Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2006-7: Travel
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Publication The Suburban Jeremiads: Critical Dialogues on American Suburbia(2007-04-01) Leone, GerardThe past twenty years have been witness to what can be called a dialogue on the subject of the American postwar suburb. Keep in mind that though there has almost been three quarters of a century since the end of the Second World War and the inception of the post war suburb, only recently has there been a dialogue instead of a hostile chorus of criticism. Therein lies the tension between title and subtitle of this paper; after all, a dialogue by definition should have a back and forth, a point and counterpoint, while a jeremiad uniformly bewails. There has and continues to be a kind of intellectual default that pervades popular and scholarly examinations of the suburb. We cannot necessarily be sure from where this kind of stance was derived, whether the popular critique takes its cues from the scholarly or vice versa. When examining both popular and scholarly criticism it is easy to see that there is a kind of uniformity of deprecation, of judgmental displeasure toward the suburb. If we discount those boosters who might have had a vested interest in selling goods and houses, then we can only really begin to see a critical defense of the suburb in the past 20 years.Publication National Variations of a Socialist Bloc Symbol: Foreigners-Only Facilities in Four Cold War Era Communist Capitals(2007-04-01) Tso, LeonardDuring the Cold War (1945-1990), many western travelers visited countries in the Socialist bloc despite the tension between the capitalist and socialist camps. Different visitors have different rationale in visiting the communist world: some are "fellow travellers" who consider the socialist bloc as a place for political and intellectual pilgrimage, some are trying to seek dialogue and exchange with the communist authorities, while some were just seeking to understand more about the culture and the people. Yet regardless of their rationale, traveling to this "semi-secretive" part of the world was always an exciting experience given the differences in the social, cultural and political atmosphere. On the other hand, western travelers were also important for the communist authorities: besides being a good source of foreign exchange, the journeys of western tourists could also be good opportunities for the authorities to publicize the "achievements of socialist construction" and instill in them an impression that the socialist bloc is strong and prosperous.Publication What matter where? Epic Geography and the Defense of Hell in Epic Geography and the Defense of Hell in Miltonās Paradise Lost(2007-04-01) Tackett, Justin"Of Milton's interests in contemporary affairs," says J.B. Broadbent, "one of the strongest ā and most typical of his period ā was geography." Indeed, when confronting the countless placenames and allusions in Paradise Lost, there can be no ignoring the prominent role that geography plays in the poem, especially in its description of Hell. By infusing this description with cartographic references, Milton takes his place in the long line of epic poets that descends from Homer and Virgil. But his participation in the epic tradition is by no means static since he uses it for purposes relevant to seventeenth-century England. In Paradise Lost, the depiction of Hell appears to be part of a theological apology. More than just attempting to emulate the epic tradition, Milton employs that tradition to ultimately promote belief in an actual Hell as a rejection of the growing claim among certain radical Protestant sects that Hell was merely an internal state.Publication Charming Charleston: Elite Construction of an Idealized History in Twentieth-Century Tourism(2007-04-01) Mossman, Ellen LouiseAn innocuous tourist pamphlet? The hyperbolic claim of a self-important city? Or the relics of slavery-era paternalism and nostalgia in a twentieth century Southern city dominated by an elite class obsessed with heritage. The associations that leap from this pamphlet, published and widely distributed in the 1930s and 1940s advertising Charleston as a tourist destination for those seeking the aesthetic and historic, raise illuminating questions about the nature of tourism in Charleston. The artist could have chosen anybody to hold the door open to the incoming public, but he chose an elderly black gentleman, grasping the gate with a huge grin on his face, having taken his hat off, and with a slightly bowed posture. Inside the gate, the luscious gardens and blooming azaleas beckon, along with the steeples of the cityās churches in the distance. The image, in short, seems to invite a very specific audience into Charleston. This brochure markets Charleston tourism as packaged for tourists seeking to go back to olden times; they desired to view gardens, historic houses and landmarks, and in essence experience the Charleston of an antebellum planter, complete with a happily subservient and very visible black population.Publication The Journey Itself Home: Saigyoās Way of Impermanence(2007-04-01) Meyer, AndrewThe journey is for us and was for Saigyo an impermanent condition of movement, but aside from this essential similarity, our conventional conception and Saigyoās diverge. Whereas we embark on a journey to get to a destination, ultimately returning to our home, Saigyo transcends all such structures and anchors by dwelling permanently in the condition of the