bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Uncharted
Authors: Yoshihara Mari
Published: September 2019

In the late 1980s, the Amberson staff began exploring the possibility of Bernstein touring China with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) to work with young Chinese musicians. While building a relationship with the Chinese government officials required a great deal of diplomatic skills, realizing the tour demanded financial resources unavailable in China. After much careful negotiation, the organizers secured the sponsorship of Japan’s Nomura Securities and presented a strong proposal to the Chinese officials. All of the complex planning came to an abrupt halt with the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, which caused the organizers to cancel the China portion of the project. Bernstein’s dream of working with Chinese students and sharing music with Chinese audiences was shattered by political and military suppression.
The First Harvest
Authors: Yoshihara Mari
Published: September 2019

At the Pacific Music Festival (PMF), Leonard Bernstein poured all he had into communicating the rigor and joy of music making with the young musicians from around the world. Despite his serious health issues, the peace and quiet at the Nidom, a brand new resort surrounded by natural beauty, and the company of his musical family provided remarkable healing power for the maestro. The concert on July 3 at Sapporo Shimin Kaikan was a highlight for the young musicians of the PMF Orchestra, culminating in their performance of Schumann’s Symphony no. 2 conducted by Bernstein. During the festival, Kunihiko Hashimoto attended to every need of Bernstein and his entourage and played a central role in realizing the maestro’s dream in Sapporo.
The Hassan Nasrallah Phenomenon
Authors: Daher Aurélie
Published: September 2019

The personality of Hezbollah's third secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and his militant path combine into a major element in the attraction the party holds for militants as well as supporters. Without question, Nasrallah has over the past years earned a place among the top leaders of the Arab world. Several Western commentators have described him for some time as a "second Che Guevara". Whether he arouses admiration and enthusiasm or insult and rejection, there is no denying that his career is now an integral part of the history of the Middle East. This chapter reconstructs the rise of Nasrallah's mature yet still evolving charisma. Setting the stage for this effort is as rigorous and detailed a biography of the man as possible, from his childhood until his accession to the post of secretary-general. From this indeed emerge sources of perception which then will lend themselves to an analysis of his charisma per se, starting from his appointment as secretary-general. From that point on, instead of charting a factual biographical course, the focus shifts to a change of perception that occurred among some of the public between 1992 and 2000.
Imperfect Knowledge
Authors: Holbo Christine
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines William Dean Howells, the writer and editor who defined the field of American literature in the decades of Reconstruction. While Howells has long been considered the leading champion of literary realism, the way he thought about the novel’s art as a mode of “social” politics has been misunderstood. This chapter addresses the first half of Howells’s career, looking at his early antislavery politics, his cosmopolitan reading in the German and Italian traditions, his magazine writings including Venetian Life, Their Wedding Journey, Suburban Sketches, and “Police Report,” and his fiction up through A Modern Instance. Howells remained committed to emancipatory ideals rooted in the antislavery struggle. However, he articulated a strikingly new conception of the novel’s role as a form of political discourse. Howells challenged his contemporaries to expand the field of literary “politics” to imagine society as a space suffused with political power, and by doing so to confront the barriers to equal social recognition that remained in an era of de jure universal citizenship. Calling into question sentimental notions of moral universality, he insisted that the novel’s contribution rested in a perspectivalist epistemology, its capacity to confront readers with the irreducible particularities of a world shaped by incomplete emancipation. Howells urged his contemporaries to confront alterity in a double sense. While including all American “subjects” in the novel’s representation, novelists needed to ask what it meant to try to represent others’ experiences, and what Americans could not understand about each other.
Positive Evolutionary Psychology
Authors: Geher Glenn , Wedberg Nicole
Published: September 2019

