Traveling and learning about new cultures has always be an integral part of my life. As a matter of fact, my mom thought travel to be fundamental to my childhood, stressing how important it was to continually expand my horizons and appreciate different environments. This, in turn, has had a profound influence and impact upon my research. As a result, one of my most significant research interests—multiculturalism—arose from my travel experience and my identity as a multiethnic individual. Subsequently, many of my undergraduate papers revolved around this theme, including one of my most ambitious projects to date, my senior capstone: A Cosmopolitan Genocide: The Failures of Multiculturalism.

 

This following portfolio acts as an archive and outline of how I transition from the knowledge I gained as a traveler to academic scholarship I used in my research. The following three components that I have linked below—Inspiration, Influences, and Research—outline this process. One of the greatest challenges of my senior capstone was finding nonfictional scholarship to ground my analysis in. Inspiration details how my visit to the Cambodia Landmine Museum was a moment of epiphany for me in discovering how I might contextualize the information I had gathered thus far through recent historical genocides. The texts I then mention in Influences are firsthand accounts from individuals who have endured these catastrophic events and briefly detail context for each massacre. This information, alongside my previous components that included a short post-apocalyptic story and five interviews, was then amassed into a critical analysis and presentation, products that can be found in Research.