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The Honors College Journal of Ideas Symposium Vol. XIII SYMPOSIUM THE ADELPHI HONORS COLLEGE JOURNAL OF IDEAS VOLUME XIII EDITORS-­‐IN-­‐CHIEF David Campmier, Annemarie Correa, Catherine Grover, Emily Ladau, Ryan Sobeck, Caitlin Stamm FACULTY ASSISTANCE Dean Richard Garner Associate Dean Diane Della Croce Cara Lynch COVER ART SYMPOSIUM CONTENTS Chapter 65 Coffee Dregs……...……………………………………………………………5 Ryan Sobeck Ruminations on Positive and Negative Liberty in Revolutionary and Contemporary France…………………………………………………………………………………….12 Alexa Savino Any Color You Like………………………………………………………………...........49 Brandon Dove Everything Burns: The World According to the Clown Prince of Crime……………......59 Jaskirat Singh William Howard Taft, First Civil Governor: Avoiding the Imposition of American Culture in the Philippines………………………………………………………………...68 Annemarie Correa Art Meets Biology…………………………………………………………………...…...84 Georgina Podany Biophilia………………………………………………………………………………….89 Matt Massaia Transcript of Harvard’s First Annual Poet’s Debate: Whitman vs. Poe…………………93 Mahnoor Misbah Pen and Paper: Letters to Emily Dickinson……………………………………………....99 Catherine Grover Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sea Power, Theodore Roosevelt, and the “Asiatic Problem”.….110 David Campmier The Unimportance of Being…………………………………………………………….125 Brianna O’Neill Keats, Coleridge, and the Artistic Mind………………………………………….……..133 Jake Stamoulis 3 SYMPOSIUM Liberty Telling the People to like “Revolution” on Facebook…………….……….……142 John Anglin William Carlos Williams: “The crowd at the ball game”…..……….………………….143 Jillian Roesch Intellectual Property, U.S. Patent Law, and Gene Patents: Utilitarian Justifications and the Divided Libertarian Position………………………………………………….....150 Joseph A. Bruno “She, the Diademed Queen:” The Function of Wealhtheow in Beowulf…….…………182 Caitlin Stamm True Power or True Womanhood: The Struggle of Female Slaves to Gain Recognition as Women and Power as Individuals……………………………………...191 Bianca M. LaVeglia 4 SYMPOSIUM Chapter 65 Coffee Dregs Ryan Sobeck (The quarter deck; the crew is busy securing Stubb’s whale to the stern; Ahab retreats into his cabin, while Starbuck resigns control to Stubb on deck; Starbuck enters the kitchen). It was the first whale I had ever seen dead, and it was larger in capacity and scope than I had ever hoped to fathom. Stubb had sent me from the quarterdeck, and my work of securing the leviathan to the infinitely small-in-spirit Pequod, to alert the cook of his accomplishment, and his peculiar desire to consume a steak from the whale’s ample stock. I left the mechanical heaving of the ship’s crew upon the leviathan at our side and descended into the damp dank hold of the ship. I entered the small kitchen1 designed for efficiency at feeding in the bottomless black pit of a hungry ship. The kitchen held every pot and pan in Russian doll form, each subsequent piece fitting into the size above it. After opening only a few pot lids and revealing a new layer, 1 The kitchen of a whaling ship deserves closer attention for it is a central hub from which all the essential nutrients that feed the body are consumed and turned into action or inaction. As I said before, the kitchen is designed for efficiency, with each instrument allotted a space from which it can be obtained with the utmost ease, and yet still take up the least amount of space. For in the hold of a whaling ship, space is considered second in value only to the essential oil the ship is commissioned for; and it is considered a horrible crime and the purest form of gluttony for someone to waste or misuse any space around them. This compressed ideology is impressed on the crew in every facet of ship life: most of the crew sleeps in tight fetal balls, hugging their knees and scowling their brows. Those who try to sleep extended often feel the uncomfortable push of the ship’s mass rebel against such wastefulness and results in the person tossing and turning like a buoy on the rough seas, sleep escaping them to the very crack of the dawn bell. Upon all the open expanse of sea and sky, limitless in all directions known to the compass and human mind, the confined space of the ship’s hold is but a thin membrane around a fragile cell of compressed human security. Just as Satan and his fallen angels believed they too were safe from God’s further wrath within the extended space of hell’s interior walls. 