Positive evolutionary psychology is essentially the use of evolutionary psychological principles and research to help advance the goals associated with positive psychology. Positive psychologists focus on ways that we can advance the lives of individuals and communities by focusing on factors that increase positive outcomes such as life satisfaction and happiness. Evolutionary psychology uses the principles of evolution, based on Darwin’s understanding of life, to help shed light on any and all kinds of psychological phenomena. Positive evolutionary psychology, thus, is the use of Darwin’s big idea to help people and communities experience more positive and fulfilling lives. Across 11 chapters, this book (a) describes the basic ideas of both evolutionary and positive psychology; (b) elaborates on the integration of these two fields as a way to help advance the human condition; (c) discusses several domains of human functioning from the perspective of positive evolutionary psychology; and (d) looks with an eye toward the future of work in this field. Over the past few decades, evolutionary psychologists have begun to crack the code on such phenomena as happiness, gratitude, resilience, community, and love. This book describes these facets of the human experience in terms of both (a) their evolutionary origins and (b) how we might guide people to optimally experience such positive phenomena in their everyday lives.
Happiness, Gratitude, and Love
Authors: Geher Glenn , Wedberg Nicole
Published: September 2019

This chapter focuses on three of the core topics that are studied by positive psychologists: happiness, gratitude, and love. Each of these concepts has been the target of extensive research conducted by evolutionary psychologists. As such, we can now understand the ultimate factors that underlie these topics quite well. Happiness can be understood as an emotion that evolved largely to motivate people to move toward stimuli that facilitate survival or reproductive success. Gratitude evolved in connection with our strong tendencies toward reciprocal altruism, helping people keep positively connected to others in small social groups. And love evolved largely because human infants are quite helpless and thus benefit strongly from biparental care. The evolutionary analyses in this chapter are detailed and help shed light on the inner workings of each of these concepts.
Darwin’s Quick Tips for Living a Richer Life
Authors: Geher Glenn , Wedberg Nicole
Published: September 2019

This book was written as something of a guidebook for both researchers and for people in general. This chapter provides guidance for both audiences. For researchers in the behavioral sciences, guidance is provided to think about how the idea of positive evolutionary psychology might help shape one’s research agenda. Specific examples of novel research hypotheses influenced by this approach are provided. And for people in general, specific suggestions for living life, based on the ideas from this book, are spelled out. Such suggestions pertain to various life domains, including physical health, one’s emotional life, social life, religion, and community. Ultimately, this chapter provides a road map for scholars to conduct more meaningful research and for all humans to take steps to live a richer life.
A Sax Is Born
Authors: Chapman Con
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides data regarding Cornelius Hodges’s birth and traces his family history to his grandparents’ generation. Confusion as to the exact spelling of his last name (“Hodges,” not “Hodge”) is resolved by reference to his birth certificate. Census records reveal that, contrary to prior accounts of his life, he had not one sister but three, all older. The change in his name from “Cornelius” to “Johnny” is discussed, along with the seven nicknames that he was given by colleagues. The chapter also details the history of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, neighborhood where he was born—Cambridgeport—and of the South End of Boston, to which the family would move when he was twelve, after a stop in North Cambridge that has been overlooked in prior accounts of his life.
Outside the Ellington Constellation: The 1930s and 1940s
Authors: Chapman Con
Published: September 2019

The chapter relates that although Johnny Hodges was primarily associated with Duke Ellington over the course of his career, he made some of his most famous recordings—sometimes under pseudonyms owing to contractual restrictions—with other bandleaders. Although Ellington was sometimes criticized for taking credit (and royalties) that should have been shared with others, he was generous in allowing his musicians to earn extra money by playing outside dates. Hodges’s work with pianist Teddy Wilson and a young Billie Holiday is described; these sessions introduced her to listeners and produced records that featured her singing when it was still fresh. Hodges and Wilson joined forces again behind singer Mildred Bailey. Hodges was included in a Lionel Hampton recording session that produced one of his most famous solos, “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” During the 1930s he would also record with Woody Herman and Earl Hines, among others.
Swee’ Pea
Authors: Chapman Con
Published: September 2019

