Humanities

Elizabeth Young, Annika Thesing, Maya Tetali, David Sisson, Sydney Simmons, Maggie Shehane, Marin Rehfield, John Morphett, Noah Mikstay, Jose Hernandez, Ashley Henneberger, Sophie Eichelberger, Layan Anabtawi, Kevin Andrews, Maeve Arthur, Rebekah Bass, Hunter Callaway

Faculty Sponsor: Caroline Fache

French 260 – Contemporary France students have been doing investigative journalistic research on specific French current events and they have put together websites that help their classmates understand current event in their historical and current context. During the VMC symposium, their will present their projects.

Allegra Geanuracos

Faculty Sponsor: Professor Daniel Layman

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls constructs one of the most famous thought experiments in modern political philosophical thought, known as the veil of ignorance. Rawls claims that by creating and examining this hypothetical scenario, in which agents do not know anything about their specific character traits or interests, we can create a context of fairness that generates two principles of justice by agreement. This agreement serves as the main justification for Rawls’ entire theory and constitutes what is known as Rawlsian contractualism. Over the course of this paper, I attempt to show why the veil of ignorance fails to function adequately as a justification for Rawls’ theory of justice. In order to do so, I develop and carry out what I call the “agreement test,” which demonstrates how contractualist scenarios can fail to function as justifications. In order to understand how the test is supposed to work, I discuss the function of agreement in contractualist hypothetical scenarios and what type of agreement contractualism demands. After this discussion, I argue that Rawls’s agreement behind the veil cannot provide justification for his theory, in that it represents a mere consensus rather than contractual agreement. This is because his agents do not qualify as qualitatively distinct. In the rest of the paper, I provide evidence that Rawlsian agents do not qualify as qualitatively distinct, why this feature of his scenario ultimately undermines its necessary function as a justification for his theory, and how his hypothetical scenario fares in comparison to those found in other contractualist philosophies.

Jake Myers, Jackson Bracy, Elle Gilleland, Josh Lodish, Landon Schabes, Mary Grace Bunch, James Shakow, Aalim Khaderi, Max Shockett, Keelan Bailey

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew Rippeon

In these digitally mediated projects, students engage with the acoustic environment of Davidson College and the Town of Davidson.  According to R. Murray Schafer (who popularized the term “soundscape”), “We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape.”  In the projects presented here, students have listened to various social, academic, athletic, and natural spaces, and incorporated ecological, social, and technological approaches in their analysis of these soundscapes.  Their writing incorporates both experiential and theoretical approaches, as students present and discuss sounds they’ve captured in these domain-based projects.  Visitors will be able to listen to and read these projects, and their creators will be on hand to discuss their work and answer questions.

Jake Myers, Jackson Bracy, Elle Gilleland, Josh Lodish, Landon Schabes, Mary Grace Bunch, James Shakow, Aalim Khaderi, Max Shockett, Keelan Bailey

Faculty Sponsor: Andrew Rippeon

In these digitally mediated projects, students engage with the acoustic environment of Davidson College and the Town of Davidson.  According to R. Murray Schafer (who popularized the term “soundscape”), “We can isolate an acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape.”  In the projects presented here, students have listened to various social, academic, athletic, and natural spaces, and incorporated ecological, social, and technological approaches in their analysis of these soundscapes.  Their writing incorporates both experiential and theoretical approaches, as students present and discuss sounds they’ve captured in these domain-based projects.  Visitors will be able to listen to and read these projects, and their creators will be on hand to discuss their work and answer questions.

Eleanor Tan

Faculty Sponsor: Fuji Lozada

Why has China never started a war, or has it? To address this question, this paper will look at Chinese strategic culture. Strategic culture although not clearly defined, tends to be used to refer to “consistent and persistent historical patterns in the way particular states think about the use for force for political ends” (Johnston). Different states have different sets of strategic preferences based on the particular states’ early military history and its philosophical, cultural, political, and cognitive characteristics as they have developed over time (Johnston). China is often depicted as having at least two models of strategic culture, one based on Confucian-Mencian principles of war as a last resort and the second based on a parabellum paradigm that places offensive strategy above defense and accommodationist ones. Both are historically evident and neither is absolute. This paper will begin to analyze Chinese strategic thought and culture using the case study of the Sino-Vietnamese War. Using past and present literature about Chinese strategic culture and the Sino-Vietnamese War, I argue that China does have strategic culture–not a singular, absolute one however, and that the Sino-Vietnamese War is not strictly an offensive war. I believe the events of the Sino-vietnamese War to be a continuation of Chinese strategic culture. Looking at larger trends in China’s strategic thought can potentially be useful in predicting China’s future positions in times of conflict.

Anthony Palumbo

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Marija Jankovic

Since the 1980’s philosophers have produced a large set of literature on collective autonomy. Collective autonomy, a concept that I will expand on later in my paper, refers to collectives’ capacity to perform actions by themselves. Today, many philosophers agree that collectives can have legal responsibilities, such as a corporation’s duty not to falsify its earnings reports. But, do corporations have moral responsibilities and autonomy too? In this paper collectives lack imputability and second-order intentionality which are criteria to be an autonomous moral agent.

Jess Villager, Christoper Mazariegos, Juliet Leach

Faculty Sponsor: Rosaline Kyo

The objective of our exhibition is to inform people about the interrelationship between ritual practices and art across a myriad of cultures. Despite the culture or origin of the art in countries such as: Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Japan, as well as many others, their artwork maintained similar continuities. We want our audience to understand the emphasis on rituals and traditions within these cultures, that despite their geographic location and if they communicated or not, all these cultures utilized art and architecture as a source of reverence. We can infer through their portrayal of ritual practices through different forms of art and architecture, that each culture formed and maintained their own unique identity; furthermore, we can theorize what each culture valued.

Maya Tetali, Eleanor Lilly, Chinara Embden

Faculty Sponsor: Rosaline Kyo

The purpose of our exhibition is to lead our audience on a journey of exploration through the three major religions that spanned across India throughout its history. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam all gave its followers an understanding of life’s meaning in different ways. Our exhibition seeks to investigate these differences through the medium of architecture. Specifically, we want to analyze monumental architecture in India through the lens of these three religious paths, highlight the connection between the physical and spiritual aspects in religious
architecture, and investigate the differences and similarities between the three. After establishing the orthodoxy of each religion, we will examine the way these beliefs are manifested within the corresponding architecture. Our main subsections will of course be Islamic architecture, Hindu architecture, and Buddhist architecture and our exhibition will observe the evolution of the three
religions and how each influences the other.