Robert Morales

Conference Paper Proposal

March 24th 2026

Professor Meeker

                Women in Basketball

My conference paper is going to be about women’s basketball and there are a multitude of topics and conversations we can have about women’s basketball. The first in the most obvious point that is very much in the mainstream is women’s pay, and the fact that they were severely underpaid through the decades at the WNBA As a leading, but now women are finally getting paid more money to their actual worth. We can have conversations about how women’s basketball is talked about in society. How men’s basketball often defaulted as the regular form of a basketball thing  in contrast to that of a women counterpart. We can also have conversations about blatant misogyny. I feel a lot of men have when it comes to WNBA players getting paid and how they feel it is unfeasible because they don’t make profit even though profit isn’t the only way to measure business success, as well as WNBA is going to turn into a profit sooner. The world should care about the development and the process of women finally getting paid for their value from a basketball perspective because this is a microcosm of everyday life working as a woman and how women are severely underpaid in their field work. The conversation with women’s basketball bridges the gap to the real world about how women are often undervalued in their field of work and as a result we can further highlight the misogynistic ways women can be kept underpaid and undervalued. I plan on conducting the research by going through a bunch of women’s scholarly articles about sports in general and scholarly articles about women in the workforce as a whole and I will attempt to bridge the gap between those articles to try to make connections to the WNBA because when you really look at it at a surface it really isn’t that much of a difference. I also want to bring in connections to the WNBA’s current CBA and how the current CBA is a much more Progressive development for  the value of women so I will be  referencing the women’s WNBA CBA agreement between the players and the league a lot throughout this research.  as well as cross referencing  past CBAs in the past to this current one to demonstrate a sense of how far women have come as well. Well I hope to find and what I probably will find is a sense of progression hopefully and a sense of how we as a society still need to do better regardless of the workplace that women are in. Women deserve to be paid as equally as  their male counterparts, They still make 80 cents to the man’s dollar so what I’ll be looking for is a lot of evidence that really confirms my ideas and beliefs of how we still want to keep women underpaid and undervalued in our society.  

1. What can society learn from the woman’s new agreed upon CBA?
2.  What can we learn from the outrage that men have in online spaces that think women don’t deserve to have these benefits that they have under this new CBA?
3. Why is it not a universal moment of joy and happiness that women are finally getting an exponential increase in benefits that can impact their life positively.
4. How can we better connect the women’s basketball movement to the average woman working in the workforce?
5. How is the treatment of women’s basketball in society versus the male counterparts a direct reflection of society as a whole.
6.  What can we as a society do to be better for women ?
7. How does society really feel about women’s sports?
8. What can be that monumental equivalent for the average woman?
9. Does the current political climate in  the United States of America help further push this misogynistic view around women in sports as well as the workplace?
10.  Can we really use sports to bridge that gap and bring awareness?

Robert Morales 

In-Class Essay

March 17th 2026

Professor Meeker

Eight Bites And Motherhood

In her body and other parties, Machado explores the struggles of women through patriarchal society and the various ways that they are treated. She highlights this through a set of distinct short stories that tell an individual experience about women, essentially. A huge aspect of the lives of women is motherhood, regardless of the point of view of a mother or a daughter; that relationship is crucial when having conversations about women in today’s society. However, I want to tackle motherhood from a different perspective. While motherhood is best described as the relationship between a mother and their children, the concept of motherhood can also take place from the perspective of personal autonomy. In the same breath that a mother takes care of her daughter, a woman in this society takes care of her personal autonomy. Machado best describes this in the short story of Eight Bites where the protagonist feels societal pressure to change her body shape. As a result, in Eight Bites, motherhood functions as a symbolic relationship between the narrator and her body to display societal pressure, a generation of influence, and to demonstrate how self-rejection shapes women’s identity as a whole. 

