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This paper examines the similarities between the philosophical work of Soren Kierkegaard as well as the philosophy found in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Specifically, Ahab, one of the main figures in Melville’s work, and Abraham, the Biblical subject of Kierkegaard’s teleology-based religious philosophy will be compared, and similarities between the two will expatiated upon, especially in the context of ethics. First, a brief exegesis of Kierkegaard’s ethical philosophy will be offered, followed by an explanation of why Ahab lives by a Kierkegaardian mode of morality. Finally, Ahab’s peculiarity, evidenced by a range of diverse and often contradictory scholarly work, will be discussed and explained. In examining Ahab through the lens of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, it is the goal of this paper to reach a broader and more complete understanding of the enigmatic and often vexatious Captain Ahab, and therefore Melville’s seminal novel as a whole.
Concrete carbonation occurs when carbon dioxide diffuses into concrete and dissolves in water within the pores. Calcium hydroxide in the cement matrix reacts with carbon dioxide and forms calcium carbonate. This oozes from the pores, leaving a white material on concrete walls or stalactites on concrete ceilings, called efflorescence. As calcium hydroxide leaches out of concrete, and chloride ions from ocean spray or de-icing salts leach in, together they lower concrete pH and cause the protective oxide layer around rebar to dissolve. This can cause extensive rebar corrosion and further concrete degradation. The efflorescence from carbonation in 10, 40 and 110 year old concrete was analyzed to determine if the metals from rebar degradation leach through to the surface. Determination of Fe, Mn, Ni and Cu was conducted with inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry (ICP- MS). Preliminary results show that these metals can be detected in the concrete efflorescence, with Fe being the most prevalent.
The 'issue' of crossdressing, in a very real sense, can be used as a common ground on which to explore Spanish and English cultures in three dimensions: the understanding of crossdressing on stage by authority figures and public audiences, its use as a literary device within popular plays of the era such as William Shakespeare's As You Like It and Pedro Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream. Finally, an examination of crossdressing allows understanding of its use by actual historical figures such as Mary Firth (i.e. Moll Cutpurse) in England and Catalina de Erauso (i.e. La Monja Alferez or the Lieutenant Nun).
Though the political rivalry between Adams and Jefferson is one of the best known in American history, as president, the two upheld peculiarly similar foreign policies while navigating the rebellion in Saint Domingue. Despite worldviews guided in part by anti-slavery sentiments, the founding fathers were mostly unconcerned with the welfare of the black revolutionaries. Rather, both administrations were primarily engaged in sustaining—and hopefully bolstering— the fledgling American republic; their policies toward the island colony reflect this priority. Exceptional diplomats, Adams and Jefferson stealthily maneuvered through the chaos of the Haitian Revolution with little regard for the interests of their international allies, Great Britain and France, let alone those of Toussaint and his men. Ultimately, the two founding fathers, abandoning their moral convictions in favor of expedient and protective policies, made Saint Domingue a symbol of their ruthlessly pragmatic agendas. The early presidential administrations could not transcend the racially impelled prejudices that would mark the next 150 years of American history. Cory Young is a senior History major from Pittsford, New York. He plans to attend graduate school to study slavery and ideology in the early national period of America.
Health discrimination, the process of disadvantaging an individual based on a medical diagnosis and its associated stereotypes, is an increasing global problem. Recent studies demonstrate that more cultures are practicing health discrimination. Prejudice from health is an especially complex topic because each condition has assumptions based on physical appearance and symptoms. For individuals with medial labels, health discrimination hinders their daily progress. While there is a significant amount of research about the retrogressive impacts on health discrimination, literature examining the origins of health discrimination is not as comprehensive. Our study examines the prejudice that precipitates health discrimination. We hypothesize that people will perceive individuals with medical and mental needs as different after viewing media clips which portrayed negative perceptions of individuals with medical and mental needs. We tested this concept using undergraduate students from three lower division psychology courses at a small liberal arts college. Each class saw a media clip which corresponded with three different health conditions: physical need, mental need, and a combination of physical and mental needs. Statistical data were obtained through surveys designed for each media clip. The results of this study were significant showing that negative perceptions and health discrimination exist in college students.
