http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/modernism Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:54:29 -0400 Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:54:29 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1947/architectural-beauty-as-a-public-good-through-the-lens-of-ritzer-and-kohn By Olivia Sun - After World War II, America’s baby boom and rapid migration into cities sparked a damaging housing crisis. This marked a turning point in architectural style: the rise of modernism. Modernism prioritizes function above all else and believes in the existence of a most efficient, most cost-effective housing blueprint. Hence, America rolled out planned housing developments by the masses with each community constructed in a near-identical fashion. This essay points to the consequential neglect of architectural beauty which is defined as a perfect reflection of the identity of a shared imaginative... Fri, 25 Mar 2022 02:16 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1947/architectural-beauty-as-a-public-good-through-the-lens-of-ritzer-and-kohn http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1779/the-everyday-as-empowering-violence-and-suburban-monotony-in-the-interwar-writing-of-george-orwell By Florence Ward - Rather than challenging these stereotypes, the few exceptions to this rule, Richards among them, have celebrated suburbia as a refuge from the world’s horrors. Richards’s version of suburbia, published while Britain was reeling from the destruction of the war, argues that suburbia is not just an architectural phenomenon but a way of life for the middle-men of England who wish to remain protected in its ‘oasis’ (36-9). In 1918, David Lloyd George promised “Homes fit for Heroes,” catering to the post-war appetite for security and stability. His promise instigated... Thu, 27 Feb 2020 08:41 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1779/the-everyday-as-empowering-violence-and-suburban-monotony-in-the-interwar-writing-of-george-orwell http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1732/challenging-the-gender-dichotomy-in-the-victorian-era-reading-hemingways-up-in-michigan-and-mansfields-frau-brechenmacher-together By Kimberly Taylor - Sexual violence and coercion became hot topics in 2017, with endless headlines. However, these problems and issues are not new, nor are they confined to a single segment of society. Rather, they have longstanding roots within patriarchal society viewing the sexes as opposite ends of an oppositional dichotomy. This dichotomy is highlighted in two short stories, one by Hemingway and one by Katherine Mansfield. These stories contextualize sexual violence and coercion within Victorian era patriarchal societies revealing the perceived and taught active male/passive female dichotomy such societies were... Thu, 22 Mar 2018 03:50 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1732/challenging-the-gender-dichotomy-in-the-victorian-era-reading-hemingways-up-in-michigan-and-mansfields-frau-brechenmacher-together http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1497/consumption-as-postmodern-ideology-in-china By Christopher E. Barnett - Jean Baudrillard makes the argument that in a postmodern globalized world, in which competing utopian metanarratives from both sides of the political spectrum have been exposed as failures, society is no longer constructed or ordered through common political ideology. The phenomenon has spread globally to nearly every modern city. Individuals no longer subscribe to the exposed metanarratives like liberalism or communism, and are instead consumed by consumerism. Hypersaturated by media that promotes consumerism, individuals are also incessantly distracted, tempted by advertisements, “news... Thu, 17 Nov 2016 03:43 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1497/consumption-as-postmodern-ideology-in-china http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/981/appellate-attorney-as-storyteller-a-postmodern-analysis-of-narrative-in-appellate-briefs By Michelle Villanueva - The appellate process, on the other hand, has a completely different set of priorities. Rarely do television courtroom dramas depict the proceedings of an appellate court, and not merely because the appellate court rarely schedules cases for oral argument. An appellate judge poring over briefs filled with legal analysis simply would not make for the most compelling television. However, it would show the shift in priorities that has traditionally occurred from the trial process to the appellate process. Generally, appellate judges are considered to be more deliberate and less emotional than juries... Mon, 02 Feb 2015 11:30 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/981/appellate-attorney-as-storyteller-a-postmodern-analysis-of-narrative-in-appellate-briefs http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/923/the-drama-and-romance-of-suicide-in-mrs-dalloway-and-madame-bovary By Jessica N. Laird - Is it noble to take your own life? Across the ages there have been many different interpretations of the morality of suicide, leading many novels to portray and examine the act. In Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a traumatized veteran Septimus takes his life rather than letting the doctors take him into a mental institution; his suicide is later remembered by the eponymous character as a beautiful way to die. In Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert, the titular character Emma Bovary poisons herself with arsenic in an attempt to end her life as a heroine in a novel would, leading to her departure... Sun, 12 Oct 2014 09:30 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/923/the-drama-and-romance-of-suicide-in-mrs-dalloway-and-madame-bovary http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/876/baudrillards-vision-of-the-postmodern-society-and-the-hope-for-human-action By Gian Carla D. Agbisit - This paper is about the numbing of man’s critical impulse brought about by consumer society, a society obsessed with speed, and is characterized by a constant consumption of products—of good things turning into goods, of culture with price tags, and of the generation of the unreal to cover up the loss of the real. But this paper also argues that despite the radical change of focus—from the modern society’s concern for freedom and political change to the blurred postmodern distinction between real and unreal—there is an underlying political concern that must be addressed... Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:39 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/876/baudrillards-vision-of-the-postmodern-society-and-the-hope-for-human-action http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/679/dialogic-conflict-and-speech-identity-in-jean-rhys-let-them-call-it-jazz By Grace E. Afsari-Mamagani - The books at her disposal, about murder and ghosts, speak to society’s understanding of crime, punishment, and the afterlife. But, for Selina, it is not “at all like those books tell you”: the stories offered within their pages do not apply to her, are not written in the language through which she understands herself. By presenting the narrative in the patois of the West Indian immigrant to Britain, Rhys produces both interior and exterior dialogic conflict. The narrator’s vernacular serves as one within a series of signifying systems, or, as Mikhail Bakhtin posited, speech... Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/679/dialogic-conflict-and-speech-identity-in-jean-rhys-let-them-call-it-jazz http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/651/the-glass-house-as-gay-space-exploring-the-intersection-of-homosexuality-and-architecture By Mark J. Stern - Philip Johnson is, without a doubt, one of the most famous architects of the 20th century. He was also gay, a fact known to some in his intimate social circle but certainly not to most in his field and absolutely not to the general public. His outward repression of his homosexuality was most likely shrewd self-preservation--mainstream America did not smile upon non-traditional lifestyles at the time--but it ultimately manifested itself in fascinating ways through Johnson’s architecture. Perhaps most notably, Johnson’s celebrated Glass House can be subjected to a thorough queer analysis... Tue, 12 Jun 2012 06:58 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/651/the-glass-house-as-gay-space-exploring-the-intersection-of-homosexuality-and-architecture http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/568/tim-obriens-the-things-they-carried-postmodern-fiction-for-a-postmodern-war By Laurence R. Kowalewski - In the western history of human existence the event, idea, and act of war stands totemic in the landscape. Borders both physical and mental have been defined by its threat and execution, and its aura hangs heavily over the last century as the bloodiest in the entire narrative of humanity.[1] During a period widely considered to be the most perfect example of the efficient, mechanised destruction of life—the Holocaust—David Rousset gave a name to the experience he saw inside the internment camps as “l’univers concentrationnaire,” a world apart.[2] This succinct explanation... Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/568/tim-obriens-the-things-they-carried-postmodern-fiction-for-a-postmodern-war http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/512/postmodernism-in-vonneguts-cats-cradle By Derek D. Miller - “No damn cat, and no damn cradle.” (Vonnegut 66). This quote encompasses the satiric postmodern themes of absolute truth in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. There are several significantly strong postmodern concepts Vonnegut brings into view in this novel. First is the idea of truth, which he satirizes though the religion Bokononism. Second, is the idea of progress and how society views that progress only betters mankind, and brings it good fortune. The third concept is the concept of absolute knowledge and the idea of attaining it through science and experimentation, which relates... Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:58 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/512/postmodernism-in-vonneguts-cats-cradle http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/398/rebecca-wests-the-return-of-the-soldier-analyzing-the-interrelationship-of-male-and-female-traumas By Emily R. Hershman - Rebecca West’s 1918 novel The Return of the Soldier dissects the socioeconomic and psychological tensions wrought by the upheaval of the First World War. In a nuanced reiteration of the typical trope of a soldier’s return, Christopher Baldry is dispatched from the Western front when it becomes apparent that selective amnesia has trapped his mind fifteen years in the past. This preoccupation with shell-shock and immersion in the past subtly couches the novel’s larger motifs in the language of the trauma narrative, as Christopher struggles to reconcile his idealization of a past... Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:28 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/398/rebecca-wests-the-return-of-the-soldier-analyzing-the-interrelationship-of-male-and-female-traumas http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/313/faulkners-absalom-absalom-and-the-mysterious-rosa-coldfield By Alicia D. Costello - William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! begins in the year 1833, when the stranger, Thomas Stupen, rides into Jefferson, Mississippi, and promptly begins building himself an empire. He builds a plantation named Stupen’s Hundred, takes a wife, Ellen Coldfield, and has two children, Judith and Henry. Ellen’s much younger sister, Rosa, comes to live at Stupen’s Hundred after Rosa’s only guardian, her father, nails himself in the attic and throws the hammer out the window in protest of the Civil War. Despite attempting to fulfill Ellen’s deathbed wish to look after... Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:03 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/313/faulkners-absalom-absalom-and-the-mysterious-rosa-coldfield http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/248/islamic-modernism-responses-to-western-modernization-in-the-middle-east By Yevgeniya Baraz - By the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a large part of the Muslim world had begun to lose much of its cultural and political sovereignty to Christian occupiers from Europe. This came as a result of European trade missions during earlier centuries that had propagated Western technology and modernization. There was a large shift of power due to the declining Ottoman Empire, which led to an essential subordination of Muslims because of Western technology and modernization. This subjugation by Christian empires led Muslims of the Middle East to question their own beliefs as well as their... Mon, 10 May 2010 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/248/islamic-modernism-responses-to-western-modernization-in-the-middle-east http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/153/virginia-woolf-on-the-role-of-the-artist-in-the-modern-world By Natasha L. Richter - Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse follows the development of the painter, Lily Briscoe, as she strives to create a meaningful space for her artwork in an increasingly critical and unkind world.  Woolf’s stylistic devices, especially those employed in the segment, “Time Passes,” reveal her thoughts on modernity and on pursuing life as an artist in the modern world.  In “Time Passes,” Woolf breaks from her traditional literary form to forge a new consciousness for society and introduces the typographical device of the square bracket to write from the... Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:36 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/153/virginia-woolf-on-the-role-of-the-artist-in-the-modern-world http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/36/absurdism-in-post-modern-art-examining-the-interplay-between-waiting-for-godot-and-extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close By Elizabeth L. Bolick - Post-modern art is permeated by Absurdism. The Post-World War II Absurdist movement centered on the idea that life is irrational, illogical, incongruous, and without reason (Esslin xix). The ‘Theater of the Absurd’, named by theater critic Martin Esslin in his 1961 work,  was popularized by Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, Absurdist playwrights, Eugene Ionesco and Arthur Adamov. Political turmoil, scientific breakthrough and social upheaval shaped the cultural context of their works. Absurdist playwrights commented on the decline of moral character that the rise... Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/36/absurdism-in-post-modern-art-examining-the-interplay-between-waiting-for-godot-and-extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close