Resolution: The World Makes Sense Again

This semester has been a really interesting one in terms of the progression of my research topic and my feelings toward it. I can honestly say that I've never had a semester that was so frustrating , but I've been able to push through and have come to a synthesis moment, to borrow the term from Hegel.

CC 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons

I think one of my problems going into the paper for this class was that I came with so many topics that I wanted to address. Awe was and still is, in my mind, an interdisciplinary notion, and I think that biology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and critical art theory all have important things to say about it. As I studied it more, though, I began to realize that I wasn't the only one having problems figuring out awe. The texts contradicted themselves, everyone used different words for the same things, and the works that seemed to be the most accurate in trying to define awe seemed to be the most abstract and vague and well. You might say that for about three months, I was pretty frustrated and had no idea what I was doing.

Annotated Bibliography for Reclaiming Awe

Working Thesis (which will surely undergo drastic revision): While the digital age affords us seemingly infinite opportunities, with those opportunities comes the danger of destroying mankind's most fundamental and universal quality, his capacity to experience and create awe.

Realistically, you should probably just skip to the end and read my end commentary, because I'm tweaking my emphasis a bit, and that's the part where I'd be most interested in hearing your feedback. Thanks!

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor W and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cummings. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972. 120-167. Print.

Adorno and Horkheimer propose that modern media encourages passive consumption over true creativity and that in their aspirations toward popularity and industrial utility, they have fallen into a state of artistic or aesthetic impoverishment. This ties into my focus on digital creativity as a means of overcoming the impoverishment and rising from passive consumption to a state of "flourishing" productivity.

Arnold, Matthew. “The Study of Poetry.” 1880. Poetry Foundation. 13 Oct. 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

In this essay, Arnold proposes that the measure of a work’s poetic or artistic greatness (and I would argue, it’s potential to inspire awe) is based on a combination of personal and historical perspectives. Great works, then, partake of the same spirit as landmark works that have come before--touchstones, as he calls them. This in some sense helps to overcome the sense of subjectiveness that many of us have been struggling with in defining awe.