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Appearance
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What is Appearance?

Appearance as a subject of academic inquiry spans a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, literature, cultural studies, and the life sciences. Students encounter this topic in courses that examine how physical form, style, and presentation shape individual identity and social experience. What makes appearance academically compelling is the tension between surface and substance — the way bodies, objects, and images communicate meaning before a single word is spoken. It connects personal experience to broader questions about how society assigns value, normalcy, and belonging based on what can be seen.

The papers archived under this topic approach appearance from strikingly varied angles. Some engage with it through literary analysis, examining how characters and narratives in works of world literature use physical description to develop theme and meaning. Others take a psychological or biomedical direction, exploring how body image, abnormal psychology, or conditions affecting physical form intersect with mental and social well-being. Cultural and artistic perspectives also appear, with papers examining how visual artists and religious imagery construct ideas about the body and beauty. Still others address appearance indirectly through social and population-level issues, where physical type and form carry institutional consequences.

A strong essay on appearance needs a focused thesis that connects the visible to the meaningful — explaining not just what something looks like, but what that appearance does socially, psychologically, or culturally. Evidence drawn from close observation, case analysis, or textual examples tends to carry the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating appearance as trivial or purely aesthetic, when the strongest essays recognize it as a site where power, identity, and social norms actively converge.

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Essay Doctorate

Sociology of women: key concepts and perspectives

Biological determinism or essentialism holds that there is a natural and genetic difference between men and women and from a patriarchal viewpoint finds that women are intellectually and physically inferior and should be relegated to child rearing and domestic duties. Liberal feminism, often called middle class feminism calls for equal economic, voting and citizenship rights within the present system, unlike radical or socialist feminism that demand the overthrow of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy, perhaps even in a revolution. Multiracial feminists also wish to build a global feminist movement that crosses the lines of color, language, religion and nationality, instead of simply being known as a white, middle class Western movement that benefits only privileged or upwardly mobile women.

Paper Doctorate

Handler and Friedman's characterizations of the current college generation

There are many criticisms regarding the dedication of the current generation to matters regarding the development of society. Some claim that this generation is has little concern because of the perception that they do not participate in any rebellious activities towards atrocities that affect them. However, the generation has a voice of its own as Nicholas Handler puts it. The argument is that they do have concern only that they have a different way of addressing their issues. In fact, they can be perceived to have a different voice than the older generation.

Paper Undergraduate

Three Ways to Cut Health Care Costs Right Now

Health Care Costs – 3 Ways to Cut Them Right Now Catherine Arnst describes 10 ways to cut health care costs right now. Three of those measures that are currently being addressed by Kaiser Permanente are: cracking down on fraud and abuse; developing a healthy workforce; and stopping infections in hospitals. As researchers and Kaiser Permanente itself have shown, these steps have significantly reduced related health care costs. Nevertheless, there are still some incidents of fraud/abuse, unhealthy lifestyles and hospital-induced patient infections that pose a drain on health care dollars. Consequently, as a manager, I would develop programs along the same lines but would add monetary incentives for compliance in order to achieve an even higher incidence of compliance while rewarding health care professionals/employees for compliance with those programs. The addition of systematic monetary incentives should cut costs even further while enhancing employees' physical and financial wellness.

Essay Doctorate

An explication of the Lilies Landsford Canal poem

An explication of Susan Ludvigson's "The Lilies of Landsford Canal." Analysis includes how Ludvigson contemplates the narrator's mortality and how it compares to nature. Also analyzed are the role that literary devices such as imagery, allusion, personification, and simile play in this contemplation. The narrator explores how nature and man cannot coexist without destroying each other.

Paper Doctorate

Facial Expression and Emotion

It is a paper regarding facial expressions and emotions. The paper defines what they each are and how they are connected. There is an historical overview of the research in this area. There is also the integration of more modern theories regarding the two topics. The paper provides examples of and differences between individual differences of facial expressions of emotion.

Paper Doctorate

Marijuana Shouldn't Be Legalized

Introduction Physical Health Concerns According to a Harvard University Law School document, it would be "…fallacious to conclude that because the chemicals in marijuana have been found to present fewer dangers…" than cocaine, heroin, alcohol and tobacco, that the recreational use of marijuana "is safe" (Harvard). In fact, even though many states authorize the use of cannabis for medical purposes (for AIDS sufferers and for those experiencing harmful side effects from cancer chemotherapy and glaucoma), marijuana has "potentially dangerous side effects" (Harvard). Those "dangerous [physical] side effects" include: a) damage to cells in the bronchial passages that could cause chronic bronchitis; b) a decrease in the ability of the body's immune cells to "fight off fungi, bacteria, and tumor cells"; c) the possibility of getting "pulmonary infections and respiratory cancer"; and d) since one joint of powerful cannabis has "four times more tar than a cigarette," lungs are exposed to the same dangers that cigarettes create (Harvard).

Paper Undergraduate

Japanese Manga or Anime

The paper is a two part endeavor. On the one hand, it is a scene analysis from the film Paprika. (2006) On the other hand, the paper is an exploration and explanation of themes from Japanese culture from the course. The paper analyzes the scene as a means to explain and locate prevalent themes and symbols of contemporary Japanese culture.

Paper High School

Saw Yesterday in the Huffington

¶ … saw yesterday in the Huffington Post (UK) about an Orthodox Jewish man from some cult who boarded a plane wrapped in a plastic bag. The plastic bag was knotted at the top of his head in a triple knot.

Research Paper Masters

Beauty and Sadness in Japanese Literature

My Dear Friend, I applaud you ambition to visit Japan for a summer session of study, and your focus on the distinct works of literature and art to emerge from Japanese culture is admirable. Having devoted much of my own studies to Japanese literature, both in historical and contemporary form, I can honestly say that you are embarking on a personal quest for knowledge that, while beginning on the Japanese mainland, will remain a valued part of your life for years to come. During my own readings of classic Japanese literary works like Natsume Soseki's Kokoro (1914), and Jun'ichir? Tanizaki's Naomi (1947), I have found that the seemingly opposing concepts of beauty and sadness are inextricably linked throughout much of the Japanese cultural experience. From the late 19th through the early 20th centuries, the Japanese people experienced a collective social transformation known as the Meiji Restoration, a period of upheaval which was driven by the adoption of industrialized economic practices and the welcome embrace of Western culture.

Essay Doctorate

Religion, literature, and the problem of evil in Nabokov's Lolita

Vladimir Nobokov's book titled Lolita, is a story of a pedophilic romance between a girl and an older man. Famous for its eroticism and exploration of a taboo part of human sexuality, it delves into what makes a girl…

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