In Eight Bites, the narrator chooses to undergo weight loss surgery to “fix” her body. Doing this, she believes that changing her body will make her more acceptable. This move to change her body directly correlates to how society has set a standard for how women believe their bodies are acceptable. According to society, if you are a woman and your body isn’t this figure or built this way, then you are deemed unattractive and unworthy. And this is directly tied to motherhood because it takes individual autonomy of the way women want their bodies to look, care of their bodies. It promotes an external influence to take care of your body in the same way that there are external influences in the ability to raise a child. In the same breath, just as there is no “right” way to take care of a kid, there is no right way to take care of your body. And society as a whole takes that individual autonomy, or in other words, their own“motherhood” from women. 

In the short story, Machado introduces a ghost that seemingly follows the protagonist around throughout this entire process. This is a symbol for the aftereffect of the weight loss surgery that she had. It follows her around, but not only does it do that, but it demands attention. It is something that is constantly on her mind. In the same breath, a ghost can also be connected to the concept of a neglected child who is constantly overlooked and begging for her mother’s attention. In this case, the mother would be the protagonist who got the surgery done. The concept of motherhood is present through this symbolic relationship due to not only social pressure, but because if that societal pressure is an influence and a pressure that she, as the mother of her own body, has to fight and ignore every day as a result and consequence of her own action. 

Not only do we see this from a symbolic perspective in relation to society as a whole, but even trace this to a more literal sense when discussing the mother’s influence on the narrator as well. In the story, the narrator references her mother and how she only consumes eight bites of every meal. Thus creating in the narrator’s mind that being fat or overweight equals bad, and that being thin is the superior way to have the maximum body figure for the patriarchy and society as a whole. According to the short story, it states that “She always said eight bites are all you need to get the sense of what you are eating. Even though she never counted out loud, I could hear the eight bites as clearly as if a game show audience were counting backward, raucous and triumphant, and after one, she would set her fork down, even if there was food left on her plate.” This quote directly shows and indicates the passing down of harmful eating tactics just to maintain or avoid becoming something society deems as ugly or imperfect. The concept of bodies and those expectations are passed down, and in a similar breath, motherhood is very much a cycle of inherited expectations in every facet of what it means to be a mother, and this is seen with women’s bodies as well.  

At the end of Eight Bites, the narrator accepts her situation and responsibility and realizes that, in the same way, motherhood is about care and recognition for a child; she has to do that for herself and her child. Towards the end, she apologizes but puts all of the burden and blame on her daughter Cal, for her being this way. This entire concept of motherhood is often thought as a literal mother, as the narrator is to her daughter Cal and her own mother, but this story serves as a deeper symbol of social expectations as a whole. Of how women often times have these social expectations put on them to maintain a certain weight or figure, and as a result, the concept of motherhood functions as a symbolic relationship between the narrator and her body to display societal pressure, a generation of influence, and to demonstrate how self-rejection shapes women’s identity as a whole. 

Robert Morales

Op-ed

Professor Meeks 

02/26/2026

Bad Bunny Op-Ed

What a time to be alive in 2026. One of the biggest moments of the cultural Zeitgeist in pop culture this year is unequivocally the Bad Bunny 2026 Super Bowl halftime performance.   It had a variety of reviews and a lot of mixed opinions. But in a very weird way,  we also had a Kid Rock performance that went on at the same time as the original Super Bowl halftime performance. This due to the rise of conservatism in the United States of America thus creating a political divide that has never been so transparent in the USA.  I did not like the fact that there was a cultural conservative halftime counter response to the original Super Bowl halftime performance. In my humble opinion,  this act was in an attempt to devalue a historical moment for Puerto Ricans,  Hispanic and Latino communities, and the overall concept of what it means to be a global community.  Bad Bunny’s music isn’t for everyone and people are allowed to not like the performance (even though personally I loved it as well).  It was just an obvious slap in the face for anyone that was not a radical conservative to have that kind of counter performance to a very anticipated show.   People are standing up for what they believe in especially through the time period where ICE is unlawfully and in an immoral way devaluing people of color and people in Latino communities.  Having a Kid Rock performance in that way is essentially telling me that people rebelled against this idea of helping out people that are less unfortunate and not what ICE and what is going on from a immigration perspective is being co-signed in a way and that just doesn’t sit right with me.  

