2022-2023 Enosinian Scholars

Major: Public Health and International Affairs 

Major: Philosophy and Political Science 

Title: Art into the Clearing: Heidegger, Benjamin, and the Ontological Liberation of Art

Description: My thesis explores the relationship between art, ontology, and politics in the respective writings of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. Seeking a politically revolutionary conception of art, my thesis argues that Heidegger’s ontological view of art is well equipped to combat the commodification of art, the ideological limits of subjectivity, and political nihilism. In making such an argument, I problematize Walter Benjamin’s theory of art for its failure to meaningfully break away from subjectivity's reactionary tendencies. By pulling from phenomenology, Marxism, and ontology, my thesis attempts to locate the full political potential in poetry, literature, and film. I will conclude that an ontological conception of art—found through the work of Heidegger—juxtaposes current historico-political structures with the uninhibited possibilities of Being itself.

Major: Special Interdisciplinary - Sociobiology

Major: Mathematics 

Title: The Enumeration of Nondegenerate Hypermatrices

Description:  A rook placement on an n-by-n board is a way of placing n rooks so no two can attack each other in one move; for those unfamiliar with chess a rook can attack vertically and horizontally. The classical q-rook theory of matrices relates the number of rook placements on certain boards to the number nondegenerate matrices with certain entries restricted. My thesis takes an initial look at generalizing these concepts to multidimensional matrices, known as hypermatrices. I find an analogous description of a 3D board and also a restriction on which type of boards can exist. I also show there exists a 3D rook, and 3D rook placements on these boards the number of which agrees with the number of nondegenerate hypermatrices in certain cases.