5 SYMPOSIUM you would think that you had reached the end, only to open the next lid to find yet another new pot to use. Likewise, the worn and used utensils all nested together in small, but deep drawers built into the workstations of the kitchen. Everything in the kitchen was built into the walls or stacked within something of greater magnitude. The only piece of equipment that stood out like a lone island in the entire space was a small coffee press that rested stoically upon a chopping block. Starbuck stood before the little coffee press, his eyes acting like measuring spoons as he carefully poured his own specific blend of coffee grinds into the contraption. He would not let the ship’s cook touch his stash of coffee grinds, but always kept them locked in the trunk under his bed for fear that the cook would blanch his limited supply or otherwise waist the finite amount he brought on board. Turning deftly, as he had done hundreds of times before, Starbuck grabbed a boiling kettle of water that bubbled and hissed excitedly as the hot liquid made contact with new metal and was poured over the dry grinds. A puff of translucent steam rose from the press in a great plume and dissipated quietly as it passed through the planks above his head like a person’s shadow disappearing in the expansive silhouette of a great oak tree. With his massive, leathered hands Starbuck pushed down on the old and worn handle of the coffee press with a vacant expression of half expectation, half monotony. Oh how Starbuck’s mind sifted through his thoughts like the thin membrane that separated the floating coffee grinds from the inky black water as the press bubbled and gurgled like the small waves that slap playfully in the shallows of low tide rocks. “Pump once for a watery solution that will barely leave an impression upon your tongue. You might as well drink tea infused with cinnamon with one pump of the arm. 6 SYMPOSIUM Pump twice for a drink of some dark fortitude. Pump thrice or more and marvel at the absolute blackness that consumes the cup like a dead night where the stars are muted by heavy, somber clouds and the moon conceals its brilliance with only shy advances peeping through. So strong and bitter, that black glass mirror can only be palpable with a sparing splash of cool white milk to temper not only the scorching of a hot cup, but also the bitter black brew taste. I take no small pride in my coffee and the bitter taste I swallow without even blinking after every sip.” At last, Starbuck had finished the mechanical extension of the pump’s arm thrice, and he was left with distilled black coffee sitting innocently in the press container. He poured the black drink into his cup and savored the robust smell. His press produced the same cup of coffee every time, a constant on this ever-changing sea. But just as he finished pouring his cup, the tap tap tap of Ahab’s ivory leg could be heard coming closer. His frame came into the already small and now incredibly cramped kitchen, and he stared with his immutable gaze upon Starbuck. “Master Stubbs has all but lashed the beast upon the ship,” Ahab said from the doorway. “Aye, Captain,” he replied. Starbuck tried to meet Ahab’s gaze, but fell short at his cheeks or aimed too high and wound up reading the sharp shadows that fell across that Egyptian brow. Already, I could feel the great weight of the lifeless leviathan pulling our small Pequod askew from its level plane. It was an almost imperceptible change in bearings, only made visible by the incline level of coffee still in the press. Both men stood as if unaffected by the ship’s shift, except for the shadow of an extension from Starbuck’s 7 SYMPOSIUM hand which appeared to brace the counter for some invisible support, whether from the tilt of the ship or from the resilient stare of Ahab pushing his eyes into every corner and hole other than the iron sockets looking back at him. Starbuck could not figure out which force caused him to swerve more. Ahab, however, stood resolute even on this slant. Perhaps his leg found some imperceptible niche in the wood for balance, giving him a look of permanency, like he was another piece of the ship. A support beam carrying the mast, driving forward with the billowing sails filled with untamable Aeolian gusts. But it was this shift of weight displayed in the contraption that eventually drew Ahab’s gaze, and with it, his monomaniacal mind. “Starbuck’s mind is no trophy to be gloated and fawned over like some dead deer that was taken down among the woods by an expert shot. I possess him for now, and though I am confident he is mine for a short time since that fateful day upon the quarter deck where he inhaled my obsession like those noxious perfumes that prevail in the gypsy districts along the harbor fronts of Nantucket and foreign ports. Their herbal remedies creating shapes and phantoms out of smoke and black mirrors to play with the mind and ensnare the senses. But that unknowable sense still eludes the gypsies and it still eludes me.

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