COASTLINE JOURNAL

…Within the Context of Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope

by Carolyn Matthews, Dominican University.

From the website: Sweet Chariot (click on image)

Presented at the 2010 Graduate Liberal Studies Symposium, Reed College, Portland Oregon, 26 June

Editor’s Note: this essay contains the lyrics to several spirituals, and a downloadable (.wav) recording of Ms. Matthews singing the spiritual.

The music had its origin on shores distant from the land where its people eventually came to dwell for generations. They were stripped physically and metaphorically of their native trappings. Those who survived what came to be called the “Middle Passage,” would have to build community among people from disparate tribes. Although the languages were different and the religious customs varied, it was the music and the inherent sense of community that would be reinforced and would help to keep the hope of freedom forever alive.

Work songs, sorrow songs, laments, moans and chants; the musical genre that has come to be known as the Negro Spiritual emanated from the folk song of the enslaved African. Once thought to be simple expressions of Christian faith from an illiterate people, objective scholarship over the years has come to understand the Spiritual as more than that. Although composed and formed on the shores of the New World, the music has definite African roots. Wyatt Tee Walker writes, “Wherever the Africans and their progeny touched New World shores, no matter what the condition of their existence, they maintained their musical identity.  The rhythm forms and musical idioms were kept alive through the desperate need of the Africans for humanness, which the slave system forcibly stripped from them” (Walker 48, 29). The American slave system was brutal, oppressive and dehumanizing. Although many freedoms were lost the enslaved African retained the freedom to think and thereby was able to develop a longing for freedom and liberation from bondage, providing the foundation from which they would hope for and look forward to a better day. This message, as communicated in selected Spirituals, is analyzed in the context of Jürgen Moltmann’s concept of hope. (more…)

Patricia Kelly, Simon Fraser University.

download this essay: Kelly_Beauty

“Beauty always takes place in the particular, and if there are no particulars, the chance of seeing it go down.” Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just

What woman hasn’t felt the attention of a man? Women live with the effects of the subtle and direct gaze nearly everyday of their life. In the three Matisse Stories, A.S. Byatt writes of five intelligent, talented women – Susannah, Gerda, Peggy, Debbie, and Mrs. Brown – and the different ways they each live with the attention and gaze of men.

Susannah is a woman much like myself. She has reached or surpassed a mid-point in her life; she has each day of her existence been presented with the opportunity to struggle with the hazy and shadowy inner thoughts that could propel her into action. As an aging woman, she is quite used to the gaze, the attention of men and of women: starting with her own parents, her extended family – aunts and uncles, grandparents, too. Teachers would see her and decide in their own mind just how much attention she deserved and what behaviour would be rewarded. But Susannah would grow up to be a woman comfortable with herself, and for decades comfortable without the rituals of the beauty salon. As she grew through her twenties and thirties, men would pass judgment on her every feature. Attention is not always desired, but the gaze would not likely cause any damage to her. Susannah does not require the expert services of a stylist until the changes in her outward appearance become obvious.

(more…)

Angie Allard, Simon Fraser University

download this essay as a pdf file: Allard_Frankenstein

Jay Hirabayashi, Kokoro Dance. Photo by Peter Eastwood

American philosopher Martha Nussbaum believes that everyone has the capacity for evil and that it is more closely connected with circumstance than with any innate human quality. In Upheavals of Thought she writes,

… in reality it seems likely that all humans are capable of evil, and that many if not most of the hideous evil doers are warped by circumstance, both social and personal, that play a large and sometimes decisive role in explaining the evil that they do (452).

