Philosophy Commons^™

Sauron: Weirdly Sexy, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

A popular meme depict Galadriel and Frodo admitting that Sauron is "weirdly sexy," a humorous allusion to The Rings of Power’s Halbrand. The show's controversial revelation of Halbrand as Sauron highlights the differences between Tolkien’s construction of Second and Third Age Sauron as an attractive or admirable leader compared to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of him as a monster or disembodied fiery eyeball. This, in turn, has implications for the geopolitical order of Middle-earth in which many people legitimately might wish to be on Sauron’s side. Acknowledging Sauron's "sexiness" may allow us to see Tolkien's world system in a new …

Beyond Dissociation And Appropriation: Evaluating The Politics Of U.S. Psychology Via Hermeneutic Interpretation Of Culturally Embedded Presentations Of Yoga, Genelle N. Benker

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Psychology in the United States (U.S.) is partially constituted by a cultural history of intellectual imperialism that undermines its altruistic intent and prevents disciplinary reflexivity. The scholarship and clinical application of Yoga exemplifies the way U.S. psychology continues to give lived authority to imperialism as part of the neoliberal agenda. Through a hermeneutic literature analysis of two source Yogic texts and peer-reviewed articles that exemplify the dominant discourse on Yoga in U.S. psychology, this dissertation identified themes that describe culturally embedded presentations of Yoga and their sociopolitical implications. Through interpretation, Yoga was conceptualized as: (a) a 5,000 year-old tradition that …

Course Syllabus (W19 Online) Coli 331t--Television Culture: "Lens, Mirror, Screen: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

Or a conjuncture of three moments in the dialectic of television as technical apparatus and cultural practice. In this course, we will read George Orwell’s 1984, view Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of the novel, and consider a number of critical texts in order to think the psychological and social implications of television as an instrument of control, manipulation, and knowledge production. What, we ask, are the implications, in both 1984 and concrete experience, of light-speed communication capabilities for sense perception, consciousness, language, and awareness? In its dissemination of images and information, how does television impede and/or facilitate politics …

Post-Pastoral And The Nonmodern: Jean Giono’S Engagement With Nature, Gina Stamm

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Dismissal of the pastoral as naïve and hostile to progress echoes the critiques which Bruno Latour, in We Have Never Been Modern, makes of what he calls the “antimodern” sensibility. Rather than advocating for an abandonment of the past, however, Latour puts forth a position he calls “nonmodern,” one that allows for recognition of the value of the past and of the natural without idolizing it, that does not demand the forward motion of the modern impulse. While eschewing the “modern” label, he seeks a way to resolve contemporary dichotomies of man vs. nature, human vs. technological, etc., which …

Beyond Anti-Semitism, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

Focusing on internal contradictions within the Israeli left, this essay considers the impact of the historical legacy of anti-Semitism on everyday thinking about Israel and the Palestinian territories. Contesting the view that to criticize Israel is to engage in anti-Semitic defamation, it offers an historical account of how Israel's actions in the West Bank have come to be immunized from conscientious criticism. It also documents how progressive media outlets in contemporary Israel have silenced or otherwise marginalized Israel's most active critics.

Politics And Play: The National Stage And The Player King In Shakespeare’S Henry V And Macbeth, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Quidditas

This article examines the intersection between theatrical and political discourse in early modern England. It argues that that the dialog surrounding early modern discourses of monarchy intersects specifically with theatrical notions of performance by means of the social contract implicit in English Common Law. The link between the political stage and the theater is perhaps most transparent in the metaphor of the theatrum mundi. Because the theatrum mundi requires the active participation of the audience, they must always be included in the theatrum mundi as participatory citizens in its illusory world. They are drawn into the conversation between stage …

Politics And Culture At The Jacobean Court: The Role Of Queen Anna Of Denmark, Courtney Erin Thomas

Quidditas

Until recently, analyses of the Jacobean court marginalized the important role played by James I and VI’s queen consort, Anna of Denmark. While historians and literary critics now acknowledge that Anna was a key player in patronage networks and artistic circles at the time, the extent of her political involvement remains largely unexplored in favor of portraying her solely as a cultural figure. This essay seeks to examine the connections between Anna’s cultural and political activities and suggests that, by viewing Anna’s involvements thorough a dichotomous lens as being either political or cultural, a truly textured and nuanced understanding of …

Temples Of Caesar: The Politics Of Renaissance Georgics Translations, Kimberly Johnson

Quidditas

Between the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign and the regicide of Charles I, three major English translations of Virgil’s middle poem, the Georgics, were published. Each translation appeared at a moment of religio-political crisis in England, a coincidence made more significant by the ambivalent political stance of Virgil’s text, which simultaneously communicates praise for Octavian and suspicion about an imperial program that disenfranchised the agricultural classes, an oversight which Virgil records in the Georgics as impiety. This paper charts the ways in which seemingly innocent translation decisions manage to perform a critical interrogation of monarchal authority, particularly as it …

Review Essay: Some Thoughts On The Greater Integration Of Islamic Sources Into The Wider Framework Of Medieval History, John J. Curry

Quidditas

The study of Islam has been attracting greater interest in recent years, due to high-profile political and economic events. In addition, the rise of world history programs has generated a need for resources by which both students and faculty alike can strengthen their knowledge in this field. Still, general knowledge on the field is limited. This disparity has occurred, in part, because the field of Islamic history, especially in its formative and medieval periods, has been oriented toward specialists rather than a general audience. Often, world history sourcebooks are content to give only short selections from religious sources such as …

Review Essay: Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies And The Body Politic: Discourses Of Social Pathology In Early Modern England, Julian Yates

Quidditas

Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. xi + 197 pp. $64.95. ISBN 0-521-59405-7.

Review Essay: Wayne, Valerie, Ed. The Matter Of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism Of Shakespeare, Peggy Muñoz Simonds

Quidditas

Wayne, Valerie, ed. The Matter oof Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. 1991. x + 227 pp. $48.95 / $18.95.

Gajowski, Evelyn. The Art of Loving: Female Subjectivity and Male Discursive Traditions in Shakespeare's Tragedies. University of Delaware Press, Newark 1992. 153 pp. $32.50.

Sir Clyomon And Sir Clamydes: A Revaluation, Peter T. Hadorn

Quidditas

Long dismissed as an immature play with no intrinsic merit, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (ca. 1570-1583) quite thoroughly debates issues of contemporary political interest. This essay seeks to restore Clyomon from its undistinguished position in Renaissance studies by showing how it dramatically supports Queen Elizabeth's use of chivalry as an ideology of power and order and criticizes military adventurism. By reading this play as a political text, in this essay I employ the methodologies of New Historicism, which identifies literature as only one of many cultural discourses taking part in the negotiation of power. "Representations of the world in …

Review Essay: Leonard Tennenhouse, Power On Display: The Politics Of Shakespeare's Genres, Peggy Muñoz Simonds

Quidditas

Leonaard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres, Methuen, 1986.

Machiavelli's The Prince: A Lexical Enigma, Jeane Luere

Quidditas

Italians today, especially Florentines, unreservedly venerate their native son, Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th century Italian political figure, along with Francesca Petrarcha, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti; they attach no stigma, no unfavorable connotation, to the adjective "Machiavellian," coined from the name so famous in literature and legend. An American abroad encounters this total veneration of Machiavelli with some bewilderment, for we are prone to attitudes like that of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote, "We doubt whether any names in literary history be so generally odious as that of Machiavelli."