Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Alchemical Transformation: Consciousness And Matter, Form And Information, Peat, F. David

Journal of Conscious Evolution

There has grown up, relatively recently, a nucleus of interests called ìconsciousness studiesî in which physicists and mathematicians, as well as neuroscientists and psychologists, attempt to discover the origins of ìconsciousnessî within the brain. A variety of approaches are employed, some based upon neural networks, others that argue that consciousness must have a quantum mechanical basis, or involve self-organization arising out of non-linearity. A common thread is a certain sense of optimism that ìthe question of consciousnessî will yield its secrets in the same way as, for example, the genetic code or sub-atomic matter. I must confess that I find …

Transition To Transcendence: Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Mathematical Yoga, Baruss, Imants

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Mathematicians--those who develop new mathematics--spend much of their time proposing the existence of mathematical constructions whose existence they then proceed to try to prove from the mathematics that has already been developed. Following that, they often try to prove that those mathematical constructions are unique, that there are no other constructions with the same characteristics. In practice, it is often easier to prove the uniqueness of a mathematical construction than its existence, so a mathematician may proceed by first proving uniqueness, as though the mathematical construction existed, and then using clues from the uniqueness proof to prove existence. I want …

The End Of Death? Conscious Life In Global Cyberspace, Purdy, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, in talking about the magical structure of consciousness[1], states: "All directing implies a consciousness process" (EPO 49). And so to die is to become not consciousness, to lose the power to direct, ultimately to lose control over our own destiny. Being only human, and realizing that death is often more real than an afterlife that we cannot experience while alive[2], we actively fight any loss of control-we fight the passage to death. In that directedness, the glimmerings of which began with magical consciousness, and that came to full awareness …

A General Introduction To Integral Theory And Comprehensive Mapmaking, Saiter, Sean M.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

While attempting to keep to the larger vision of integral studies as a whole I shall be proposing a rudimentary outline of an underlying assertion primarily based upon the works of Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan (based on the work of Clare Graves), and Mark B. Woodhouse. Robert Kegan, Howard Gardner, James Mark Baldwin, Susan Cook-Greuter, and Carol Gilligan are influences working in the background.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when trying to understand integral studies as a field is that a fundamental, underlying message in Wilber's, Graves', Beck's, Gebser's, and Woodhouse's …

Eulogy For The Republic: Virgil's Anti-Augustan Longing For The Roman Republic In The Aeneid, Dylan Mcauley

Arts & Sciences Student Symposium

For centuries many scholars have identified the Aeneid as a piece of propaganda designed to help legitimize the regime of Augustus Caesar. However, this analysis finds that there is an important subtext in the piece through which Virgil criticizes the Emperor. By analyzing the direct and indirect references to Augustus and potential commentary behind those references, it becomes clear the Virgil opposed many of Augustus' actions, longing for a return to the principles and governance of the Roman Republic and seeking to remind the readers of the glory of the Republic through his commentary in the piece.

The Camel Corps Experiment, Abigail K. Major

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

“Did you know there was a push to create a Camel Corps right before the beginning of the American Civil War?” This certainly seems like an interesting piece of trivia to share around the dinner table, but what was the Camel Corps and what insights can it provide on U.S. military thinking in the mid-19th century? I believe that the Camel Corps Experiment, regardless of whether it was deemed an utter failure or not, demonstrated progressive military thought and the desire of its advocates to explore advancements in both mobility and technology for military practices. [excerpt]

Sounds Of The Singing Revolution: Alo Mattiisen, Popular Music, And The Estonian Independence Movement, 1987-1991, Allison Brooks-Conrad

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Estonian identity, history, and music are deeply intertwined. In the late 20^th century, when faced with Soviet domination, Estonians relied on music to carry their message as part of their independence movement, which was eventually referred to as the Singing Revolution. Composer Alo Mattiisen emerged as one of the most influential members of the Estonian music scene in the 1980s, not only by defining Estonian popular music as political and activist, but also by developing experimental reinterpretations of larger Western popular music traditions. We can view Alo Mattiisen’s contributions to the Estonian music scene of the 1980s as a …

Music Is The "Noise Of Remembering" Tracing The Origins, Influences, And Connectivities Of West African Music, Adam Friedman

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The popularity and universal reach of music genres such as Jazz and Hip Hop attest to the idea that these forms have been long established as a vital part of global musical culture. For people who are familiar with Afrocentric music, it is clear that styles such as Jazz and Hip Hop are rooted in, and inextricably linked with, African culture and history. What is more difficult to make sense of, however, is how and why transplanted African culture came to have such wide reaching impact in the new contexts in which it was taken up – because the stories …

