Aesthetics Commons^™

Actualization Through Constraint: An Analysis Of Hegelian Self- Consciousness In Fascism- Exclusionary Expression And In Modular Orchestral Composition, Marisa Kaye Janke

2022 Symposium

How does a conscious entity become aware of itself and its place in the world? According to German Idealist Philosopher G.F.W. Hegel, there are required conditions that facilitate this movement of awareness. Recognition serves as a central requirement, for a consciousness cannot progress in an isolated space. Coexistence allows for referential points, and is often necessary for the actualization of concepts by providing social interactions wherein recognition both of and by others can occur.

This paper illustrates the progression of two such concepts, discourse and musical composition as forms of freedom “in-itself”. They are both imperfect for the promotion of …

Symposium On Thinking With Images: An Enactivist Aesthetics By John Carvalho: Introduction, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The commentaries collected in this symposium were first developed at the “Author Meets Critics” session on John Carvalho’s Thinking with Images: An Enactivist Aesthetics at The American Society for Aesthetics Eastern Division Meeting in Philadelphia on April 17, 2021. We thank Deborah Knight for organizing the papers to be published as a symposium for Contemporary Aesthetics and all the authors for their contributions.

The Disappearance Of The Anti-Aesthetic; The Death Of Fashion, Scrap Evans

Capstone Showcase

In this essay, Scrap explores the connection between famous nihilist and postmodernist theorists, Dadaism, the concept of the anti-aesthetic, and today's high fashion. They provide a history of nihilism and follow its influence through time upon other social, political, and artistic movements. They then make direct connections between famous theorists' prose and famous fashion designers' collections. Finally, they analyze the current state of the fashion world and discuss their plan of action.

V.1 Winter 2022, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Winter 2022 issue is a special edition "art writing capsule," with three zines that each feature a student writing about a work of art, and a fourth zine with an editor's note and postscript. Writing 1 is Angelina Rogers on Salman Toor's "Two Boys with a Dog," Writing 2 is Maxwell Fertik on Shahzia Sikander's "Epistrophe," and Writing 3 is Sabo Kpade on Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's "Any Number of Preoccupations."

Notices, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Recent Publications, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Once Upon A Time/There Was A Story That Began: Novelty, Endings, And Chronotope In John Barth’S The Tidewater Tales, Zachary K. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of frame tales, genre blending, multi-voiced narration, and circular structure in John Barth’s 1987 novel, The Tidewater Tales. It tracks the isomorphy of Barth’s general aesthetic project, set forth in his essays, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” “The Literature of Replenishment,” and “Very Like an Elephant: Reality Versus Realism,” onto the theoretical aesthetics of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Both Barth and Bakhtin praise the novel its omnivorous capability to accommodate, and juxtaposes conflicting genres against one another; they each see the novelist as an “arranger” or “orchestrator,” who reassembles pre-existing forms to make them …

Aestheticized Tragedy (Karuṇarasa) As An Intellectual Virtue, Lisa Widdison

Comparative Philosophy

In contemporary virtue epistemology, responsibilist intellectual virtues in the tradition of Aristotle's moral theory are acquired character traits involving a motivational component and a success component. The motivational component is an emotion that regulates inquiry but which would ordinarily, and problematically, carry bias. In order to monitor the patterns of fallibility in emotions, reflection can correct beyond perceptual errors or logical fallacies. Emotions which survive reflection are less partial and hold more epistemic valance than egotistical emotions. Since the framework of virtue epistemology might be at a loss for monitoring emotions reflectively, given the fact emotions operate rapidly and tend …

Manila’S Black Nazarene And The Reign Of Bathala, Antonio D. Sison

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of how the dynamics surrounding Manila's Black Nazarene express crucial themes in the Filipino psyche. The article specifically addresses the importance of "felt-experience" (pagdama) in devotion to the Black Nazarene as well as its connections to indigenous Filipino religion.