Not only was the performance a spectacle and a huge celebration of Puerto Rican culture.  It was unequivocally an Iconic political moment that involved the recognition and uniting of all the Americas as Bad Bunny described that “We are all Americans.” Bad Bunny’s influence  regarding speaking up against anti-colonialism and fascism is so prominent in our culture that there are literal universities that have classes based around Bad Bunny Music and how they’re able to teach US colonialism and Puerto Rican resistance. At Loyola Marymount University, Vanessa Diaz and Petra Rivera described Bad Bunny’s success combined with the myriad issues his career touches on make him an extremely effective anchor for a college course. Often times these classes are student led to  guide the flow of the class. For example, in Petra’s fifteen-person seminar, students work in pairs to introduce key concepts and readings to their classmates. They select one of Bad Bunny’s music videos or performances that anchors the class discussion on these concepts. In so doing, students not only demonstrate their mastery of the material, but they also practice critical analytical skills in concrete ways by showing how more abstract theoretical concepts map onto something that they are familiar with in their everyday lives. This got so much notoriety to the point where Jimmy Fallon mentioned it on his  show, told it to Bad Bunny in an interview and he said in his words (to paraphrase) that he would like to take the class. As reflected in the music the performance  in terms of its political regardless of how regardless of the mixed opinions Cannot be denied.  To add on what also is very upsetting me is the blatant disrespect in terms of the ignorance of the production elements of the performance. Diaz and Rivera In a New York Times article this time mentions how People magazine described the performance as a “fun-filled dance party” that largely abandoned politics in favor of sexiness, joy and tropical flavor. A friend texted to say she was especially annoyed when one media outlet referred to the plants onstage as “shrubbery,” oblivious to how those sugar cane fields recalled a long history of chattel slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean. Describing the plants on stage as chivalry and describing it as a dance party that largely abandoned politics is very toned in my opinion and to see such ignorance being displayed in the form of disrespect in a way connects back to the counter culture response that was the Kid Rock performance. Even disrespect from our current president Donald Trump as he describes the halftime performance as “All it does is sow hatred.” Due to the fact that he  has been derided as “not an American artist” Disrespect that in my opinion isn’t deserved but not surprised given the conservative climate that we live in as a country right now,  and with Donald Trump being ahead of it. 

When it comes to the United States of America some things simply don’t change.  This devaluation of the historic moment for a global community and the Latino community is simply another instance or another moment in American history where a group like Latinos cannot win.  Love simply just cannot win regardless of who is at the helm spreading awareness work in this instance creating an iconic political moment that will be remembered for years to come. From that to the secondary Kid Rock show that we got,  it is disappointing but it’s not surprising.  This is America for you. 

Robert Morales

April 22nd 2026 

Professor Meeker. 

Conference Paper Essay

Misogyny in Women’s Sports 

Misogyny in sports has long shaped not only the opportunities available to women athletes but also the ways their performances are perceived and valued. Nowhere is this more evident than in women’s basketball, where players consistently face disparities in media coverage, pay, and public respect when compared to their male counterparts. While leagues such as the WNBA have grown in visibility and talent, cultural narratives continue to frame women’s basketball as inferior or less entertaining than men’s basketball. This essay examines how scholars have analyzed the intersection of gender, media representation, and institutional inequality within the sport. By comparing perceptions of women’s basketball to those of men’s basketball, this paper highlights how misogyny operates both overtly and subtly, reinforcing broader societal hierarchies. Ultimately, the existing research reveals that the marginalization of women’s basketball is not a reflection of athletic ability but rather the product of deeply rooted gender biases that continue to shape the sports landscape. My main thesis for the paper is that despite the massive increase in Legislation and participation in women’s sports,  misogyny is still present in digital Sports culture due to the lack of media coverage negative perceptions of women’s basketball through sexism and racism as well as maintaining its certain economic structures and as a result it reinforces the deeply rooted gender biases that continue to shape its cultural and digital landscape. 

