Essays – Savannah Schaffer

Shepherd Book: Gadfly of Serenity

October 2, 2014 October 2, 2014Culture, Essays

I’ve had a lot of projects going on the past few months, so I haven’t had the time to write new posts. This weekend I am going to Indianapolis to the MPCA/ACA (Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association) to present a paper on the influence of Socrates and Kierkegaard in the Firefly character, Shepherd Book. I just uploaded the final manuscript to my portfolio, here. So while it is a bit more academic than my usual posts, it will perhaps make up for my absence here recently!

NaPoMo: Reflections on Emily Dickinson

April 4, 2014 April 4, 2014Education, Essays, Life, Words

This post was originally published in October 2013, but I decided to resurrect it for National Poetry Month. I was looking for a favorite poem to post and this one came to mind…so then I figured I might as well include my short essay, haha. I am taking this MOOC (massive open online course) on Modern and Contemporary Poetry which is just amazing. I’ve always enjoyed classic poetry but never really got into the newer stuff. Until now, that is. The format of this course is great, I love the group discussions and interaction between all the participants. One of…

The Queen’s Allegiance: An Exploration of Hamlet

February 10, 2014 February 10, 2014Essays, Literature

This essay is “hot off the press” (aka, I wrote it about 10 minutes ago) for my MOOC class on Hamlet. Enjoy! There are three different versions of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The First, or “Bad” Quarto includes a scene which the other two versions leave out completely. This scene is a dialogue between Queen Gertrude and Horatio. Horatio tells the queen that Hamlet has escaped the death trap set by his uncle, King Claudius, (he was sent to England with a sealed letter to the King of England requesting Hamlet’s immediate execution) and is back in Denmark. In the other…

Frost and Woolf: Tradition and Modernity

January 30, 2014 January 30, 2014Culture, Essays, History, Literature

This is an essay I wrote last semester for my Ideas of the 20th Century course. The assignment was to explore two modern artists who had contrasting views about progress and modernity. Robert Frost, a 20th century American poet, opposed the disintegration of tradition. He called for a return to convention both in the content and structure of his poetry. Some poems directly confront the erosion of civilization; others indirectly support his conservative tendencies in the overall structure. Mending Walls is an early poem by Frost, published in 1914. The poem tells of two rural New England neighbors who meet…

Rousseau and Marx on Historical Progress

January 25, 2014 January 25, 2014Culture, Economics, Essays, History, Politics

This is an essay I wrote last semester for my Modern and Postmodern Philosophy class. For Rousseau, historical progress only further removes man from his natural state of living. He argues that the cultivation of civilized studies weaken the natural virtues of men; in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau writes, “our souls have become corrupted to the extent that our sciences and our arts have advanced towards perfection.” He cites Romans of old as saying, “Since the learned men began to appear among us, good people have slipped away.” Rousseau attributes this decline to the intentional pursuit…

Thoughts on Dracula

January 15, 2014 January 15, 2014Christianity, Essays, Literature

Preface: This is a short essay I wrote for my Science Fiction/Fantasy MOOC class last semester. It was challenging because of the word limit (320 words) and I would have liked to expand on the ideas much more. But at least it gave me practice in trying to condense my thoughts : ) So this essay is on Dracula, by Bram Stoker. The overarching tension of Dracula is the conflict between the traditional Christian worldview and the forces of evil. It is only through recourse to religion that the protagonists are able to overcome Dracula; science and technological advances were…

What is Enlightenment?

August 17, 2013 August 17, 2013Culture, Education, Essays

The Modern and Postmodern Wesleyan University Coursera 1. How did Kant define “enlightenment”? Kant defines enlightenment as “man’s release from self-incurred tutelage.” This tutelage is reliance on other people for instructions on how to conduct your life. Kant gives the example of allowing a physician to determine your diet so that you don’t feel the burden to independently consider your health. Dependence on other people—or institutions—will lead to an individual’s loss of control over their life, while inversely giving other people more power to exert their own ambitions on that individual. As Kant notes, there are constant restrictions on…

Why I Write

October 16, 2012 October 16, 2012Art, Christianity, Education, Essays

I’ve started on my next novel. I’ve thought about several different ideas over the past year or two, but none of them seemed to work quite right. So I finally came back to the idea that I’ve had for years now but never felt ready to tackle. Being a writer, I want to write about everything that I’m experiencing. As soon as I have an idea, I want to pour it out into a story. But I’ve learned that it is better to go at it slowly. Because memories become riper and deeper and richer with time. As I grow…

Category: Essays