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Letter From the Editors
Letter From the Editors
Undergraduate years are among the most formative ones for students. Along with the treasures of friendships and memories, undergraduate years also bring the springtime of many pursuits for Truth. As an academic institution, the Catholic University of America is committed to pursuing the Truth without compromise, illuminated by the harmony of faith and reason. Today however, the pursuit of Truth is often left to experts, those with terminal degrees and specializations in given fields. For this reason, faculty and graduate research take a prime place in the priorities of a global research university like Catholic, leaving undergraduate education separated from an institution’s research endeavors. The Catholic University of America offers a different approach, in which undergraduate research matters, because undergraduate research holds a unique value of its own, a value that cuts to the heart of the true meaning of education.
Undergraduates do not claim to be experts in their fields; instead they are marvelors at their fields. History is charged with thorough examples of students whose relentless and courageous pursuit of the Truth has led to fruitful harvests: think of the notes on human anatomy in the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, the commentary on Aristotle in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, or the study of bird aviation conducted by William and Orville Wright. In each of these cases, research is driven by the impetus of finding the causes of things, the desire to know. From the most practically applicable research to the most contemplative investigations, both are driven by a kind of wonder animated by love.
Young people are particularly prone to fall in love, to move mountains for the sake of a fine pursuit. How wonderful it would be to see the excitement of a young Thomas More studying Augustine’s City of God or a young Lincoln reading the great speeches in Thucydides. These people discovered their passion at a young age, a passion that was prudentially checked by the discipline and duties of responsibilities. This is the invaluable experience that undergraduate years can offer students.
Every field-leading expert at some point modeled this intellectual springtime. How wonderful it would be to peer into the minds of those field-leading experts when they were merely field-admiring students. All sports fans know the value of their favorite player’s rookie card, the year they had their first voyage. What a joy it is to know that an undergraduate researcher is like a flower at its first burst, with nearly infinite potential ahead for them.
Fostering this springtime is at the heart of the educational project. Teaching and researching often appear to be competitors for professors’ attention. But in undergraduate research, teaching is the sine qua non that sparks the impetus of each of these student’s investigations, the kind of endeavor that sparks a fruitful lifetime passion. The kind of passion of the Wright brothers, Aquinas, and Da Vinci. Perhaps an endeavor of showcasing great undergraduate research is a profound tribute of gratitude to all of our teachers.
As we publish Inventio in the springtime, it gives us a great opportunity to reflect on the gratitude we have to be at the stage in our lives where ideas appear to us as new and exciting, marvelous and worthwhile. We all love the springtime’s color and promise; its Easter hope, its fertile fields. We hope that the pages of this journal radiate that same fragrance of hope and the freshness of truth, because at the end of the day, each of these pieces of work, and the work done to prepare and produce this journal, is driven by the spark of a young heart, what the philosophers and the poets call “wonder.”
We hope that each of you can enjoy this Volume of Inventio, and can wonder along with us.
Sincerely,
Javier-Andres Mazariegos, Editor-in-Chief
Daniel Formella, Associate Editor
Javier-Andres Mazariegos, Editor-in-Chief
Daniel Formella, Associate Editor
Essays
Essays
by Jana Jedrych
After the Russian Revolution, the future of Russian ballet— an imperial entertainment far removed from the daily lives of the proletariat—hung by a precarious thread. Radicals argued that ballet was inherently incapable of adapting to the new regime, but others saw the moving quality of ballet as a valuable propaganda tool with which to shape a new society. Russian ballet was forced to strip itself of the artifice and frivolity of its past and take on a new, Communist character, a difficult process full of missteps which had harsh consequences for those involved. While ballet was inextricably intertwined with politics in Soviet Russia, meant to be a tool of the state, to imagine that all ballet was simply propaganda— or artistically worthless—is an unjust and oversimplified view of what was in reality a complicated, contradictory machine. Soviet cultural policy in regard to ballet paid overwhelming attention to content over artistry, which led to various ballet artists expressing their own artistic preferences even amidst the stifling and brutal confines of what constituted Soviet ballet, especially under Stalin but continuing on after his death. The Soviet preoccupation with content over artistry lead to drambalet but was not able to entirely stifle the creativity of those working at the time, and some notable persons even used compliant content to veil and justify subversive artistry. This analysis of several notable Soviet ballets will discuss the power and controversy of Soviet ballet in regards to politics, focusing on the ways in which ballet was used to promote Soviet ideology. Ultimately, this allowed for artists with subversive identities or affiliations, most notably Jewish choreographer Leonid Yakobson, to veil the dissident sentiments expressed in their artistry with content that very literally complied with Soviet ideology.
by Kate Lorio
In James Baldwin’s world, both white and Black America saw conflict between the sacred and the secular; the light path of salvation was thought to be that of the churches and their gospel hymns, while the dark path of damnation was that of the streets and their “good-time music.” This paper argues that Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” presents an alternative perspective, one that Baldwin himself seems to have held, dependent upon threads connecting blues and jazz music to spiritualism. The story and the main character of Sonny himself unite the sacred and the secular in harmony with each other, showing that the sacred can in fact be found not just in churches but within the experiences and elements of the secular world. Sonny functions in the text as a “secular saint,” a term coined by the author to describe a character who undergoes spiritual transformation and achieves salvation from his addiction and suffering by the end of the story. Crucially, this is accomplished not through the context of the church but through secular music. It is this “Devil’s music” that saves Sonny, serving a spiritual purpose in the narrative alongside the religious and Biblical imagery present.
