Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Morality As Social Software, Jongjin Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation research is a project to understand morality better through the concept of ‘Social Software.’ The dissertation is, consequently, to argue that the morality in a human society functions as a form of social software in the society. The three aspects of morality as social software are discussed in detail: the evolutionary, anti-entropic, and epistemic game-theoretic aspect.

We humans ‘usually’ think that, for example, (a) killing other humans without any necessary reason is morally wrong, and (b) helping other humans in need is morally right. We want to know, in this dissertation research project, why we think in such …

Toward A Posthuman Ecology: Evolutionary Aesthetics In Transatlantic Romanticism, Kaitlin Mondello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation traces the vibrant interchange between Romantic literature and science in the nineteenth century that necessitated new forms of aesthetics. I argue that Romantic writers and scientists co-created a new way of understanding nature that moved away from hierarchical anthropocentrism toward what I call “posthuman ecology.” This work explores shared scientific, literary, and philosophical sources for Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Mary and Percy Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson. I connect aesthetic innovation to ethics to ask more broadly how literature can provide an affective and effective space to represent and engage scientific discourse. I conclude that understanding …

Darwin's Failures: Childless Women In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel, Rose P. O'Malley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses feminist neo-materialist and evolutionary theory to examine non-maternal relations among childless female characters in nineteenth-century British novels. In both the nineteenth century and the present day there is a tendency to use the authority of evolutionary biology to define women as essentially reproductive beings; their entire physical and intellectual organization is seen as geared toward childbearing and childrearing. Reading childless female characters with this tradition in mind, as well as the more open-minded counter-narrative of feminist engagements with evolution, opens up new questions about their meaning: Are they truly biological failures, or not? What avenues of physical …