Creating Knowledge the LAS JOURNAL of UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP
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V O L U M E 7 2014 D E PAUL UNIVERSITY Creating Knowledge THE LAS JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP CREATING KNOWLEDGE The LAS Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 2014 EDITOR Warren Schultz ART JURORS Chi Jang Yin, Coordinator Laura Kina Steve Harp COPY EDITORS Brandon Haskey Elizabeth Teahen Lauren Mietelski TABLE OF CONTENTS 6 Forward, by Dean Charles Suchar STUDENT RESEARCH 8 Victoria Trahey Observations on Family Corruption Seen Through Camera Lucida (Department of Art, Media, and Design) 12 Maria Wojtas 19th-Century American Identity Fashioned Through Children’s and Misses’ Ready Made Dresses of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Company Catalog (Department of Anthropology ) 18 Scott Jones Invectives Targeting Caesar and the State in Propertius Elegies II (Classics Program) 24 Ramiro Hernandez Tracing the Decline of Catholicism in Contemporary Mexican Identity (Department of Catholic Studies & The Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology) 32 Alex Kfoury Re-Evaluating the Persistence of College Wage Premium Gaps Across Gender and Ethnicity (Department of Economics) 42 Jordan Weber A Cynic’s Duty: Ambrose Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, Alienation and Challenging Civil War Authority (Department of English) 50 Sheridan Haley À la recherche du temps perdu ; Du côté de chez Swann: Une œuvre impressionniste (French Program, Department of Modern Languages) 56 Marina Schneider Reviewing the Origins of the Sudanese Style: Andalusian or African Provenance? (Department of the History of Art and Architecture) 66 Mary Ralph Banging at the Door: Twenty Years of Activism That Put Jon Burge Behind Bars (Department of History) 74 Keavy McFadden Gender, Labor Organizing & Solidarity in the Salvadoran Garment Sector (Department of International Studies) 84 Ryan Restine “Putting Allspace In A Notshall”: The Presence of Hamlet in Finnegans Wake (Irish Studies Program) 92 Ben Brooks Un’analisi Stilistica di “Guido, I’ Vorrei” di Dante Alighieri (Italian Program, Department of Modern Languages) 96 Rhone Talsma Gay Marriage Makes Me Want To Puke: On Respectability Politics, Anti-Capitalist Queer Activism and the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage (LGBTQ Studies Program) 102 Iwona Bies Jewish Organizations in Brazil and Argentina and the Struggle to Protect Their Communities (Latin American and Latino Studies Program) 110 Molly Dannenberg Feet on the Ground, Head in the Sky (Department of Philosophy) 116 Andrew N. Hardy Sacred Dimensions: Diffused Religion in the Traditional Chinese Family, State and Local Community (Department of Religious Studies) 126 Brie Goldstein Prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young People By Sex, Race/Ethnicity and Income: Evidence from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (Department of Sociology) 134 Kevin Cole Revaloración De La Voz Negra En El Poema “Mi Lengua” De Jeannette Miller (Spanish Program, Department of Modern Languages) 140 Clare Stuber Inventing Virtual Autonomy; Or, How to Friend Request the Discursive Hysteric (Department of Women’s and Gender Studies) 150 Bridget Wagner You Should Be Ashamed: Exploring Seventeen’s “Traumaramas” as a Contradictory Genre (Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse) FORWARD Dear Students, Faculty Colleagues and Friends, It is my great pleasure to introduce the seventh volume of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ Creating Knowledge—our undergraduate student scholarship and research journal. First published in 2008, the journal is the outcome of an initiative to enhance and enrich the academic quality of the student experience within the college. Through this publication, the college seeks to encourage students to become actively engaged in creating scholarship and research and gives them a venue for the publication of their essays. Beginning with the sixth volume of the journal, we instituted a major change in the manner in which the papers for the journal were selected for inclusion and a decision about the best way to more fully represent the considerable breadth of subject matter that reflect the many different departments and programs that we have in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Each major undergraduate department and program was challenged to develop a system whereby the single best scholarly essay written by a student during the academic year would be decided by faculty within that academic unit and awarded a publication slot in the current annual issue. This necessitated the cooperation and hard work of many within the undergraduate units in our college. The resulting collection of papers representing the efforts of our best students and the collaboration of faculty reviewers in 20 of our programs is certainly ample testimony to not only the creativity, hard work and sophistication of our undergraduate scholars, but of the dedication of our programs