The University of New Mexico Best Student Essays

Spring 2008, Vol 20 No I

a word from the editor

By Jay Reidy
In the final hours of editing before a magazine is relinquished to its printer, the editor and the staff may find themselves in one of several states of mind.

Dwelling Poetically: A Philosophical Foundation for Environmental Ethics

By Tara Kennedy
Homelessness represents a real and troubling ethical and social dilemma. What is the best way to eradicate this problem?

Cross with Krauss: An Inquisitive Exploration into “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism”

By Elaine Ritchel
Initially presented as a colloquium paper at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Rosalind Krauss’ article “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism” is a notable contribution to the extensive collection of writings pertaining to surrealist representation.

A French Trying to Understand American Football

By Pierre-Yves Barbeau
The game was to start in fifteen minutes and everyone got in line to enter the stadium. The line was incredibly long, running all along the fence of the back parking lot.

Dignity Will Be the Death of Me

By Kelsey Seeger
Dignity suffers innumerable assaults everyday. And I know that you, my dignity- conscious reader, understand that any attempt to maintain your dignity usually results in its loss.

The Sensitive Editor and Ezra Pound

By Gerard Hebert
I took a fiction workshop as an undergraduate, and I remember the mantra that my instructor forced upon me: nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs.

On Wanderlust

By Wesley Alan Morton
Screaming through the desert, dirty, matted hair tangling in the dry air, the hot, Malian sun on my wind-beaten skin, eyes opened wide for maximum intake of the parched, desolate, and dusty expanse, holding on white-knuckled to the tied-down baggage atop an all-terrain vehicle flying erratically over the choppy dirt road, two young, blue-turbaned Tuareg nomads seated on either side of me, approaching the infinite sand dunes of the Sahara just north of Timbuktu, it hits me.

Biodiversity of Fish Species Found in Scleractinian Corals and Octocorals

By Stephanie Moquin
Many species of fish in the Great Barrier Reef depend on coral for food and/or shelter. Unfortunately, there has been a significant loss of live coral due to mass coral bleaching over the past twenty years.

Women

By Kaitlin Jencso

I have often felt that the fabrication of the “ideal woman” is an outdated and damaging social construct that should be revaluated. Such confines separate women from the work-world, as well as from self-realization, alienating them from men and removing their individuality and human- ity. My work takes symbols of femininity and juxtaposes them with the reality of their emotional repercussions. The overall degradation and broken/shattered nature of the environment becomes the symbol of femininity, be it a dress, deer, or an actual woman.

Print Edition
More Best Student Essays

editor

John (Jay) Reidy

editor, design

Danielle Gilliam

editor, photography

Maxwell Robert Krivitzky

editor, science

Kieran Gallagher-Gonzales

editors, copy and research

Alima Jimenez
James Olson
Graeme Prentice-Mott
Ryan Tynan

business manager

Jim Fisher

special thanks

Clara Boling, Conceptions Southwest
Leslie Donovan
Daven Quelle
Christopher Sanchez, The Daily Lobo
Carolyn Souther

cover photography

“Fun Slide”
©2008 By Andrew Berry.
All rights reserved.