bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
For Richer … in Good Times … and in Health: Positive Processes in Relationships
Authors: Maisel Natalya C. , Gable Shelly L.
Published: February 2013

Although psychologists have learned a great deal about negative and harmful processes in relationships, they have focused less on understanding the positive and beneficial processes in relationships. Of course, almost every close relationship offers the promise of both meaningful rewards and substantial risks, such as support, intimacy, companionship, conflict, rejection, and criticism. In this chapter, we attempt to highlight the complexities involved in relationships, with an emphasis on positive processes, with the goal of creating a picture that represents the dynamic reality of the social world. We first discuss the important role that intimate relationships play in human life and their strong links with health and well-being. We then highlight research on the positive processes in relationships, such as positive emotional expressions, shared novel experiences, intimacy, and the benefits of sharing positive events. This work complements previous literature which has tended to focus on the potential pitfalls in relationships. For example, displaying low levels of negative emotions may not be enough to create a strong relationship—expressions of positive emotions are also beneficial. Finally, we point to future directions in the positive psychology of relationships, such as a greater focus on biology and health (e.g., examining hormones that promote bonding), and the need to examine other types of relationships, such as friendships.
What's Positive About Self-Verification?
Authors: North Rebecca J. , Swann William B.
Published: February 2013

Self-verification theory assumes that people work to preserve their self-views by seeking to confirm them. As is the case with other processes advocated by positive psychology, self-verification is presumed to be a fundamentally adaptive process. Intrapsychically, self-verification strivings maintain psychological coherence, reduce anxiety, improve physical health, and may foster authenticity. Interpersonally, they encourage people to gravitate toward honest relationship partners, foster trust and intimacy in relationships, and ensure predictability in one's behavior, which further promotes trust. Although self-verification is adaptive overall, it may lead to the perpetuation of negative self-views. Nevertheless, identifying the underlying processes in self-verification may lend insight into how to raise self-esteem. It is posited that to help raise the self-esteem of someone with a negative self-view, one should first provide the person with self-verification and subsequently provide positive feedback that challenges the negative self-views. In these and other instances, understanding the self-verification process more deeply may also shed light on how to define and build happiness.
Positive Psychology on Campus
Authors: Schreiner Laurie A. , Hulme Eileen , Hetzel Roderick , Lopez Shane J.
Published: February 2013

This chapter synthesizes the research from positive psychology on fulfilled individuals and thriving communities with the research from higher education on student success and institutional effectiveness, in order to build a bridge from one discipline to the other. Principles from positive psychology are applied in practical ways to the daily work of faculty, staff, and administrators in four key areas: (a) teaching and learning, (b) academic advising, (c) student leadership development, and (d) promoting students' psycho logical well-being. Self-determination theory and the talent development approach are synthesized into practical applications for the teaching and learning process with an emphasis on engaged learning and strengths-based education. Specific strategies for academic advisors are outlined in order to increase the likelihood of engaged learners persisting to graduation. Authentic leadership principles are applied to student leadership development programs, with an emphasis on emotional intelligence, mindfulness, the importance of a growth mind-set, and strengths-based approaches to leadership development. Finally, positive psychology principles are applied to counseling and psychotherapy services, preventive outreach, and consultation services to the broader campus community in order to build students' psychological well-being.
Sharing One's Story: On the Benefits of Writing or Talking About Emotional Experience
Authors: Niederhoffer Kate G. , Pennebaker James W.
Published: February 2013

Over two decades of research devoted to the writing paradigm has resulted in substantial findings that translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes. How and why would constructing stories about important personal events be so beneficial? The chapter describes the writing paradigm used in this research, offering an overview of the research findings and examination of its historical antecedents. While the precise mechanisms through which a narrative heals are still unrealized, we review three underlying processes that might explain its power: emotional inhibition, cognitive processes, and linguistic processes that echo changes in social orientation. Most recently, advances in computerized text analysis, in addition to the rapid development of the Internet, have afforded a new lens on the psychological transformations achieved through the writing paradigm. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is one such computerized text analysis program that captures style and content words. Originally created to better understand the language of emotional upheaval and recovery, with a focus on content and emotional valence, more recent research has focused on subtle stylistic differences in function words such as pronouns, articles, and prepositions. These “junk words” have proven to be reliable markers of demographics, biological activity, depression, life stressors, deception, and status. The chapter briefly reviews recent LIWC-based research regarding the often-overlooked stylistic components of sharing one's story.
Behavioral Genetics, Genomics, Intelligence, and Mental Retardation
Authors: Iarocci Grace , Petrill Stephen A.
Published: February 2013

