Blain, Camille

Douglas College student research essay submitted as partial requirement for Anthropology 2112 course. Faculty sponsor to submit this essay to DOOR: Dr. Laurie Beckwith. <p>Modern bias is a huge obstacle within archaeology, due to the nature of studying the far away past by people born in the near present. The understanding of gender is heavily effected by modern bias, and often researchers interpret gender of the past in the same way that they understand it today. Gender is a social construct with many connotations of what it means to be feminine and to be masculine, and those connotations have seemingly always looked different as well as the conceptualization of gender in general. Matić (2016) argues that Ancient Egypt has been interpreted as having a binary understanding of gender, but recently feminist and queer theories have begun re-interpreting gender in Ancient Egypt outside of that binary theory. He ultimately argues that evidence for a ‘third gender’ in Ancient Egypt is scarce, but that it still did not function exactly like today as he cites, among other instances, the warrior goddess Neith who is said to be two thirds male and one third female. Gender can also be represented differently in death, as men were sometimes seen as the regenerative sex, and it is conjectured that if women wanted to be reincarnated they needed to be represented as a man once buried (Cooney, 2010). Moreover, in ancient Egyptian law men and women of the same status were treated as mostly equal, as women could own property, and try or be tried in court (Tyldesley, 2012). Yet, the role of women is still under appreciated in modern literature such as Tyldesley’s (2012, pp. 5) characterization of believing that the man was not in total control of his household as a “naive” belief.</p>

Douglas College student research essay submitted as partial requirement for English 2117 course. Faculty sponsor to submit this essay to DOOR: Dr. Diane Stiles. <p>A recurring theme during the romantic period, spanning from 1785-1832, is the sublime. There is no readily available description of the sublime that would do it justice, as it is an almost entirely abstract concept that is conceptualized differently by each individual. It is a mysterious force that has gripped the minds of many, not uniquely in the romantic period. “To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats both focus on the song of the skylark and nightingale to makes connections about the sublime, and “The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins uses the flight of the titular bird; therefore all three use bird imagery to discuss the sublime. However, these three poems suggest that experiences of the sublime somewhat depend on how it is approached. Interestingly, Hopkins was writing about a romantic period theme in the victorian era, when it was not being written about, in a manner that reaches back to the middle ages and forward to the 20th century. Hopkins' transcendence of time somewhat reflects the prolonged obsession with the mystery of the sublime. The sublime is not uniquely a romantic period theme, and is taken up again in the 20th century, however readers and writers alike seem no closer to understanding it than they were before. The sublime recedes as it is approached. From “To a Skylark” readers learn it cannot be conceptualized logically or with intent to control. “Ode to a Nightingale” demonstrates that it can be experienced through a emotion and senses, and readers can seemingly conclude that all of the unconventional uses of opposing sense experiences can eventually lead to the sublime. Then finally, those conclusions are challenged by “The Windhover” who employs a blending of logic and emotion while ultimately experiencing the sublime with almost no mention of senses. Experiencing the sublime is as mysterious as the sublime itself, by beginning with opposites and then arriving at paradoxes it is an ephemeral topic with no clear conclusion, and those writing about it employ various strategies to attempt do so.</p>