journey. That is, the journey itself is home for him. It would be easy to argue that he is no more than nature poet, drawn into a lifestyle of traveling because of its privileged connection with the natural. This stance has been argued in the past, and convincingly grounded in the strong value of nature in Japanese literary tradition. However, framing him this way overlooks the deep spiritual beliefs and unique cultural influences that inspire his work and push him to along his wandering way. In this essay I seek to understand the connections between Saigyoās fundamental spiritual beliefs and poetry, while focusing on how and why a wandering lifestyle is integral to his life and work. I believe he expresses through his poetry and wandering lifestyle the realization and acceptance of what he feels to be the absolute truth and beauty of impermanence, as symbolically and actually present in nature.Publication Sche knelyd upon hir kneys, hir boke in hir hand: Manuscript Travel, Devotional Pedagogy, and the Textual Communities of The Book of Margery Kemp(2007-04-01) Gorman, SaraThe simplest, and yet most knotty, place to start with The Book of Margery Kempe is to ask plainly: what is it? It has most frequently been proclaimed the first autobiography in English, seemingly more as a marketing ploy than as a result of careful analysis of genre. In reality, Kempe's book occupies an uncomfortable space between first person and third person, written (and even this is problematic) by a self who calls herself "this creature." Yet it is not hagiography either. The Book falls short of the criteria of hagiography for practical reasons ā to name only a few, Margery Kempe has not been canonized and she has no proper "vita," the primary criterion for which is posthumous creation. Barry Windeatt and Sarah Salih, seemingly frustrated with the Book's apparent refusal to conform to a devotional genre, have facetiously called it "autohagiography" with palpable discomfort and skepticism. "Autohagiography" proves a concept with nearly insurmountable troubles, for a number of reasons which perhaps go beyond the scope of this paper. In short, scholars have found efforts to fit Kempe's book into some wider corpus of texts tremendously problematic.Publication Sentenced to Marriage: Chained Women in Wartime(2007-04-01) Breger, Sarah GavriellaOn September 7, 1971, military chaplain Rabbi Aryeh Lev wrote a long and detailed letter to renowned Reform Rabbi Solomon Freehof describing the break-up of the Committee on Responsa (COR) of the Jewish Welfare Board. He explained how mainstream rabbinical organizations had slowly abandoned, and finally dissolved the Committee which had been on the decline since the end of World War II. During its golden years, between 1942 and 1945, the Committee on Responsa achieved something remarkable: all three major denominations in Judaism - Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform - worked together to make Jewish legal or halakhic decisions for servicemen in the American military. Today, fractious fighting between Jewish religious denominations makes it difficult to fathom how such a committee could have existed.Publication Wonderlands: Through the Traveling Lens(2007-04-01) Ellis, Michael; Hu, DiFrom the first photograph taken by NiĆ©pce which took eight hours to expose, to modern digital photographs which take less than a second to process, photography has continuously afforded us glimpses into the lives of the photographers. The capture of the light of those particular moments also captures, in a sense, the flashes of inspiration or the stirring of our hearts. We use photographs to communicate with one another sometimes the most complex and indescribable of emotions. Nowadays, cameras are so ubiquitous in American daily life that they have become another language, a visual one, by which we make meaning in our lives.Publication Ambassadors, Explorers and Allies: A Study of the African-European Relationships, 1400-1600(2006-04-01) Felber Seligman, AndreaThis thesis is an exploration of the diplomatic relationships that developed between various African kingdoms and Europeans between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a focus on African experiences and agendas.Publication Doctors' and Nurses' Flight, Patients' Plight: The Catch-22 of Health Care in Developing Countries(2007-04-01) Yang, CherylI first became interested in this topic after attending an AIDS awareness workshop focusing on South Asia and a lecture given by a nursing professor who had just returned from Botswana. Although these two events dealt with different geographic areas, the problem of brain drain underlay both of them. Inspired by Paul Farmer's belief that health care is a human right, and driven by my own curiosity and interest in international development and global health, I began to dig more deeply into the problem. After further research, I realized how extensive and multi-faceted the brain drain phenomenon is, and I decided to conduct an independent research project that I hoped would complement the existing studies by identifying and exploring some of the issues associated with it that have not yet been thoroughly examined. Upon the suggestion and encouragement of Dr. Renee Fox (my wonderful faculty adviser), I drafted a proposal to undertake a qualitative inquiry that would examine the brain drain process through face-to-face interviews with a small, but intensive sample of physicians and nurses who had migrated to the United States from so-called developing countries.