This chapter provides an overview of the current evidence on the behavioral genetic etiology of mental retardation. It begins with a history of the two-group approach and the need to differentiate between organic and nonpathological forms of mental retardation. Then, it presents evidence that genetic and environmental factors that contribute to variation in IQ in the general population may also lead to low IQ in persons with familial mental retardation. The chapter continues with a review of the new behavioral genetic work to identify DNA markers for intelligence. It outlines methodological challenges, with particular emphasis on how these issues pertain to the search for an etiological link between familial mental retardation and normal variation in general cognitive ability. It concludes with a discussion of familial mental retardation within the broader scope of the reciprocal relation between genetic and environmental influences.
Language Development in Fragile X Syndrome: Syndrome-specific Features, Within-syndrome Variation, and Contributing Factors
Authors: Abbeduto Leonard , McDuffie Andrea , Brady Nancy , Kover Sara T.
Published: February 2013

This chapter reviews what is known about the language problems of individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS). The chapter is organized into four major sections. The first section provides a comprehensive characterization of the language problems typically associated with FXS, describing the extent and profile of delays and impairments and, where possible, the syndrome-specific features of the linguistic profile. The second section describes within-syndrome variation in the linguistic profile, emphasizing the relationship between language and gender and autism status. The third section considers the genetic and environmental factors that lead to the syndrome-specific features of, and within-syndrome variation in, the linguistic phenotype of FXS. The final section identifies important gaps in our knowledge of the language problems of FXS and suggests some directions for future research.
Emotional Development in Children with Developmental Disabilities
Authors: Kasari Connie L. , Jahromi Laudan B. , Gulsrud Amanda C.
Published: February 2013

Research into the emotional development of children with developmental disabilities has dramatically increased over the past decade. Studies investigating the development of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) account for the largest increase in the field, but progress has also been made in better understanding emotional development in children with Down syndrome (DS). This chapter reviews the evidence on emotional strengths and weaknesses in children with autism, DS, and other developmental disorders. It identifies continuing gaps in our knowledge of emotional development and suggests some promising lines of research for the future.
Child Eliciting Effects in Families of Children with Intellectual Disability: Proximal and Distal Perspectives
Authors: Fidler Deborah J.
Published: February 2013

This chapter describes two potential frameworks for examining child effects in families of children with intellectual disability. The first framework is an etiology-specific framework, which is rooted in Hodapp's (1997) notion of direct and indirect effects in families of children with intellectual disability (ID) of different etiologies. This approach offers a proximal account of how a specific child factor—child diagnosis—can be linked to patterns of parent and family functioning. The second framework places the child effects phenomenon within a bio-anthropological paradigm. This paradigm offers a more distal account of child eliciting factors in children with disabilities, and takes into account evolutionary influences on parent-child relationships.
Attention
Authors: Mole Christopher
Published: February 2013

The article focuses on Broadbent's approach to the explanation of attention. Broadbent shows that one's information-processing resources have sufficient capacity to encode the simple physical properties of all the stimuli that one is presented with, but have only a limited capacity for the encoding of the semantic properties of those stimuli. The resulting model depicts perceptual processing as proceeding in two stages. The first stage entails that a large capacity sensory system processes the physical features of all stimuli in parallel. A subset of the representations generated by the large capacity system are selected to be passed on to a second perceptual system, which has a smaller processing capacity, and which has the job of processing the stimuli's semantic properties. Broadbent's theory would explain that pre-bottleneck processing is responsible for the detection of simple physical features, and also for own-name detection. The phenomenology of one's shifting awareness in conditions of binocular rivalry is naturally described as the manifestation of a competition, and perhaps of a biased competition.
Cognition and the Brain
Authors: Grush Rick , Damm Lisa
Published: February 2013

The article explores the relationship between cognition and the brain. Some researches indicate that emotions provide information, anticipate future responses, influence reasoning strategy, index value, and direct attention toward particular objects but few psychologists have attempted to incorporate these results into an integrative general theory of cognition and emotion. Antonio Damasio claims that emotions are primarily representations of somatic states, including visceral and musculoskeletal, at the psychological level. The relationship between the event type and the associated emotional reaction is learned so that when the same type of event is encountered, or the same type of action considered, it can induce the corresponding emotion and the valance of that emotion can influence how the agent behaves in that situation. Damasio argued that somatic markers help facilitate reasoning by providing a rapid processing of potential decision outcomes based on immediate endorsement or rejection, which then helps constrain the decision-making space to a manageable size for which it becomes reasonable to employ more traditional means of evaluation such as cost-benefit analysis on the remaining options. Berthoz argued that the brain is a simulator of action and a generator of hypotheses such that anticipating and predicting the consequences of actions based on the remembered past is one of the basic properties of the brain.
Evolutionary Psychology
Authors: Jeffares Ben , Sterelny Kim
Published: February 2013

