Jessica Lykken

Contingent (Working Title)

This is snippet of a dystopian novel I've begun working on about a society that uses a government-issued “nostalgia medicine” to regulate happiness and memory. As people become increasingly detached from the present, two individuals begin to experience time differently—one forward, one backward—and form a connection that defies the system. Their story challenges the illusion of perfect memories and asks whether real life can survive in a world built on artificial feeling. It’s a surreal,...

From Parking Lots to Platforms: Third Places and Engineered Belonging

Using the rise and decline of the American regional shopping mall as a central case study, this paper argues that malls functioned as consumer-mediated approximations of third places: accessible and socially vibrant, yet structurally limited by private ownership and commercial imperatives.

Emotional Surveillance: Psychiatry, War, and the Narrowing Of Acceptable Affect in...

This paper argues that psychiatric innovations emerging between the 1930s and 1950s were shaped by wartime pressures and broader social transformations, producing new forms of medical authority that sought not only to treat mental illness but to stabilize the emotional life of the population itself.

“We Don’t Want Your Medicine”: African Autonomy and the Limits of Colonial Biomedicine

This paper argues that African communities actively assessed medical options, drawing on both traditional healing and selective engagement with missionary and state medicine. Their decisions illuminate a medical world defined not by passivity but by choice, negotiation, and discernment.

Game Reflection and Artist Statement: Patient Zero

This paper is a brief reflection and some photos of the social deduction card game I created called Patient Zero.

Video Game Overview: Stray (2022)

This paper analyzes the world design in Stray (2022) and draws connections between the game design and the now demolished Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong, China.

Bitter Fruit: Position Paper

In this position paper, I take on the role of advisor to President Eisenhower and attempt to dissuade him from executing the 1954 American Coup on Guatemala. The arguments are based on the book, "Bitter Fruit" by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer.

A Textual Analysis of "Black Skin, White Masks" by Frantz Fanon

A Summary of "Orientalism" by Edward W. Said

A Summary of "Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam" by Dr. Chouki El Hamel

The Opium Question

A primary source analysis of "The Opium Question Among Foreigners in China, 1836-1837"

The Modernization of Japan: Meji Era

The Meji Era in Japan (circa 1860s-1890s) - While optimistic for many, the promise of modernization fell short for others.

They Called it Superstition -- A History of "Old Wives Tales"

There’s a phrase most of us have heard our whole lives: old wives’ tales. We use it almost without thinking, usually to dismiss some piece of folk wisdom or superstition. But where does that phrase actually come from? The history behind those three words turns out to be more revealing and more charged than it might initially seem.

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