Shooting Awry to Hit the Mark: George Gascoigne's Alternative Ethic of Representation

Lynn Huang
College '04, English
Penn Humanities Forum Undergraduate Coordinating Research Fellow

Communication between members of the Renaissance court was confined to vague language filled with contradictions and hidden meaning. Huang argues that George Gascoigne's Hundredth Sundrie Flowers subverts this predominant ethic of obfuscation, using courtly language as a means to accomplish its very critique as inadequate and dangerous in its lack of clarity and openness. Huang will study how this anthological work challenges accepted modes of representational discourse, principally the belief in courtly language as the only appropriate literary standard.

Back to Top

While philosophers struggled to comprehend and justify Pythagoras's seemingly inane rule of abstention from kúamos—the legume now known as the fava bean—physicians of antiquity seem to have ignored this dietary restriction, for it does not figure in any known medical treatise of the time. Could it be argued that the fava bean restriction somehow fell within the conceptual framework of the divine, categorically rejected as an agent of malady by the Hippocratic corpus? If so, then on what grounds could this same corpus reject Pythagoras's diet, yet accept a misogynist narrative such as Hesiod's Pandora myth about female physiology and disease? Bielska will explore the circumstances of this ostensible contradiction in medical belief.

Back to Top

Death and Dying in the United States: Intersections between Medicine, Spirituality, Science, and Religion

Molly Collins
College '04, Health and Societies

The relationship between spirituality and medicine has run the gamut from tension to cooperation. The intersection of belief, religion, science, and values is perhaps nowhere more evident than in issues surrounding death and dying. Collins will study the practices and ideologies that surround care for the dying in the United States, with special attention to both the recent reintegration of spirituality into care for the dying, and the question of how medicine and spirituality act upon some of the various players involved.

Back to Top

Good versus Evil in U.S.-North Korean Relations

Erin Douglas
College'04, Political Science

Ever since the Cold War era, relations between the U.S. and North Korea have been largely determined by ideological belief rather than informed knowledge; a mutually-inspired and categorical mistrust between these respectively capitalist and communist countries has tended to predominate in the landscape of their political interactions. Using psychology's theory of fundamental attribution error as a means of comprehending this hostile deadlock, Douglas asks whether a more profound understanding of North Korea's viewpoint might change the simplistic, good-versus-evil terms in which Washington seems to base its decision-making. With an end to explaining North Korea's current stance against nuclear nonproliferation, Douglas will investigate where North Korea "sits" in order to elucidate where it "stands."

Back to Top

Lens on the Mennonites: What Words Can't Say

Rebekah Flake
College '05, German, Visual Studies

Visual language and other non-verbal media often serve as surprisingly apt vehicles for the exploration and representation of such abstract concepts as belief. Flake proposes to study the Mennonite population of British Columbia through the lens of her camera. Her aim: to compose a photo documentary of their life and faith. Though Flake also plans to avail herself of resources like the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia and the Columbia Bible Institute, she believes that the photographic image will ultimately reveal an intimate and unique perspective on the belief system of this religious community.

Back to Top

Plantinga and Hume: Is Belief Justified?

Susanne Flood
College '05, Philosophy, English

Enlightenment philosopher David Hume and contemporary thinker Alvin Plantinga share not only the intellectual enterprise of elaborating hermeneutic systems for the understanding of belief, but also the historical circumstance of major epistemological transition. Situated respectively in the ages of deontological empiricism and postmodern information, Hume's natural religion and Plantinga's externalist epistemology can be considered ideas that resist their times just as much as they reflect them. Flood will seek to arrive at an understanding of these thinkers' works and the relationship they bear to their historical circumstances as she traces in them a changing concept of belief.

Back to Top

An Apocalypse Commentary Attributed to Alcuin

Eric Knibbs
College '04, History

Among the Biblioteca Vaticana's manuscript collection is a 9th- or 10th-century commentary on the Apocalypse of mysterious authorship, origin, and significance. In spite of the text's frequent association with two eighth-century figures—Charlemagne court scholar Alcuin of York and French abbot Ambrosius Autpertus—questions abound regarding its source. Knibbs proposes a close textual analysis to elucidate the author's beliefs with respect to the enigmatic book of the Apocalypse, as well as broader socio-literary issues of canonical authority and religious perspective.