The article presents several models of evolutionary psychology. Nativist evolutionary psychology is built around a most important insight that ordinary human decision-making has a high cognitive load. Evolutionary nativists defend a modular solution to the problem of information load on human decision-making. Human minds comprises of special purpose cognitive devices or modules. One of the modules is a language module, a module for interpreting the thoughts and intentions of others, another is a ‘naive physics’ module for causal reasoning about sticks, stones, and similar inanimate objects, a natural history module for ecological decisions, and a social exchange module for monitoring economic interactions with peers. These modules evolved in response to the distinctive, independent, and recurring problems faced by the ancestors. Domain specific modules handle information about human language, human minds, inanimate causal interactions, the biological world, and other constant adaptive demands faced by human ancestors. Nativist evolutionary psychologists have turned to moral decision making, arguing that cross-cultural moral judgments are invariant in an unexpected way. Natural selection can build and equip a special purpose module only if the information an agent needs to know is stable over evolutionary time. Automatized skills are an alternative means of coping with high-load problems. These skills are phenomenologically rather like modules, but they have very different developmental and evolutionary histories.
Culture and Cognition
Authors: Fessler Daniel M. T. , Machery Edouard
Published: February 2013

The article provides an overview on the approaches used to study the relation between culture and cognition. Psychological universals can be defined as those traits, processes, dispositions, or functions that recur across cultures, with at least a subset of each population exhibiting the trait. The strongest test of the universality of a given psychological trait is to search for it across maximally disparate cultures because traits may recur across cultures due to cultural influences alone. One methodological concern, however, is that whether or not a trait is identified in different cultures will depend in part on how the trait is defined. Some traits may be psychological universals because they are homologies. A trait is generatively entrenched if its development is a necessary condition for the development of other traits. Most modifications of a generatively entrenched trait are selected against because they prevent the development of these other traits. The approximate number sense, evident in cultures as diverse as small-scale hunter-horticulturalist societies and modern, technologically complex societies, is also present in numerous animal species. A number of uniquely human psychological traits are also universal because their development has been canalized during the evolution of human cognition. Natural selection selects against development pathways that rely on specific environmental inputs when these environmental inputs vary, when variation in these environmental inputs cause the development of variable traits, and when there is a single optimally adaptive variant.
Harmonic Dualism as Historical and Structural Imperative
Authors: Klumpenhouwer Henry
Published: February 2013

This article aims to provide more sympathetic readings and accounts of harmonic dualism. It makes two claims in particular: first, that the traditional attacks on harmonic dualism that focus on putative structural contradictions in the system are entirely unjustified; and second, that harmonic dualism is a good, legitimate, and useful perspective which can generate enlightening accounts of tonal pieces of music. The argument in this article is part of a broader methodological challenge that questions the means of determining the “correctness” of a music theory. The defense of dualism presented in this article is highly conscious of the modalities of Anglo-American music-theoretical discourse and makes the renewed case for dualism in the context of current argumentative strategies; in the sense, by rehabilitating Riemann's dualism, the article is also holding up the mirror to contemporary music-theoretical practices. There are three parts in this article: the first section focuses on the characteristics of the dualist theory of harmony; the second section defends the first claim presented above (that the traditional attacks on harmonic dualism that focus on putative structural contradictions in the system are entirely unjustified); and the last section defend by way of analysis the second claim—that harmonic dualism is a good, legitimate, and useful perspective which can generate enlightening accounts of tonal pieces of music.
Tonal Pitch Space and the (neo-)RiemannianTonnetz
Authors: Cohn Richard
Published: February 2013

This article reexamines the Tonnetz as an analytical apparatus. Drawing on Fred Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space, which is critical of the homology of tone, chord, and key space posited by the Riemannian Tonnentz, the article proposes a hybrid spatial model that draws on both the Riemannian tradition and Lerdahl's hierarchical model. The pragmatic solution presented in this article allows for communication, reinterpretation, and relocation between tempered and unbounded spaces of tones, key spaces, and diatonic spaces or regions of triads, through the graphic metaphors of the Tonnetz and its allied spatial models. Apart from providing a pragmatic solution, the article also illustrates the hybrid model in analyses of Schumann, Wagner, and Chopin, with the view of suggesting further explorations and applications of these analytical tools.
Three Short Essays on Neo-Riemannian Theory
Authors: Harrison Daniel
Published: February 2013

