Expose: The Journal of Expository Writing
Expose biannually shares a selection of noteworthy personal and critical essays that are created by students in College and Expository Writing courses at Purchase College.
Fall 2024
The Creative Act of Research
“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.”
―Joan Didion
This special issue is titled after Purchase College associate librarian Darcy Gervasio’s essay, included below, “The Creative Act of Research.” Darcy takes us from moments of uncertainty and reticence with research as a college student (“learning to love research was a slow burn”) to the exact moments she began instinctively “rearranging my own thoughts, seeing connections where I hadn’t before, and drawing new conclusions,” research fueling the writing process organically. Now, Darcy and the Purchase College community of librarians are boundlessly generous and inspired as students mine subjects they feel passionately about and emerge with new insights and interpretations.
Research, and the corollary skills and practices it embodies—brainstorming, distilling key ideas, connecting what we are interested in with previously published works, ideas, and discoveries—is not only integral to writing, but to our everyday lives. Our College Writing curriculum culminates with a research project so students can connect their ideas about the critical issues of our time and the subjects that drive their creativity and individuality with broader scholarly conversations about the same.
Congratulations to this issue’s featured writers, Julia Aguinaldo, Hunter Baron, Nysine Ordoñez Blanco, Emma Cisneros, Mia Desalos, Chase Koda, Ashley Fermin, Darcy Gervasio, Charles Ireland, Emilia Rembisz, and Kaelin Viera, and much gratitude to Chris Kramer for again creating original illustrations for each essay in this issue. This issue includes three essays from Critical Explorations in Contemporary Culture, a continuation of College Writing for students who wish to further immerse in critical writing and research.
With special thanks to College Writing faculty members Professor Ellen Brooks, Professor Alexandra Dos Santos, Professor Tessa Rossi, and Professor Emily Sausen for co-creating this issue, and to Professor Aviva Taubenfeld, Director of the School of Humanities, for celebrating first year writers.
—Amy Beth Wright, Editor
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Reflections on the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series
“…especially coming from a background of little to no hardship; it’s inspired me to write beyond my own experiences, and to write as far outside of myself as I possibly can and really place myself into the characters and setting that I’m writing about.…” Read more
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Goblins: Projections of the Human Obsession with Morality
‘Goblins in storytelling are a product of humanity’s preoccupation with moral concepts of good and evil…” Read more
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Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies Illustrates a Radical Life Beyond the Church
“For the women in Philiyaw’s stories, the church is a fundamental part of their childhood, established through her maternal figures, agents of moral superiority, who ingrain a sense of duty to relinquish bodily and sexual autonomy over to the church in their daughters to protect them from being marked as unworthy…” Read more -
History and Gothic Culture Within Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera, a novel written by Gaston Leroux, uses elements from Gothic culture as well as historical events to weave together a complicated love story within the walls of an opera house….Read more
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Analyzing Primary Sources: How Artists Manipulate the Reactions of Their Audiences, An Examination of Ghost World and Bojack Horseman
“My favorite thing about watching TV is sharing it with my friends and family. I am always eager to watch their reactions to my favorite scenes, and hear their unique interpretations of the plot. Recently, I watched the film Ghost World with my mom…” Read more
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Hidden Figures Examines the American Dream as Conditional, Dependent on One’s Race and Gender
“In the 1960’s, amid the struggles of segregation and the Civil Rights movement, the United States engaged in the Space Race with Russia, fueled by an American Dream that burned stronger than ever. But without three women— Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, and Mary Jackson — it’s possible that man would have never set John Glenn into orbit, or stepped foot on the moon in 1969…” Read more
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Considering Dance on Instagram, and the Double-Edged Effects of Globalization on Art
“The convergence of Instagram and dance provides insight into the dynamic between tradition and technology. Instagram drastically influences the dance community…” Read more
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How Inside Out 2 Sympathizes with the Mental Health of Post-Pandemic Adolescents
“Anxiety is illustrated as an antagonist, but not a villain, that functions to protect us but has the capability to debilitate us. Inside Out 2 exposes these realistic struggles, particularly relating to highschoolers transitioning into college who are dealing with the anxiety…” Read more
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Stitched From The Womb
“Seeing how women were viewed and regarded in other parts of the world inspired Judy Chicago to create the Birth Project in the 1980s. Chicago utilized the masterful needlework of hundreds of women to highlight the one experience that every woman on this planet is expected to take part in…” Read more
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Body and Mind: Instagram’s Damaging Effects on Body Image and Mental Health
“Instagram produces harmful effects that impact young women’s and men’s mental health and body image by promoting the thin ideal and causing self-objectification in women, as well as promoting a muscular ideal which leads to comparison and magnifies the effects of internalized homophobia in men…” Read more
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Edna Pontellier’s Awakening To Liberation
“The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a historical fiction book published in 1899. Protagonist Edna Pontellier gains independence from being a mother and a wife in a French Creole environment…”Read more
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Fortunes and Fame: Supernatural Elements in Ride the Cyclone
“Ride the Cyclone is a musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell that follows six high school choir members who die in a roller coaster accident. Suddenly finding themselves in a run-down warehouse in the presence of a godly machine, they must vote on who gets to live again…” Read more
Faculty Essay
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The Creative Act of Research
“Long before I decided to get a masters in Library & Information Science and become an academic librarian, I was an undergraduate creative writing major…” Read more