The chapter discusses the addition of billy Strayhorn to the Ellington band at the end of 1938. Strayhorn gradually transformed its music with harmonic enhancements that he had mastered as a student of European classical music. He also began to write pieces that served as vehicles by which Hodges developed a romantic style to broaden his appeal beyond the hot jazz and blues of his early period. Ellington had learned his trade from East Coast stride pianists, who used the piano as a percussion instrument in the bass register. Strayhorn’s music showed the influence of Debussy and Ravel, romantics with a softer side that was well suited to Hodges’s warm tone. Strayhorn took control of the Ellington small-group sessions and became so closely associated with Hodges that the two formed a four-man group for a time that played apart from Ellington.
Food and Drink
Authors: Chapman Con
Published: September 2019

The chapter describes the personal eating and drinking preferences of Johnny Hodges and their sometime relation to his music. He wasn’t enthusiastic about many things, generally maintaining a placid and inscrutable demeanor, but one subject that was guaranteed to pique his interest was food, as both a gourmet and a gourmand. A number of anecdotes describing his appetite and discriminating tastes in food are recounted. Food was of sufficient importance to him that he used the phrase “Come out of my kitchen” to warn off those who imitated his style and Duke Ellington, who would poach his riffs as the foundations for longer works. His changing tastes in liquor are described, as is the one recorded incident when he had too much to drink before returning to the bandstand after intermission. Ellington called for Hodges to solo on this occasion, to somewhat embarrassing effect. Hodges was not a drug user.
The Quality of Song
Authors: Chapman Con
Published: September 2019

The chapter discusses the way many contemporary singers compared Johnny Hodges’s sound to human song. Top singers of his day including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett all thought of his playing in terms of song, and said as much. This was both a blessing and a curse; his tone stood out from ensemble sections and was a luscious vehicle for a solo, but it sometimes would overshadow rather than complement a singer who performed with him. Hodges recorded albums with Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Ellington vocalist Al Hibbler, and Jo Stafford. Hodges not only enhanced the performance of vocalists, but he also influenced vocal styles, as reflected in the singing of Ivie Anderson, Ellington’s long-time vocalist, and singers such as Sinatra, as evidenced by the ensembles that arranger Billy May created in imitation of Hodges’s style.
Jump Up!
Authors: Allen Ray
Published: September 2019

Jump Up! Caribbean Carnival Music in New York City is the first comprehensive history of Trinidadian calypso and steelband music in the diaspora. Carnival, transplanted from Trinidad to Harlem in the 1930s and to Brooklyn in the late 1960s, provides the cultural context for the study. Blending urban studies, oral history, archival research, and ethnography, Jump Up! examines how members of New York’s diverse Anglophile-Caribbean communities forged transnational identities through the self-conscious embrace, transformation, and hybridization of select Carnival music styles and performances. The work fills a significant void in our understanding of how Caribbean Carnival music—specifically calypso, soca (soul/calypso), and steelband—evolved in the second half of the twentieth century as it flowed between its island homeland and its burgeoning New York migrant community. Jump Up! addresses the issues of music, migration, and identity head on, exploring for the first time the complex cycling of musical practices and the back-and-forth movement of singers, musicians, arrangers, producers, and cultural entrepreneurs between New York’s diasporic communities and the Caribbean.
Introduction
Authors: Aguayo Angela J.
Published: September 2019

We are living in a historical moment that will be known for its emphasis on media engagement. The evolution of mobile media technology, the ubiquity of social media, and the omnipresence of multiple media platforms in each of our lives have led to new and evolving modes of interaction with the experience of the media screen. The interactive conditions of digital culture in the United States align with a significant historical moment: growing political and social upheaval, economic crisis, dissatisfaction with representative government, and disillusionment with state institutions. Together, these conditions have given rise to an emerging participatory media culture(s) engaged in addressing problems, exposing exploitation, facilitating media witnessing, and taking back the means of media production and circulation. The chapter argues for an understanding of documentary practice as a mediated commons. This book focuses on how the visual culture(s) of documentary moving images are harnessed as a means of resistance in forms that include witnessing, petition, solidification, polarization, and promulgation. It will examine the ways in which documentary as a mode of production engages in the process of social change.
A Critical History of Documentary and Participatory Media Cultures
Authors: Aguayo Angela J.
Published: September 2019

