CURRENT ISSUE

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As climate change intensifies, natural disasters pose growing threats to the preservation of art and history for museums and cultural institutions. This article explores disaster response, museum preparedness, and equity in determining what cultural heritage is protected and what may be lost.

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.