Catholicism In Context: Religious Practice In Latin America, Gustavo Morello Sj

Journal of Global Catholicism

A critical problem to study Catholicism in the context of Latin American modernity, is that the conceptual tools we use to study religion were designed to understand the transformations that modernity provoked in European religiosity. Studies on the religion of Latin Americans have largely explored the religiosity of the population through surveys that measure attendance, adherence and affiliation. While some anthropologists have explored religious practices among particular groups, we do not know how ordinary, urban Latin Americans practice religion. To fill this gap, a group of researchers from Boston College, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Catholic University of Córdoba, and …

Fraternity, Martyrdom And Peace In Burundi: The Forty Servants Of God Of Buta, Jodi Mikalachki

Journal of Global Catholicism

During Burundi's 1993-2005 civil war, students at Buta Minor Seminary were ordered at gunpoint to separate by ethnicity—Hutus over here, Tutsis over there! They chose instead to join hands and affirm their common identity as children of God. The forty students killed were quickly proclaimed martyrs of fraternity. Their costly solidarity defused the cry for reprisals and continues to inspire Burundians and others on the path of reconciliation. Drawing on fifty interviews with survivors, parents of martyrs, neighbors, religious leaders and other Burundian intellectuals, this essay examines how Burundian Catholics understand the significance of the Buta martyrdom to their …

Editor's Introduction, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Reflections On “Catching The Ghost: House Dance And Improvisational Mastery”, Renee Conroy

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Contemporary Aesthetics recommends first reading Christian Kronsted’s article, “Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,” appearing before this article.

This essay is a constructive response to Christian Kronsted’s “Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,” in which he develops three topics introduced in his novel treatment of this club dance form. First, I consider the nature of the relationship between house dancing and house music. Second, I address the significance of “the vibe” in house culture. Third, I apply these reflections to Kronsted’s three puzzles of improvisational agency to demonstrate that an apt, aesthetic analysis of …

Architecture Emerging From Landscape: A Reading Of Spinoza In Landscape Architecture, Gokhan Balik

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In what follows, Benedict de Spinoza’s ontology of immanence and monism is deployed as a means to launch a rethinking in between landscape and architecture. Public urban landscape, I suggest, is not a static and neutral construction, but a complex system of dynamic relationships within a continuous process of becoming and a generative field of non-oppressive, non-hegemonic power. This study focuses on two temporary structures by different European practices in the Royal Park of Kensington Gardens, in London. This study uses these works to ground a philosophy of radical immanence within our understanding of a contemporary world of landscape architectural …

V.1 Fall 2021, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Fall 2021 issue is formatted as a zine and contains notes from students displayed on their phones and otherwise, along with student creative writing.

Catching The Ghost: House Dance And Improvisational Mastery, Christian Kronsted

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article received the 2020 Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Society for Aesthetics. Contemporary Aesthetics recommends reading Renee Conroy’s article, “Reflections on ‘Catching the Ghost: House Dance and Improvisational Mastery,’” following this article.

I interviewed seven expert house dancers regarding their improvisational practice and discovered several intriguing testimonial consistencies. House dancers articulated a feeling of simultaneously being in control and not in control of their movements. Furthermore, in peak moments of improvisation, interviewees were often surprised by their own capabilities. How do we award artistic credit to someone who is seemingly not aware of his or …

Afterlives Of Discovery: Speculative Geographies In The Colombian Political Landscape, Heidi A. Rhodes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers how the temporal remains of the Age of Discovery and its doctrine persist in a racial-geographical ranking of human and non-human, terrestrial and planetary life and worth. Across this work, I interpret a series of historical moments and their objects of speculative geographic cultural production: a state mapping program, a painting, a biomedical project, a de-monumenting protest action. As repositories of codified belief and repertoires of Discovery’s political and affective modes of racialized domination, I read these materials from the Colombian archives of coloniality and liberalism to illuminate their implications for Colombia’s national becoming as a liberal …

Essays On Communication, Shawn M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One of the central issues of contemporary philosophy and biology is the nature of communication. Early accounts of communication tended to focus on just one side of the communicative divide – the speaker side or the receiver side – and took as their starting point the case of human language. Animal communication, historically, was largely treated as a special case. Now things are different. Now it appears we might have a model that makes sense of sign use in both the human and animal realms and brings together both sides of the signaling divide. It’s still to be seen, however, …

What We Owe To Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility Of Fiction Creators, Kathryn Wojtkiewicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to provide a theoretical underpinning for the belief that creators of fiction should dedicate time to diversifying the cast of characters in their fictions, and to avoiding harmful stereotypes when doing so. I establish this as a hermeneutical responsibility: because of the epistemic influence fictions can wield over their audiences, trafficking in harmful stereotypes of marginalized identities (instances of which I call Bad Representation Problems) or excluding marginalized identities entirely (which I call No Representation Problems) from one’s fictions can reinforce harmful beliefs about real people with those identities. The more popular the fiction, …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …