James Hercher

Evolution in Literature

Dalke & Grobstein

Webpaper #3

Comics author Alan Moore, perhaps contemplating the differences between comics and film.

Alan Moore is widely renowned as one of the most accomplished comics authors in the genre. With such works under his belt as Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell, Moore revolutionized the concept of the superhero genre, deconstructed various comic book tropes, and won numerous Jack Kirby and Eagle Awards, as well as acclaim from his peers and critics.

Have Disney Princesses Evolved?

Grace Hopper is perhaps the most well-known pioneering figure in computer science. She coded the first compiler and is known as the “grandmother of Cobol.”[i] Her vision and drive helped spur computer innovation farther than was thought possible, and led to technologies that even she could not foresee. Her ideal of making computer use easier and more intuitive to humans was carried farther than she could have imagined by technologies like those Andy Clark speaks of in Natural Born Cyborgs.

Cyclical Evolution: From plague to Italian

           Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague, ends with a very particular note. “…the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years… and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city”. [1] With this, Camus suggests through the metaphor of the bacillus plague that some things are cyclical; thus, a cyclical evolution begins. As an Italian-Biology major, I couldn’t help but think of Italian as an example. Like this example, Italian language has come to embody a cyclical evolution. 

But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?...
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there
    - Henry V, Prologue.