Bibliography

Both of these essays deal with the topic of disability representation and rights for people with disabilities. With the Representation matters essay being written for a writing class on argumentative writing. In this essay I explore various portrayals of Autism Spectrum Disorder in popular media. The second piece is a zine that I wrote for a political science class about the politics of disabilities. The zine details the Lego company’s commitment to diversity, especially in their portrayal of disability in their toys. 

My interest in disability rights started way back in high school after I decided to take a class that my school called “community service”. This class allowed students to work as helpers and assistants in our school's special needs program. The four semesters I spent taking community service were the most transformative and inspiring time of my life. This is where I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in disability law, as I hope to make a real impact and aid the lives of persons with disabilities in any way that I can. These experiences shaped these two writing pieces and are my way of writing about issues I am deeply passionate about. While thinking back on my own experiences working in a high school special needs program and writing these essays I always remember the wonderful memories, but also the harsh reality of the situations of many. Working in this area brought so much joy to my life, but I would be remiss to not also mention the hard days where I felt powerless to a world that wasn’t created for people with disabilities. 

This is where seeds of this project came from, this feeling of sadness and helplessness in politics. I find politics fascinating but I felt my political science degree weighing on my heart heavily. There were days where my classes consisted of topics like genocide, torture, and the improbability of any real change coming. Around my junior year I felt myself becoming jaded, with constant thoughts that I couldn’t do anything about the world around me. That’s when I started to embrace the comedy and love of politics as a way to combat these feelings about the degree I had already spent 3 years working towards. Embracing comedy  really helped shape this project and how I wanted to share my love for politics with the world as there is more to politics than despair, as there is love and laughter from real people. 

This is an essay I wrote for a political science class all about the Constitution. The prompt was simply pick a part of the Constitution, research it, and make an argument about it. So of course I chose a rather obscure and seemingly mundane topic: eminent domain. While writing this essay, I found myself getting lost in the research. I found myself caring far more about the issue on an individual level rather than a grand governmental level. I cared far more about hearing the stories and testimonies of the real people displaced by eminent domain. This aspect of research I really took with me into this project. As politics can often seem so abstract and unattainable to the average person, but behind every law or government action there are real people with emotions, lives, and stories. This idea helped shape my research and approach for this project as I wanted the stories to remain grounded in stories of people and the world around them. 

Michigan Voices Podcast: Good Old Fashion Midwestern Living

In the Fall of 2025 I had taken a class called the Art of Podcasting with T Hetzel (who is also the professor for the capstone class this project is a part of, so massive shoutout!). In this class I created an episode of the Michigan Voices Podcast titled Good Old Fashion Midwestern Living. I had taken the class because I already had the idea of this project taking shape, but there was one problem: I don’t know how to make a podcast. I decided to take this class to hopefully learn how to take this project from an idea in my head into a real listenable podcast. My experience in this class was more helpful than I could ever even express. Without this class my project would have been dull and drab, but the knowledge and experience I gained from this class was crucial for this project. I was inspired to play with noise and music that later became a large part of this project. In my episode for the Michigan Voices podcast I spoke about my love for living in the  midwest. A lot of the format, sounds, and podcasting ideas for this project come from this previous podcast episode. 

This essay I wrote for a writing class about trash, so naturally I chose to talk about one of my favorite things: trash tv. In this essay I dissected TLC and the many things morally or ethically concerning the network and its content by treating the network as a physical body. This essay helped shape this project as it is me doing one of my favorite things, making things that aren't political, political. Maybe it's my political science degree or maybe it's just how I am, but I have a knack for being able to make everything political. I am often jokingly referred to as the “friend that's too woke”, which is a reference to a popular TikTok meme. This idea of making everything political really inspired the topics that I talk about on these podcast episodes as I began to aimlessly search for politics and laws about things I enjoy like game shows or zombies. This approach allowed me to keep every episode refreshing and unique as I looked for obscure and random places where law and politics creep into a relatively unrelated area.

The Rehearsal is a show created by my favorite comedian, Nathan Fielder, as he helps people prepare for stressful situations by creating in-depth rehearsals of said situations accounting for all possibilities. This show has an amazing mix of comedy and really introspective story telling that I could talk about for hours. There is so much depth to the show all while just being a hilarious show. Fielder’s approach to comedy is dry and a bit awkward, but I personally love this style of comedy. This style of comedy definitely inspired my sense of humor and how I went about writing the comedic aspects of this project. I never really had the opportunity to write comedy like this before as so much of what I wrote was purely academic, so this project was a big swing on that front. I immediately knew that for a lot of the comedic aspects Nathan Fielder’s work on The Rehearsal would become a major inspiration for me, as it blends comedy with unbelievable character moments. Through this approach I had so much fun writing comedy and as someone who has been described as “not funny, like at all” before I was nervous at first but I am very happy with how things turned out.

Chimp Crazy follows Tonya Hadix who is the owner of many pet chimpanzees, but this documentary dives into her legal struggles to keep her chimpanzees after PETA attempts to have them removed from her care. I am a sucker for a good documentary and I am obsessed with all kinds of monkeys, so this documentary was an immediate watch for me. It is such an in-depth look into the lives and controversies of people I would have never heard about otherwise, which is what I love about it. I always enjoy an intimate retelling of topics that would have never come across my desk otherwise. I wanted to take this approach for my own project as I went through such weird and complex political stories. This documentary also inspired me to explore topics off the beaten path and embrace the weirdness of law as the documentary focuses on chimpanzee ownership laws, which I wouldn’t say is at the top of anyone’s mind when thinking about law.