The Thirty Years War(S), Logan Kilsdonk

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The Thirty Years War, spanning 1618-1648, has been described as the last great war of religion despite pitting Catholics against Catholics and Protestants against Protestants. In addition to religion not playing the role it is supposed to have, a closer look at the motives and goals of the major participants reveals that what we have called a single war is actually much more easily understood as four: The Bohemian Rebellion (1618-1624), Denmark's War with the Emperor (1625-1629), Sweden's War with the Emperor (1630-1648) and France's War with the Habsburgs (1635-1648/59). These four wars are related and sometimes overlap, but they …

Santería In A Globalized World: A Study In Afro-Cuban Folkloric Music, Nathan Montgomery

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The Yoruban people of modern-day Nigeria worship many deities called orichas by means of singing, drumming, and dancing. Their aurally preserved artistic traditions are intrinsically connected to both religious ceremony and everyday life. These forms of worship traveled to the Americas during the colonial era through the brutal transatlantic slave trade and continued to evolve beneath racist societal hierarchies implemented by western European nations. Despite severe oppression, Yoruban slaves in Cuba were able to disguise orichas behind Catholic saints so that they could still actively worship in public. This initial guise led to a synthesis of religious practice, language, and …

Professional Risk, Russell A. Perkins

Theses and Dissertations

This essay suggests a reading of Harold Rosenberg’s “American Action Painters” and John Cage’s “Experimental Music”, texts in which notions of chance and risk are mobilized to account for artistic production; I argue that this rhetoric mischaracterizes the relation between artist and material, confusing the labor involved in taking chances.

Electronics And The Music Of Miles Davis, Darren E. Shekailo

Theses and Dissertations

Miles Davis produced a wealth of music relying on the use of electronic instruments and new technology. With their adoption, the famous trumpeter began his “electric” period. Examining the electric period of Davis’s career helps us trace the profound impact of electronic instruments and technological advances on his music.

On Memory And The Radical Black Imagination, Todd Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

On Memory and the Radical Black Imagination is an exploration of the personal, sociological, and historical elements contained within the art of T. Eliott Mansa (Todd Eliott Thomas) Mansa examines the memorialization of black death and the radical black imagination. included are illustrations of specific art works and descriptions.

Evolutions Of The Soldier Hero: Eastwood’S American Sniper And The Iraq War, Justin Gillingham

Honors Projects

Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014) tells the story of Chris Kyle. However, it also participates in an extensive cinematic traditional by making use of the soldier-hero archetype. The soldier-hero is a cinematic historical figure representing a member of the armed services whose characteristics reflect the war in which they participate. Beginning with World War I, and then moving through World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq, the soldier-hero archetype develops in an iterative manner with each respective war. Eastwood’s film, taking place in the Iraq War film genre, both fulfills and breaks away from conventions traditionally ascribed to Iraq War films. …

Murmur/Murmuro, Paola M. Di Tolla

Theses and Dissertations

By using repetition or misplacing intonations and accents, etc. one can imitate the slipperiness of spoken language. However, it is the accidental slippage that I find most revealing and exciting because it allows for two conversations to exist in one. Once spoken language is transcribed as text, it is put through another filter and the risk of [accidental] slippage increases by a different measure. Fingers don’t keep up or autocorrect insists on taking matters into its own hands.

Generating Audio Using Recurrent Neural Networks, Andrew Pfalz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Long Short Term Memory cells are a type of recurrent neural network that perform well when predicting sequence data. This works presents four approaches to modeling audio data. The models are trained to predict either raw audio samples or magnitude spectrum windows based on prior input audio. In a process called sampling, the models can then be employed to generate new audio using what they learned about the data they were trained on.

Four methods for sampling are presented. The first has the model predict a vector for each vector in the input. The second has the model predict one …

Bending Gender In French Literature, Jacey Flatte

LSU Master's Theses

This paper looks at French literature that defies binary and heteronormative gender roles and identities. The literature spans from the seventeenth- to the nineteenth-century. My goal is not only to bring these pieces of literature to light, proving that non-binary genders have existed long before the recent liberal LGBTQIA+ movement, but also to help modernize these identities from the past. In doing this, I aim to explain that contemporary gender identities are not new, but timeless. The experiences seen in this literature are strikingly similar to how people experience gender today. As a result, I hope that readers will be …

The Body In Pain / The Body In Ecstasy, Shannon Kenny

LSU Master's Theses

The Body in Pain / The Body in Ecstasy is a series of short lyric essays/extended poems which catalogue major discriminatory movements against disabled people in the 20th and 21st century, specifically in the United States. My work contains duel storylines, using these movements/categories of violence as frames for my own personal narrative, and connecting individual experience to larger historical structures. I do this to disrupt the notion that history is disconnected from the present, and showcase how humans are built by context, where personal and political are inexorably intertwined, and social development is tied to both the body and …

The Accompaniment Techniques Of British Organists, Dallin Baldwin, Don Cook

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of my research was to better understand the choral accompaniment techniques of English organists. Most of the choral music that is performed in the United States today is accompanied by the piano. Yet there are great choral masterpieces that are neglected because there are no organists that have sufficient training and experience to perform them. In Great Britain, however, choirs are often accompanied by organists. Several of the top choirs in the world are located in Great Britain and have resident organists to accompany them. In my research, I studied the techniques of English organists in accompanying choirs.

