Inculturation: The Influence of Bartolomé de Las Casas on the Jesuits
The European discovery of the Americas and its cultures introduced theological and anthropological questions for Christians that had not yet been fully answered on such a grand scale. The Catholic Church, not accounting for different cultural groups, seemingly had the anthropological question, “Who am I?” The Hebrew Bible most clearly proclaims that the human race was created in the image of God. Yet, despite this, Christians throughout history have struggled and failed to recognize and affirm the full humanity of all peoples. In turn, Christians have oppressed, enslaved, and killed countless persons whom they deemed not worthy of the title: “human.” The European Christians alongside the Indigenous inhabitants of these lands encountered cultures that were entirely different to their own. Two essential questions arose out of this cultural dichotomy for European Christians. The first was not, “Who am I?,” but “Who are these indigenous peoples?,” as their culture was evidently different from the European Christians.
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Free Thought, Free Will, and Freedom Projects: A Study of Religious Resistance
The American Constitution grants citizens freedom of speech and freedom of association. Collectively, these rights recognize citizens’ ability to protest the American Government. From the inception of the United States, direct-action protests have been a cornerstone of American democracy. Direct-action protests are so well renowned and embedded into the fabric of American democracy that in-direct protests have failed to gain the same level of traction and immortalization. This essay examines the validity of indirect small-scale resistance when conducted by liturgical (i.e.: Catholic and Episcopalian) and non-liturgical (i.e.: Baptist and Methodist) churches and the historical background that predated resistance modes and church influence during the Civil Rights Movement.
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A "Prayer for Ukraine:" Music and National Identity
In this analytical and comparative study, I analyze Anna Lapwood’s transcription of Mykola Lysenko’s Prayer for Ukraine (1885) and compare it to John Romano’s recent arrangement for the United States Air Force Band. I further examine the extramusical narratives of cultural identity and highlight this hymn as a symbol of Ukrainian independence. The Ukrainian struggle for independence has lasted for centuries. Present-day Ukraine was formerly ruled by the Romanovs–later the Soviet Union–and the Habsburgs (1760-1991), where many Ukrainians were assimilated into other cultures. The nineteenth century, however, saw a series of revolutionary uprisings. As Paul Kubicek states, “toward the end of the nineteenth century, Ukrainians began to experience an important ‘ideological conversion,’ as the cultural intelligentsia, which had been growing throughout the nineteenth century, abandoned its previous ethnic self-destination as Rusyns, or Ruthenians, and began using a new moniker, Ukrainians.”[1] The rise of the Orthodox Church, the increase of scholarly publications, and the establishment of Ukrainian educational institutions became important vehicles for creating a unified Ukrainian identity.[2] To use Kubicek’s term, this “Ukrainian awakening” would continue to last throughout the twentieth century which saw Ukraine established as a nation–following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[3]
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Defining the "Ideal Woman:" Korean Femininity in Occupation-Era Modernisms, c. 1910-1945
Through an examination of modernist depictions of Korean women from 1910-1945, this study will attempt to understand how both Korean and Japanese creators used Korean women’s bodies to construct an ideal Korean identity under occupation. I argue that the visual languages they developed to represent women display a clear link between imperial and nationalist ambitions and the “modern” woman, illustrating how specifically women’s bodies were manipulated within artworks to express sociopolitical ambitions on both sides of the colonial encounter.
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A Pretty Little Place: Patti Smith's "Just Kids" and the Artistic Domestic Space
Toward the end of Just Kids, the iconic queer photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, now on his deathbed with AIDS, tells his once partner Patti Smith: “We never had any children.” This yearning for heterosexual parenthood is a strange statement coming from an artist who pushed the boundaries of queer representation in art, invoking the anger of Congress and heterosexual America in the process. In response, Patti Smith shuts Mapplethorpe down, telling him instead “our work was our children.” Smith’s response does two important things. First, it legitimizes artmaking as a worthwhile life pursuit, elevating art to the status of childhood (which, as Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner argue, has achieved the “status of sanctified nationality” in America). Second, this statement reveals a major project of Smith’s memoir—the reimaging of domesticity, the creation of a home centered around art, rather than a nuclear family.
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