Inking Social Skin: Tattoos as Care of the Self and Embodiment of Identity

Tattoos may be understood as a way to navigate one's own social being and the continuity of it over different social contexts and parts of the self. The project Inking Social Skin presents two intertwined aspects, where the first one touches on how identity is embodied in having tattoos and the second aspect touches on identity embodied from getting tattooed. Identity embodied in having tattoos dives into what tattoos say to both their carrier and to their surroundings. In other words, tattoos perform as and constitute physical manifestations of personal experience for our participants. Using Foucault’s theory of care of the self, this project argues for the belief that tattoos can function as a process of embodiment.

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Quaestio mihi factus sum: Death, Friendship, and the Construction of Identity in the Confessions

This article argues that Augustine’s identity in the Confessions is not fixed or purely inward, but is continually reshaped through relationships marked by friendship, love, and death. By examining the deaths of close companions—alongside enduring friendships with figures such as Alypius, Nebridius, and Monica—it shows how grief destabilizes Augustine’s sense of self and ultimately redirects his love toward God as its proper end. The study contends that friendship functions as a crucial mediator between self-knowledge and divine knowledge, revealing identity as relational, mutable, and ordered through rightly directed love.

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Japan's Monstrous-Feminine: Unspoken Ghost Stories

Monsters arise from the desire to disempower what is perceived as a threat. This article examines the figure of the Japanese female ghost through the theoretical framework of the monstrous-feminine, arguing that the spectacle of horror and victimhood of patriarchal narratives also contain expressions of female suffering and resistance. The article explores how, historically, the Japanese female ghost embodied the anxieties of patriarchal Japan concerning female sexuality and how contemporary artists, particularly Yuko Tatsushima, have recontextualized representations of female ghosts as figures of subversion and resistance against patriarchal norms.

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From Religion to Reason: Voltaire, Diderot, d’Holbach and the Public Perception of Christianity in Revolutionary France

This article examines how Voltaire, Diderot, and d’Holbach questioned religious authority along with Christianity during the Enlightenment. It goes over how their multiple critiques of church authority and the clergy weakened the French monarchy along with the Catholic Church. By relating events such as church reforms and the abolition of the monarchy to Enlightenment ideas, this article makes a clear case for how religious skepticism completely helped reshape the political and religious landscape in France.

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A Matter of Public Opinion: How The Jamestown Exposition Built Naval Station Norfolk

This article argues that the Jamestown Exposition of 1907 was pivotal in the creation of Naval Station Norfolk (NAVSTA), now the largest naval installation in the United States. It demonstrates that beyond economic considerations, the exposition’s military displays fundamentally reshaped public opinion in the Hampton Roads area, transforming sailors from an unwelcome presence into a valued civic and strategic asset. By tracing nearly a decade of local advocacy following the exposition, the article contends that this shift in public sentiment was the decisive factor influencing Congress to establish a permanent naval base at Norfolk.

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Challenging the Stereotype of the Witch: Medea in Fifteenth Century Burgundy

Decades span the changing perceptions on Medea as a mythological figure; from spiteful child killer to potent sorceress, each time period brings with it a new way to reinterpret Medea’s portrayal in literature and media. This paper seeks to understand and explore these changing perspectives and focus its lens on Raoul Lefèvre’s 1460 adaptation L’Histoire de Jason against the backdrop of the Arras Incidents in 15th Century Burgundy.

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Aristotle Visits Bed-Stuy: The Practical Wisdom and Rhetorical Virtue of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing has centered itself as a quintessential piece of cinema regarding the issue of American race relations. At its core, the film asks a rather obvious moral question: What is the right thing to do regarding racial struggle? Throughout the multi-layered picture, Lee consults several viewpoints on the matter—including the ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X—in how to address racial injustice and marginalization, challenging what “the right thing to do” exactly is. To develop authenticity and his overall message, Lee relies heavily on Aristotelian rhetoric, of which rhetorical virtue and practical wisdom stand out. 

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“A Jew’s Daughter”: Metaphorical Bilingualism and the Tragedy of Religious Assimilation in The Merchant of Venice

To leave your religion is to destroy your entire upbringing—this is familiar advice from my fifth-generation Jewish American parents. Although the “Jewish bloodline” runs matrilineally[1] and my parents care less than previous generations about the religion of whom I marry, I know that if I were to convert, it could shatter my family. Perhaps this is why I sympathize with Jessica, from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and understand the gravity of her decision to marry a Christian and convert. In this essay, I will explain Jewish identity, modern feelings towards conversion out of Judaism, and linguistic assimilation models in order to fully dive into the loss of self in Jessica’s conversion.

