2019-2020 journal issue

By Alexander Fardy

Education offers empowerment. To know more about the world, the people in it, and how they respond to the hardship around them is to prepare for life as an independent adult. It would seem, then, that an adolescent hoping to find their way in an openly hostile world could look to the opportunity afforded to them by traditional schooling with great enthusiasm, as they receive the knowledge that they will need to survive their oppression.

By Natalie Sparrow

In The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King writes that “somebody once told me that racism hurts everyone. Perhaps in the broader sense of community, this is true. All I know is that it seems to hurt some much more than others” (King 185). This statement raises three challenging questions: What is race? What is racism? And can the effects of racism on an individual and their community be compared to another?

By Noah Cohen-Vogel

I went on a road trip with a couple friends up the east coast of the United States this summer. One friend, who’s big into theater, played the soundtrack to Hamilton. This sparked the occasional political comment. “Say what you will about George Washington,” one companion remarked. “The most important thing he did was step down after two terms.”

By Sophie Konrad

The scale, intensity and longevity of inequality is especially unique and unprecedented in America. This is because, as Ta-Nehisi Coates argues in Between the World and Me, American identity is essentially founded upon oppression, and thus economic inequality is anchored in racial inequality.

By Maya Thulin

Sex, love, and relationships are compelling universal topics that have been the subject of countless musings and explorations. In his didactic poem, On the Nature of Things, Lucretius discusses all three, guided by his valuing of the Epicurean principle of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.

By Joseph DelBigio

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet were written hundreds of years apart, but certain characters in the two works seem to have their lives controlled by similar conditions. Both Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar and Ophelia in Hamlet live in worlds characterized by extreme political unrest and misogyny.

By Alexandra Lamb

While Sigmund Freud came to be known as one of the most (in)famous psychologists of all time, and while Fyodor Dostoevsky established himself as one of the great psychologists of world literature, some modern scientists might point out the close similarity between ‘Freud’ and ‘fraud,’ and no professor would assign The Double as required reading on schizophrenia. While one was primarily considered a psychologist, and the other primarily an author, the speculative features of both author’s writings have resulted in works that modern readers would recognize as resembling each other’s more than they resemble contemporary psychology.

By Aiza Bragg

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the characters of Victor and his creature parallel each other as they both face injustice and suffering and both resort to violent revenge. The creature is a manifestation of Victor’s own flaws and motivations, as Victor calls him “my own spirit let loose from the grave […] forced to destroy all that was dear to me” (100), and he expresses Victor’s need for revenge, companionship, and power.

By Manya Kapur

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States of America has emerged as an unmatched superpower in the international arena. With its supremacy in the global economy and monopoly over mass media, the West stands at the forefront in shaping not only world culture and our accepted history, but the attitudes and ideals of the anglophone world.

By Emily Que

In a world shocked by the horror of death and calamity that came from 9/11, Mohsin Hamid allows us to listen to the voice of a Pakistani-American during this tumultuous time. While many novels about the terrorist attacks of September 11 occupy themselves in exploring the aftermath and traumatic effects on the white population, The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s story circulates around the critical stance of a Pakistani-American who momentarily fell victim to the powerful and imperialistic American system.

By Ila Iverson

Mohsin Hamid’s casual yet powerful writing style communicates the biographical story of a Pakistani Muslim’s enchantment and disenchantment with America while maintaining a degree of uncertainty regarding the character and intention of the narrator and protagonist, Changez. The Reluctant Fundamentalistintrigues and involves the reader with unique stylistic decisions. Presented as a one-sided conversation, or as a monologue, the text brims with realism and ambiguity.

By Macy Quigg

In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud imagines the origin of guilt in humans and how it evolves into a more complex conscience. He posits that guilt stems from a fear of the loss of the father’s love when a child recognizes that they have done something bad and may be found out.

By Shan-Li Barkovich

Edna Pontellier’s story culminates in death, but not in destruction. The last pages of Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening detail Edna’s final moment on the shore of Grand Isle in a position that may indicate her defeat as one who has attempted to break free from the conformities of what it means to be a woman in 19th-century America, but may also represent her success in accepting the impossibility of her situation and taking control of the one thing she has power over: her mortality.

By Camryn Traa

When considering where to lay blame for the hypothetical end of the world, it can be hard to decide whether responsibility lies with the creators of the means of destruction or those who actively put these means to use. This struggle is present throughout Heinar Kipphardt’s play, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

By Erfan Hakim

In Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus makes the disconcerting claim that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (Plato 338c).What is fascinating about Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is that Adolf Eichmann falls prey to Thrasymachus’ problematic conception of justice.

By Gabriel Cameron

Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt have both been misinterpreted with regard to their attitude toward the Nazis, but in fact they both hold very strong and uncompromising anti-Nazi views. I believe Nazism is a version of the ascetic ideal, an ideal which Nietzsche abhors.

By Nola Boasberg

Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is nothing short of terrifying. The striking candor with which Arendt uses Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial to bring to light the horrors committed under the Third Reich is so irreconcilable with what we want to be true about the moral compass of mankind that it may be easier to pretend these events are all fiction, just an appalling thought experiment as to how far a society is able to go towards injustice and evil under the right circumstances.