This article presents a three-section discussion, exploring the specific interrelated themes and questions central to the transformational and neo-Riemannian enterprise. The first section discusses the natures of musical objects and relations within the transformational worldview. It asks what happens when tones and chords are imagines not as objects but as transformations. The second section delves further into the object/transformation dichotomy. It explores the structural and functional differences among dissonant and consonant trichords in a particular nonatonic cycle. It also explores how the voice-leading functional and set-theoretical implications of the cycle might be engaged by a transformational perspective as a means to impart “sensuous distinctions”. The last section examines the analytical implications of the first two sections, by examining Vaughan Williams's neo-modal triadic Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Augustine to Aquinas (Latin-Christian Authors)
Authors: Fidora Alexander
Published: February 2013

Thomas Aquinas integrated the newly translated philosophical source that is Greek, Arabic, and Jewish authors into a unique synthesis with his own Christian tradition efficiently. The most prominent and certainly one of the most influential, among Aquinas's Latin-Christian authors of reference was Augustine of Hippo (354–430). The North African bishop had a significant influence on intellectual discussion at the end of the twelfth and during the thirteenth centuries. Aquinas follows Augustine in theological matters such as Trinitarian theology, and the questions of divine providence and grace. Aquinas accepted Augustine's doctrines on causality and exemplarism but he clearly rejected some of his metaphysical teachings, and a series of claims concerning theory of knowledge and psychology, namely the role of the ‘seminal reasons’ and of divine illumination. Aquinas placed the issue in the larger setting of different philosophical options, such as Augustine vs. Aristotle, Arabic philosophy vs. the ‘genuine’ peripatetic tradition, and Platonism vs. Aristotelianism. Aquinas's second commentary (Paris 1259) is dedicated to the short tract De hebdomadibus, in which Boethius set out to analyze the goodness of substances. Boethius coined some very influential ontological key notions, in particular the distinction between id quod est and esse. Aquinas paid a good deal of attention to this distinction, interpreting Boethius's id quod est as ens, which is one who participates in the act of being (actus essendi), whereas being itself (ipsum esse) is defined as that which does not participate in anything else.
Aquinas, Plato, and Neoplatonism
Authors: Hankey Wayne J.
Published: February 2013

Plato, and a wide variety of ancient, Arabic, and medieval Platonisms had a significant influence on Aquinas. The Corpus, with its quasi-Apostolic origin for Aquinas, was his most authoritative and influential source of Neoplatonism. His most influential early sources of Platonism came from Aristotle and Augustine, that is besides the Dionysian Corpus and the Liber. Aquinas greatly acknowledged the Neoplatonic, and the Peripatetic, commentaries and paraphrases he gradually acquired, because they enabled getting to the Hellenic sources. A great part of Aquinas's last writing was devoted to explicating Aristotle's works including the Liber de causis, which was attributed to him. Aquinas wished to understand the philosophical schools such as their characters, the differences between and within them, their memberships, influences, histories, and the extent to which they are complementary. Aquinas gave an extended treatment of the history of philosophy, including lists of differences and agreements between Plato and Aristotle, beginning with ‘the opinions of the ancients and of Plato’ in his On Separate Substances. When Aquinas treated Aristotle in On Separate Substances, he did not leave his Neoplatonic framework behind. There is much more in On Separate Substances concerning the numbers, including an elaborate reasoning that saves the verbally opposed positions of both Proclus and Dionysius.
God's Omnipotence
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: February 2013

Aquinas argued that God's power is infinite because God needs no help from anything else to produce his effects, the number of his effects is unlimited, and its intensity is unlimited. Aquinas believed that God necessarily wills himself to be, be good, be happy, and so cannot produce the contrary volitions. Aquinas's line of thought generates a subordinate metaphysical account of why God can produce only noncontradictory states of affairs. It is a fact about causation, Aquinas thought, that every agent produces effects that are somehow like itself. Aquinas's claim that if God willed to do evil, he would succeed as he has the power but it is impossible that he will to do evil, so impossible that he can do evil. Aquinas argued that the rational agents act ultimately to be happy (a standard Aristotelian thesis). Every evil action falls short of attaining that, given the universe we live in (with Hell), or suitably strong natural-law assumptions and claims about rational nature. God cannot fail to attain the end for which he acts, which implies that God cannot fail to be happy, or to possess himself. He cannot because he is perfectly knowledgeable and knows what will make him happy, perfectly rational, and omnipotent. God's omnipotence is part of the reason he cannot sin.
The Theological Virtues
Authors: Wawrykow Joseph P.
Published: February 2013