By Marie-Sophie Brackstone
This paper examines Franz Liszt’s solo piano transcription of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36. Beethoven was a composer who contributed to the shift of music from the Classical era to the Romantic period of music, while Liszt was fully immersed in Romantic style. This paper successfully determines that, through his accurate and detailed transcription, Liszt did more than simply transcribe the original work for solo piano but rather used the transcription as a means to better engage with and further display the genius of Beethoven through his new rendition.
By Andrew Snaith
Vaporwave is a sample-based music genre and art movement that both critiques and embraces the idea of the free market. It is an entirely internet-based music genre and community that embodies a fascination with past time periods, achieved through its associated aesthetics and connection to nostalgia and idealized memory. Yet, even though it is a genre born in the digital era, countless members of its community display a constant obsession with obsolete physical media formats such as vinyl and cassette. In this paper, I attempt to explore this community’s fascination with old physical media and the connection that Vaporwave’s associated aesthetics and “plunderphonic” nature have on this phenomenon. I conclude that the obsession stems from the overtly vintage aesthetics of the genre by listening to Vaporwave on physical formats. Fans are blinded by nostalgia and inconvenience themselves in their listening habits, a practice that has opened opportunities for artists to release their sampled music in a preserved format while creating additional profits for them.
by Abigail Treacy
Central to the study of metaphysics is the study of ontology (i.e., the study of being). Within this branch of metaphysics, thorough systematic investigation of its subject is necessary to better understand the subject itself. In ontology, this includes studying the transcendental attributes of being which have been elements investigated in metaphysics for centuries. Building off of the work of ancient philosophy, Saint Thomas Aquinas offers his own significant contributions in this area of study. This essay will track his metaphysical interpretation of the association between the notions of being and good, and will further assess Jan A. Aertsen’s superb understanding of Aquinas’s ontological pursuit. Aertsen follows Aquinas’s two investigations—how good is resolved to being and the degrees of goodness and being—found in Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate and Summa Theologica and provides coherent distinctions to articulate the interchangeability of being and the transcendental good. This essay will also make it apparent how substantial Aertsen’s contribution is to the study of ontology and indicate how particularly helpful it is for anyone interested in understanding Thomistic metaphysics.
by Laura Roa
Sharp divisions characterized Europe during the First World War. Political upheaval and an atmosphere of nationalist motivations altered life for many, forcing strict standards upon men and women alike. Whereas their male counterparts at the battlefront endured greater physical strife, many women at the Home Front experienced emotional demands that impacted their perception of gender roles, specifically those related to motherhood. Embedded in motherhood was the expectation of sacrifice: a characteristic that received attention from female authors such as Ida Boy-Ed. Boy-Ed illustrated strong interest in the status of her sex and explored the implications of that status in her 1916 work, Die Opferschale. Despite popular notions reducing the novel to propagandist fiction, this paper endeavors to contextualize Die Opferschale’s depiction of the Women at Home as well as the cultural and political forces that contributed to the female “necessity” to sacrifice oneself for one’s family and homeland. Examining Die Opferschale on the basis of the author’s veiled critique of women’s roles and of the sacrifice presumed in motherhood, rather than on the assumptions of the novel as solely a work of German nationalism, is the purpose of this paper.
by Veronica Brown
This paper is a shortened form of a longer paper on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche (the original paper also included a consideration of The Brothers Karamazov). This paper traces the similarities and differences in the thought of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on God, morality, and freedom. It begins with an analysis of The Underground Man. I show that Nietzsche felt a kinship for Dostoevsky because they both argued against modern rationalism and nihilism; however, Nietzsche thought that nihilism was the direct result of Christianity, whereas Dostoevsky thought that nihilism was the result of society forgetting God. I then compare Nietzsche’s theory of the overman with Raskolnikov’s theory of “extraordinary” men. I trace the similarities and differences between these two theories and ultimately conclude that Raskolnikov and Nietzsche have similar theories because they both divide humanity into ordinary and extraordinary men; they recognize the rights of extraordinary men to be actors beyond good and evil. The overman and “extraordinary” man are both elevated to the level of God because of their right to be lawgivers. While Nietzsche espoused the overman as the liberation of humanity, Dostoevsky saw only enslavement and destruction, as shown through the psychological breakdown of Raskolnikov. Dostoevsky counters Raskolnikov’s theory and his belief in the rights of extraordinary men through the will to love, exemplified by Sonia. This self-sacrificial love brings about the possibility of moral resurrection for Raskolnikov. For Nietzsche, the antithesis of freedom, or Christ, will forever stand. But for Dostoevsky, this is a false antithesis because the only freedom possible for human beings is not the will to power, but the will to love God and neighbor.
by Sarah Abood
Prompt: In this essay, you will apply the writing skills that you have been honing this semester – drafting and invention techniques, organization and revision strategies, rhetorical and argument analysis, dialoguing with sources, persuasive appeals – in order to present a compelling argument for a particular discourse community.
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