The Divine Shell

Winner of the Earl R. Miner Outstanding Senior Thesis Prize, issued by Princeton University May 2024 

Advised by Paul Nadal

My thesis draws from a diverse assemblage of literary and visual texts—South Korean artist Lee Bul’s exhibition, “Live Forever,” Ling Ma’s novel, Severance, and Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai’s film, 2046—to explore the generative concept of the “divine shell.” The term was originally coined by Lee in an interview on “Live Forever,” and in my project I remodel the concept of the divine shell into my own, defining it as the vessel through which one fabricates fantastical memories: memories of things we may have never directly experienced ourselves, memories we must invent into being, memories of things that never even happened. Through my analysis of the divine shell, I seek to unearth the peculiar ways through which fantastical memories are the building blocks of our most intimate relationships and collective communities. 

I propose that the family unit is a kind of divine shell, a “self-contained, self-inventing machine where the memories of the family members are continuously inherited and reproduced by the other members,” and that the relationship between immigrant parent and child in particular is conducted through the prism of fantastical memories. Furthermore, I analyze the divine shells that haunt separated lovers—displaced by migration and missed connections, hearts weathered by the seasons of time—and the fantasy lives and projections that haunt the spaces between them. Lastly, I explore the geopolitical applications of the divine shell, considering how cities like New York City, Hong Kong, and Seoul serve as a palimpsest onto which fantasies are repeatedly projected. This project reforges simplistic divides between “real” and “false” memories, instead illuminating the centrality of fantasy to mediating and reconstituting the past.

I’ll meet you in another life

Written with support from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Department, under the tutelage of Yiyun Li  

A collection of 7 short stories investigating the curious tides of time and chance: serendipitous collisions, accidents that become destiny, paths that are so close but will never cross. 

bitter root

Written with support from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Department, under the tutelage of Joyce Carol Oates 

A collection of 12 short stories and essays examining how our efforts to preserve family histories are also inherently acts of forgetting. 

Research and Editing Projects

Research Assistant for Donald Burnes’ and Kevin Adler’s book, When We Walk By: Homelessness and the Struggle to End Relational Poverty and Systemic Failure in America (2024) 

Research Assistant for Landon Jones’ book, Celebrity Nation (2023) 

Research Assistant for Paul Nadal’s essay,  “Cold War Remittance Economy: US Creative Writing and the Importation of New Criticism into the Philippines.” American Quarterly, vol. 73 no. 3, 2021, p. 557-595. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2021.0036.