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Laundry and the Monk's Robe: Buddhism in the Modern Era

Hygiene and cleanliness are undisputed expectations for members of civilized societies across the globe. Such hygiene may be achieved in a myriad of ways, depending on the location and resources available. The use of soaps and water is often the norm when it comes to the cleaning of clothing and fabrics. The introduction of washing machines has made cleanliness convenient, removing the need for households to spend hours scrubbing and drying fabrics. Certain fabrics demand special care, such as precious satins or embroidery, which present cleaning difficulties on a physical level and must be washed manually. There is difficulty in cleaning certain fabrics beyond the physical limitation due to sentiment or symbolic importance. In Southeast Asia, Buddhist monks living in monasteries are held to the same societal expectation of hygiene as any other civilian, but are also presented with religious demands on their outward presentation.

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The Discoverie of Motive: Key Events that Motivated Reginald Scot to Write The Discoverie of Witchcraft

Behind every conscious decision, there is a motive. It is what drives us all to achieve a better life and world around us. Reginald Scot, an early modern English demonologist, was no different. During the later decades of sixteenth-century England, the height of the witch persecution was impending due to societal ignorance, religious tensions, and poverty. While this era did not see as many witch persecutions as the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, Scot nevertheless set forth a radical treatise titled, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, that argued against women who confessed to causing maleficia, or demonic harm, because they could not have manifested it.

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From d’Aulnoy and Perrault to Disney: A Comparative Study of Fairy-Tale Adaptations and Fan Fiction

The adaptation of fairy tales is a tradition that has lasted for centuries. Early fairy tale authors, such as d’Aulnoy and Perrault, enjoyed considerable freedom when adapting fairy tales. However, the rise of Disney restricted access to further fairy tale adaptations through the company’s persistent enforcement of copyright laws. Nevertheless, with the arrival of the internet, users found unprecedented avenues to engage in the reimagining and adaptation of fairy tales without fearing copyright laws, echoing an era predating Disney.

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The Social Pressure on Janie in Zora Neale Hurtson's Their Eyes Were Watching God Through an Intersectional Lens

Individuals are heavily influenced by significant figures around them- for better, or for worse. Janie Crawford, the protagonist within Hurston’s literary work Their Eyes Were Watching God, is shaped through social pressures related to her race and gender on her own journey to self-discovery and acceptance.

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Art Nouveau as Avant-Garde: Redefining ‘Nature’ through Metamorphosis and Interrelationship

Art Nouveau was an art reform movement of the late nineteenth century in France that sought to revive nature in response to the industrial standardization of art and design. This project introduces that Art Nouveau involves metamorphosis and interrelationship as key principles that unify the construction with ‘design fitness,’ incorporating utility and beauty, and examines Art Nouveau as an avant-garde turning point that led to the emergence of Modernism, breaking free from traditional representations of nature and architecture.

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From Angst to Ashes: The Complexities of Addiction in the Lives of Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley, 1987-2002

In the rain-soaked streets of 1990s Seattle, a seismic shift was brewing. The pulsating guitars and angst-ridden lyrics of grunge did not just define a genre; they became the battle cry of a generation hungry for authenticity. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden emerged as icons, their raw sound echoing the disillusionment and alienation felt by millions. Yet, amidst this musical revolution lurked a shadowy presence: drug culture.

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Issue XIXContent Editors
Booker T. Washington: A Strategist, Not an Apologist

After visiting Booker T. Washington’s school in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1908, Len G. Broughton wrote, “Perhaps no man in this country is better known than Booker T. Washington, and perhaps no man is more poorly understood or incorrectly reported as he.” This assessment remains true today, as historians often misrepresent Washington and his accomplishments.

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Issue XIXContent Editors
Utilitarian Aesthetics: The Function of Art and Individuality in John Stuart Mill and George Eliot's Middlemarch

In his two seminal works, On Liberty and Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, one of the leading philosophers of the 19th century, argued for the import of a broadened conception of individuality and the general utilitarian good of intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. Utilitarianism is a philosophy that promotes happiness above all else, it is often understood under the motto “the most good for the greatest number of people”.

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Issue XIXContent Editors
Disentangling Synonyms: How Resistance to Nazism and Antisemitism Were Distinct Movements in Occupied Norway

After Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, a resistance movement gradually emerged from numerous sectors of Norwegian society, including the government in exile (comprising both Norway’s Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold and Royal King Haakon VII), the Church, businesses and industry, political and social organizations, and individual citizens.

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Issue XIXContent Editors
Visualizing War in The Digital Age: Feminist Aesthetics and Open-Source Investigations

In examining open-source aesthetics, which are often clinical and exacting, this article explores how feminist methodologies might offer reparative modes of envisioning conflict to ensure greater social justice. The case study presented in this paper analyzes an open-source report produced by the New York Times Visual Investigations Unit, including a formal analysis of a contemporary video documenting the Ukrainian/Russian conflict, examining the way that truth claims are asserted through the “right to look,”, as theorized by Nicholas Mirzoeff. Through the prism of this theory, I contend that open-source counter-visualities can effectively challenge state power and could benefit from the deployment of feminist aesthetics that humanize digital formations of marginalized subjects with greater empathy, more robust ethical protocols, and efficacious strategies.

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