Back to Top

Seeing as Believing, Believing as Seeing: Santería

Julia Leah Koprak
College '04, Communications

In the United States, religious faith does not always figure into daily sensory experience; often it remains at the level of abstraction and can even seem alien in the midst of an increasingly secularized society. It is precisely this distance that draws Koprak to the study of contemporary faith. For Koprak, the syncretic Afro-Cuban religion of santería produces an exceptional degree of awe and curiosity because of the radicality—and seeming impossibility—of propositions central to its faith such as the divine possession of a living body. Koprak will undertake a study of santería through photo essays, interviews, and testimonials in order to bridge the gap of incredulity that separates her from a more profound understanding of this particular system of belief.

Back to Top

Religion and the German Enlightenment

Mary Le Gierse
College '04, GAS '04, German

The German-speaking world of the 18th century stood at the crossroads of religious and scientific cultures. With a secular sensibility on the rise, views on theology, philosophy, and morality were hotly contested in a diverse array of settings, from literary texts to debates organized by freemasonry circles. Drawing on the work of Leibniz, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, Le Gierse hopes to show how, in the midst of an ostensible polarization between religion and science, there was nevertheless a consistent social desire, as is expressed in the works of these philosophers and artists, to reconcile the two poles, bringing religion into harmony with scientific discovery.

Back to Top

Written on the Body: The Martyred Body as "Text" in Early Christianity

Swii Yii Lim
College '04, Classical Studies, English

For Christians, the crucified and resurrected body of Jesus is the site where word and flesh meet to engender foundational beliefs. It is through the interpretation of his death and martyrdom that the mortal "Jesus of Nazareth" is rewritten as the divine "Jesus Christ." Lim will examine other martyrs of the early Christian period and explore the importance of transforming tortured, publicly displayed bodies into triumphant, spiritually resurrected martyrs via written texts. She is particularly interested in martyrdom's role in forming the then fledgling Christian identity. Figures of interest include Perpetua and Felicitas, Ignatius, and Polycarp.

Back to Top

An Exploration of Beckett's Characters through the Psychoanalytic Theories of W.R. Bion

Paul Samuelson
College '04, English

Samuel Beckett and his psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion, shared not only a close relationship of collegial rapport, but also central ideas about the human condition and psyche. To what extent can their respective works be considered different expressions of the same outlook on consciousness, reality, insanity, and being? Samuelson will assess the depths of this correspondence by using Bion's psychoanalytic writings to explain the inner workings of the characters in Beckett's first novel, Murphy, with the larger hope of explaining different levels of consciousness at work in the human subject.

Back to Top

Reception of Epic Poetry in Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost

Dan Shu
College '04, Classical Studies

The position of the artist with respect to tradition, whether literary or sacred, is one of simultaneous veneration and rebellion. How can artists borrow from and even imitate tradition while carving out a distinct and important place of their own? Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost are texts that straddle two important traditions: the pagan epic of antiquity, most immediately embodied in Virgil's Aeneid, and the Christianity of their times. Shu will look closely at the ways in which Dante and Milton strategically place the classical epic tradition and Christianity in conversation with each other, and how such a way of "talking back" to both antiquity and Church may have allowed both authors to establish for themselves a unique place within those traditions.

Back to Top

Individualist Anarchism and 19th-Century America

Nicholas Zwang
College '04, Intellectual History

The 19th century bore witness to the rise and fall of individualist anarchism in the United States. Unlike their communist counterparts, individualist anarchists emphasized radical economic programs rooted in a fundamental belief in the "sovereignty of the individual" and anticipated the conflict between strong and weak central government that would come to the fore in the Progressive Era. Although individualist anarchists failed to achieve mainstream intellectual and political legitimacy, Zwang asserts that there is value in understanding their work as a lens to view 19th-century America, a complex and turbulent era when the modern system of American capitalism and industrialism was still nascent. Neither "progressive" nor "backward-looking," individualist anarchism constitutes an "alternative" path untaken whose study Zwang believes will challenge our ideas about how history unfolds.

Back to Top