Volume XXV, Published in 2016
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THE JOURNAL OF THE CORE CURRICULUM AN ANNUAL ACADEMIC REVIEW OF THE CORE COMMUNITY AT BU NUMBER XXV, SPRING 2016 ISSN 1555-2233 EDITOR Alina Szremski STAFF EDITORS Radhika Akhil Rosie Carter Cat Dossett Rich Driscoll Elizabeth Foster Priest Gooding Hannah Hamilton Emily Hatheway Haotong Jiang Shanti Khanna Matthew Moon Sierra Tempas Isaiah Tharan EDITOR-AT-LARGE Justin Lievano MANAGING EDITOR Zachary Bos FACULTY ADVISOR Prof. Sassan Tabatabai © 2016 by the Trustees and Officers of Boston University. All rights are reserved by the creators of these texts and images. // Creative works published herein are works of the imagination; any resemblance to persons or beings living or dead may be coincidental, or may be artistically deliberate. Resemblance to fictional characters found originally in song, myth, art, religion or literature is in all cases meaningful, and in many cases, inspired. // Correspondence may be sent to the editors c/o the College of Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum at Boston University, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 119, in Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, or via email sent to [email protected]. The editors dedicate this issue to BRUCE REDFORD whose manner, wisdom and great & stately spirit we regard as cherished touchstones of our experience in the Core. * “... but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage...” Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf Table of Contents 8 The Core Almanac The Editors 13 Are Utopias Useless? Caroline Aaron 18 On Ajax’s “Deception Speech” Elizabeth Foster 21 Waiting for God Lydia Erickson 29 Soldier and Sage Abagail Petersen 35 Is Milton’s Eve Taking a Bite Shanti Khanna Out of the Apple, or Out of the Patriarchy? 40 Understanding History Samantha Arnold 42 My Father and Him Brian Jorgensen 44 Ovid’s Dido Konrad Herath 49 Formulating a Thesis Peter J. Schwartz 63 Gilgamesh in Kallipolis? Daniel Fitzgibbons 69 Twang Goes the Core Kyna Hamill & Justin Lievano 72 Poem in the Style of Lao-Tzu Joy Lin 74 Four Sonnets Priest Gooding 77 Hobbes and Non-Contractarian Allen Miller Government 83 Flights of Freedom Rosie Carter 89 Two Depictions from Dante Alexandra Lion 93 A Kind of Jacob Brian Jorgensen 119 A Conversation with Justin Lievano, interviewer Bruce Redford 132 Free Will and Foreknowledge Weiyi Hu 138 Engaging with Utopian Literature Lily Filipowska 143 Religion as a Social Force Emily Hatheway 148 Examining Lao-Tzu Farhan Hoodbhoy 152 Beethoven’s Ninth Rachel Quillen 159 Rousseau: Freudian Fraud Kush Ganatra 166 The Inevitable Social Contract Adam Parks 170 Reports on Recent Science Elizabeth Foster Francis DiMento Savannah Wu Hannah Salem Morgan Richards 187 About Our Contributors 190 Etna Sassan Tabatabai Photos and Illustrations 2 photo, Malinowski with Billy Hancock (likely) Trobriand islanders, 1918 3 photo, the burren, Lisdoonvarna Chloe Hite and Oughtdarra, Ireland 12 pencil, “Dogs of the Core” Cat Dossett 23 photo, Salon d’Agriculture, Paris Chloe Hite 39 photo, Palatine Hill, Rome Elizabeth Foster 45 ink drawing, sunflowers Lily Filipowska 68 photo, kasbah in Ouarzazate Chloe Hite 73 painting of peonies, titled “Hua Yun Shi Kai Fu Gui”: “fortune comes with blooming flowers” 75 photo, font at Fore Abbey, Kyna Hamill in County Meath, Ireland, dating to the 10th century 88 painting, “Dante and Beatrice” Scheffer (courtesy MFA) 91 painting, “Dante and Virgil” Corot (courtesy MFA) 98 photo, David Ferry, before Alina Szremski the Core Poetry reading in March 2016, at the BU Castle 121 video screenshots, showing Zachary Bos Bruce Redford lecturing 142 photo, dusk and the rooftops Chloe Hite seen from the Tour Eiffel, Paris 151 photo, of a “talking statue” in Elizabeth Foster Piazza Pasquino, Rome 158 photo, of a “fat cat at Versailles Chloe Hite that I named Lucille”, France 186 pencil, sketch of Dickinson Cat Dossett >> Visit https://pinterest.com/corecurriculum/core-analects to see more of Cat’s drawings of the “Women of Core.” -Eds. Image sources for the composite front cover design: Scan of a stack of the Core textbooks, b2016. Scan of Beethoven’s manu- script of “Moonlight Sonata,” c.1802. Malinowski with islanders, 1918, photo likely taken by one Billy Hancock. Back cover: Detail of the head of a horse of Selene from the east pediment of the Parthenon, 438bc- 432bc. transcription, published in 1902, of the Old Babylonian cuneiform text known as the Meissner tablet (characters from the same tablet were incorporated into the design of the Spring 2016 Core tee-shirt). Drawing of neurons by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1899. Editor’s Note he words “Core Curriculum” bring to my mind the image of the Core