Journals @ KPU (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
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To Hear Your Voice: Analyzing Choice and Consent in Jane Austen’s Proposal Scenes
Get PDFA comparative assessment of proposal scenes in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma
“Body”: Gender Performativity and Dance as a Performative Art
Get PDFIn Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, they discuss how gender performativity dictates an individual's actions and identity in society since the repetition of expectations of a person’s presenting gender influences how their identity is crafted throughout their lives. Dance is a performative art in which creative self-expression of identity manipulates gender by freeing the body from its established gendered restraints.
In this video essay, Swann Tsai discusses how dancers demonstrate the skin's permeability through the transgression of gender limitations amongst all identities despite their expected gender performance. They manipulate their bodies based on the emotions they are trying to express, highlighting how the manifestation of gender performance in the real world is malleable.
This essay was a co-winner of the 2023 Intersectional Social Justice Essay Prize (2nd/3rd year category
Human Monogamy: Innate Tendency or Personal Preference
Get PDFSuccessful monogamous relationships may come as second nature to some. For others, remaining emotionally and sexually exclusive with their partner is difficult, leaving individuals to question whether monogamy is a natural human instinct. This paper evaluates research fortifying monogamy as an inborn tendency and research reinforcing the notion that exclusive dyadic relationships are a socialized personal preference. Monogamy is supported through survival instinct, procreation, and pair bonding. Humanity as a non-monogamous species is supported through infidelity threats, jealous tendencies, sexual fulfillment, and the potential mating candidates of the modern world. After assessing both sides, the author makes an informed stance on the debate. 
ReFocus: The Films of Antoinetta Angelidi edited by Penny Bouska and Soitiris Petridis
Get PDFAntoinetta Angelidi is a ground-breaking filmmaker who has crafted a legacy in the realm of experimental film and feminist film theory. The book ReFocus: The Films of Antoinetta Angelidi edited by Penny Bouska and Soitiris Petridis breaks down this legend by addressing her many films such as Topos (1985) and Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (1977) and analyzes the many techniques and themes that make Angelidi’s work stand out. From her avant-garde feminist perspectives on women's sexualities and motherhood, to visual and sound techniques, the film scholars within this text take a deep dive to give context and analysis on Angelidi's artistic contributions. 
Speaking of the Dead: Analyzing “Mythology”, “Monsters”, and the Power of Matriarchy on Stolen Land in Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe
Get PDFThis essay seeks to examine the impact and influence of Indigenous mythology in how it guides the main character Ellie, her family and friends through their daily lives and generational experiences with colonization. Ellie’s America unveils its monsters as figures of authority who wield their magic as a source of power to uplift majorities and further diminish minorities. With frequent reference to Cohen’s take on “Monster Theory”, this essay looks at what the presence and absence of monsters means throughout Ellie’s history and how her psychic gifts can help those around her to better understand the connections between her family and the land she has laid claim to since time immemorial. 
An Indigenous Perspective in the Anthropocene: A Spiralic Essay on Time
Get PDFBy examining the dances of the Idle No More protests, the essays of Kyle P. Whyte, and a book of poetry by Tommy Pico, this essay explores the impact of perceiving time as a spiral rather than a line during the age of the Anthropocene. From the perspective of a descendant of settler-colonials, the essayist attempts to connect these three varying sources to convey an understanding of time as relational and dialogic. This indigenous relation with time is underrepresented during an age of profit and pollution.
This essay won the 2023 Intersectional Social Justice Essay Prize (4th year category
Uncovering Identity on Both Sides of the Camera: An Interview with 'Monica’ Director Andrea Pallaoro
Get PDFItalian film director, Andrea Pallaoro’s striking third feature, Monica (2022), sees trans actor Trace Lysette play the titular character, a trans webcam performer who returns home and tries to reconnect with her ailing mother, Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson). Monica is a continuation of fractured relationships and loneliness, that is defining the early stages of Pallaoro’s career. At a glance, Medeas' (2013) focus on a rural family appears to share more in common with Monica, than his sophomore feature Hannah (2017), that centres on a woman thrust into loneliness when her husband is imprisoned. Both Medeas and Monica are broader family portraits, compared to Hannah's sparseness. That's not to suggest that it lacks the depth of exploration into human nature, but it's smaller cast of characters deepens the claustrophobic intimacy of his other feature films. Pallaoro directs Monica with a patience that emphasises the character’s self-reflective nature, utilising longer takers and fewer edits to not interrupt the stream of consciousness. The director wants us to observe the character, to piece together our understanding of who she is not only by her words, but her silent existence. It’s difficult to not comprehend the spirit of Michelangelo Antonioni’s non-intrusive observational approach in Pallaoro’s storytelling, but Monica never feels an act of imitation, instead it continues a tradition of filmmaking through the individual voice of its director.
Speaking with MSJ during the film's festival run, in the spring of 2022, Pallaoro discusses encouraging the audience’s active participation, the opportunity of his non-judgmental gaze, and the creative manipulation of the cinematographic framing
The Human Bridge from Slavery to Freedom: Nalo Hopkinson’s Critical Hope for Utopia in Midnight Robber
Get PDFBy positioning themselves as able to simply ‘evolve out’ of social injustices, utopias turn a blind eye to the conditions that create such injustices in the first place; they ignore history and refuse—inadvertently or not—to engage critically with the present (Smith 48). This uncritical imagining comes from what José Esteban Muñoz calls a “banal optimism” (3). Muñoz contrasts this abstract utopia with the methodology of “educated hope” (3-4): a relational collective’s desire that allows us to visualize a future that transforms current social dynamics and imagines a concrete utopia, or a utopia grounded in history (1, 3, 9). By positioning Midnight Robber’s Toussaint and New Half-Way Tree as “dub-version[s]” of each other (Hopkinson 2), Nalo Hopkinson critiques this banal utopia and articulates potentialities for a better future grounded in history.
This essay was a co-winner of the 2023 Intersectional Social Justice Essay Prize (2nd/3rd year category