Nussbaum’s argument is supported by empirical research. In his discussion on understanding evil acts, Paul Formosa cites Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments in which students, when told to do so by the researchers, continued to apply shocks to recipients even when they were unresponsive. For Formosa, these experiments were an example of an evil-encouraging situation, one that increases the likelihood of performing an evil act. He explains that individuals always act within a particular situation that, in many cases, allows or even encourages their evil behaviour (Formosa 10). (more…)

Sandy Penn, Simon Fraser University

Download this essay: Sandy Penn_nature culture

“The Earth’s declining health is our most important concern, our very lives depending upon a healthy earth,” states Lovelock (2006) in his book, Revenge of Gaia.  Brian Handwerk[1] used the same metaphor in his article “The Earth’s Health in Sharp Decline, Massive Study Finds,”  in which he highlights a “UN-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report [which] revealed that nearly two-thirds of Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems, including clean water, pure air, and stable climate, are being degraded by unsustainable use.”

The notion that the environmental crisis has led the earth to suffer from potentially terminally illness is a metaphor that relies upon our familiarity with illness.  It places global environmental concerns within a tangible anthropocentric framework. Illness, an affliction or pathology of the individual body that causes suffering, is universal in nature, but personal in its effect.  It has been with us since the beginning of human time. Our understanding, reactions, responses, management and approaches to human illness have evolved with us. In contrast our perceptions of earth, as a complex, intricate, fragile, discrete object is a recent phenomenon. Our responses to global environmental concerns are fresh, untried and unproven.  We are faced with rethinking our position and  our impact as earthly inhabitants. The illness metaphor framework allows us to empathize with the environmental crisis and explore how the variety of approaches to illness may be relevant when attributed to the global environmental setting.  This essay will take advantage of this paradigm shift in our understanding of the earth to explore the environmental crisis through the various lenses we usually confine to health and illness.
(more…)

Arista B. Dechant, Fort Hays State University, Kansas

download this essay: theories-of-criminal-behavior

Arista writes:

I have been involved in extensive research since undergraduate school surrounding criminals and how they operate. There are many ideas surrounding the cause of antisocial behavior and criminality. Through this independent study class for Fort Hays State University’s Justice Studies (Graduate) Program, I felt I would have the perfect opportunity to explore many of theories which have developed, over time, to explain criminal behavior.

It is my hope that this research paper will provide an extensive and educational look at how the psychology of a criminal impacts the activity which is produced. It seems that every year brings new ideas, but I feel that the following is a conclusive look of research compiled from the beginning of criminality to the present.

I have also provided a history of criminality and how it has developed into what we now understand as forensic psychology. This field will always remain fluid with discovery, and my greatest pleasure would come from being part of it in the future.

“Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves behind, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him.” Edmund Locard

The application of psychology in the criminal and civil justice system is known as forensic psychology. Hugo Munsterberg (1863 – 1916), a German-American psychologist was the first to pioneered the application of criminal psychology in research and theories. His research extended to witness memory, false confessions, and the role of hypnosis in court.

In 1889, psychology students were beginning to take courses related to law such as “Crime and Modern Theories of the Criminal,” but for the most part, American psychologists did not immediately embrace the study of legal issues (Bersoff, Ogloff, & Tomkins, 1996). For reasons unstated, the study of psychology and law began to wane after World War II. In the 1960’s, psychologists were beginning to “be called on” to make predictions of dangerousness, make clinical assessments relevant to insanity defense pleas, and make assessments and/or offer testimony about other mental health issues in the courts. In the early 1980’s law, criminal justice, and social science would become embraced in legal education. Interdisciplinary and specialized training was introduced at the doctoral, internship, post-doctoral, and continuing educational levels. Textbooks began devoting themselves to forensic testimony and assessment. “Nearly three quarters of a century, from the time that Munsterberg had called for an application of psychology to law, his call had been answered” (Bersoff). (more…)

Susan Burt-Collins, University of Pennsylvania

This was Susan’s final paper for a course in The Literature of the American Political History and Political Culture, taught by Professor Richard Beeman, and her Capstone project.

download this essay (43pp): burt-collins_citizenship

photo by KCH Brown

Along the east bank of the Schuylkill river on Kelly Drive there is a group of statuary that is part of the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial. It is entitled “A History of the American People.” This statuary extols America as a place of energy and possibility. It was created seventy years after the Statue of Liberty’s passionate call to immigrants, “”give me your hungry, your tired…….those yearning to breather free” ,America is the place of possibility, the future and freedom. By including immigrants and a slave in the tableau it echoes the theme of America as a place where all are welcome to join in this American future. Yet, the immigrants and slave are denoted as different: inelegant, rough, not the same as the Americans within the twin arcs of the composition.

