SOPHIE LORENSCHEIT (Mentor: Clark Knowles)
With funding from the January Research Opportunity Program (JROP), I wrote four fictional short stories, each of which deals with a different disadvantaged person, how their daily life is shaped by social inequality, and how it impacts their emotional state of mind. Drawing from what I learned in my Introductory Psychology and Criminology classes, I laid special emphasis on the character building and development behind my stories. Sociological insights from Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, by Steven Barkan, helped me bring depth to the characters as they interacted with their environment. This book also helped me choose which social inequalities to focus on.
Although I originally intended to write six short stories to demonstrate how widespread social inequality is and how many people are affected, I learned that to make each story authentic and intentional, I had to write fewer of them but do more research beforehand. That research included reading excepts from relevant biographies and reading blog posts of impacted people; visiting Atlanta and seeing for myself the parts that displayed signs of social inequality; and talking to people on the street to gain their perspectives and learn about their feelings and memories. I wanted to portray social inequality as it is in daily life – not in an academic or abstract sense, but real and gritty. As a result, my characters are victims and shown as trapped in a circle they cannot escape, even if they are aware of it.
Social inequality is a societal chokehold. The more I researched the topic to illustrate the characters accurately, the more frustrated I became. It was sad, but unavoidable: None of my characters got a happy ending. Neither did they get a conclusion. The stories turned out more as an excerpt of their lives – lives that were marked by inequality before the readers joined and will probably always continue to be.
Personally, this project gave me the opportunity to gain new insights on social inequality. The detailed and critical nature of the writing process helped me tap into different perspectives and develop a feeling for the struggles of my characters, despite the fact that I have not experienced some of these inequalities myself. Deciding how the characters would handle certain situations made me explicitly aware of the (limited) options they had. Reading so much about social inequality inspired me, and I have a lot of ideas that I want to put into words in the coming months. Whether they will turn into their own research projects or be added to my creative portfolio remains to be determined.
My major and interests focus on discussing theory, which I love. At the same time, I wish there was more of an output and positive impact on our community. The more I learned about social inequality, the more determined I became to study international law and make a positive impact on society by advocating for human rights. I also discovered a fascination with social inequality as it relates to Latin American culture, and I want to dive deeper into this area. I appreciated how this project allowed me to take my collected knowledge and put it into a form where it can reach people and hopefully inspire them to act – because, as we know, emotions drive action. I hope that my readers will feel the pain, the disappointment, and helplessness that my characters experience and that I experienced while writing. The JROP experience for me was not about what I would achieve – it was always about what my stories would achieve. They were intended as a wake-up call to anyone indifferent to the real harm social inequality brings, and to make people uncomfortable.
Sophie Lorenscheit is a legal and political philosophy and justice studies dual major and psychology minor.