Despite the increasing tendency for documentary to function as political discourse, there is little historical work addressing the rhetorical and material influence of documentary in public life. These stories of documentary impulse and political struggle have been only erratically recorded. Documentary scholarship frequently addresses the issues that surround the process of social change, focusing on the screen as the central location for communicative exchange, but there are many other sites of struggle for those working on the ground with documentary and the political process. This chapter will cover the broader questions of documentary and social change, how it functions in relation to generating participatory media cultures. The chapter will specifically address the shifts in the documentary commons and how opportunities for social change emerged as it moved through the introduction of portable analog video recording equipment in the late 1960s and on into a digital culture of new media. This chapter will contribute to articulating the ways in which documentary is a distinct form of discourse that engages the political in patterned ways, creating a mediated commons for the engagement of political struggle.
Street Tapes
Authors: Aguayo Angela J.
Published: September 2019

The proliferation of screen media and the saturation of everyday life with digital culture led to dramatic shifts in public communication, challenging our sense of what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century. Digital technologies have expanded the capacity to author and circulate information in unforeseeable ways. Cell phone video recordings became evidence of an unprovoked police attack, leaving traditional news outlets with little original content. Shifts in online engagement and mobile recording patterns at the turn of the century have enabled people who exist outside of business, state, and mainstream media sectors to create visible documentary moving image discourse that circumvent traditional media content. The standardization of the internet at the turn of the century brought people together in new ways, paving the way for social media and newly formed social networks. Visibility through digital production, online self-publishing, and circulation through social networks offer more than the opportunity to gather an audience; these forms of communication consistently disrupt, contribute, penetrate, challenge, focus, and reframe important public conversations in our culture. This chapter focuses on accidental witnessing of racial struggle and representation of police brutality in documentary history. This chapter has implications for what bodies get to move freely through a documentary commons and what bodies do not.
Value
Authors: Wolfsdorf David Conan
Published: September 2019

The gradable property associated with “good” is value. Chapter 4 pursues the question “What is value?” and does so by linguistic means. The term “value” is a mass noun. This mass noun is polysemous between generic and specific senses; where the former comprises so-called negative, neutral, and positive value; and the latter denotes only positive value. The chapter argues that positive value is purpose serving, which is to say contribution to the realization of a purpose. Consequently, for an entity x to be good is for x to contribute to the realization of a purpose to a significant degree. “Purpose,” as here employed, is a univocal modal term, whose denotation comprises at least four basic kinds: biological and characteristic artificial purposes and ad hoc purposes derived from either intentions or desires. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relation between value and quality.
Dimensional Specification
Authors: Wolfsdorf David Conan
Published: September 2019

Gradable properties are called “dimensions”; dimensions that are specifiable by kind are called “dimension-types.” Tokenings of “good” almost always involve specification of the dimension-type of value, that is, purpose serving associated with “good.” Dimensional specification is precisely tantamount to specification of purpose. Chapter 5 considers several explanations of dimensional specification and argues that dimensional specification is effected through so-called supplementation. That is, the adjective “good” is supplemented with an explicit or implicit adverbial or nominal expression. Implicit supplementation is semantic ellipsis. In cases of nominal supplementation, the nominal expression semantically modifies “good,” which syntactically modifies it. Such so-called reciprocal modification involves the nominal supplement N suggesting an implicit adverbial modifier of “good.” Semantically, the implicit adverbial modifier functions as an intensional predicate modifier. The meaning of the adverbial modifier plus “good” phrase is “good in the typical or at least contextually salient way that an N is good.”
Counterfactual Interlocutors
Authors: Ballantyne Nathan
Published: September 2019

If the intellectual world were different, we would very likely face powerful objections we haven’t actually encountered. Realizing that “counterfactual interlocutors” could devise objections to our strongest arguments can help us keep our confidence in check. This chapter defends the idea that counterfactual interlocutors may challenge our controversial opinions.
Novices and Expert Disagreement
Authors: Ballantyne Nathan
Published: September 2019

