by Jazzy Lemons
HUM124 with Leslee Johnson
Author: Alex Hollifield
by Alana DeLawter
LANG120 with Jessica Pisano
Dyslexia and Growing Up
After reflecting on my childhood, which was largely spent in a remedial program, I decided I wanted to make a mixed media piece detailing my experience and the conclusion I came to in coping with my visual dyslexia. I chose to use an eye as a self-representation for a few reasons. Firstly, my visual dyslexia is a result of distortions of my eye and parts of my brain
that contribute to my visual function. Secondly, an eye represents me as an artist because I can use my eyes to transcribe the world around me and put it on paper. I am not defined by my dyslexia but it is a part of my human experience. I also chose to use the star as a symbol in my drawing as a nod to reward systems offered by teachers in school, as well as a symbol of potential to learn, something I have despite my dyslexia. I placed scraps of paper with b’s, d’s, p’s, and q’s in various positions as a nod to my memoir, where I mentioned the letters I struggled the most with growing up. The process of making this piece started by gluing collaged notebook paper onto my bristol board then drawing on top with micron, pen, and marker.
by Natalie Akins, Roddie Trotter, and Abbigail Kirkman
“Color is the most relative medium in art.” Josef Albers
The “1 as 2 project” is an iconic exercise that Josef Albers would assign his students. This project involved placing two small color swatches, IDENTICAL in color, on two larger color fields – each a different color. The students would then observe how identical color swatches appear to be two different colors when influenced by the larger color fields.
Scroll through the document below to learn more about the process and theory for these pieces of art and theory.
Created for FYS178 with Suzie Dittenber
by Jackie Knowlton
FYS 178 with Heidi Kelley
The Earth has a heart
She is smart
And sturdy
She protects herself
You’ve seen her send ocean waves dancing in fury
Her wrath was never directional or conventional
It was long held
She loved too selflessly not to send out a flame one day, crying out to be heard
“Haven’t I given enough?”, She screams
The Earth never wanted to hurt us,
Never wanted to burn us,
but we knew that we threw the first flame.
The answer has never been simple
We always knew the end would come,
Yet we never planned
to make ourselves less responsible
We don’t need all of this to survive
These empires did not build us
we built everything unnecessarily
We tried to make everything easier
and it was
temporarily
We stand in front of our creation now,
Asking ourselves, “was it worth it?”
Will it be worth it to give up our empires?
“Yes”, a whisper echoes loudly through cavernous land mines
spins like bottle caps on a vengeful breeze
Mother Nature’s eyes will be
flourishing valleys
That we never dare touch
She is the blush of morning on front lawns
growing tall, daunting, and unkempt
Her seven wonders amplify
every block and
blink
that fir tree, that dandelion seed, everything plucked from fertile valleys
the mosaic of rainwater as it gushes down the city street
every stream
and cave
As the midnight sky is met by branches stretching out past the skyline like hands exalting
Her seven wonders amplify
Her timelessness is echoing
The breeze heaves a heavy sigh
She is tired
She is waiting to be loved by us
Loved enough to be protected
But we burned Her trees
The very things we breathe by
We shout into souls of valleys
We dance on bones and loathe endings
The Earth is our giving tree
When will we be
Truly happy for the days themselves
I melt into Mother Nature’s arms once more
She can swallow me
Lava coursing through my veins
We are tempted to sail on Her waves forever
But She controls the sea
It is Her breeze and way forever
by Liv Barefoot
HUM124 with Jeremy Phillips
In the contemporary world there is an ever-growing tolerance and even acceptance of queer identities including those that fall under the sapphic and/or lesbian umbrella; yet, in this modern world, there is still a convoluted uphill battle for accurate representation in all forms of media–including literature. However, sapphic identities are nothing new, in fact, such identities are believed to be observed as far back as 640-570 BCE with the ancient Greek lyric poet, Sappho. Sappho’s poetry, especially her famous hymn to the goddess Aphrodite, undoubtedly exemplifies some of the earliest expressions of sapphism/lesbianism–both modern terms centered around Sappho herself–and more broadly women’s sexuality despite the intense heteronormative suppression and silencing her works have endured.
Firstly, who exactly is Sappho? While little is truly known about the details of her personal life and story, accounts from the “‘Suda,’ a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia of ancient culture,” helps piece together the puzzle of who she was (Mendelsohn). According to ancient texts, she is described as being “short in stature and dark in complexion” (Mark). Some of the other more certain details of her life include how she was born into an aristocratic family on the island of Lesbos around 640 BCE and was raised being taught to play the lyre–hence her poems being lyrical. The circumstances regarding her demise are unknown and most historians decide to conjecture that she simply died of old age around 570 BCE as she lived long enough to write about her “graying hair and cranky knees” (Mendelsohn). Moreover, the ancient Greek society she lived in was heavily patriarchal with fathers selecting husbands for their daughters and women having little to no purpose in society other than child-rearing or domestic house activities (Cartwright).
