The Consort

In the Young Adult novel The Consort, seventeen year old Rowan must learn to navigate both sides of the sexual spectrum in the totalitarian theocracy of The Empire. When Rowan isn\u27t selected to serve deity at the age of twelve, which she feels is her right, she loses faith in the religion that has ruled her since birth. She begins to notice the tight leash the government and the church have on its citizens and she silently questions its truthfulness through subtle rebellion which puts her at risk for Re-Education and possible death. At seventeen her eyes change from their natural color to golden and she is whisked away to serve as a priestess within the Order of the Consort. For citizens in the Empire to look upon another with lustful thoughts was enough to warrant severe punishment and to be caught having sex outside of marriage could result in death, but now, as a priestess, Rowan finds that she will be forced to have sexual relations with various partners in the name of communicating with their god, Ama. Her desensitization to sex and sexuality, once complete, thrusts her into ritual sex with men and women. Through all of this she is protected by her handmaiden, Katrina, and her Escort, Jude. Although warned that it is punishable by immediate death they begin to have an emotionally intimate relationship and must figure out how to make it last given the nature of her calling. Because she is different, her eyes are a different color than other priests and priestesses, there are those that fear her or are jealous of her. This causes problems for Rowan as she navigates the corrupt system and finds herself being pushed around by superiors and her peers. Rowan must find her path and purpose as the goddess, The Consort, takes up residence within her and begins to push her to reform the theocratic government. She must decide if the risk to those around her is worth trying to free her countrymen of the false and tyrannical rule that has been imposed on them for hundreds of years

The Renaissance: An age of classical wonder

This dissertation is concerned with the use of wonder in the Renaissance. Recently, new historicists have batted around the notion of wonder, linking it to travel discourse and the curiosity that is piqued when two foreign cultures collide. Thus, the would of travel literature is peopled with the strange and admirable. However, there is another notion of wonder that stands outside the realm of mere curiosity and embraces contemplation, knowledge, and philosophy. Aristotle described wonder by saying, it is owing to their wonder that men both now and at first began to philosophize. This classical notion of wonder filtered down to the Renaissance with great vitality. It can be found in the works of Spenser, Davies, Jonson, Shakespeare, Herbert, Cervantes, and Milton. Thus this dissertation attempts to reveal that wonder is much more than mere curiosity; rather, it is a classical notion that served as the spark to philosophical inquiry, the stimulus to knowledge, and a starting point for understanding greater matters

Nonequilibrium Quantum Fluctuation Forces

We study all known and as yet unknown forces between neutral atoms and neutral atoms and surfaces. The forces arise from mutual influences mediated by an attending electromagnetic field and not from direct interaction. We allow as dynamical variables the center of mass motion of the atom (or surface Chapter 5), its internal degrees of freedom, modeled as a three dimensional harmonic oscillator (the internal degrees of freedom of the surface in chapter 4), and the quantum field treated relativistically. We adopt the methods of nonequilibrium quantum field theory (NEqQFT) to study the problem of fluctuation forces beginning from first principles. NEqQFT provides a fully dynamical description of systems far from equilibrium having the advantage of being the synthesis of quantum field theory and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The integration of these two paradigms is necessary for a complete study of fluctuation forces; quantum field theory for providing effects such as retardation and quantum field fluctuations, and nonequilbrium statistical mechanics for treating processes involving quantum dissipation and noises. By embarking from first principles we avoid wrong or only partially correct results from inconsistent theories that can be generated from assumptions made at lower levels of accuracy. In thermodynamic equilibrium we reproduce all the effects and forces known in the last century, such as Casimir-Polder-- between neutral atoms, Lifshitz-- between an atom and a surface and Casimir between surfaces (and the generalization of these forces to nonequilibrium stationary-states). More noteworthy is the discovery of the existence of a new type of interatomic force which we call the `entanglement force', originating from the quantum correlations of the internal degrees of freedom of entangled atoms. Fluctuation phenomena associated with quantum fields is a new frontier of future research in atom-field interaction. With NEqQFT we have derived Langevin equations which account for fluctuations of an atom's trajectory about its semi-classical value. These quantum field-induced perturbations of the atom's position could lead to measurable results such as the damping of the center-of-mass oscillations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate near a surface or backaction cooling of moving mirror by radiative pressure and quantum viscosity discussed respectively in Chapter 3 and 5 of this thesis. The methods introduced in this thesis for treating atom-field interactions or mirror-field interactions go beyond previous work by providing a fully dynamical description of these forces valid for arbitrary atom and surface motion, indeed the inclusion of self consistent backactions are necessary for the study of phenomena such as quantum decoherence and entanglement dynamics, including non-Markovian processes which invariably will appear when backaction is taken into consideration(especially for strong fields, low temperatures, or fast response)