to the quality of the educational experiences and opportunities offered by them to students. It is through the continuing annual publication of this undergraduate student journal that we aim to underscore that leadership within their disciplines requires students to not only be familiar with the knowledge base of the discipline, but also to have the experience of being actively engaged in sustaining an intellectual community—understanding how their creative work and the work of others also depends on its dissemination and on the sharing of that knowledge within a community of scholars. I want to congratulate, first and foremost, the many student scholars whose work is featured in this seventh volume of the journal. They truly represent the best of the best. I also want to thank the faculty who served to make this publication possible—those who served on the editorial committees in each department and program that had the difficult task of selecting the best submissions their respective programs could make for this edition of the journal. I want to particularly thank Warren Schultz, PhD, associate dean for Undergraduate Studies, who spearheaded this year’s efforts—no small undertaking. To the students who are featured in this edition, it is my fondest hope that this will lead you to make similar contributions beyond the department and program, the college and DePaul University. To one and all, I extend my most sincere congratulations and gratitude. Chuck Suchar Dean OBSERVATIONS ON FAMILY CORRUPTION SEEN THROUGH CAMERA LUCIDA Victoria Trahey* Department of Art, Media, and Design For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, become corrupted. A snap in time, marking a moment for watches…cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, what may be forever, in Barthes opinion, is the definition and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the of essence. photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood. – Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida In a similar sense, I have a photograph of my grandfather taken just before he passed away. It is from my nephew’s In his book on photography, Camera Lucida, Roland baptism. When looking at this photograph, “three tenses Barthes discusses time in relation to photography and how, dizzy my consciousness” (97). This is an idea that Barthes to him, the passing of time is not a negative. I am drawn talks about when looking at a photograph that captured the to this because I have always found comfort in the sound road to “Beith-Lehem.” For me, I am dizzied by my present, a shutter makes. The mechanical sound that results from the present of the photograph, and my grandfathers prime. the photographer’s inspiration is powerful and motivating. This essence of The Baptism has been corrupted by the Each photograph is a stamp of time; it is a fragment of passing of time. the past. Although I was very young when my grandfather was A photograph marks a moment in time – it steals a second both mentally and physically fit, I have been granted the to be looked at and relooked at an infinite number of opportunity to view snippets of this time that the camera times. According to Barthes, the essence of photography preserved. The memories I have and the images I have is to ratify what it represents. This essence, however, aid in the corruption of The Baptism. These memories can be corrupted by the passing of time. By corruption plague my way of thinking and create fragmentation in I am referring to a shift, which occurs over time, in the photograph before me. When I look at the photograph, understanding the essence of a photograph. I am consumed by the innumerable photographs and memories I have of my grandfather. At one time, the Camera Lucida is heavily weighted by the death of his essence of The Baptism was family unity. In my present— mother; it is the author’s way of understanding and coping. having knowledge unavailable to me when the photograph Although Barthes indicates no prior attachment to the was taken—the essence has been corrupted. Winter Garden photograph, since his mother’s death he believes that this photograph is the essence of all When The Baptism was first taken, it was atame photograph photography. I question whether it would hold the same that was intended to serve as documentation of the event meaning for him had he found this image prior to her and who attended. However, with the passing of both my death. Thus, over time the essence of the photograph has grandfather and time, it has become a mad photograph. It is more alive than it was upon its inception. The * Prepared for ART 118, Thinking Photography, taught by photograph has punctum, I see it in my grandfather’s eyes; Professor Steve Harp in winter quarter, 2014. 11 it leaves me uneasy. My own eyes look longingly upon his The camera captured something I never could: an eternal eyes, which look carelessly into the camera lens. It is a look image. Without this photograph, I would not remember that I cannot define, one that leaves me in anticipation for what my grandfather looked like the last time I saw him.