Play!

Play is a scholarly topic with a long and convoluted history. This faculty colloquium will make a few obligatory nods to the literature, but then focus instead on how play might be related to the Bucknell educational mission. The talk will be structured more in the spirit of a “This I Believe” essay. It is meant to challenge the Bucknell community to consider play as an important component of a healthy environment. Some questions we will visit: Why as we mature do we view play as the opposite of work? How can play be used to practice skills and explore our world-view? What is the connection between play and creative habits? How can we pair play with reflection to stimulate deep learning? How might we alter our risk/reward structures to encourage productive play?

Natural History on Blocks, in Bodies, and on the Hearth: Juvenile Science Literature and Games, 1850-1875.

This article examines the role of domestic spaces and images in mid-nineteenth-century science writing for children. Analyses of John Mill’s The Fossil Spirit, A.L.O.E.’s Fairy Frisket, John Cargill Brough’s The Fairy Tales of Science, Annie Carey’s “Autobiography of a Lump of Coal,” and an assortment of boxed games reveal a variety of ways in which overwhelming scientific concepts are domesticated. Moreover, juvenile science literature contributes this appeasing domestication to the broader scientific discourse, consistently framing natural history in terms of human experience.

The Little Metropolis: Religion, Politics, & Spolia

There have been numerous councils throughout the Catholic Church?s history. From the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to Vatican II in 1962, only a few centuries have passed without any major church doctrinal change. Following hand in hand with changes in doctrine came the bifurcation of the Christian Church into the Roman CatholicChurch and the Orthodox Church. The first split came in 325 CE with Arianism. Arius of Alexandria and his followers did not agree with the Catholic Church?s viewpoint that the son, Jesus, should be on equal footing with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Constantine the Great brought the Arianism debate to the First Council of Nicaea,which declared Arianism a heretical religion. The following Catholic council?s decisions separated the two Churches even more, eventually creating the formal separation of the Church during the East-West Schism in the middle of the 11th century. Although the twoChurches constantly tried to unite, the Churches hit speed bumps along the way. Eventually, the 1274 Second Council of Lyons officially united the two Churches, even if only for an ephemeral time. At first glance, it might not seem that much resulted from the 1274 Second Council of Lyons. Almost immediately after the council?s ruling, the two Churches split again. Little is known as to why the 1274 Second Council of Lyons ultimately failed in its unification attempt. In this thesis, I will examine the churches of the Little Metropolis at Athens, Merbaka in the Argolid, and Agioi Theodoroi in Athens. In detailing the architectural features of these buildings, I will reconstruct the church building program in association with the 1274 Second Council of Lyons. I will also compare these churchesusing historical sources to keep the sociological, religious, political, and historical context accurate.

Saving morality: Why we cannot, and why we must

Philosophers and laymen alike have often used morality to invite misconceptions of human life into ethics, and also of ethics into human life. The Kant/Williams discourse provides a rich backdrop on which to consider these misconceptions. But the misconceptionsof morality involved are just as numerous and just as serious. One thing that the Kant/Williams discourse shows is this: that ethics can be neither contained by nor cultivated without morality. Though much of Williams’ critique of Kantian morality is quite astute, thephilosophical and ethical wisdoms of morality abound in spite of these. Morality understands the fundamental condition of moral loss, and the sometimes irreducible quandaries that this condition places human beings in. It understands the nature of the moral law, and theintricacies that the levels of letter and spirit invite into human life. Perhaps more importantly, it understands the uncompromising relationship between moral loss and moral law, and how the human navigation of this relationship leads into the ethical realm via giving rise to ethical conviction. Finally, for all of its pressures, morality abounds in valuable wisdoms for the one discovering that the human soul occupies a place of ethical significance in the world. It is responsible for pointing out, grounding and providing a framework for some of the most fundamental truths about the world and human beings; and these are essential to any viable ethical theory and sensible conception of human life.

The Insufficient Void": The Problem of an Earthly Paradise in Wuthering Heights and Dracula"

The aim of my thesis is to chart how death and the spirit world - what might be defined as our living essence - becomes the sites of a new and remarkably subversive Victorian exploration of the supernatural.

The Evolution of Media Coverage of Historical Sports Controversies

This thesis will cover sports controversies throughout the 20th Century in the context of the media’s newspaper coverage of the events. The 1919 Black Sox Scandal, the debate over American participation in the 1936 Olympics, and Muhammad Ali’s conversion to the Nation of Islam, standing as a notorious public figure, and conscientious objection to the Vietnam War will represent the three sports controversies. The media’s adherence to cultural norms is clear in all three cases. The consistent devotion to the cultural and racial atmosphere of their respective eras was constant and helped to perpetuate accepted, mainstream cultural attitudes. Cultural and racial norms were followed in the coverage of the three discussed controversies. The anti-Semitism and racially intolerant sentiments in America during great waves of immigration in the early 1900s allowed for journalists to freely vilify Jews as corrupters of baseball and the ballplayers who were rumored to have thrown the 1919 World Series. The white ballplayers were supported in the press, who protected their own and blamed outsiders. Jim Crow and the Americanization movement forced African American and Jewish newspapers to limit their journalistic bias on both sides of the debate over American participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The white, mainstream press was void of bias as the spirit of isolationism in America triumphed over journalist’s leanings in the Olympic debate. The racial tension created by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s created an atmosphere that allowed mainstream journalists to heap endless criticism on Muhammad Ali as he gained fame. By portraying him as a villain of society as both a religious radical and traitor to America, journalists created a common enemy in the minds of white America. In all three cases, a pattern of journalists expressing the state of cultural and racial norms of the era is present and significant.