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Delivered Divinities: Senatorial Power and Senatorial Peril in the Importation Narratives of Cybele, Asklepios, and Bacchus
Get PDFThis thesis attempts to analyze the Roman Senate’s actions during the importation of three different gods — Cybele, Asklepios, and Bacchus — into Rome during the Middle Republic (400-133 BCE) in order to deduce how the Senate manipulated these religious events to increase their own power and reinforce elite, Roman social norms. Religious events of such importance would not normally be so closely monitored by the Senate, but rather, specific colleges of priests. However, in looking at the ancient narratives of these events, this is not the case.
In order to explore this idea of Senatorial manipulation, the three case studies have been carefully chosen. The first chapter will center on Cybele, the second on Asklepios, and the third on Bacchus. The Cybele and Asklepios narratives share many similarities that allow for a fruitful comparison of supposedly perfect importations. In both of these instances, the Senate is able to tie the importation to a concurrent political event which allows them to extend their sphere of influence further into the religious sphere and create a situation in which they are made stronger.
Bacchus, the third imported god whose story will be looked at, underwent an altogether different sort of importation. Rather than being sought out by the Romans, the Senate saw the incursion of the Bacchic cult as parasitic. They argued that this cult threatened their power and dealt with the sect accordingly.
These three narratives reveal a trend of Senatorial interference in divine importations in order to augment their power and reinforce Roman values that benefit the Senators’ position in the world
Feminized Automobility: Racing the Car as a Cultural and Technological Artifact
Get PDFThere are very few technologies that have so profoundly shaped society as the automobile has. However, what has been a liberating force for some has been an obstacle for others. Since its inception, the automobile has been imbued with masculine creation myths of mechanical strength and technological prowess that have restricted women from utilizing it to its full capacity. The gendered imbalances of the automobile become amplified when studying them not in their practical use but in sport. Auto racing has valued historically masculine characteristics that largely rely on the car as the source of their power. Having been frequently associated with nature, emotionality, and fragility, womanhood has been constructed as incompatible with a sport that relies so heavily on technology. This thesis aims to illustrate that the simultaneous sensationalization and systematic exclusion of women from the racing industry is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that is neither new nor close to ending. Old stereotypes of women as incompetent drivers have permeated the racing world and have strong ties to the early development of automotive technology. Everything from the electric starter and the automatic transmission has been construed as a “feminine” amendment to the automobile, thus serving to minimize utility and preserve the male identity as the holders of automotive expertise. Through interviews with past and present female racers at all levels I explore how the development of a technology is inseparable from its cultural context, and examine how social values regarding the use of technology manifest themselves in racing
Violence as an Infectious Disease: Using a Public Health Approach to Mitigate the United States’ Proliferation of Police Violence
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O\u27me alone? : Aristotle and the failure of autarky in Shakespeare\u27s Coriolanus
Get PDFThis thesis offers an Aristotelian reading of Coriolanus, with the goal of assessing the viability of individual self-sufficiency. As political and moral treatises, Aristotle\u27s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics are valuable intertexts through which Shakespeare’s more imaginative work may be analyzed. I draw on representations of self-sufficiency in both texts in order to consider two larger questions: whether total isolation is practicable, or even possible; and, on the other side, whether social and political expression are ‘merely’ desirable parts of life, or rather necessary for survival. I explore Coriolanus’s dialectic of dependence and self-sufficiency through three recurring themes that appear in both texts: family, food and the body, and divinity
The Politics of Mobility: Study Abroad in an Era of Climate Change
Get PDFThis paper explores the fundamental tension between mobility and the environmental consequences of the transportation that allows for that movement, zeroing in on the paradox of studying abroad in order to learn about climate or environmental sciences. With this, I consider what makes students feel justified in participating in such programs, whether the perceived benefits of these experiences outweigh the environmental costs, and how these programs play into the larger discourse of sustainability and tourism. By framing travel —air travel in particular— as technology embedded with political and cultural ideals, I analyze how and why concepts of mobility influence student choices, as well as how these tensions are navigated by its participants. Through exploring the history and objectives of these types of travel-intensive programs in conjunction with the historical purposes of travel and study abroad, considering the climate impact of air travel, and relating concepts of “Academic Flying” to study abroad, I question why students feel entitled to the privilege of embarking on such an environmentally detrimental journey, and whether such programs should even exist. My research culminates in surveying over 200 School for International Training (SIT) and School for Field Studies (SFS) study abroad alumni about how the climate impact of their travel abroad impacted their decision to participate in their program, whether or not they discussed or thought about their climate impact over the course of the semester, as well as how they would respond to criticism regarding travel for the purpose of discussing climate change. I conclude that the choice is messy; while the benefits of these study abroad experiences may outweigh the environmental costs of the travel required, this is not always the case. With this, students engage in a level of somnambulism, where they fail to question the concept of study abroad and think critically about the potential repercussions of their actions. This can in part be attributed to the social and cultural capital that travel promises, and the lack of reflexivity promoted by both study abroad organizations and students’ home institutions