Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Scientia et Humanitas is dedicated to showcasing exceptional scholarship from across the MTSU community, and this, the 16th issue of the Honors College's research journal,
offers a set of papers as intriguing as it is prodigious. Submissions have been culled from an interdisciplinary call for papers and subject to a blind peer editing process. From the articles submitted, 13 have been chosen based on their demonstration of exceptional research, composition, and pertinence to the writer's field. Both graduate and undergraduate work has been represented.

Our crop of articles reveals a wide range of scholarly pursuits and angles, revealing the plurality of interests that abound in MTSU's academic environs. This year's contributors examine everything from media sensationalism to the cognitive relationships between music and language; from the pedagogical dimensions of narrative genres to 20th Century representations of women in literature. The coexistence of multiple interpretive lenses and research methods showcases the rich diversity of scholarship taking place in the MTSU
community, where the sciences naturally coexist with the humanities, and research has direct relevance to the world outside the academy walls. Perennial questions abound:  What is the role of the arts in education? How have the gains in women's cultural agency reoriented our understanding of history? How does pedagogy adapt to social trends and learning differences? To what extent does the media shape our discourse and behavior? In what ways does literature still uniquely allow us to consider what it means to be human?

It has been a delight as an editor to engage with the lively work taking place in this university. I want to thank my associate and assistant editors, who gave rigorous readings to submissions and aided in the selection process; to the readers, who have been there in clutch times to evaluate incoming submissions; to the journal's previous editor, Kylie Petrovich, who gave me a proper introduction to the layout of the journal, and lastly to Dr. Phillip E. Phillips, my dissertation advisor and academic mentor, without whom this journal, the honors college, and the university as a whole would be at a great loss.

Matthew P. Hutton
Editor in Chief