Looking at the tableau one sees the forward thrusting shape in the center, grasping and almost becoming one with an eagle. He is an athlete: strong and always in forward motion. It is made of bronze. It is smooth and unblemished. It is entitled Enterprise and beneath it are words of Theodore Roosevelt extolling the youth and energy of the American spirit. “Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with fearless and eager eyes, as vigorous as a young man to run a race.” Within the twin arcs of the plaza are additional bronze figures. In the northern arc are figures of two young men, very athletic, with aquiline noses and even features. These figures convey strength and the promise of youth. The words inscribed around the circle by William Cullen Bryant, suggest the opportunity of America. “Here the free spirit of mankind at length throws its first fetters off and who shall place a limit to the giant’s unchained strength, or curb his swiftness in the forward race.”[1] In the opposite arc to the south is a couple beside a large wheel, all done in bronze. The woman wears a bonnet and full skirt common to frontier women. The man is in boots, hat, pants, his shirt sleeves rolled up suggesting he is hard at work.

The contrast with these handsome, strong figures is immediately obvious when you step out of the arcs and look at the figures atop each pillar leading into the arcs. Each figure is done in limestone, not bronze. Each figure is crouching (the slave) or bent by burdens (the immigrant his sack, the miner his ax, the ploughman his bundle of tools). Finally, none of the four figures has the smooth, even features of the people depicted in bronze. Instead the slave has exaggerated lips and nose with an overhanging forehead giving him a decidedly simian appearance, the immigrant, miner and ploughman all have heavy, harsh features and downcast eyes.

Do these contrasts suggest that the arguments of nineteenth century phrenologists still had currency in the mid-twentieth century? Is there a hierarchy of Americans, some being more able, more suited to America than others? Becuase these figures are perched at the entrances to the arcs, is there a suggestion in their appearance and placement that they are not fully American and not fully a part of the American community? (more…)

Billy Thompson, University of Pennsylvania

Billy writes: I graduated from the Master of Liberal Arts program at Penn in December 2006.  I am currently a technical writer for a student loan company in Wilmington, Delaware. This essay was written for the course, Fads & Trends in Modern Society.

download this essay: thompson_unconscious-optics

Greenscreen stage, "Catwoman"

In his 1984 work, Distinctions, Pierre Bourdieu contends that consumer taste unintentionally reproduces social class structure. He writes:

Consumption is a stage in a process of communication, that is, an act of deciphering, decoding, which presupposes practical or explicit mastery of a cipher or code. In a sense, one can say that the capacity to see is a function of the knowledge, or concepts, that is, the words, that are available to name visible things, and which are, as it were, programmes for perception. A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded. The conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception and appreciation which constitutes pictorial or musical culture is the hidden condition for recognizing the styles characteristic of a period, a school or an author, and, more generally, for the familiarity with the internal logic of works that aesthetic enjoyment presupposes. A beholder who lacks the specific code feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colours and lines, without rhyme or reason.[1]

Bourdieu’s Theory of Tastes applies the concept of cultural capital, or a code of cultural competence as it were, a competence that is subsumed as if by osmosis in accordance with the resources of one’s environment. This competence is expressed through people’s habits of consumption, habits that themselves express the social class and environment the consumer is of. “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.”[2] But, how might we define environment in these terms of taste and class? What tastes are distinctive to what environments, and what meaning can we find in the differing correlations? (more…)