We are pleased to present the seventh issue of Carleton’s Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies. There is excellent work in the humanities and social sciences being done at the undergraduate level and it is our hope that we can play a small part in getting such work out into the world and read. The Journal continues to receive a promising number of submissions from an exciting range of schools, and the intellectual community that this publication sustains continues to encourage us. Though this spring issue is slightly smaller than usual, we have selected three superb papers for publication.
Henry Brill (Kenyon College) offers a groundbreaking analysis of the roles of religiosity and kingship in a dream narrative of the Baburnama, a memoir by Zahir ad-Din Muhammad Babur — a key figure in the founding of the Timurid-Mughal Empire.
Kate Hoeting (Carleton College) delivers a rich and highly original ethnographic study of the pilgrims of El Camino de Santiago, examining the identities and ritual creativity of “spiritual but not religious” pilgrims on this traditionally Christian pilgrimage.
Alexander Jin (Swarthmore College) offers a fascinating exploration of the interpretive possibilities that critical legal scholarship affords to both theoretical and politically urgent problems of legal interpretation.