Editor's Note

Abstract

This year, Constellations is pleased to welcome two new editors and an entirely new senior review board. This transition has resulted in an exciting new demographic of individuals responsible for the production of this edition: our 2015/2016 senior review board is composed of students majoring from history to philosophy to native studies, all of whom come together under their love for historiographical research. Our Fall 2015 edition reflects the diverse nature of our student staff. We begin our edition in the 1600s with Nicholas Smit-Keding's "'Absurd' Rationalist Cosmology: Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes and the Religious Basis for the end to Aristotelian Dogma" offers a historical look at the shift from the Aristotelian geocentric model to the heliocentric model, a critical moment in scientific history. From there, we travel back to the time of Nero in Faisal Afridi's "Defense of Nero in the Style of Seneca and Genre of Biography", an entirely new type of publication to Constellations: this article presents its defense of Nero in the form of a narrative, as written from Nero's tutor Seneca. Our third article, Letitia Johnson's "Gender and Medical Inspections at Ellis Island" is the most historically recent of our fall edition and offers a critical examination of the difficulties of immigrants as they passed over the American boarder in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. Finally, we move to the Ottoman Empire in Thisaranie Herath's "Women and Orientalism: 19th century Representations of the Harem by European female travellers and Ottoman women", offering a rethinking of the depiction of the Harem space as a cross-cultural dialogue. We wholly hope you enjoy our Fall 2015 edition as much as our staff has enjoyed curating it.