volume seven

essays from spring & fall 2006

Ideas: The Music of Democracy
Traci Cox

What does "America the Beautiful" really stand for, anyway?  What kind of message are we sending by being anti-American while we are actually residing in "the land of the free"?  Truly, in this melting pot of a nation in which we are being constantly stirred, ideas are bound to boil to the surface.

 

Forgive Us Our Trespasses
Michael Hickman

If we peer through history textbooks or other mainstream history sources, we find that truth is often filtered through a gamut of interpretations and subjective emphasis. Such texts look past the truth in favor of abstract statements that hardly convey the impact of historical events. As a result, we lose both our personal and national identities, along with the context in which they are formed.

 

Next Stop: 180 Feet Below Street Level
Kacie Johnston

New York City. The Big Apple. Home of Central Park, Ground Zero, and Times Square. Popular tourist attractions include the Statue of Liberty, Carnegie Hall, and the you-either-love-'em-or-you-hate-'em New York Yankees. Every year, millions of people flock to the big city for Broadway shows at Gershwin Theater, shopping on Fifth Avenue, and the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. But below the hustle and bustle of the big city, the ground shakes and trembles, revealing an entirely different kind of world.

 

The Last Acceptable Prejudice
Jamie Kelly

People assume that without religion there would be no reason to act “morally.” However, this notion is simply false. The world got along fine before the advent of Christianity; moral philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle lived hundreds of years before Christ, and to this day their writings are held in the highest esteem for their moral principles.

 

Body Worlds: An Exhibit That Really Gets Under the Skin
Laura Lloyd-Braff

Undeniably, Body Worlds elicits responses from millions of people worldwide, whether they are profoundly inspired, or deeply repulsed. By this standard, Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds clearly is art, and he is thus entitled to his own “product of human creativity.”

 

Seeking a Happily Ever After
Doreen McCormack

She would just tell herself that things were going to get better and that it would be worth it once her knight in shining armor came striding into her life on a white horse. She refused to deal with the little nagging part of her that told her that she had made a mistake, or the other little pesky part of her conscience that told her that her expectations were unrealistic.

 

The Value of Experience
Larson Thune

Speaking about and diagramming sex with overhead slides dehumanizes the act and the people involved. Sexual intercourse is performed by all mammals, and represents an essential part of nature.  The public school system's attempt to inhibit students from fully understanding this act serves to distort this most sacred existential role.

 

For more information, contact:

e-Vision
MSC 2103
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
540-568-7817
540-568-2742 (FAX)

Contact Webmaster at jefferkx@jmu.edu

e-Vision essays copyright © 2007. All rights revert to individual authors.

All authors have granted permission for use in instructional purposes only.

Unless explicitly noted, all ideas expressed on these pages are not those of e-Vision Magazine or of James Madison University.

volume seven Editorial Board

Josh Hahn
Jamie Kelly
Lauren Leopold
Andrew (Drew) Norton
Katie O'Dowd
Gwen Page
Cory Scott
Katelyn Wyszynski

volume seven Faculty Advisors

Kevin Jefferson
Erin Lambert
Cynthia Martin
Karen McDonnell