Philosophy Commons^™

El Arte De "Lágrimas En La Lluvia", Todd K. Mack

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Uno de los elementos destacados de Lágrimas en la lluvia, la excelente novela de ciencia ficción de la madrileña Rosa Montero, es la genial inclusión de obras de arte con fines simbólicos dentro de la obra. Entre estas obras de arte se incluye el famoso cuadro de Johannes Vermeer, Una señora escribiendo una carta con su criada. En este artículo, el dr. Todd Mack muestra cómo este cuadro presagia el principal dilema de la protagonista de la novela. Bruna Husky es una replicante, y por eso sabe exactamente cuánto tiempo vivirá. El conocimiento de su inescapable fin hace …

The Tapestry Of Memory, Kathryn M. Lawson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Rationality points to the complete annihilation and end of a life when the body perishes, and yet when a loved one dies we continue to experience that person in a myriad of ways. The focus of this thesis will be a phenomenological exploration of the earthly afterlife of those we have loved and lost. By positing the subject as always intersubjective and as temporal in nature, this thesis will investigate how we continue to create and interact with the deceased upon the earth. In the introduction, this work will be placed in the context of the phenomenological tradition. The first …

Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif, Ivette Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Differentiating Averroes’ Accounts Of The Metaphysics Of Human Epistemology In His Middle And Long Commentaries On Aristotle’S De Anima, Caleb H A Brown

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Averroes (an Islamic Andalusian philosopher in the 12^th century) discusses the metaphysics of human epistemology extensively, and his socio-religious context sheds light on this discussion. Several of his works, most prominently his three commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, attempt to explain how finite, particular minds interact with universal, eternal intelligibles. Current scholarship focuses on the two longer commentaries, the Middle Commentary and the Long Commentary, but there is no consensus regarding which of these presents Averroes’ final articulation of the metaphysics of human epistemology. Those who maintain that Averroes wrote the Middle Commentary last tend to minimize …

The Space Of Alterity: Language And National Identity In Theodor Adorno And W.G. Sebald, Agata Szczodrak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The German Romantic monolingual paradigm of national identity emerged in the late eighteenth century to establish a mother tongue as a national backbone. This paradigm portrayed multilingualism as destabilizing, impoverishing, and unsuitable for aesthetics. Radicalized by the Nazis and overlooked in postwar debates over German national identity, this paradigm persists in contemporary societies and continues to conceal, belittle, and discredit multilingualism. To oppose that paradigm, this dissertation unveils the enriching and nourishing qualities of foreign languages, presents translingualism as a viable alternative to monolingualism, and reveals how translingual literature creates transnational connectedness. The limitations of the paradigm are traced from …

The Formation Of The Autonomous Woman Through A Hegelian Lens: A Comparative Study Of The British Fin De Siecle "New Woman" And The Post-Mao "Amazing" Woman, Robyn L. Buro

English Department Theses

This thesis utilizes the Hegelian concept of self-consciousness development to explore the formation of the autonomous woman within the New Woman movement of the British fin de siècle and the literature of women writers in 1980s Post-Mao China. The sexual figuration of the New Woman via an unremitting male gaze as well as the absence of individual awareness due to limited reflective self-assessment lead to a misrepresentation of the female figurehead in fin de siècle Britain. Through an in-depth study of literature by Charlotte Mew, Victoria Cross, George Egerton, and Thomas Hardy, the reader can identify key points of failure …

Listening/Reading For Disremembered Voices: Additive Archival Representation And The Zong Massacre Of 1781, Jorge E. Cartaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2017

Steven Hrdlicka

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Delno C. West Award

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The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2017

Kristin M.S. Bezio

University of Richmond

Milton And The Middle Ages: Poetic Analogues And Visual Representations Of The War In Heaven, Expulsion Of The Rebel Angels, And Michael And The Dragon, Steven Hrdlicka

Quidditas

Milton is not typically connected to the Middle Ages as much as to the later Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. Yet many distinctively medieval ideas can be seen in Paradise Lost, especially in the scenes that are related to the War in Heaven. Milton’s account of the war displays a medieval understanding of history in terms of typology in the drama of salvation. Particular details about the war itself such as St. Michael and Lucifer’s sword fight, Jesus’ eventual ending of the war, and the human characteristics of the fallen angels all have clear parallels in longstanding Christian poetic and …

“Dwellers In Shadows” & Abbatial Jerusalem: Reformed Monastic Ideas By The Third Crusade In The Sermons Of Garnerius Of Rochefort And Adam The Scot, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

In the crusading era of the Twelfth Century, a majority of Latin sermons presented Jerusalem as a visio pacis (“vision of peace”) that maintained an original characterization of the city made by Pope Urban II’s 1095 sermon at Clermont that launched the First Crusade. This essay demonstrates significant ways in which Garnerius of Rochefort and Adam the Scot transformed that visio pacis by the end of the twelfth century. For Garnerius (d. 1215)—a bishop at Langres (in northeastern France) from 1193 who wrote against the Amaurian pantheistic heresy, and died at Clairvaux—the traditional Augustinian visio spiritualis of Jerusalem was reversed, …

A Dialogue On Disaster: Antichrists In Jewish And Christian Apocalypses And Their Medieval Recensions, Natalie E. Latteri