Aquinas focused on the moral and intellectual virtues to display the theological virtues in their distinctiveness in his analysis of the theological virtues covering faith, hope, and charity. The designation of certain virtues as ‘theological’ suggests their connection to God in such a way that the theological virtues are infused by God, they direct a person to God as beatifying end and they become known by God's revelation in scripture. The theological virtues are not acquired but are given by God. The theological virtues enhance human capacity and elevate the person to the supernatural order and making their possessor capable of the acts that bring that person to the end to which grace and these virtues direct him. Each of these virtues in its particular manner relates the person to the God. Aquinas considered the theological virtues in the order of generation in his Summa theologiae. Aquinas thought there are three aspects of the internal act of faith. He adopted a formulation that nuances the relation of the person to God by faith, which includes credere Deo, credere Deum, credere in Deum. Human beings are involved in God's revealing and the process of articulation. The truths needed for salvation are revealed in Scripture, and God reveals these truths to the human authors of Scripture and does so in such a way that they cannot be mistaken.
The Intellectual Virtues
Authors: Hoffmann Tobias
Published: February 2013

The article explores Aquinas's account of the individual intellectual virtues, with special focus on prudence. Aquinas argued that the intellectual virtues (apart from prudence) are virtues only in a qualified sense but he considers them superior to the moral virtues. Aquinas examines the virtues in detail in his Secunda Secundae. The only intellectual virtue that receives extensive treatment in the Secunda Secundae is prudence, a cardinal virtue as the four cardinal virtues, together with the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, constitute the major organizing principle of the Secunda Secundae. Aristotle mentioned that wisdom concerns knowledge of the highest causes and the ability to judge and order subordinate things by these standards. Wisdom as an intellectual virtue concerns God, as he is knowable by natural human reason, that is, as he is investigated in the science of metaphysics. According to Aquinas, the domain of a specific science is defined by its ‘subject’, which is confined to a single genus. The intellectual virtue of art refers to what the medieval called the mechanical arts and it is distinct from the so-called liberal arts. For Aquinas, the liberal arts are speculative habits such as the theoretical sciences and they merely have a resemblance to the mechanical arts in that they involve such activities as counting and measuring. Art as an intellectual virtue is the knowledge or the professional competence of a craftsman.
Providence and the Problem of Evil
Authors: Stump Eleonore
Published: February 2013

Aquinas argued that a human being's life is divided into two unequal portions, one very small portion before death and another, infinitely enduring, after death. Aquinas held that the state of a person at the end of the smaller portion of his life determines his state in the infinitely extended portion of his life after death. Aquinas's views of the best thing and the worst thing for human beings mark out a scale of value on which human suffering and the benefits that might be thought to redeem it can be measured. Aquinas himself thinks that acceptance of the view that there is an afterlife and that true happiness consists in union with God in that afterlife is essential to his theodicy. It is also important to recognize that the best thing, the upper limit of Aquinas's scale of value for human lives, comes in degrees. Aquinas argued that human beings differ greatly in what constitutes for them the peak human condition of union with God. Aquinas took the justification and sanctification of postlapsarian human beings to be the means by which a person becomes healed of the disease in the will. Justification occurs when a human person recognizes and rejects the moral evil in him and yearns for the goodness of God.
The Trinity
Authors: Emery Gilles
Published: February 2013

Aquinas argued that Christian faith is Trinitarian in nature. Aquinas ruled out the possibility of natural reason attaining to knowledge of the Trinity and refused to consider God's personal plurality as the fruit of an essential fecundity of the divine being. He drew a clear distinction between the knowledge of the divine essence and knowledge of personal plurality in God. Aquinas supplied several syntheses of the Trinitarian doctrine and the principal elements of his Trinitarian doctrine are presented here as well in his biblical commentaries. The Summa theologiae offers his most complete synthesis. Aquinas's speculative Trinitarian theology focuses chiefly on two doctrinal pillars that include the conception of the divine person as a subsistent relation, as well as the doctrine of the Word and Love. Aquinas conceived of the divine person as a ‘subsistent relation’. Aquinas held that two bases can cause a real relation that includes quantity and action-passion. Aquinas recognized two kinds of immanent procession in an intellectual nature, that of the intellect and that of the will. Aquinas showed that the procession of Love is distinguished from the Word's generation in the real order, because generation takes place through the mode of a similitude, while the procession of Love takes place through the dynamic mode of a principle of impulsion toward the being that is loved.
Sacraments
Authors: Holtz Dominic
Published: February 2013

