SCCUR 2007 Conference
| Amanda Totten Supporting Professor: Dr. Michaela Reaves
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Fighting Words In United States history, understanding the underlying causes of the Civil War depends on a comprehension of policymakers and the decisions they made. Often there remains a lack of sufficient effort to explain why individual soldiers took up arms against their fellow citizens. However, through the actual examination of letters and diaries from the Civil War, certain reasons can be ascertained. Did the Union soldiers fight to end slavery; was abolition their goal? Did the Confederate military truly fight to protect slavery, or was there another more basic reason for going to war? These questions are vital to understanding why ordinary citizens risked their lives and can be examined through the fighting words they left behind. The men of the Confederate States were determined to stand up for the rights they felt were being ignored and were willing to die for them, while the Northern men were determined to keep the Union together at all costs; the Union. |
| Amy Supporting Professor: Dr. Marja Mogk |
Hollow Imagery and Imperialism in Heart of Darkness Critics of Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness have found it difficult to pinpoint the novel stance on imperialism. The novel has been read as a critique of imperialism in general, to a critique of only certain kinds of imperialism, to a representation of imperialism itself. Many of these arguments center on the character of Marlow, Conrad's narrator, and his attitudes towards European engagement in Africa, a focus that tends to implicitly equate Marlow's ideas with Conrad's beliefs. This paper argues that focusing on Marlow is too narrow a lens to use in assessing the novel. Heart of Darkness does, in fact, offer a strong critique of European imperialism that is not simply articulated through Marlow himself, but through the characterization of the Europeans he encounters in Africa, many of whom are described specifically as hollow in some way. The images of emptiness associated with these characters are juxtaposed with Marlow's growing awareness of the humanity of the indigenous peoples, who demonstrate qualities that the hollow Europeans lack: restraint and emotional engagement. This contrast and the repetition of hollowness as a dominant image call into question the civilizing mission of the imperialists, revealing that they have no reason to be in Africa other than profit, the ultimate hollow motive. |
| Brigette Stevenson Supporting Professor: Ariane Balizet |
Piety in Relation to Characters in Medieval English Literature This paper discusses the general morals of characters in "The Canterbury Tales" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" in relation to their piety. The cause for this topic is from a discussion of the intense religious lifestyle of medieval England and yet how the authors of its famous literature did not always reflect that. The thesis is that a characters relationship with the church and his or her level of true spirituality relates with the way in which the author portrays his or her personality or morals. The Prioress, the Pardoner, and the Nun's Priest will be used from "The Canterbury Tales" and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will be used from "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". Each character has a unique relationship with religion and also a distinguishable personality. The authors use the goodness or badness in the characters' temperaments as a means of showing whether a relationship with God and the church determines an iden tity. It was concluded that not only did the authors use religious sincerity as a means to establish a character's morality, but also to give their own critical and cautionary opinions on the state of religion and the state of the established church in their time. |
| Jessica Porter Supporting Professor:Dr. Mogk |
Aging and Duality: A Non-Modernist Interpretation of Prufrock "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot has been read as a portrait of the post-war, lost generation and the modernist ethos of fragmentation. In this context, Prufrock's own anxieties and perspectives are interpreted as symbolic or representative of a larger cultural malaise, rather than as articulations of an individual life experience. This is particularly true of references to age or aging in the poem. This paper argues, instead, that Prufrock can be read as a meditation on the actual experience of aging and the challenges it may bring in cultural environments that do not privilege or value the elderly, specifically social powerlessness and ostracism. Furthermore, Prufrock's experience of age is articulated not through the narrative fragmentation so often lauded in the poem, but through a series of dualities the poem poses that include dual voices conveying Prufrock's internal struggle with his visceral experience of living in a particular body that has reached a particular point in life. |
| Kathleen Hicks Supporting Professor: Dr. Mogk |
Myth and Americana in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Daniel Grassian articulates the dominant critical view of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when he writes for the Popular Culture Review; the novel reflects total, amorphous confusion and the breakdown of all ideology and potentially all hope of redemption. Thompson himself comments in personal letters that his text is an epitaph statement for the Benevolent Drug Era of the 60s. Alternatively, Robert Sickels, in his essay titled "A Countercultural Gatsby: Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the Death of the American Dream and the Rise of Las Vegas, USA", considers Thompson's done to be that the essence of the American Dream has changed from the rags to riches myth to a mere hope for survival. However, Fear and Loathing is not a description of the decay of the essential American myth or even its transformation so much as it is a perpetuation of a collection of American myths. By reifying mythological signs, Thompson's novel reshapes, and therefore continues, traditional American mythology. These signs include the American road trip, the masculine car owner, and the 60s drug culture as well as his extensive commentary on good and evil in America. Ultimately, Thompson renews these myths, as Roland Barthes proposes in Mythologies, to make sarcasm a condition of truth. |
| Shauna Papenbrook Supporting Professor: Dr. Helen Lim |
Perceived Differences in Criminality Between Direct and Indirect Harm The definition of crime is socially constructed from any given societys fears. In this way, criminal law does not create crime, but mirror what is perceived as dangerous and threatening. However, this mirror reflection can become distorted, skewed in a way that influences how the criminal justice system views and labels crime. This study explores societys positive bias toward corporate and white-collar crime as opposed to street crime. Specifically, the differences between punitive damages and punishments were explored through scenarios involving equivalent physical harm. It was predicted from previous studies that individuals would attribute financial responsibility to white-collar crime while rendering sole punitive punishment to street crime. Results yielded considerable judgment differences on scales of charges administered, punitive sentencing and monetary damages awarded. This study revealed both the common fears of our society and what crimes are
perceived as most dangerous. It can be suggested by these preliminary results that crime is not inherent in behavior or definition, but a judgment made by |