Trial by jury is a constitutionally guaranteed right, and the concept of being judged by one’s peers is a foundational principle in Western society. It is assumed that criminal cases are best and most equitably decided by juries and general consensus is that a judicial case decided by a jury is inherently more acceptable than any alternative. With that said, the foundations for the modern Western judicial practice, like most other essential practices, rests in the Golden Age of Athens and Greece. While the chain of descent is long and varied, in Greece, one can find the first trace of legitimized trial by jury in keeping with the Western tradition. As such, in order to fully grasp the complexities of the system including its shortcomings and its successes, one must first consider its origins. To that end, a contrast of the trial of Socrates and the trial of Orestes can be considered. While the trial of Orestes is entirely fictional and intended foremost to entertain, it is nonetheless an accurate telling of the myth upon which Greek jury trials were founded. Conversely, the trial of Socrates as presented in Plato’s Apology is considered almost entirely factual and is the subject of considerable scholarly research. Yet in both of these cases one can see the full gamut of both esteemed and undesirable attributes inherent to jury trials.
Post-colonial scholarship conventionally focuses on the persistence of systems of economic activity, power structures, social frameworks and cultural norms, including language. In large part, while important, these systems lack material expression in the landscape. Economic exploitation through mining activity, however, has always been accompanied by striking landscape modification, often subsequently abandoned owing to factors such as depletion, technology, outside competition and fluctuations in market prices. Coastal Namibia, formerly German Southwest Africa, is one such landscape. My presentation focuses on the human landscape infrastructure of diamond mining by German interests in the early 20th century and the subsequent decline of the industry by 1950, leaving ghost and near-ghost towns scattered throughout the Namib Desert. I also examine the neoliberal legacy of early European exploitation evident in the re-visioning of the ghost town landscape as a high-end international tourist experience and the revival of the diamond industry through increased offshore activity.
Where Werewolf and Zombie once were “born” of infection via bite, the novels The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (2011) and Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by Scott G. Browne (2009) introduce monstrous reproduction through the performance of biological sexual intercourse. What this paper investigates is the impact of suggesting likenesses between the social definition of “human” versus that of “monster” by analyzing sex, and subsequently love and emotion, and what it means that the creation, the birth itself, is a direct association between these dichotomies. Taking this most fundamental concept--the very start of life--in a sense attempts to humanize the monsters; it advocates for a collective understanding, that “it’s been us all along” (Duncan 119). But what does it say of the possibility of assimilation when the characters lose their children? In Duncan’s novel, not only does protagonist Jake murder his human wife and unborn child, but he dies before the chance to know what becomes of his werewolf offspring who will, with luck, carry on the species. For Browne’s zombie, Andy, his undead lover and fetal child are burned to death before readers can kno w what a monster born of natural means will be like. Here, Jeffrey Cohen’s assertion that monsters are “a form suspended between forms that threaten to smash distinctions” becomes undeniably salient as fantastic literature progressively integrates modern human culture (Cohen 6).
In recent years, a large volume of medical and public health literature has been dedicated to the sexually transmitted infection Human Papillomavirus (HPV). The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive assessment of recent empirical investigations which assess the public health impact of HPV and recent HPV vaccinations.
I utilize a site in the eastern Washington Cascades subject to fire exclusion for > 100 years to examine relationships between ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) above-ground forest structure and below-ground fine root mass. I address these spatial relationships at four scales: 1) at the level of individual trees; 2) density of trees and standing biomass within a two meter (radius) circular buffer 3) a four meter (radius) circular buffer 4) and the plot level (16 meter diameter). Fine root biomass distribution and the nearest above-ground trees were not related at the individual tree and root subplot scale. This lack of relationship was also found with fine root biomass as a function of number of trees, and standing biomass at the two meter scale. A significant relationship was found between number of trees and fine root biomass at the four meter scale. At the plot-scale, no relationship was found between total number of trees and fine root biomass, but a significant weak relationship was found between standing biomass and fine root biomass. Comparison of results in a model selection framework consistently suggest the highest predictability of fine root mass using above-ground data at the 4 m scale. Results suggest that root distribution at fine scales (individual tree and 2 m radius) is likely too heterogeneous to easily predict, but that distribution at intermediate distances may be somewhat predictable. Restoration efforts may improve efforts to protect fine roots by increasing buffers around large old trees to scales greater than 4 m.