Unfortunately, many of her works have become heavily fragmented with large pieces missing due to the lack of preservation of her works, and are therefore assigned a number in place of their lost titles. In her best-preserved piece, titled Ode to Aphrodite, lines 18 through 24 are devoted to portraying how Sappho hopes Aphrodite will help her “harness [the] love” of her unrequited beloved, who notably uses “she” pronouns; it is such verses that begin to spark the initial curiosity surrounding her sexuality (Rayor 52). This is mainly attributed to the fact that, in such verses, it seems apparent how much she appeared to directly comprehend sapphic emotions in a time when lesbianism is scarcely documented. Ultimately, by the late 6th century CE, her popularity and inferred affinity with homosexuality led to “the meaning of the term lesbian [changing] from ‘one from Lesbos’ to ‘a woman who prefers her own sex [or gender]’” (Mark).
As her poetry was discovered and recognized more, so was her sexuality. In fact, ancient writers, who had notably sounder access to better-preserved versions of her work and more immediate reports about her disposition, while notably “prais[ing]” her knack for lyrics, also posed a stark critique of her “behaving as a masculine woman” (Mark). Then, later on around 1073 CE, there is evidence that the medieval church’s Pope Gregory VII ordered her poetry to be burned “to suppress lesbian love poetry” (Mark). Similarly, some playwrights shamed her for having “loose morals” with one theologian even writing that she was a “sex-crazed whore who sings of her own wantonness” (Mendelsohn). On a less vulgar but equally as invalidating note, early German scholarship attempted to clarify that while what she felt was indeed “love” it was far less “objectionable, vulgarly sensual, and illegal,” and therefore platonic which aligns with what many early classicists did, which involved clamoring for more “innocent” explanations–meaning ones that did not involve her being queer (Mendelsohn). In all instances, with the latter ones being more overtly against her sexuality, there is some degree of scorn and revulsion surrounding her open expressions of desire and sexuality; and her apparent queer declaration of sexuality, no less.
Likewise, despite it being “generally accepted that Sappho was a gay poet”–and believing her poetry harbored her personal sapphic attraction–many modern scholars have also countered with the assertion that the queer woman portrayed in her works was merely a separate “persona” and thus “advise against reading her works biographically” (Mark). Even if it were to be read with some level of detachment from Sappho and her sexuality, her works still vividly illustrate the infatuation of one woman with another thereby still underscoring its sapphic representation. Moreover, lines such as, “[Aphrodite,] Come to me now again, release me from / this pain, everything in my spirits longs / to have fulfilled, fulfill, and you / be my ally” in her Ode to Aphrodite, capture and seem to suggest an innately personal and emotional understanding of the fervor and woes of sapphic unrequited love (Rayor 52). Furthermore, it seems important to note that these scholars fail to consider an important question: Given the “intimacy” and deeply personal sentiment of the lyrics, why choose to make the person of interest a woman rather than a man–especially in the era she lived in–if sapphic attraction was not to some degree something she experienced (Mark)? It seems far less controversial and simple to have just made the unnamed woman’s (or her own) infatuation to be with a man; hence why her choice to make the lover a woman so captivating–so captivating that it has sparked three millennia-long debates and scrutiny.
Then again, there are women scholars such as Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant who continue to advocate for Sappho’s identity as a lesbian by noting, “Many of [Sappho’s] poems describe a world that men never saw: the deep love women could feel for one another in a society that kept the sexes apart” (Mark). What this references, is the aforementioned patriarchal society Sappho dwelled in that left women in the domestic sphere while men engaged in the outside world–the same society that could have forced her to marry under the instruction of an older male relative around the “typical age of 13 or 14” and in which she likely could not openly express her desires for risk of being punished by a male authority figure (Cartwright). As such, the potential inability to openly express her desires, especially for other women whom she may have come into contact with in the domestic sphere, made lyric poetry a viable outlet to express herself. So, even if she were perhaps married to a man at some point as some scholars claim to be the case, this could point to a number of additional possibilities, including being bisexual or pansexual (still sapphic identities for women) or nevertheless being lesbian but just forced into a heterosexual marriage–just because these labels did not happen to exist back then, does not erase the existence of such feelings.
Over the course of history, both ancient and more contemporary, ancient authorities, historical scholars, classicists, and even some of her fellow poets and writers have aimed to discredit and almost totally erase the sapphic nature of her lyric; yet, despite the harsh rejection of her sexuality across the ages, her radiant poetry has still shined through the dense fog of heteronormitivity. Thus, regardless of debates raging on and whether Sappho herself may or may not have identified as queer in some capacity, her poetry serves as a beacon and “inspiration” for the LGBTQ+ community today–allowing sapphics in particular to depict our continuous existence (Mark).
