Letter from the Editors

Dear NOSTRA Readers,

The Newcomb Scholars Program is a feminist research and leadership program that selects 20 intellectually curious and deeply motivated individuals to be scholars every year. Throughout our four years in our cohort, we develop our writing skills, deepen our scholarship, and ultimately learn in an environment forged in the spirit of gender equity. Each spring semester, we take one class with our cohort. We begin by studying the history of women in higher education, moving then to case study writing, and ending with learning about feminist epistemologies in the hope that they will prepare us for the academic culmination of our Newcomb Scholars involvement: an Honors Thesis.

Besides the academic enrichment it provides, this program allows us to develop as people, as feminists, and as creators. The Newcomb Scholars Program has undoubtedly impacted our time at Tulane beyond just academic work, so what about the projects we create outside of the classroom? Does art not also have a place in feminist scholarship? Short stories? Essays?

NOSTRA: The Newcomb Scholars Literary Magazine aims to provide an answer to those questions and a place for our community to celebrate the things we create.

This magazine is a collaboration between editors, authors, artists, and poets. From gathering submissions to designing the final layout, we have strived to work with our authors, craft the vision for our debut issue together, and reflect our feminist research in a multitude of ways.

Though we are young, the last 20-some years of our lives have made us witnesses to changes in what it means to be a woman and feminist. Hence, this issue’s theme: The 21st Century Feminine. From art about nature to musings on Roe v. Wade’s overturning to poetry about aging, motherhood, and identity, this magazine is meant to show our readers how young, creative, brilliant young women think about their identity and place in the world.

We are proud to present the very first issue of NOSTRA: The Newcomb Scholars Literary Magazine

-NOSTRA Editors Emma, Liv, and Mika

Pieces We're Proud Of Physician-Assisted Death Does Not Undermine Human Morality

By Catarina Vazquez

Physician-assisted death is a procedure that allows terminally ill patients to legally end their lives with the assistance and supervision of a medical professional. Advances in medical technology and medicine prolong life for many Americans, but do not guarantee a quality of life. This essay provides a brief history of physician-assisted death, its political polarization, and makes the argument that allowing people to choose physician-assisted death does not undermine a generally accepted view of human morality.

Gladwell’s Flawed Logic: The True “Story of Success”

By Lillian Milgram

This essay provides an analysis of Gladwell’s Theory of Sucess and a criticism on his recipe for success using Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Outliers. Finally, it makes the case that the recipe for success is a person’s objective recognition of their innate strengths and weaknesses, conceptualization of their dreams, and procurement of the needed traits they are lacking. Without introspection, paired with a rational worldview, ultimate success cannot be reached.

Girl Online

By Liv Tanaka-Kekai

Comic book fan communities are primarily composed of white, heterosexual men. As these communities have migrated online, the spaces where they discuss comic books have become increasingly dangerous to women. Even so, the early Internet also provided a forum for women to realize their opinions and disseminate information like never before, as is the case of Gail Simone, creator of the landmark blog Women in Refrigerators. In the decades since the original publication of the blog, many changes have happened within the industry that are reflective of the role the Internet plays in modern-day fandom as well as the proliferation of violence towards women even as they make representational gains.

Litany of Agency (Lost & Found)

By Khira Hickbottom

my body belongs to a second hand mattress, blood-stained fitted sheet in a room interrupted by my imposition to star and stripe and stagnation silent smothers while i sleep but never find a way to rest my body belongs to boys who quantify reduce for the sake of their surveys and make a simple thing of me to boys who take, boys in blue, boys in bars whose hands wander up backs inverted in avoidance my body belongs to a mother who dreams better of me, believes in the impossibility of our suburban perfection to a father’s whose nation i’ve never seen, its splitting and rage, insatiable and reverberating since before the thought of me my body belongs to her who holds only what I give, reminds me that home is here, happening, haunting to blue januarys and trash day and breathing green on the porch at night to forget, for a moment, that i am not my own