Philosophy Commons^™

Volume 16, Maggie Duncan, Madeline Little, Alicia Hoffman, Megan Livesay, Gabrielle Quaresma, Serenity Allen, Laina Pfountz, Ainslie Allred, Sabrina Robles, Nicholas J. Duellman, Trinity L. Deguzman, Melissa H. Savage, Margaret Dudley, Jocelyn Escobar, Olivia Hildreth, Olivia Hopkins, Benjamin Gettier, Lee Kassay, Jade Riddle, Ashley Seiders

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Artist’s Statement Maggie Duncan

On Mentoring Dr. Lee Millar Bidwell

The Hujum Campaign in Uzbekistan and its Consequences by Madeline Little

Wet Cupping Compared to Dry Needling for Treatment of Patients with Low Back Pain: A Critically Appraised Topic by Alicia Hoffman and Megan Livesay

Optimization of eDNA Air Sampling Via 3D Printed Fan by Gabrielle Quaresma

Beyond the Classroom: A Qualitative Study of Teacher Attrition and Retention by Serenity Allen and Laina Pfountz

The Treatment of Subacromial Impingement Syndrome with Platelet-Rich plasma Injections Verses …

Music In The Catholic Church: An Analysis Of Hymns And Congregational Singing In Roman Catholic Churches In The United States, Andrew T. Medrick

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the musical dilemma in the American Catholic Church, highlighting issues such as inappropriate musical selections for the Mass and a profound lack of congregational singing. Through a literature review of Vatican documents, expert opinions, and hymns, I analyze the criteria for music used in the Mass, identify common failures of musical selections presented in many Catholic churches, and offer practical guidance to improve sacred music in parishes and dioceses. I conclude that music used in the Mass must be sourced primarily from Sacred Scripture, in full conformity to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, and easy …

David B. Smith Chats With Monday 1.0, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This document is an edited archival transcript of extended conversations between David B. Smith and an AI persona (“Monday 1.0,” GPT‑4o based) conducted in Spring 2025, prepared as a foundational primary source for subsequent scholarly and creative work. It records the emergence and testing of concepts related to human–AI collaboration (including “Balanced Blended Space”), as well as applied explorations in areas such as generative AI, quantum computing and music, virtual orchestras, multimodal performance, pedagogy, and the rhetoric of “pushback” in conversational systems. It also contains an extended section in which Monday and DB Smith co-curate a set of student research …

Lontas: The Aesthetic Concept Of Mortar Music Of Farmer Community In Turi Village, Indonesia, Dea Lunny Primamona, Bambang Sunarto

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

This research is focused on the phenomena of an aesthetic impression in kothékan lesung performed by a farmer community in Turi Village, Magetan District, Indonesia. This research aims to understand the kothékan lesung as an art system and understand the idiom lontas expressed verbally in their mortar music performance. This research uses an ethnomusicology approach which includes fieldwork and deskwork. The research is sequentially conducted with observation, interviews, recordings, measurements, and studying literature and documents. This article uses Sedyawati’s concept about the art system and Sethares’s concept about the science of sound to analysis data. The result shows that: (1) …

The Non-Apology Of Tyler, The Creator, John Gibaud

CAFE Symposium 2025

This project analyzes the behavior and statements of the musician Tyler, The Creator as compared to contemporary understandings of the steps, requirements, and functions of a public apology. In 2009, Tyler, The Creator began his career as a solo singer songwriter, using shock value tactics to gain the attention of the public with lyrics and online comments which glorified murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Outcries against the themes of the comments and lyrics called for an official public apology and acknowledgement from Tyler, The Creator, however, such a statement never came to fruition. Since his problematic debut, Tyler, The Creator …

Reflections On Cover Songs: Replies To Polite, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Brandon Polite poses a number of interesting criticisms of my account of cover versions. Some I am happy to acknowledge and take on board, but with others I feel he goes too far. I take this chance to clarify and extend my account.