Novices must trust experts, but novices face uncertainty when the experts do not agree. To defer reasonably to one expert over another, we need to identify an epistemological asymmetry between them, but this chapter argues we are often not well-poised to distinguish between rival experts.
Perspectives and Frames in Pursuit of Ultimate Understanding
Authors: Camp Elisabeth
Published: September 2019

We frequently employ “framing devices,” like metaphors, telling details, and just-so stories, in ordinary conversation and in political, pedagogical, and scientific discourse, in order to coordinate our intuitive patterns of thinking about their subjects. Such framing devices, and the perspectives they generate, are thus tools for understanding at least in the sense of helping us to comprehend one another. But they can also seem like mere cognitive mechanisms: suitable for manipulating ourselves and one another, but at best heuristic proxies for, and at worst noisy obstacles to, genuinely rational engagement with the world. This chapter argues that frames can make an essential epistemic contribution within the course of inquiry, by guiding investigation in distinctively fruitful ways, and, ultimately, by producing characterizations that aptly reflect the explanatory structure of the world.
Recasting the “Scientism” Debate
Authors: Gottlieb Anthony
Published: September 2019

This chapter questions the idea that the sciences are by their nature limited in scope and contends that it rests on a failure to press the question of what we mean by “science.” This term and its cognates are approbative or honorific rather than purely descriptive: they have typically been used to mark whatever was thought at the time to be the best sort of theoretical knowledge. So it is not clear how any topic in the domain of theoretical knowledge can be judged to be beyond the scope of scientific illumination. Particular attention is paid to the history of debates about “scientism” and to the recently popular idea that consciousness and subjectivity are citadels that cannot be breached by natural science.
Technology as Teacher
Authors: Brink Kimberly A. , Wellman Henry M.
Published: September 2019

Robots are increasingly a part of children’s lives—teaching in classrooms, comforting children in hospitals, and playing in their homes. This chapter reviews literature on children’s understanding and trust of robots, including the authors’ own emerging research addressing these topics empirically. It demonstrates that children’s understanding of the abilities and behaviors of robots affects whether children like and are willing to learn from robots. The chapter emphasizes that children’s beliefs about the psychological, social, and perceptual abilities of robots change with age and differentially impact children’s feelings toward and their willingness to learn from them. Empirical research addressing these issues is in its infancy, so the chapter concludes with suggestions for still more programmatic research on the questions of how children learn from, and how they come to understand smart technology—computers, smartphones, and especially humanoid robots.
Understanding Others to Learn and Help Others Learn
Authors: Gweon Hyowon
Published: September 2019

Through learning from others and sharing what we know in our everyday social interactions, we learn things that go far beyond what we can directly experience. What makes human social learning so distinctive, powerful, and effective? This chapter reviews recent developmental evidence on how our understanding of others—basic aspects of human social cognition—can support effective learning and communication. Even at a young age, humans show remarkable abilities to reason about others’ minds to (1) draw sophisticated inferences from information provided by others, (2) use such information to evaluate others’ informativeness, and (3) actively teach and communicate information to others. These studies suggest that human social learning is rooted in the basic social-cognitive abilities to understand what others want, need, and know, as well as what is useful or costly for others. Such abilities allow even young children to make flexible and rational decisions to learn from others and teach others, providing foundations for the development of distinctively human social learning.
Religious Understanding and Cultured Practices
Authors: Tilley Terrence W.
Published: September 2019

This chapter explores the insights and oversights of projection theories of religious belief (e.g., Feuerbach, Freud). It accepts the notion that religious beliefs are projections developed in religious practices applied to the “transcendent.” But these beliefs are not irrational simply because they originated as projections; this is the genetic fallacy. Rather, all beliefs about the transcendent, including denials of any reality to the transcendent, originate in projecting qualities found in the immanent onto the transcendent. The reasonableness of religious beliefs is argued on analogy with the travails of “A Square” in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland. To distinguish among religious projections, the final section develops standards of appraisal that can be used at least to weed out the less plausible religious projects.
Where We Stand
Authors: Stohr Karen
Published: September 2019