As stated earlier, women’s sports across the board are on the rise, but perhaps the leader of this movement is women’s basketball, particularly in the college basketball and WNBA scenes. However, with this rise across the board digital sports media culture, with women’s college basketball and the WNBA as a result, it rises as well. While it is definitely a good thing that more people are talking about the product of women’s basketball as a whole online, it is also given Misogyny as a structure and as a system of empowerment to really spread bigotry and hate towards women’s sports, and in this case, high-level basketball as well. The two most well-known basketball players and leaders for women’s basketball throughout the early 2020s are Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Both high-level basketball players played for the University of Iowa and LSU, respectively. Both players, because they’re so good at their craft and have a competitive nature and desire to win basketball games, had a bit of a rivalry throughout their college basketball careers. The reason why athletes like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and their rivalry throughout their basketball careers is relevant when it comes to having a conversation about the rise of misogyny when discussing women’s sports in digital media culture, and as a result of this rivalry, we see misogyny and racism intertwine. A study on digital sports culture shows how misogyny in women’s basketball is reinforced through online discussions, particularly in male-dominated spaces, analyzing players like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. The authors argue that these spaces diminish women athletes by portraying them through gendered stereotypes and framing their games as less legitimate, while also applying racialized stereotypes to Black players like Reese. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that negative perceptions of women’s basketball are socially constructed through intertwined sexism and racism rather than reflecting the sport’s actual quality. According to the said article, Manufacturing Racialised Misogyny in China’s Digital Manosphere, yet, unlike the far-/alt-right pathways to misogyny and racism in Western societies, this discourse displays distinctive characteristics informed by China’s localised gender power dynamics and context-specific nationalist interpretations of the global racial order. On a platform predominantly frequented by male sports fans, this discourse illustrates the prevalence of gender- and race-based discrimination in present-day China and its dialectical relations with popular cultural consumption, nationalism, and international geopolitics.” The key argument when having misogyny and these discussions is not just an individual hostility towards specific women, but it’s part of a broader cultural and political structure and system. Users as a whole tend to frame women athletes through stereotypes such as the portrayal of women as very “over emotional”, “jealous”, or incapable in comparison to their male counterparts. This, as a result, reinforces traditional gender hierarchies; on top of this, racial bias is also layered on top of this misogyny when having a conversation or how black athletes like injuries are being discussed in sports digital media culture. Black women are often subjected to racialized stereotypes that show them as aggressive or threatening, showing how gender and race work together to shape negative perceptions of these women. The article also highlights that online discourse plays a role in spreading these ideas of massaging and racism in its interactions between the two. even phrases that are most associated with female solidarity, or twisted into sarcasm, or Expressions that mock women. These kinds of patterns are not really random; they reflect larger nationalists and political ideologies and narratives, particularly within countries like China and Western countries as well, and overall, the use of online platforms to spread this kind of hurtful ideologies can amplify anti-feminist and exclusionary discourse. Overall, the study that was sourced earlier argues that digital Sports media culture around women’s basketball can act like a space where misogyny and racism are normalized, rather than just affecting opinions about said sport. These discussions review deeper truths about the power structures and tensions of culture that shape how women athletes are perceived.

