Noor's Portfolio
I started out with a research essay I wrote about the rise and fall of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. The structure of this piece follows your standard essay format: intro, body paragraphs, conclusion. In deciding what genres to explore in reconfiguring its content, I wanted to break away from the rigid structure of academic writing and create a more engaging experience for readers.
In pursuit of bringing the same history to life, I tapped into the art of story-telling in my first experiment. Exploring the genre of creative non-fiction, I interviewed people who lived through the history I cover in my origin piece and intertwined their experiences with historical fact. The interviews were incredibly enriching and from them I derived what I would be focusing on in the second experiment.
From the interview responses, I was particularly struck by the extent of state control on the media landscape under the Ba'ath regime. I decided to explore this topic further through the genre of an Opinion Editorial. In this piece, I begin to trace the transformation of Iraq's media landscape post-Ba'ath through the focus on access to information. This experiment is the format I did end up choosing for my fully realized project.
In this wave, I experiment with creating a script for a podcast. My inspiration for both its structure and tone came from the podcast "Blowback" and specifically, their format for the season on the Iraq War. For the script, I hone in on the Bush administration's narrative for going into war and actively critique it.
Here you will find a piece I wrote in class (unrelated to this project). We were introduced to the Moth writing style, and as a class activity, we were tasked with starting to free style a Moth story. I found myself writing about my first time behind the wheel. This piece starts to develop my inner-dialogue during it all, the anxiety, the fear, the pressure. Hope you enjoy taking a glimpse into what my 16 year old self was feeling during a pretty cool milestone in my life!