This chapter considers the obstacles that stand in the way of moral improvement, particularly the challenges that human beings face in trying to acquire self-knowledge. It aims to set out a psychologically realistic picture of how human beings think about themselves and their actions, and what that means for moral improvement. It focuses on our epistemic limitations and how those interfere with our capacities for accurate self-perception and reflection. Those epistemic limitations are significant and any account of moral improvement must take them seriously. The chapter claims that moral improvement projects can still can get off the ground, even if we assume that moral reflection is standardly haphazard, unsystematic, and prone to error. Moral improvement is described as an effort to pull a coherent moral self together from threads of existing, messy, and conflicting practical identities and standpoints.
Moral Identities
Authors: Stohr Karen
Published: September 2019

This chapter is an exploration of moral identity, as both a psychological and a philosophical concept. It begins with the phenomenon of an identity crisis, employing Mr. Stevens, the butler from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, as an illustration. The chapter develops an account of moral identity that seeks to be consistent with psychological conceptions while also generating the normative authority and regulative efficacy necessary for moral identity to function as a moral ideal. The chapter argues that person’s moral identity is not separable from her other practical identities and standpoints, and that it derives its content from her efforts to work out how to live well within the normative structures of those other identities. It also argues that an individual’s moral identity is intertwined with her social context in ways that shape the content of that identity and her ability to live in accordance with it.
Moral Aspirations
Authors: Stohr Karen
Published: September 2019

This chapter takes up the question of what it means for a person’s moral identity to be aspirational and how we can go about cultivating aspirational moral identities that are conducive to moral improvement. It considers the role of conflict and crisis in precipitating critical reflection on existing moral identities. It also considers the ways in which a person can enhance her capacities for the requisite kind of reflection, with a particular focus on perspective shifts, imagination, and the use of exemplars. The chapter draws on work by Agnes Callard and David Velleman to argue that aspirational moral identities are cultivated proleptically through developing and enacting imaginative self-conceptions that reflect moral aspirations. These imaginative self-conceptions take the form of what the chapter describes as fictive moral selves.
Self-Deprecation
Authors: Stohr Karen
Published: September 2019

This chapter takes up the social practice of self-deprecation, or the deliberate lowering of one’s social position in a given social interaction. The social practice of self-deprecation is distinguished from the virtues of modesty and humility and from the social practice of humblebragging. When self-deprecation is used well, it alters the normative space of a social interaction in ways that restore or maintain equality. Used badly, it threatens that equality and undermines respect and self-respect. How self-deprecation affects the normative space of an interaction depends on the social landscape in which it occurs, especially social power relationships. The account of self-deprecation defended in this chapter distinguishes between morally constructive and morally destructive self-deprecation.
Protection
Authors: Boris Eileen
Published: September 2019

This chapter explores the legacy of the interwar period by focusing on the contested meaning of protection. It contrasts labor standards as protections for workers with cultures of protection that address Western notions of morality, sexuality, gender ideals, and “civilized” behavior. It probes standards for workers who deviated from the adult male industrial norm by their gender, age, occupation, or geographical location. After discussing the promise of the International Conference of Working Women, it analyzes the ILO’s originary embrace of protection in 1919. It then compares two ILO proposals that elicited pushback from both social purity advocates and legal equality feminists: migrant women traveling alone on ships and the social welfare of seafaring men in ports. It finally turns to interwar conventions for areas under colonial rule. Amid regulation of forced and contract labor, Western women justified their own quest for equal rights by intervening to save “native” women from multiple kinds of violations through “native” labor conventions. The operation of such special protections highlights the centrality of reproductive labor for the sexual division of labor, but also for the economic, political, and cultural hegemony of the colonial powers.
Outwork
Authors: Boris Eileen
Published: September 2019