Quidditas

This paper examines textual and iconographic representations of antichrist personae in medieval Christian and Jewish manuscripts. Through a common language of polemics, Christians and Jews conflated antichrist personae to represent a more generalized category of apocalyptic antagonist that reflected the most significant temptations and threats to each respective religious community. As will be argued here, the greatest temptation and threat for Christians and Jews alike were those posed by members of the other religious group

The Local Costs Of Religious Reform And The Decline Of Parish Performances In Tudor England, James H. Forse

Quidditas

The volumes of the Records of Early English Drama show that there was a lively tradition of local, religious performances throughout England in the late medieval and early Tudor period. Parishes, large and small, rich and poor, supported plays, processions, ales and other activities like Robin Hood celebrations. Great care, money and time went into creating costumes and staging for these events. Most of these local performances disappeared by the middle of the sixteenth century. A few, notably at York, Chester, Coventry and Norwich, continued into the early 1570s, but focus on these performance “giants” of English theatrical history fails …

“Me Thinks If I Were A Man”: An Analysis Of Dorothy Leigh’S Mother’S Blessing As A Response To Joseph Swetnam, Julia Combs

Quidditas

As one of the first and most popular female-male authored conduct manuals of the seventeenth century, Dorothy Leigh’s The Mother’s Blessing is usually placed in the company of private, domestic literature. However, it does not sit comfortably there. Leigh claims to forget herself, as she rhetorically navigates her way through the constraining but enabling genre of the conduct manual. In this paper, I position Leigh as one of the initial respondents to Joseph Swetnam’s pamphlet The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women . Swetnam also claimed forget himself, as he stirred up the ire of writers in …

Marlowe’S Radical Reformation: Christopher Marlowe And The Radical Christianity Of The Polish Brethren, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Quidditas

Although scholars of both literature and history have made arguments for Christopher Marlowe’s religious belief in Catholicism, the Church of England, and even atheism (which could have been conflated with both by different parties during his lifetime), few consider the belief system of the Polish Brethren, a precursor to Unitarianism established by one Faustus Socinus. This essay uses historical and social network analyses to suggest a close tie between Marlowe’s acquaintances and believers in Socinianism. Clues in Doctor Faustus and Massacre at Paris suggest Marlowe’s skepticism concerning the doctrines of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Furthermore, repeated references to Poland and …

Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now: Rethinking Joan Of Arc In The Twenty-First Century, Timothy M. Thibodeau

Quidditas

Joan of Arc has stood alone among legendary figures of the Middle Ages in her capacity to be appropriated and employed for a host of modern noble causes. However, a fresh examination of Joan’s words and deeds reveals that her aims and objectives were not the universal “greater goods” of modern activists who have used her story to craft their own narratives. I propose that Joan’s continued attractiveness as a cultural icon now faces two major obstacles. First, in the wake of the rapid secularization of modern western society and the evolution of social mores related to gender identity and …

Labouring For The Lost Love, Christine S. Williams

Quidditas

Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost often is considered a “problem play” because of its emphasis on word-play and its extreme “topicality” to a 16th-century, London audience. Yet imaginative staging reveals that the play actually provides excellent opportunities for connecting with our current millennial students and audience members.

Cultivating Our Garden, Daniela Chavez

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Candide by Voltaire promotes social reform in areas dealing with injustice and corrupt power–especially in religious organizations. One biographical book, one master of arts thesis, and two literary criticism essays were read to further expand the reader’s understanding of Candide. The impact religious organizations had on Voltaire and on European societies, their insincerity, and the abuse of their power sparked a fervent desire in Voltaire to criticize such institutions in order to reinvigorate the rights and freedoms of citizens and eliminate the abuses that societies continued to bear. The last phrase in the novel reflects Voltaire’s call to speak …

Voltaire The Feminist, Esdras Castaneda

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Voltaire was not the common Enlightened philosopher. No, he was one of the great ones. And especially critical in the fight for social justice and equality for women. Voltaire did not write about women. Typically, women were seen as weak, fragile, had pale skin, and were very thin. But Voltaire wrote about them in the exact opposite way. They were as strong, resilient, and brave as any man. And they were buxom, plump, and provocative. Voltaire purposefully writes this way to switch the gender roles; to show that women could be anything a man could be. That they could be …

Course Syllabus (W17 Online) Coli 211m: "Superhero Film And Contemporary Culture", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

What might the current popularity and ubiquity of superhero film say about contemporary culture? This course will explore three possible implications of this question: (1) that the superhero genre reflects a moment in our species’ history of reconciling the human being-technology relation, which we shall view as a complex system constituted by our productive relations to material and ideological tools and their ensembles, the needs and aspirations that determine how we conceptualize and activate these relations, and the technically rationalized social reality that is their result, (2) that this ongoing process of reconciliation evinces, at once, the …

La Circunstancia De La Víctima En Las Novelas De Alicia Giménez Bartlett., Eyda Elisa Vaughn

Wayne State University Dissertations

The detective series of Petra Delicado published by the contemporary Spanish writer, Alicia Giménez Bartlett presents the individual characters in a changing, complex and fragmented society. The emphasis is placed on the special circumstances that lead the characters to become the victim. The facts presented in this study, demonstrate that the character's ability to change their unfavorable circumstance are not due to the lack of agency or unwillingness. In some cases, the circumstances in which the individual is borne, places limited to their access to resources. In others, the characters in position of power manipulate others individual's circumstance to their …