Another key argument that is very prevalent when discussing the presence of misogyny and women’s sports is the lack of media coverage/representation despite the advancements in participation and legislation. To further elaborate on what I mean, I first must start with an article that examines how sports journalists in other countries view women’s sports media coverage. In the article “The Perception of Women’s Sports by Polish Sports Journalists.” The article examines how journalists’ perceptions contribute to the marginalization of women’s sports. Through interviews with Polish sports journalists, the study finds that many view women’s sports as less important or less engaging, often justifying limited coverage as a reflection of audience interest rather than gender bias. Ultimately, the research shows that these attitudes reinforce systemic inequality by normalizing the idea that women’s sports are secondary to men’s, shaping public perception and limiting growth. A key concept of this article and why the citing of this article is very important is that male and female journalists don’t really recognize that gender bias that’s at play when it comes to the lack of coverage of women’s sports; they justify it as kind of very natural or very audience-driven in a sense. And what’s really interesting about this article is that even though female journalists, despite living and understanding what it’s like to be a woman in a huge male-dominated industry like sports, a lot of those same misogynistic believe so that gender biased is internalized as a result of working in this male-dominated field and being socialized into its cultural norms. According to the article, it states that  “The coverage of women’s sports remains small despite the continuous increase in the number of girls and women taking part in sports. In the last 20 years in Poland, we observed an increase in adult sport participation from 30% in the 1990s to approximately 60% in 2013, with a steady 5% difference between the number of men and women participating (Lenartowicz, Dziubiński, & Jankowski, 2017). One of the possible reasons for the inequitable coverage of women’s sports is the male hegemony in sports media. While the proportion of professional male and female sportspersons has changed much in favor of the latter, sports journalism remains a profession dominated by men” This is crucial really understanding the lack of representation because the reality is as much as we seen growth and women’s sports the reality is is that sports has always been a male hegemony as the article describes and this quote best represents how the study argues how the media represents women’s sports are most definitely deeply rooted in gender biases within journalism and it reinforces this idea that women’s sports always be secondary to the men’s sports. 

Inequality when it comes to pay between women and men is a topic that goes beyond Sports. There’s a topic in conversation that transcends centuries upon centuries of women in the workplace and how constantly they are undervalued doing the same line of work as their male peers. Today, women earn 80 cents to the man’s dollar,  while it is definitely a progression from the years of yesteryear, it is still not good enough, and we see this in the sports world, but arguably even worse fashion. In “Bet on Women” from Building the WNBA, Georgia Munro-Cook argues that the wage gap in the WNBA is not simply due to revenue differences but is shaped by structural inequality and misogynistic attitudes that devalue women’s sports. She highlights how players and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association challenge this system by asserting their worth and demanding greater investment, reframing themselves as valuable labor rather than beneficiaries of opportunity. The chapter ultimately shows that limited pay and investment are part of a cycle where negative perceptions of women’s basketball suppress its growth, reinforcing broader gender inequality. Cook makes an excellent point when discussing the limited and structural factors that lead to inequality, and when you read the quote, it goes hand in hand with the main argument from the previous paragraph. Cook states how “The WNBA is assumed to be unpopular and salaries low due to the quality of play or intractable market forces. The structural factors that prevent women’s leagues from succeeding are ignored, supporting Allison’s (2018, p. 138) argument that ‘in professional sports today, essentialism operates as an “ideology of interest” that moves responsibility for inequality from sports, media, and corporate organisations and their constituent decision makers onto sport fans.’ In other words, the onus is on individual sport fans and the players themselves to support and grow the league, ignoring the lack of investment by brands or the media. ESPN, for instance, despite televising the WNBA, rarely talks about games or shows highlights on its talk shows, assuming a lack of interest yet not doing the work to build an audience in the same way it does for other sports or even poker tournaments. Early in the second paragraph, I state a key argument that the lack of attention women’s sports as a whole get in comparison to their male counterparts, despite the growth in women’s sports. However, in this quote,  Cook is essentially saying that the ideology of the interest’s argument that moving responsibility from the sports media to the consumer in order to grow the league is a huge part of why the economic structures are the way that it is. Women are meant to be paid less than men because that is the way Society is structured as a whole. Rather than people in high positions of power, like Adam Silver, who is the commissioner of the parent company of the WNBA, taking accountability and really growing the league as a product. Despite the common media narrative that the wage Gap is simply because of Revenue differences and how the league isn’t profitable. Cook is arguing that it is sustained by misogynistic attitudes from the media and fans as a structure that, in turn, devalues women’s sports and limits Financial investment in the League like the WNBA. Preventing the league from reaching its full economic potential. As well as highlighting how WNBA players are expected to not only perform at an elite level, but in order to promote the league, it has to conform to gender expectations in order to gain visibility for the league as well. World-class athletes, such as women playing in the WNBA, should not settle for being grateful to have a professional league, as Society has kind of deemed this to be the narrative to be placed on Women and their sports.