Robert Hass' poem Meditation at Lagunitas begins, "All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking" (1-2). Through this loss, the poem's speaker struggles for a sense of connection—with his past lover, childhood memories, and language—all of which remain elusive. Thus the poem highlights a fragility and "lack" of both words and identity; what is, essentially, an inability to ever communicate or directly convey. This inability is correlated to Freud's constitutive lack and Lacan's mirror stage, psychological states which are also applicable to hermeneutics. In Meditation at Lagunitas, the text itself becomes an enactment of linguistic struggle, expressing a pivotal "lack" at the core of language. Through tautology, we see the speaker can only end in resignation, with a repetition of the phrase "blackberry, blackberry, blackberry." Using methods from psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, and semiotics (and theorists such as Lacan, Freud, Derrida, and Barthes) I wish to explore the ontologies of lack and different modes—and attempts—at expression in Hass' poem. Jacqueline Thomas is a senior literature major from Ramapo College of New Jersey. She plans to pursue graduate study in literature, with a concentration in contemporary poetry.
In this paper, I will describe a grounded theory study which aimed to acquire an understanding of what it means to undergraduate students to be cynical in terms of civic and political engagement (CPE) and whether undergraduate students experience helplessness in CPE. Interviews were conducted with five senior undergraduates. Two central categories arose from the data. The first was ‘cynicism as experiencing varying combinations of frustration and distrust, but also efficacy and meaning, when one perceives barriers to advancing, and ensuring the representation of, one’s worldview, which is neither adequately visible nor represented in the civic and/or political environment.’ The second was ‘helplessness (an extreme form of cynicism) as experiencing increased levels of distrust and/or frustration, as well as low self-efficacy and little meaning in CPE, when one perceives insurmountable barriers to advancing, and ensuring the representation of, their worldview, which is neither adequately visible nor represented in the current civic and/or political environment.’ Participants described cynicism as dimensional. These results have implications for Goertzen et al.’s (2012) engagement styles, and for understanding cynicism in CPE. Study limitations and directions for future research are addressed.
Jeffery Eugenides’ Middlesex presents a protagonist, Calliope, coming to terms with hir gender identity. For some critics, the final stage of this development is Calliope’s return to hir family and decision to live as a man. By this understanding, they mistakenly conflate the end of that narrative with the narrative of the framing device, set in the present. They ignore the fact that Cal’s time as a firmly-defined man is even worse than hir time as a woman, a sad reality that has not changed in the present. Adult, male-identifying Cal still lives in hiding, cut off from society and unable to bring any romantic relationship to fruition. Conversely, when Cal accepts the hybrid nature of hir gender and reveals it to others, xe is able to form hir most meaningful and honest relationships: with Julie, with Zora, and with the Obscure Object. The fact that these relationships exist across the three stages of Cal’s gender development—female-identifying, male-identifying, and hybrid—will address the argument of some critics that Cal’s happiness at the novel’s close is due to a presumed acceptance of a masculine identity.
This paper addresses how the ancient Athenian grain trade in the Mediterranean and Black seas affected Athenian politics, internal regulation, diplomacy and colonial expansion. This paper addresses how laws and edicts, as well as diplomatic and colonial policies were influenced by the need to obtain sufficient grain to feed populations that were beyond the area’s carrying capacity. In conversations, as well as primary and secondary evidence, it seems clear that environmental necessity was the driving force behind the Athenian government’s actions during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E.