The article discusses Aquinas's view on sacraments. Aquinas understood worship and not simply the internal love shown in mind and will of rational creature to its Creator but also the use of material objects, words, and bodily gestures, to be a natural obligation of all human beings. Aquinas is rightly credited with asserting that the sacraments are better understood as signs than as causes, and that even as causes, they have their effect by means of their signifying. The purpose of the analysis of the sacraments is meant to do justice to the fullness of the sacramental teaching that Aquinas inherited from the early centuries of the Church. Aquinas was not unaware that one might imagine both different matter and different form, particularly different words, to enact the sacraments. Aquinas was willing to admit a range of signification in certain respects. Aquinas rejected any radical departure from the matter or the ritual forms accepted by the Church. Aquinas recognized that objects and ritual actions are ambiguous as signs. They generally require words to locate the meaning that they have here and now. The sacraments are signs of supernatural effects, of the various participations in the healing of sin and more importantly of the perfection, the completion of the human person through a sharing in the life of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.
Prayer
Authors: Davies Brian
Published: February 2013

The article focuses on Aquinas's view on prayer. Aquinas had an understanding of God according to which everything created is at all times made to be what it is by God. Aquinas thought that God's omni-causality does not act as a rival to the causality of creatures, since it actually empowers it or makes it to exist. He thought that prayer is an expression of trust in God and an act of religion. He argued that the purpose of religion is offering reverence and honor to God through the prayers. Aquinas also insisted that prayer is an act of charity. He was clear that prayer should be directed to union with God and should be offered by human beings as seeking to achieve this. Aquinas held that human beings can specify what they want in their prayers such as particular temporal things, forgiveness of specific sins, or the well-being of their neighbors. Aquinas avoided high-minded generalities and he did not suggest that one should only vaguely ask for what is good. Aquinas argued that it is lawful to pray for what it is lawful to desire.
Greek and Roman Classics
Authors: Van Anglen K. P.
Published: February 2013

Projecting the relationship Transcendentalism had with Greek and Roman Classics, this article looks at the exposure in Roman and Greek literature Transcendentalists recieved in their education. Though the Classics were central to their curricula, the special interest they showed in exploring it themselves gave them a good command of the subject. Harvard, in fact, provided a great platform to the Classics as many Transcendentalists took up languages and literature and mastered those subjects by the time they left college. The article explains that the women Transcendentalists too got the same level of education despite being excluded from institutions of higher learning. And, as they grew older they read the authors of antiquity as part of their struggle for intellectual autonomy and equality. The article also gives different reasons for the reception of the Classics by the Transcendentalists.
Asian Influences
Authors: Hodder Alan
Published: February 2013

This article states that Asian religious texts and traditions had the greatest impact on the American Transcendentalists. Their embrace of the Asian religious ideas was a corrective step to the centuries-long dominion of Christianity in the west. The commerce—both intellectual and material—that had linked Asia and Europe played a crucial role in it. The French and English agents began acquainting themselves with the cultures and languages of the areas. The flow of material profit soon led to an unsuspected intellectual windfall in the form of a host of texts and translations that shed new lights on the traditions of Asia. This eventually led to the English translation of Bhagavad Geeta, the introduction of Buddhism in the west, and so on. The article looks at the contributions of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Amos Bronson Alcott to the Asiatic influence on Transcendentalism.
Education
Authors: Mott Wesley T.
Published: February 2013

This article talks about the Transcendentalists' vision of education, which was later extended to every stage of human life. They saw education as something that commemorates with the object of life and as a moral goal that teaches self-trust. The first generation of Transcendentalists had taken so much pain to attain the goal of education, especially of women who were denied access to higher education. Elizabeth Peabody, the most indefatigable teacher among the Transcendentalists and the one most receptive to European pedagogical innovations, was classically educated in a home school by her progressive mother. She later became one of the best educational activists among the Transcendentalists. Massachusetts witnessed many educational reforms during that period. The Transcendentalists, in all the way, were real educational reformists.
Native American Rights
Authors: Bellin Joshua David
Published: February 2013

This article critically examines the Transcendentalists' attempts to speak for the Indians. The leading Transcendentalists were almost entirely silent on Native American political, territorial, and religious sovereignty. Though major figures such as Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau read widely on Indians, traveled among them, and harbored a lifelong fascination with them, their admiration did not lead to advocacy. Though some of the Transcendentalists kept on talking about issues relating to the Indians, the talk did not come through in their actions. Transcendentalists such as Theodore Parker and Emerson have been criticized for their double standards on the issue. The chapter also talks about the kind of life the Indians had led in those days. However there were some less well-known figures who came forward to fill the gaping hole in the Transcendentalists' record on Native American rights, as there was an absence of leadership in the movement.
Antislavery Reform
Authors: Petrulionis Sandra Harbert
Published: February 2013