column, the one you see on the title page. That image carries with it a sense of fortitude, ofT eternity, of foundation. Our studies mirror these values; whether we’re reading Gil- gamesh or Argonauts of the Western Pacific, we’re engaged with influential texts that have weathered the tests of time and have earned their place within the Western canon. However, the Boston University Core as we know it is about more than what we study—it’s about community. Core is a place where students and professors connect through a shared love of learning, and to challenge each other’s ideas, and to forge relationships that make our years at BU a little more meaningful. The Journal of the Core Curriculum is the perfect blend of our curriculum and our community, where we immortalize our discussions with the texts we study. The edito- rial team and I are therefore proud to present the twenty-fifth issue of your Journal. In this landmark issue, we decided to highlight the work of our social scientists, so as to bolster involvement and interest in these subjects. The team and I hope you, dear reader, enjoy the work created by your peers and teachers and are inspired to contemplation by these same ideas. It truly is a group effort to pull together this publication. I would like to thank the editorial team—especially those who worked late into the night—for all their sacrificed hours which could have been spent on homework. We express our sincerest gratitude to Zak Bos, our managing editor, for his inexhaustible work ethic, endless patience, and willingness to share his knowledge with us. Of course, this issue would not be possible without Prof. Tabatabai, our faculty advisor, whose vast kindness and light-hearted attitude creates a positive, encouraging atmosphere to work in. We offer our warmest thanks to him. Last but not least, I would like to thank Stephanie Nelson for being a fearless director for the Core, and for all she does to preserve, strengthen, and extend the spirit of Core: its classes, programs, and community. Her unflagging efforts have been central these past few years in creating a harbor for learning here at BU, one that so many of us are proud to be a part of. Thank you for reading! Alina Szremski on behalf of the 2016 editorial team 8 The Core Almanac Playlist of CC 102 Walk-in Music for Spring 2016: 1. Roochnik on Aristotle: Modern Jazz Quartet, “Bags’ Groove” 2. Speight on Aristotle: Modern Jazz Quartet, “European Concert” 3. Klancer on Confucius: Swan Lake and Janet Jackson, “Rhythm Nation” 4. Michael on Lao-Tzu: Guqin, “Flowing Water” 5. Samons on Roman History: “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto No.5, Op.73 (1st Movement) 6. Uden on The Aeneid: Ryan Bingham, “Southside of Heaven” and “Hard Times” 7. Jorgensen on Gospel of Matthew: Bruce Springsteen, “Chimes of Freedom” 8. Knust on Gospel of John: Lauryn Hill & Tanya Blount, “His Eye on the Sparrow” 9. Eckel on the Bhagavad-Gita: The Mahabharata (film!) 10. Nelson on Inferno: Penderecki, “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” 11. Appleford on Purgatorio: Solesmes Abbey VIII, “Ascension. Pentecôte. Trinité.” 12. Sims on Dante: Gianna Nannini, “I Wanna Die 4 U” 13. Hawkins on Paradiso: “In Paradisum” List of All Authors and Artists Studied in Core, AY 2014-2016: Aertsen, Alexander, Alfarabi, Aptekar, Aristotle, Augustine, Austen, Bach, Beckmann, Beethoven, Bhagavad-Gita, Blake, Boas, Bourdieu, Brown, Byron, Cervantes, Chapin, Chekhov, Churchland, Clement XI, Coleridge, Collins, Confucius, Corinth, Cox, Dante, Davis, Degas, Descartes, Dickinson, Dix, Du Bois, Dürer, Durkheim, Engels, Eurip- ides, Evans-Pritchard, Exodus, Forshaw, Genesis, Gilgamesh, Glenn, Goethe, Grosz, Heartfield, Herodotus, Hobbes, Höch, Hochschild, Homer, James, John, Johnson, Jo- inville, Kant, Katznelson, Keats, Khaldun, Kirchner, Klee, Klinger, Kurzweil, Lao-Tzu, Lareau, Las Casas, Leiken, Lenski, Liebermann, Lindley, Locke, Loury, Machiavelli, Madison, Malinowski, Marx, Massey, Matthew, Mead, Menzel, Michelangelo, Milton, Mollenkopf, Montaigne, Moore, Nicolelis, Nietzsche, Omi, Petrarca, Phidias, Pirsig, Plato, Ramachandran, Rembrandt, Rhodes, Ricci, Rousseau, Sacks, Searle, Sepúlveda, Shakespeare, Shapiro, Shelley, Smedly, Smith, Sophocles, Tacitus, Thucydides, Tilly, Toc- queville, Virgil, Voltaire, Von Baeyer, Wacquant, Weber, West, Whitman, Winant, Woolf, Wordsworth, Wright, Ziegler, and Zimmerman. 9 2015 Devlin Award Winners: Kush Ganatra and Abagail Peterson; Honorable Men- tion, David Daniel Ortiz and Liam O’Connell. // 2015 Divisional Award Winners. 1st Year Humanities: Femke Hermse, Pooja Patel, and Shan Qin; 2nd Year Humanities: Brianna Randolph; Natural Sciences: Konrad Herath; and Social Sciences: Hannah Hamilton. // Polytropos Award Winners, 2015. Emre Alpagut, Madeline