Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (JIDR), v.6 no.1 2023
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Items in this collection are the scholarly output of Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student students, either alone or as co-authors, and which may or may not have been published in an alternate format.
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Item A Multilevel Incentive Theory of Group Integration(Graduate Student Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2023) Levey, SamThis paper explores commonalities between two bodies of work: Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) in social psychology, and Multilevel Selection Theory (MLS) in evolutionary biology. These two fields have each created theories of group integration, or how elements of a system become so coordinated and coherent as to take on the properties of a single entity in their own right, but with SIT tackling human groups and MLS looking at biological and cultural systems that evolve through natural selection. In this paper, drawing on the Anticipatory Systems view of Robert Rosen, I offer an abstract systems language that can unite these two approaches as special cases of a broader theory of systems integration in learning systems. This approach offers a new lens that bridges social and natural sciences, and has profound implications, particularly for economics and political science.Item The Dirty South: LatinX Art in the United States(Graduate Student Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2023) Coronado, DanielleThe Dirty South adds to the discourse of LatinX arts and culture by creating space for South American and other-identifying artists in the United States mainstream. Through historical context and data, this essay discusses the discrepancies of LatinX artists in the U.S. fine art scene while analyzing the disparities placed on the ethnic community itself. Included in citation, this research includes encyclopedic text, opinion articles and critique, as well as quantitative studies of ethnicity and museum diversity. The driving forces include the words of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands and the concepts of Anibal Quijano’s Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. By creating an inclusive environment within the text, Dani Coronado highlights the shared experiences yet abundant identities of LatinX artists. The inscribed duality of the culture is highlighted by five contemporary female-presenting artists in the U.S. with their various and similar concepts of identity. Coronado weaves connections between cultural iconography, art materials, and text to show the false disconnect of the LatinX community, attempting to repair some of the damages brought by eurocentric mainstream culture.Item The Ironic Budd: Elements of Sophoclean Tragedy in Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor”(Graduate Student Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2023) Hynes, Daniel E.Employing the three major substances of tragedy (plot, character, and thought) as outlined by Aristotle in his Poetics, this paper analyzes how the imbrications and interactions of these components manifest simultaneously within the general Sophoclean text and Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor. In tracking each author’s manipulation of their respective substances and identifying how adroitly their works converse amongst themselves across the two-and-a-half millennia that separate them, I conclude that literary tragedy is a commonality which links each globally disparate culture, and its every adherent within, and that archetypal tragic thought, character, and plot are three aspects as endemic to 5th century B.C. literature as they would be twenty-four hundred years later. “The tragic hero’s fate is meted out by a plot whose structure preexists them by millennia; and if a contradictory fluidity resides within rigid structure, in almost symbiotic relation to it, then… as evidenced through the fluidity of plot, recognition, reversal, tragic incidence… we learn that the average Sophoclean work fascinatingly occupies the same region of equivocality as [Budd], while maintaining in itself the reification identified by Aristotle which would be instructed to future students of tragedy and the like down through the ages, past the first millennium A.D., up to the moment Melville first raised his pen—and well afterwards—reconstituting itself sempiternally, cyclically for who-knows how long.”Item Heteronormativity as a Rhetorical Tool to Reclaim Public Spaces and Engage in Community Building: A Study of The Ladder and Mattachine Review(Graduate Student Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2023) Gomez, MiltonThis project is the result of extensive research at the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid- America (GLAMA) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I engaged in a rhetorical analysis of The Ladder and Mattachine Review. These two publications were created and edited by two of the most prominent Homophile organizations in the 50s and 60s in the United States—Daughter of Bilitis and Mattachine Society. My argument deals with the ambivalences of the historical times in which these periodicals were produced and distributed. On one hand, while these organizations attempted to make queer people visible, they also used heteronormativity as a rhetorical tool in order to normalize their publications and sound more acceptable. This normalization of voices entailed the erasure of queer identities that didn't comply with the "sense of normalcy" demanded by public hetero spaces. On the other hand, editors of these publications were strategic in creating sections within the periodicals called "Reader's Responses" through which they controlled interactions among subscribers while promoting community building. These sections allowed queer people to connect, network, and become visible within a framework of hetero-acceptance and normalcy. These sections were also used to incorporate recent research in the fields of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Law in order to de-pathologize and challenge regulations that made queerness illegal. Throughout my project, I urge the reader to think about the pervasiveness of heteronormativity while giving value and acknowledging the limitations of the work of Daughters of Bilitis and Mattachine Society. The work of these Homophile organizations was quintessential and paved the ground for future queer activism in the US. However, it is worth noting that hetero norms were always present and shaped the ways in which queer people attained respectability and recognition.Item Empathy, Symbolism, and Synchresis in Under the Skin (2013): How Mica Levi’s Score Shapes the Narrative(Graduate Student Council at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2023) Cholodenko, DevinThe 2013 science-fiction horror film Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer, revolves around an alien being sent to earth to collect and harvest human bodies. As the film progresses, the alien begins to question its identity and develop a fascination with human emotion. Most striking about this film is the role of its musical score, composed by Mica Levi. The score plays an unusually extensive role in shaping the viewer's perception of the alien’s “otherness,” and in manipulating this perception throughout the film. This paper analyzes the ways in which the score’s timbral, melodic, harmonic, and electronic elements are applied and developed to direct the viewer’s narrative empathy with the main character. Through careful application, the musical material first discourages viewers from identification with the alien, but as the film progresses, the tactical combination of score and plot shift the sympathies of the viewer toward identification with the “other.” Then, in the final moments of the film, these two opposing ways of seeing the main character are brought together, creating a dissonance which presents the viewer with their own capacity for empathy.