This chapter charts the road to the Home Work Convention, 1996 (No. 177), whose passage paved the way for “excluded” workers to press for rights and recognition at the ILO. Changes in the global economy led international union federations and ILO sectorial meetings to support a convention. Efforts of the Programme on Rural Women also proved crucial. The Self Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA) led by Ela Bhatt became the most important group organizing home-based workers and documenting their lives. It lobbied for international redress as a strategy to enact and enforce national measures. However, the campaign by an emerging transnational network of women in HomeNet International required amplification by the labor federations. Research alone was insufficient to gain the attention of the Governing Body or win at the International Labour Conference, though lack of statistics served as an excuse for inaction. Support by the Workers’ group proved necessary, galvanized by Dan Gallin of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF). Conflicts over who was an employee and rejection by the entire Employer’s group revealed cracks in the ILO’s structure.
Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir
Authors: Stainton Hamsa
Published: September 2019

This book investigates the history of a popular genre of Sanskrit devotional poetry in Kashmir: the stotra, or hymn of praise. Such hymns demonstrate and frequently reflect upon the close link between literary and religious expression in South Asia—the relationship between poetry and prayer. This study presents an overview and reassessment of the stotra genre, including its definition and history, focusing on literary hymns in Kashmir from the eighth to the twentieth century. Investigating these hymns as theological texts, it argues for their pedagogical potential and their particular appeal for non-dualistic authors. Analyzing such hymns as prayers, it unpacks the unique capabilities of the stotra form and challenges persistent assumptions in the study of Hindu prayer. The book argues for the literary ambition and creativity of many stotras across the centuries, and it complicates standard narratives about the vitality and so-called death of Sanskrit in the region. Śaiva poets also engaged with the rich discourse on aesthetics in Kashmir, and this study charts how they experiment with the idea of a devotional “taste” (bhaktirasa) long before Vaiṣṇava authors would make it well known in South Asia. Finally, it presents new perspectives on the historiography of bhakti traditions and “Kashmir Śaivism.” Overall, this book reveals the unique nature and history of stotra literature in Kashmir; demonstrates the diversity, flexibility, and persistent appeal of the stotra genre; and introduces new sources and ways of thinking about these popular texts and the comparative study of devotional poetry and prayer.
Poetry as Theology
Authors: Stainton Hamsa
Published: September 2019

This chapter delves into the complexity of poetry as theology. Focusing largely on the most influential period of theological composition in Kashmir, from the ninth century to the twelfth, it reevaluates poetry by some of the most well-known Śaiva authors from the region, including Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and Kṣemarāja. It charts multiple ways that Sanskrit hymns can do theological work, and specifically how the poetic features of many hymns help to constitute their theological content. Some hymns show pedagogical concerns and serve as models for human audiences to emulate, both in their interpretations of specific positions and in their implementation of those positions in practice. The chapter argues, in particular, that the stotra form was appealing for non-dualistic authors seeking to reinterpret various practices and features of worship that might otherwise be seen as dualistic, including praise, prayer, and devotion.
Poetry as Prayer
Authors: Stainton Hamsa
Published: September 2019

This chapter develops the study of poetry as prayer. It reviews recent scholarship on prayer and evaluates the perils and potential of prayer as a category of analysis in the study of South Asian religions. Then, focusing on an important and previously unstudied text from fourteenth-century Kashmir—Jagaddhara Bhaṭṭa’s Stutikusumāñjali (Flower-Offering of Praise)—it analyzes various types of prayer sheltered under the umbrella of the stotra genre. In addition, it explores two creative ways of interpreting poetic prayer. First, it examines how Jagaddhara dramatizes Śiva’s interactions with Sarasvatī as the beautifully embodied form of poetry. Then it analyzes praise-poetry as a type of verbal prasāda, an offering received by a deity and then enjoyed by a community of devotees. Finally, the chapter argues that some of the evidence from Kashmir challenges a persistent view in the study of Hinduism that “true” prayer is a spontaneous outpouring of the heart.
The Genesis of Indo-Pakistan Security Competition1
Authors: Fair C. Christine
Published: September 2019