Transcendentalism has a very deep history in antislavery activism. As the article goes, Radical abolitionism gained momentum as an organized effort centered in Transcendentalist New England with the Boston publication of William Lloyd Garrison's “Liberator,” which began in 1831. The article takes on Garrison as a great antislavery activist as in contrast to using gradual methods Garrison insisted on the immediate and peaceful abolition of slavery. Bronson Alcott alone among the Transcendentalists locked arms with Garrison, attending his lectures even before the “Liberator” began publication. However, later on, by the late 1850s, nearly all of the Transcendentalists regarded themselves as abolitionists. Instead of whether to act, they deliberated how to do so. Many women in the Transcendentalist circle responded to Garrison, empowered by his insistence that women take leadership roles in his movement, though the principal female Transcendentalist Fuller, however, played little to no active role in antislavery reform.
Health and the Body
Authors: Shelden Mary Lamb
Published: February 2013

This article explains famous Transcendentalists' ideas on health and the body. People such as Emerson and Alcott considered the body as a kind of pivot point between nature and spirit. Transcendentalists preached respect for historically oppressed bodies, which included the establishment of women's rights and the abolition of slavery. This fundamental core of ideas respecting the body constituted a common ground among the various and interrelated health reform movements that sprang up in the early nineteenth century: that the body had remarkable powers of self-healing; that nature offered aid in curing the body of disease; and that healthful moral living could strengthen the constitution and help prevent disease. What united the widely diverse health reforms advocated during this period was a proffered paradigm shift to a model of wellness through natural healing and disease prevention. The article also states that there was widespread interest in less radical forms of vegetarianism.
Transcendental Poetics:Emerson, Higginson, and the Rise of Whitman and Dickinson
Authors: Folsom Ed
Published: February 2013

This article, mainly, analyses the poetic works of the Transcendentalists. Most of them have been categorized as essayists or nonfiction writers. Poetry was to them the occasional rather than the chief medium of expression. It was said that Transcendentalist poetry was too philosophical, not written to please, but to convince. However, this poetry often seemed as a kind of bardic or homiletic wisdom literature. The article also examines the works of Whitman and Dickinson relating them to Transcendentalism as although it is generally known that Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are somehow associated with Transcendentalism, no one seems quite sure just how or just how much their poetry can or should be called “Transcendental.” While the Transcendentalists attempted to keep Whitman's and Dickinson's poetry in check, they also promoted their poetry to encourage society to take their idiosyncratic poetry seriously.
Travel Literature
Authors: Packer Barbara L.
Published: February 2013

This article explains the approach of the Transcendentalists towards travel and travel literature. Those who wrote about traveling and travel literature often disparaged both. Ralph Waldo Emerson even called traveling “a fool's paradise”. However the article says that despite giving disparaging remarks most of them loved travel literature, cited it frequently in their own writings. The article also mentions the reason for this double standard of the Transcendentalists on both these topics. Travel literature provided an escape from New England's provincial orderliness. Its stories of hardships endured and dangers overcome offered agreeable examples of stoicism or at least pluck. The glimpses they provided into alien societies presented vantage points from which to view America's shortcomings. Most of the Transcendentalists became travelers in pursuit of education, health, or lecturing income; they recorded their impressions in letters, journals, memoirs, and poems. Some of them even published travel narratives.
Music
Authors: Saloman Ora Frishberg
Published: February 2013

This article talks about the contributions of the Transcendentalists to the genre of music in America. Though there were slight differences in their opinions, they were all in favor of music. Henry David Thoreau experienced music as a vital gateway to the physical and then to the spiritual universe. Transcendentalists proposed that music be regarded as an art, a language, and a prophecy. Its dual capacities, according to them, were “to hallow pleasure and to naturalize religion.” John Sullivan Dwight, the foremost of those who contributed to the American concert music advocated the formation of harmonious bonds between individuals and community through music as one way toward the amelioration of society. Transcendentalists tried to attract and retain excellent performing musicians who would reside and give concerts regularly in the United States despite poor working conditions and a lack of social status then endured by musicians.
Global Transcendentalism
Authors: Walls Laura Dassow
Published: February 2013