Works Cited
Cartwright, Mark. “Women in Ancient Greece.” World History Encyclopedia. 27 July 2016. Web. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/927/women-in-ancient-greece/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
Mark, Joshua J. “Sappho of Lesbos.” World History Encyclopedia. 10 June 2021. Web. https://www.worldhistory.org/Sappho_of_Lesbos/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. “Girl, Interrupted: Who was Sappho?” New Yorker. Condé Nast, 9 Mar. 2015. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
Rayor, Diane J. and W. R. Johnson. “Sappho.” Sappho’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 51-82. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1ppgxf.10. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
by Chloe F. Koz
LANG120 with Leslee Johnson
I look for the thinkers and I find them everywhere. The people who have a lot to say but never do. I could say it’s because I love getting to know people, at least the process. People remind me too much of the contradictions of myself. We are complicated beings and yet, so simple. We can be selfless to a fault and sometimes, so selfish. We have morals until they work against us, we love unconditionally until we hate. Our minds are so full and conversations empty. We are nothing alike and yet, we are the same. That is why there are days when I wish I knew no one at all.
Sometimes I tell people things that are not exactly true. Not to be intentionally inscrutable but it’s like the lie I find myself coming back to. I swear to some people that I do not understand what it is to cry. That I can not cry. That I feel no desire to cry. I haven’t the slightest why I do it. I grew up with a lot of criers. The types to cry about all sorts of things.
Melancholy things, choleric things. I mean, they even cry about sanguine things; and so that we may have a full cast of Shakespearean humors, I have the laudable role of a phlegmatic arbitrator. I think that because I’m not the type of person to express my tears in the same manner, I come up with a lie to save myself from the complications of explanation. It may not look like I’ve participated in chasing a summer storm when things go to hell but I still feel things. I may even be the saddest person I know but even that may not be the truth of it. I think sad people jump into lakes and sadder people jump in to save them.
And sorry for saying hell but some words can never be more right.
That, or they become poets. How dare I call myself a downer when people like Wilfred Owen exist. The poets that use words like piteus, encumbered, and end the whole thing with good-bye. “There, encumbered sleepers groaned” I like that line. Yes, English poets from war are most certainly the saddest. Perhaps I could become a poet. Because I think while writing
about all the grievous things, I would fall in love with the world. See, a walking contradiction.
I met a writer once. He told me that the zenith of his life would be the moment he became completely insignificant. That got me thinking, really thinking and it still does. Does questioning significance out loud or proclaiming its existence make someone more significant? It confused me at the same time. Seldom in my life do I come across those who love being alive
as much as they can’t seem to stand it, like him. Like me. At any opportunity, he would attempt to escape whether it was disappearing physically or mentally for a while. A fellow escapist I would joke, never really joking. I’ll tell you a secret, I think he cared way too much to be insignificant. I believe insignificance would destroy him. To hate a life, you must love it until it treats you like you are; insignificant.
Referring back to a previous topic since we don’t possibly talk about it enough: lying. Firstly, why do we do it? A simpler answer would be because it’s easier that way. Even the people who say they could never lie, the most decent kind of people, are the biggest phonies of all. It is only doing one an injustice to tell someone the things they are desperate to hear. Unless
that thing is the truth of course. Secondly, why is lying such a bad thing if most lies are said just to make people feel better? It’s all a matter of opinion really. And timing. Especially timing.
I’m not certain that I have what most would consider a lot of friends but the friends that I do have know that I have a certain tendency to be frank. I may never understand the aversion to a point. My own silence would never hesitate to eat me alive. A friend had told me once that I was much too honest. I could blame that one on genetics. A family of criers and honest, honest people. “Your honesty could be called brutality if you really meant the things you said” she had said. I liked her for telling me that. For the reason that it was honest but because it also made me wonder if I meant the things I said.
In the words of Catherine Camus while sharing the ideal of her father Albert Camus, the philosopher, she states that we are “obliged to accept certain contradictions if [we] don’t want to reject certain obvious things about life, certain evidences.” Contradictions must exist, they are proof that we think and that we evolve. That we are an ever changing and quarrelsome species.
This mentality, I find this ironic, is paired along with a moral from Camus’ book, The Fall, that all living things crave sympathy. On some level, our decisions are almost always decided with a piece of solidifying sympathy. Or according to the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, the main character of the story, sympathy is the prevention of solidarity. He is able to explain this by using an example of friendships. Friends tell us just what we long to hear. The things we need to be affirmed. Not because they agree with us or know every perspective of our life but because in one way or another, they expect the return of this sympathy.
It will forever be impossible not to think. For me anyway. I will no longer attempt to speak on the behalf of other thinkers. Though what I will find possible is the desire to contradict myself, to lie, to be brutally honest, to cry, to think. And the desire to desire. I do not ask to be remembered for much at all if anything but I will not exist in this world silently. I am a finder
and I will find those who are nothing like me. Who can disagree with and inspire me until they want nothing to do with me, who want everything to do with me at the same time. I will be brutally significant.