Academic Papers

The Empowering Squirrel Girl

All the strength of a squirrel multiplied to the size of a girl? That must be the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! This paper will explore Marvel’s Squirrel Girl character, from her introduction as a joke character to her 2015 The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic series which is being harold as being extremely empowering. This paper aims to understand why a hero like Squirrel Girl would be harold and celebrated by fans, while other female heroes with feminist qualities like Captain Marvel or the New Almighty Thor might be receiving not as much praise.

Worlds Collide: Aztec Gender Parallelism and Spanish Patriarchy

Every culture is bound to gender roles.  The Mexica of ancient Mesoamerica– more commonly known as the Aztecs – were no different. The Aztecs had strict gender roles, but practiced gender parallelism. After the Spanish Conquest, the syncretic merging of European and Aztec culture gave birth to New Spain and eventually to modern Mexico.  This paper will explore gender roles before and after the Conquest, in order to explore the syncretic nature of gender roles in today’s Mexico.

The Bonampak Murals and the Classic Maya Collapse

When words cannot explain, we – as humans – turn to art. Art can explain everything we do, everything we feel. From the Dutch domestic life, to Chinese folklore. From the birth of Venus, to the most violent scenes of human warfare. The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica were no different than anyone else when it came to their art. They also explored ideas of monarchy, mythology, and war. The Bonampak murals are no exception. These Maya murals now act as a history lesson for modern scholars, and that lesson is how elite extravagance and excessive war lead to the fall of the ancient city-states of the Southern Lowlands of the Maya world. The murals offer to us a view of the last decades of the Classic Maya period.