Overall, this research reveals that misogyny in women’s basketball is sustained through interconnected systems of media representation, economic structures, and cultural attitudes. Across different contexts, women athletes are consistently undervalued, whether through limited coverage, wage disparities, or stereotypes that question their legitimacy. These studies demonstrate that negative perceptions of women’s basketball are not based on athletic ability but are socially constructed through sexism and, at times, racism. Taken together, this research underscores the need to challenge these narratives to create more equitable recognition and investment in women’s sports. Not only in terms of sports, but the research on inequality between men’s sports and women’s sports signifies a broader theme of gender inequality as a whole, regardless of the various contexts that may exist where there are gaps between men and women. I hope that this paper and research contribute to the overall conversation of misogyny and interconnected factors of online digital media representation and fan discourse, as well as addressing economic disparities and structures that continue to keep women limited in their growth and valuation. 

Robert Morales 

Community Essay

02/04/2026

    My Gaming Community Experience

Community has always been a very complex topic for me. This is because throughout my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever really identified with one set of communities or people. I was always just there, existing and living life.  People have always come and go all the time, but the one common constant that was always there for me would definitely have to be my Xbox. So as a result the gaming community was always there for me and I never realized it. Being a part of the overall gaming community is a very complex experience for a few reasons. One reason would be that essentially the world is at your fingertips when it comes to meeting new people and really grasping and attaining different cultures and backgrounds while having gaming as the foundation and the basis for what your relationship is like with said people. That in of itself is an amazing thing when it comes to being a part of the gaming community because diversity is always an amazing thing to really have a foundation of in your community. However the other side of the token which introduces that complexity is that since the gaming community is such a big community, gaming communities as a whole get separated into a bunch of many subsection gaming communities and even smaller friend groups on top of that as well. Creating an inevitable bubble in which we all as gamers are stuck in as a result plus the concept that it’s all virtual and online and not in real life so you don’t get an authentic one to one human connection experience although still a great connection to have nevertheless. 

The average gamer in the gaming community and the average person outside the community could view and analyze the word in a multitude of perspectives. For the average game this is their opportunity to  escape the harsh reality and political  climates we as human beings deal with on a day-to-day basis.  For some other people,  they view gaming as a silly hobby or something that wastes people’s time. Community for the average gamer means joining together to enjoy and soak in the presence of a common interest.  In essence to create memories that regardless of what age you’re at can create lifelong memories with people you love, for a lot of other people since gaming is such a wide spectrum of people joining together to enjoy this one concept, unfortunately have to go through what it’s like to experience toxicity or a bunch of negativity. So for other gamers it can be a negative experience at times because of that wide spectrum that was discussed earlier. I remember all the time how I would get roasted and play overwatch for not being a “good support” for my teammates. People would make fun of me for not having an exorbitant amount of heals, even though I pace at the same rate as other supports in the individual game. Those memories broke my heart and really hurt my ego and oftentimes ruined the game experience for me and for my friend as a whole. As a result the work Community can be a very complex way to describe gaming communities as a whole,  although the majority of my friends and still now are connected through gaming I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m subversed into this mega Gaming Community and its bigger picture.  I am like a lot of other people who are in small bubbles that make up the entire Community as a whole.  However you really see instances where larger gaming communities join together to really make a positive impact through their gaming journeys like for instance when you see a company do  specific actions the community does not like and then voice their opinions about it. Or when popular moments happen in the overall zeitgeist whether it’s politically or anything pertaining to the world, gamers come together to really speak out and express their opinions through their gaming. It can create a moment that really stands in time for gamers  so that will be the greatest example of  larger subsections of gaming communities really exemplifying the principles of what it actually means to be a part of a community and investing into this community whether it is time, money, sacrifice or etc. A lot of people outside the gaming community as a whole are not able to really see those moments when the “community” in the gaming community really shows out.  So for those specific people gaming will forever be in their eyes something to just pass time and be meaningless. Gamers as a whole will never be able to rewrite those narratives due to negative connotations from bad apples in our community. 

