another more specific kind: mimetic. Mimetic desires are those that mimic another’s or what an individual might believe to be another’s. Burgis states that in order to fully break free from the cycle of being controlled by desire, an individual must understand mimetic desire.
Stephanie	Alder, Emily. "Dracula’s Gothic Ship." (journal article)	Alder shows how the ship’s claustrophobic interior mirrors the Gothic castle’s enclosed and oppressive atmosphere, turning the voyage itself into a descent into horror. The essay also situates the ship within maritime Gothic traditions and interprets it as a site of imperial anxiety and contamination.
Stephanie	Whitcombe, Eleanor. "The Semiotics of Space in Gothic Literature." (journal article)	Gothic environments reflect cultural anxieties about national identity, colonial fears, and gendered social hierarchies. The paper situates Gothic space as a signifying system that shapes character psychology, narrative tension, and reader engagement.
name	Author article title	summary