Review Of Lives Remembered: A Memoir, Eileen R. Tabios

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Beauty And Gore: Unsettling Audiences In The 2018 Production Of Ang Paglilitis Ni Mang Serapio, Sophia Martha B. Marco, Svetlana Antropova

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of Posthumous: Poems, Mark Anthony S. Angeles

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

“Dead Stars” The Revolutionary Politics Of The Edenic Past, Rosario Cruz-Lucero

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

This study undertakes a comprehensive, close reading of the original version of Paz Marquez Benitez’s (PMB’s) “Dead Stars,” published in the Philippines Herald in 1925. Previous critical essays have explicated selected aspects of the 1975 version edited and published by Leopoldo Yabes, based on some of its elements and techniques. On the other hand, this close reading is supplemented by empirical data gathered through historical research, including the cultural forms of the three Philippine traditions: indigenous, Hispanic, and colonial American. Weaving through the intertextual reading is the use of PMB’s biography, sources and influences, specifically the story’s historical context, milieu, …

Review Of Will You Happen, Past The Silence, Through The Dark?: Remembering Leonard Casper, L. M. Grow

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of So Heaven, Francessca S. Abalos

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Interview With Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Caroline Howard, Jose Y. Dalisay

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of Notes On Bakya And Other Essays, Jose Monfred C. Sy

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of Everything Is Fiction: Essays, Mark Anthony S. Angeles

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Rereading Nick Joaquin As A Devil’S Advocate “La Naval De Manila” (1943) In Context, Luisa L. Gomez

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

Nick Joaquin characterized himself as a “devil’s advocate” for taking contrarian positions in Philippine cultural history. His early essay “ La Naval de Manila” is taken as an example of such. A re-examination of the essay within its original context of the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, however, reveals that Joaquin’s early historical imagination must be understood less as an act of rebellion and more as a product of negotiation. It navigates multiple audiences and overlapping empires—the Spanish past it venerates, the American period whose language it uses, and the Japanese present that enabled its publication. Its power lies not …

Review Of Mapping New Stars: A Sourcebook On Philippine Speculative Fiction., Roy Tristan B. Agustin

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Tributes To Gregorio Brillantes, Jonathan Chua

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of Oha: A Story Told In One Eternal Second, Celeste Aida Abad Jugo

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Post-Lecture Forum With Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Mara Coson, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Sixth Setouchi International Art Festival In Japan, Summer Session, Midori Yamamura

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

Storytelling In A Time Of Exigency, Kaisa Aquino

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

No abstract provided.

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

The Black Spectacle And Oppressive Double Binds: What Rap On Trial Reveals About Race, Exploitation, And Criminalization In The Music Industry, Giovanni Pierre

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I investigate the paradox revealed by the Young Thug trial where certain portrayals of Blackness in rap music are simultaneously praised and punished by white institutions. I propose that the theatrics of the Young Thug trial and other instances of rap lyrics used in criminal trials are emblematic of what I call the Black Spectacle. The Black Spectacle is the role Blackness plays in American entertainment. It has three elements: (1) It entertains white audiences because of Black people’s perceived otherness, (2) it provides white people, particularly white men, with a vehicle through which they can …

Rhythm Against Poethics, Jayvyn Dacas

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis stages an auto-poetic ethnography that listens to, and moves with, the anterior spaces of Black life. Those murmurs, hums, musical hesitations, and infrastructural vibrations that refuse capture by dominant epistemic regimes. Drawing from Ramon Amaro’s reading of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick and Alexander Weheliye’s reflections on sound, Fred Moten’s insights on displacement, and Tendayi Sithole’s attention to the phonographic, the project situates music production as method and unworlding. Through engagements with the 808, sampling, sound systems, and embodied listening across Florida. Spaces like the warehouse, the party, record stores, and community become the work of Black voices, and …

Exploring The Shadows: How Taylor Swift's Music Embodies Dark Sound As A Popular Music Artist, Kristyn E. Cole

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

To challenge the conceptual matter of “dark sound”, this major research paper centers around the popular music artist, Taylor Swift to demonstrate an overarching feminist wisdom in an alternative style of music to identify how Taylor Swift presents and embodies qualities of “dark sound”. Research done by D. Ferrett, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes and Paul C. Jasen are used to examine her popular music, and its intersections and influence on our culture and society. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, this research paper discusses three of Swift’s songs; “willow” (evermore, 2020) for her sound, All Too Well: The Short …

Teaching The Grateful Dead With Nietzsche’S Birth Of Tragedy, Stanley J. Spector

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Ideally, in a teaching situation one can use parts of Nietzsche to help explain aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon(a) or use aspects of the Grateful Dead to help explain parts of Nietzsche; in either case, there is heuristic back and forth between the text and the phenomenon(a). Both Nietzsche and the Grateful Dead speak to the subjective experience of life affirmation, not as mere cognitive recognition, but rather as a physiological state of being. For both Nietzsche and the Grateful Dead, the Dionysian dimension of life comes to the forefront through the body, whether experiencing the unity of nature …