In my life many of my best moments have been a result of being on the Xbox with friends.  I don’t think I’ve ever really taken the time  to really understand the privilege I have to have an expensive game  system in which I can interact with an infinite amount of people with a ton of different backgrounds and cultures and different perspectives on life as a whole. The gaming community is a very huge community and it’s also a very complex community due to how many subsections and even smaller bubbles we are a part of. There’s some things about our community that we understand that the average person who doesn’t play games doesn’t understand and for the non gamer it could be vice versa. My view of Community really has evolved in the sense of I’ve never really understood how good I had it until now, And that while I have lived in a bubble my entire life, That bubble hasn’t prevented me from realizing  the value that the gaming community brings despite its flaws and its negative connotations to the non-gamer. 

Robert Morales

Self-assessment essay

Professor Meeker

May 21st 2026

Self-assessment

Overall my experience with the class can be described as one heck of a journey.  In the beginning, asking for every single class that I take in college I feel like a very nerve-wracking sensation.  I usually just assume the worst whenever I’m taking or starting a new class for the first time but throughout the entire process I felt like I got more comfortable and I was able to really settle in and be myself when it comes to my writing style. Starting out we had these objectives and these objectives are set off like goalsFor us a student that we have to keep track of and really see how we’re improving and setting these goals.  I would say that overall there has been an improvement in a few of the objectives that the professor has set for the class as a whole.  The vast majority of the objectives were basically like engagement or like how you engage in gender analysis or engage in library databases and how you engage and paraphrase sources and engage with your classmates.  I feel as an overall My overall engagement of the objectives for the class is mostly based around I feel like there has been an improvement of those engagements. 

I would say my biggest  struggles would be figuring out what I’m doing wrong.  I say this because like when I would write an essay I would try to reference the readings and I would genuinely feel like I am doing my part in terms of the structure of the textbooks that they want me to do but for some reason I feel like something is missing from my writing.  I feel like I’ve improved to a certain extent but there’s a cap to my thing and maybe it could be a situation where I need to reread the books and improve but I would say going back and revising my Works definitely would be my biggest struggle. I would say my biggest strength  is the collaboration aspect in terms of engaging with my classmates whenever we would do something like a peer review or a project that involves the formulation of questions as we did with the Machado series of stories.  I would say that it was my biggest strength because I was there in the group settings to collaborate and understand new perspectives. I never really argued with anybody when they had criticism of my work or because I know my writing and my work overall isn’t perfect.  As much as I love my point of view and my perspective, I know my point of view in the way I view the world isn’t the end all be all when it comes to English literature writing and Etc. I felt like I already knew how to write an essay but having a textbook like the one that  the professor  gave us basically gave us an encyclopedia on writing and grammar and sentence structure. It is an incredibly valuable resource when it comes to being able to write an essay. But reading through all the readings it really all comes back to one question that I have as a whole.  What is writing? Or how do you really write an essay? Is  everything from what I learned when it comes to knowing and developing the intricacies of what it means to write a piece of work or are there more things to be discovered?  That to me is a very loaded question and even after these past few months of being a part of the class it can be talked about.  and to be honest  based on the way you can frame the question it was almost like a very philosophical question to ask you know? I feel like I can take numerous English classes. I dont think  I can really find the answer to what is being a proficient writer or what does it mean to write? Overall I would say throughout this entire process I had ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses,  weaknesses in terms of reviewing my work seeing what I did wrong and improving but strength and collaboration engagement and overall with genre analysis I feel like I contributed to class discussion as a whole. 