七月派翻译家研究, Qingyang Gui

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

中国现代文学流派“七月派”强调文学创作中的“主观战斗精神”和“精神奴役创伤”，因其在文学领域异质凸显，与代表主流文化的文艺思想不尽契合，导致了 1955年中华人民共和国的第一大“文字狱”。自20世纪80年代以来，胡风事件及胡风文艺思想重新进入学术研宄视野，成为史学界和文艺界的研宄热点，但迄今为止国内外关于七月派研宄的现状并不令人满意，正如周燕芬所指出的，“现在的研宄成果中，实在留下不少史料的空白或者因史料的不信、疑虑、矛盾而带来的所谓‘分寸’，所谓‘留有余地’，说到底，依然是研宄的一种不清楚和未完成状态”（周燕芬，2013:6)。而就七月派翻译家研宄而言，也存在诸多研宄缺口。本论文论题有三：1、七月派作为“新文学的骄傲”， 其领袖人物胡风的文艺理论特质何在？影响了怎样一个文学流派及翻译家群体？2、七月派翻译家以“启蒙现实主义”为译介出发点，形成了怎样的译介主张？3、从翻译政治学、描写翻译学理论、生存心态等视角探讨以胡风、满涛、 绿原、呂荧等为代表的七月派翻译家具有哪些群体特征？本论文得出以下结论: 七月派翻译群体是我国翻译史上不可忽视的群体，他们基于启蒙现实主义思想的译介主张是以为时代和战斗而翻译，为文学经典生成而翻译，为民族文学发展而翻译为主要特征的。而胡风“为时代、为战斗而翻译”的“武器”翻译论， 满涛“传达精义”的翻译观，绿原“整体效果”、翻译“异同”性、名著重译 “接力赛”等译论，呂荧“谐意谐音”的诗歌翻译理念等等，既是对七月派翻译主张的体现和深化，又是各自翻译实践的重要指导思想。本研宄原创性在于: 在追根溯源七月派的源流、定义及其影响的基础上，从活生生的研宄对象及历史语境出发，对胡风文艺理论影响七月派翻译主张形成的过程以及七月派翻译家的文化生态作出相对可靠的历史复原，让读者对该时期的翻译历史全貌具有更清晰的了解，这在近现代翻译史研宄上不啻为一个重要发现。

Setting The Record Straight, Nathaniel Pockras

Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America has existed since the 18^th century, and the actions of its governing Synod are published in annual minutes, but the actions have never been recorded in a single catalogue. An organizational schema is proposed, improving on the schemata of similar catalogues for other Presbyterian denominations: actions are listed chronologically and assigned subject headings to facilitate the creation of a thesaurus. Inclusion criteria are specified, and the catalogue is described in a manner approachable without specialized training.

Freedom Through Mental Health In Crystal Wilkinson's "The Birds Of Opulence", Lucy Lansing '18

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of The Revolution In The Centennial And Bicentennial Eras, Anna Doremus '18

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

Hume, Miracles, And Mathematics: A Case Study For The Use And Prevalence Of Probabilistic Argumentation Within Biblical Studies, Joshua Brickell '18

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

The Divine "Sophia": The Development Of Jewish And Hellenistic Thought In The Christology Of The New Testament, James Bergman '19

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

Sound And Silence: A Psychoanalytic Analysis Of "The Medium", Margaret Mccurry '18

Furman Humanities Review

2018 Meta E. Gilpatrick Prize Essay

Table Of Contents, And Introductory Information, Gretchen Braun Editor

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

Furman Humanities Review. Volume 29, April 2018, Gretchen Braun Editor

Furman Humanities Review

No abstract provided.

The Liturgical Lives Of Pets, Howard Schaap

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Stewardship draws our hearts upward and downward, to not only the transcendent and sublime but also the immanent and mundane."

Posting about lessons learned from pet ownership from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/the-liturgical-lives-of-pets/

Understanding “Southern” Identities And Confederate Iconography: Internal Orientalism, (Mis)Representation, And Social Media, Robert W. Perham

LSU Master's Theses

In light of recent debates surrounding Confederate iconography (flags, statues and symbols), this thesis has three foci. First, the continued construction of the American “South” as an internal “Other.” Second, the reactive perspectives taken by self-identifying “Southerners” who both support and denounce Confederate iconography. Third, the role that social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) have as sites that both disseminate hegemonic discourse and facilitate resistance. Drawing on a Foucauldian discourse analysis of content (news articles, posts, videos, images, memes) published and discussed on social media, I explore whether "the South" continues to be portrayed as a lesser "Other" nationally, …