First of all, we would like to thank Dr. Kurt Spellmeyer, Director of the Rutgers Writing Program, and Dr. Richard E. Miller, Chair of the English Department, for the support and encouragement that has been invaluable in the continuation of this project. Moreover, their New Humanities Reader and pedagogy for Expository Writing has provided the students of Rutgers University with the foundation in analytic writing that has enabled them to produce the original and provocative essays included in this volume. We also appreciate the generous gift from the Aresty Research Center for Undergraduates and the assistance of Justine Hernandez-Levine, Administrative Director, and Steven Lawson, Faculty Director.

This year we were fortunate in both the quantity and quality of the submissions. The contents of this volume are twelve of more than one hundred undergraduate research essays that were submitted to Dialogues in the past year. Most of these were written in the Writing Program’s research courses, Research in the Disciplines (355:201), and College Writing and Research (355:301), but thanks to the Aresty Research Center, one of ten submissions were written in courses outside the Writing Program, and we are publishing one of these for the first time. Colleges across the university were represented in the submissions: we received essays from students of Cook College, Douglass College, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Livingston College, Mason Gross School of the Arts, the College of Nursing, and Rutgers College.

We received many strong research essays, and would like to have published more of them, but budgetary realities limit expansion for the present. Our thanks to all who submitted their work to Dialogues this year: Ugonma Achebe, Annie Agrawal, Al Aguilar, Latoya S. Anderson, Nadia Awad, Sarah Bavier, Ryan Bednar, Cathy Bonett, Leah Bonnell, David A. Bopp, Kyan Bowman, Inna Braylovskaya, Jason Chester, Daniel Cheifer, Alexander J. Conway, Charles W. Copeland III, Ankur Dave, Mercedes Diaz, Michael Dixon, Igor Drasovic, Rosalie Eang, Rosanna Eang, Suzanne C. Eng, Jennifer Fern, Elizabeth Foreman, Parisa Ghazi, Arielle Gomberg, Dina Gonzalez, Peter Graham, Kristen M. Gutierrez, Maha Hadi, Patricia Meyers Hancocks, Chiang Sheena Huang, Jennifer Huttenberger, Vishal Jani, Kelly M. Jones, Melissa Karwoski, Danna Katzourin, Jessica Keisman, Daanish Khan, Jennifer Kist, Meredith Klein, Christina Krupinski, Linda B. Koenemund, Blaze Kozlik, Lauren Lehman, Jeanpier Lopez, Christine McCormack, Susan Mendes, Janice L. Mendez, Jason Mierzwa, Heidi Milad, Tara Mulford, Michelle E. Navarro, Brian Nielsen, Anh Thy Nguyen, Danielle Orlando, Michael Olsson, Chitra Patel, Harshil Patel, Vishal Patel, Sheila Peri, Garri Priyampolskiy, Jessica Rees, Angelica Rodriguez, Royce R. Rollins, Michael Rosamilia, Steven Rubel, Desi Saran, Sandra Sewing, Neha Shah, Faisal S. Sheikh, Tim Shoemaker, Lina Silimkhan, Angela Smith, Scott Smith, Stephanie Smith, Caitlin Sulley, Emily Tibbels, Sara Tilitz, Alexandra Tuchman, Michelle Wallis, James Wang, Ting T. Wang, Kathryn Wells, and Jin-ie Yoo. The Editorial Board had a difficult time selecting from among these excellent essays.

We are grateful to the instructors whose classes produced the stimulating essays submitted by their students. The essays in this volume were written by Alan Bond, Melissa Connerly, Frankie Dintino, Jennifer Flynn, Annat T. Katz, Eric Kaufmann, Stephen Linguito, Virginia Mensah, Jeffrey C. Moon, Pascal Scemama de Gialluly, XiaoLei Shi, and Monica Yung, whose instructors were John Aveni, Paul Benzon, Tracy Budd, Donna Cantor, Brian Hurley, Victoria James, James Mulholland, Michael Rossi, Kurt Spellmeyer, and Karen Thompson. Three groups of editors read over a hundred submissions, selected twelve for publication, worked with the authors on revisions and wrote commentaries on the essays. Thanks to Latoya S. Anderson, Courtney Borack, Igor Drasovic, Ryan Gogol, Dayna Hunter, Meredithe McNamara, Douglas Piccinnini, Rahul Sharma, and Amanda Smith who did a phenomenal job. These remarkable young editors were recommended by Susan Arvay, Heather Robinson, and Ken Urban, Directors of the Livingston, Douglass, and Plangere Writing Centers. I was fortunate to have had Enock Aloo and Tracy Budd as Associate Editors, who chaired the editorial groups. Important contributions were made by Emma Rumen, Romana Uhlirova, and Lillian Yang on the Livingston Campus, Judy Karwowski, Gale Nadonley, Carol Spry, and Jessica Hedges on the College Avenue Campus, and Arlene Bubrow on the Douglass Campus. Special thanks to Sylvie Lekarakos who has been responsible for the production of the journal since its inception, to Dr. Michael Cripps, the Founding Editor of Dialogues, and to my excellent colleagues in the Writing Program, especially Dr. Barclay Barrios.

Skiles Howard
Piscataway , New Jersey
June 6, 2005