Previous research has revealed that individuals who use tobacco products, due to the fact that they may be aware of the consequences of their addiction on their health, are often stigmatized; also, when health issues arise, others tend to feel less sympathetic for these victims. Thirty-eight undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Participants read a scenario about a woman who had contracted lung cancer and were told she was either a smoker (condition one) or a non-smoker (condition two). They then answered a twelve-item questionnaire assessing their blame attitudes toward the lung cancer patient, and completed a demographics page. Two-sample t-tests were performed on all of the dependent measures. Overall, participants felt sympathetic toward the lung cancer victim in both conditions. However, a global blame score was computed, and individuals in the smoking condition significantly distributed more blame toward the lung cancer victim than individuals in the non-smoking condition. In keeping with previous research, participants in my study demonstrated “blame-the-victim” effect in the smoking condition, a topic that other researchers have looked at. Melissa Poulin is a Psychology major from Farmington, Maine. She will graduate in 2013, and aspires to graduate school in counseling or clinical psychology. She hopes to eventually become a college psychology professor with a private practice on the side.
In under ten years, Alexander the Great had founded the largest empire that the world had yet seen, conquering a territory that stretched from Greece in the West to the borders of India in the East. From this conquest sprung Hellenism, the dominance of Greek influence and culture throughout the ancient world. This paper examines the effects of Alexander’s conquests and the ensuing spread of Hellenism, as well as whether those changes were significant and lasting. My paper focuses mainly on the Hellenistic Successor Kingdoms, known as the Diadochi: Ptolemaic Egypt, Persia under the Seleucids, and the Greek Kingdom of Bactria. This paper served as the basis for my presentation at COPLAC in the Fall of 2012, which focused more specifically on the legacy of Hellenism in Bactria and India. Gregory James is a senior majoring in History and Education at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He comes from Newburyport, MA and plans to pursue graduate study in history while teaching at a public high school.
Traditionally, reason has been regarded as what differentiates humans from all other life on this planet, and sets us apart as superior beings. However, if reason is seen not as an independent, external phenomenon but as arising as a product of the body, then traditional epistemology needs very desperately to be re-examined. In this paper, I provide critiques of theories of abstract and embodied reason. I also examine the methods by which different groups of people have made claims to knowledge, the situation of those claims in sociohistorical contexts, and their ramifications. Through examining and criticizing masculinist understandings of knowledge, objectivity, and justification through a feminist lens, I hope to enter into conversation with works of feminist epistemology. Finally, I broaden the conversation to consider an ecofeminist perspective of these issues in an attempt to lay down the foundations of an ecofeminist epistemology born out of ecofeminist ethics.
There are approximately 1.2 million nonprofit organizations in the United States (Luckert, 2011), and 7,817 of those organizations are in New Hampshire (NH nonprofit sector, 2009). A nonprofit organization is formed with the goal of having no profit because all profits that are earned are used in order to serve the public. If excess revenue does occur, it must be used to better the organization and drive the mission (Luckert, 2011; NH nonprofit sector, 2009). Within the nonprofit sector are multiple groups, such as charities, foundations, advocacy organizations, professional/trade organizations, and more. These groups all have the same goals of creating programs to help and protect the common good. The NH nonprofit sector plays a significant role in “preserving and enhancing the quality of life for NH residents” (NH nonprofit sector, 2009). This quality of life is enhanced because the government has partnered with the nonprofit sector to help provide a range of services.
Nicole Brossard’s Mauve Desert is a feminist intertext, which Susanne Lotbiniére-Harwood’s Re-Belle Et Infidéle states: “Is a body of text written in the feminine by feminists rereading and rewriting what other feminists have written and spoken” (126). Throughout history, the privatized female semantic space inhibited the bilingual nature of the woman and her ability to speak in the dominant, masculine language system and her own muted tongue. The collective female voices in Mauve Desert comment on the emergence of women writers and translators through “écriture feminine”. Using theorists such as Susanne De Lotbiniére-Harwood, Héléne Cixous, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin and others, this essay discusses the theory of female desire in translation and authorship while commenting upon the relationship between translator and text, author and translator and original and copy. Caitlin Vogel is a senior at Ramapo College from Wantage, NJ currently studying literature. She plans to obtain a doctorate degree in early literature of the Americas.