To demonstrate my intercultural competency, I chose my final essay from ENG-241 (British Literature I), which I took in the fall semester of 2023 over twelve weeks. I particularly enjoyed this assignment because prior to it, I had the opportunity to study Natura Exenterata, medicinal textbooks, and floriography within Victorian British culture for my honors project with Ms. Katherine Widner, which also gave me the opportunity to explore the lives of women who fought their way into STEM during that time period. Having studied the topic in-depth prior to writing an alternative viewpoint with a more ecological and historically relevant analysis made the entire process significantly easier than it would have been starting from scratch. 

My essay is titled “Althea Talbot’s Natura Exenterata Through the Lens of EcoCriticism and Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution,” and, as the title states, it primarily explored my thoughts and in-depth analysis of Althea Talbot’s Natura Exenterata as well as Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution through the lens of Ecocriticism and Feminism literary theories. While an essay exploring women in science in the early 16th century may not initially come across as an artifact that demonstrates intercultural competency, it allowed me to recognize that the traditional narrative of the scientific revolution excluded and marginalized women’s contribution to science in early British culture, as well as ignored ecological consequences due to such. Nevertheless, women of all different backgrounds fought together against the limitations of the scientific revolution and successfully published numerous herbal textbooks—my essay highlighting Natura Exenterata, in particular. 

The goals I had selected previously for this artifact were to choose one specific culture to study in-depth and write about and to study how America has impacted other cultures and present my knowledge in writing. I successfully accomplished the first, but the second was not a focus for this particular assignment, as it primarily highlighted British culture and its impacts rather than America's. The first, however, was not as measurable as I would have liked, and I felt that two better and more specific goals for this assignment were to analyze the marginalization of women within a specific culture and to explore cultural differences within a different time period. 

The first goal, analyzing the marginalization of women within a specific culture, I was able to accomplish specifically for British culture and, more particularly, British scientific societies. Within my essay, I explored the challenges women faced in trying to join scientific societies and the patriarchal structures deeply embedded within British culture during that time. I also explored the bridges of solidarity built between thousands of women of entirely different backgrounds who desired to create change and challenge the cultural biases within the scientific movements, as well as share their ecological knowledge with other women and play a part in scientific progress. 

For the second goal, to explore cultural differences within a different time period, my essay focused on British culture in the 1600s, which gave me the opportunity to compare and analyze the differences in how women from different cultural backgrounds were treated as a general during that time period, but also within patriarchal scientific communities. While I did not specifically include it within the essay, I had the opportunity to compare and contrast the progress that present society has made through challenging cultural bias over time and gradually reversing the often deeply embedded inequalities and structures that had previously restricted women’s participation in scientific discovery, recognition, and progress.

Intercultural competence is something that grows continually with exposure and with efforts toward understanding and communicating appropriately and effectively with people from different backgrounds and cultures, and something that cultivates values such as empathy, respect, reciprocity, open-mindedness, and critical awareness. Being able to empathize and communicate across cultural boundaries is of great importance in any career choice, and it is something that will help me significantly in my future career, academics, and personal life. Fortunately, I have already had opportunities to improve and apply my intercultural competence to specific scenarios, both inside and outside the classroom. My father and his side of the family are from Argentina, which also allowed me to grow up culturally aware and immersed in a culture different from that of the U.S.