Robert Morales

The process was very much a very straightforward process when it comes to writing the in class literary analysis.  Basically a bunch of readings taking notes engaging with the group. I was very vocal and very proactive throughout the process with the limited finite time I was able to engage with the group. The actual Class essay overall was a good experience. I expected much worse because I’m not the fastest typer in the world or the most  grammatically correct typer in the world. And so it was a good experience. I hope to just overall prepare for the essay more so that way I have more to write but I was able to get my main points down as long as with some evidence to really support my claims and arguments.  In general for my riding I want to practice riding drafts and focusing on going through multiple processes to create and build one solid piece of literature rather than just simply voice typing my way one shot of an essay or literature and just leaving it how it is. Leading the class discussion definitely was better than I anticipated.  I wasn’t really around for the process of leading the class discussion; it was a very simple integration myself within my group.  I have my questions prepared and everything I was able to copy and paste my questions out to the Google Doctor the group made and I just do what I did what I always do.  I asked some good questions. I made sure to really participate when it comes to the discussion by asking multiple questions instead of just asking one.  The class as a whole was very hopeful and led the discussion and helped me get integrated.  It really helps knowing that we have such an intelligent class that can carry a class discussion and conversation. Overall I thought the class discussion was pretty good,I felt like I should have answered some of the questions and responded to some of the classmates with their responses and their answers.  I should have done more to engage with the other students  rather than just letting them carry the conversation and me moving on to the next person to ask their questions.  I felt like my other groupmates were more prepared to carry a conversation and a dialogue with the students in the in class discussion then I was. Who prepared me for the in class essay by giving me more perspective and points of view of a short story that was really familiar so that way I have the best amount of prior knowledge needed to write the essay. Hearing everybody’s point of view of  how they interpret and view the story definitely shapes the perspective of my essays in shaping my interpretations and analysis of the other short stories in her body and other parties even though it’s not exactly the same story.  I was able to connect things my classmates stated and apply it to other stories. 

In her bodies and other parties,  Machado Throughout all the short stories use realistic ideas with trauma to help the reader connect ideas of women’s bodies and overall societal expectations to convey a message. In this specific Story 8 bites the protagonist undergoes surgery because of the self-belief that her losing a lot of weight will make her life easier  as well as make her Dean War accessible to society as a whole.  however this didn’t work,  instead of the latter she becomes haunted by a mysterious  figure and  that figure  is the overall representation of the physical parts of herself that she tried to cut away.  This mysterious figure represents the concept or the idea that the narrator can’t just simply remove all the negative experience and the self-identity that is tied to her body even with a surgery. From the reader perspective the surgery itself is very important not just for the plot of the story but symbolically as well. The protagonist believes that this surgery will make her more societally acceptable but will help her solve emotional issues as well. As she has had trauma  with family or friends making fun of her way and comparing her way to her thinner sisters,  despite this The Haunting presence that the protagonist goes through knows that  her identity can’t just be removed like in excess tissue in a surgery.  Machado uses descriptive energy to show how harmful these societal expectations can be for a woman to constantly have to do things for their body in order to feel valid and accepted in society.  Instead of more Liberation the protagonist feels more shame. The story as a whole breaks boundaries that women shouldn’t have to treat their bodies as a problem rather that their body should be loved from the very beginning and that there is no correct version of what a body should look like even on a societal scale