This article examines the courses of action taken by the Transcendentalists in the wake of globalization and how successful Transcendentalism was in becoming a global movement. Transcendentalists were self-conscious and enthusiastic participants in the global culture and commerce. They themselves saw their achievement in global, planetary, and even cosmic terms. The scientific discoveries that happened during that period helped them revise inherited dogmatisms into radically liberal and secular forms of religious thought. The article states that Transcendentalism was a movement that aimed at a global reach. They offered not a national but a global ideology. In Emerson's opinion, Transcendentalism would not only successfully interweave sources from all around the globe, across all historical time scales, it would also consolidate a project for “planetary conviviality” under the leadership of elite intellectuals. He also hoped that this international class would rise above the petty differences of nationalism to offer far-sighted guidance to global leaders.
Naysayers: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville
Authors: Kopley Richard
Published: February 2013

This article takes on Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville calling them the naysayers among the Transcendentalists. The article enunciates that they brilliantly insisted upon themselves to resist effectively Transcendentalism. Their objections ranged from verbal obscurity to emotional reserve; their strongest shared concern was Transcendentalism's insubstantial treatment of the darker side of humanity. As the article explores, Poe's objections to Transcendentalism included what he considered its naïve reformism and its aesthetic inadequacy. Though Poe was keenly interested in the Transcendent, he was of an opinion that “Frogpondian” or “Bostonian” Transcendence could be problematic. The Transcendentalists of Boston were, to Poe, unreliable enthusiasts and unknowing zealots. Similarly Hawthorne and Melville had taken on Emerson's point of views, Melville's view of the social stringency of Emerson was already evident. His greatest objection to Emerson was his failure to recognize the reality of evil.
Walden: Pilgrimages and Iconographies
Authors: Wilson Leslie Perrin
Published: February 2013

Concord is the place Henry David Thoreau was most intimately associated with. Since his death, Concord has assumed heightened significance as it is remembered for including the Thoreau family home, the farmhouse on Virginia Road where he was born; the Main Street residence where he died; the First Parish Church, where he rang the bell to announce an antislavery gathering, and his gravesite in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and so on. However, the connection between Thoreau and Concord is most powerfully embodied in Walden Pond, which served him as both home and inspiration. As the article reads, among the various Concord sites, Walden beckons as a shrine and it offered retreat and removal from the distractions of town life and an opportunity for contemplation. The article also looks at the ordinary tourists who view Walden as a famous literary locale. Pilgrims invest it with the capacity to spark their own spirituality, insight, and creative energy.
Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Authors: Morris Saundra
Published: February 2013

A long and rich scholarly tradition has established that twentieth-century American poetry responds constitutively to Transcendentalism. And also, as the article explains, most scholars of Transcendentalism and American poetry have focused on Emerson and subsequent male poets. The article suggests ways to complicate and to extend our understanding of the poetic resonance of the Transcendentalisms of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. The article explains that since the major Transcendentalists were white and culturally privileged, one must be careful not simply to reinscribe their voices by invoking marginalized ones as their descendants. While exploring permutations of Transcendentalism in subsequent American poetry, the article also emphasizes its fundamental concern with a politically ethical aesthetics that calls us to imagine the poetically beautiful in terms of the politically just.
Beyond Transnationalism: An Alternative Perspective on Immigrants’ Homeland Connections
Authors: Waldinger Roger
Published: February 2013

This article first provides a critical review of the transnational perspective on migration, tracing its intellectual career and providing an evaluation. Starting from the standpoint that international migrations invariably produce cross-border connections, it then provides an alternative perspective, designed to explain variations in the strength, persistence, and coverage of those cross-border ties. The remaining sections apply that perspective to a range of cross-border phenomena. Given the complexity of global migrations, the burgeoning literature, and the huge scholarship devoted to both historical and contemporary eras of mass migration, the article focuses on the international migrants who have converged on the contemporary United States and the complex relations that link them to both their old and new homes.
Public Opinion and Populism
Authors: Fetzer Joel S.
Published: February 2013

This article provides needed insight into public attitudes on immigration in a comprehensive review of social science research on immigration, public opinion, and populism. It begins by reviewing individual-level attitudes about migration, including sociological and economic predictors and psychological approaches. Within the former school of thought, there is a clear finding that education is associated with support for immigration and mixed findings about other would-be predictors (income, gender), as economic “threat” and in-group/out-group conflict variables both seem to exert cross-pressures on individual attitudes. Among the latter group, support for conservative parties, isolationist attitudes, and nationalism all boost anti-immigrant responses. The remainder of the article reviews the smaller literature on cross-national variation in attitudes toward immigration, changes in attitudes over time, differences in attitudes as a function of immigrant characteristics, variation in support for populist and anti-immigrant parties, and the translation of populist attitudes into restrictionist immigration policies. It concludes by identifying several important avenues for future research, including on immigration attitudes in the developing world by taking advantage of more mixed methodological approaches, and the media's role in priming the populist response.