Understanding the tortured history of Pakistan's revisionist agenda with respect to India is critical to appreciating the utility of LeT and other militants to Pakistan's deep state. For this reason, this chapter provides a brief history of the independence movement, the inherent communal ideologies that Pakistan's proponents mobilized to achieve an independent state, and a precis of the disastrous Partition process that gave rise to India and Pakistan. Three particular issues remain significant in contemporary Pakistan. First, many Pakistanis continue to pass onto their descendants these tales of communally motivated murder, rape, and mayhem that accompanied the countries' births. Second, Pakistanis continue to assert that the way in which the British parsed the districts of the Punjab was inherently unfair and prejudicial to Pakistan's interests. Third, Pakistanis believe that the princely state of Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan and that the way in which the British carved up the Punjab enabled India to mobilize troops against Pakistani invaders, thus thwarting Pakistani efforts to secure the state by force.
Who are the Soldiers in the Army of the Pure?
Authors: Fair C. Christine
Published: September 2019

Generally, writers on terrorism, particularly Islamist groups, frequently adduce that terrorists are poor, uneducated, and/or come from criminal backgrounds. Speaking of Islamist militants, writers have long argued that madaris are responsible for producing scores of Muslims ready to kill and die for their faith. Various governmental efforts to counter violent extremism (aka "CVE") tend to focus upon men of military age and often subsume many of the aforenoted assumptions about the deprived backgrounds of persons who join militant groups. Many of these ostensible insights are gleaned from anecdotal accounts of captured or killed militants. Fortunately, for understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, we have a very rich source of data that allows us to glean considerable detail about the persons who fight, and ultimately die, for LeT, namely: the hundreds of biographies of slain LeT militants that are widely available in several LeT publications. This chapter provides quantitative and qualitative insights from 918 posthumous biographies of LeT militants, whom LeT calls shaheed (martyrs), assembled and analyzed by a team I oversaw at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. These data reveal that families are incredibly important in encouraging their sons to join the organization and ultimately to fight and die in its service.
The Domestic Politics of Let
Authors: Fair C. Christine
Published: September 2019

Most scholars of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba/Jamaat ud Dawah (LeT/JuD) tend to view the tanzeem as a proxy militia for the Pakistani army. While the organization certainly performs this role, this narrow understanding undervalues the full scope of activities it performs, alongside the full range of political and social perquisites that the organization affords the Pakistani state, and thus, the importance that the state attaches to it. Presumably, the formation of the Milli Muslim League (MML) will further entrench this alliance between the state and the LeT/JuD. This chapter demonstrates that LeT/JuD performs a critical role in assisting the deep state to secure its domestic objectives as well as its foreign policies in India and Afghanistan.
Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar's Sicilian Odes
Authors: Lewis Virginia M.
Published: September 2019

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes argues that Pindar engages in a striking, innovative style of mythmaking that represents and shapes Sicilian identities in his epinician odes for Sicilian victors in the fifth century bce. While Sicily has been thought to be lacking in local traditions for Pindar to celebrate, this book argues that the Sicilian odes offer examples of the formation of local traditions: the monster Typho whom Zeus defeated to become king of the gods, for example, now lives beneath Mt. Aitna; Persephone receives the island of Sicily as a gift from Zeus; and the Peloponnesian river Alpheos travels to Syracuse in pursuit of the local spring nymph Arethusa. By weaving regional and Panhellenic myth into the local landscape, as the book shows, Pindar infuses physical places with meaning and thereby contextualizes people, cities, and their rulers within a wider Greek framework. During this time period, Greek Sicily experienced a unique set of political circumstances: the inhabitants were continuously being displaced, cities were founded and resettled, and political leaders rose and fell from power in rapid succession. This book offers the first sustained analysis of myth in Pindar’s odes for Sicilian victors across the island that accounts for their shared cultural contexts.
Arriving in Syracuse
Authors: Lewis Virginia M.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 1 focuses on the cult and mythical narratives of Arethusa and the related goddess, Artemis Alpheioa. It begins with a survey of the historical and material evidence for Arethusa in sixth- and fifth-century Syracuse. As a civic symbol for the polis, Arethusa endures despite political volatility in the period. Pindar, the chapter argues, recognizes the importance of Arethusa as a civic symbol and evokes the relationship between Arethusa and Alpheos in nearly every poem for Syracuse, signaling stability and continuity. Furthermore, it proposes that links between the cults in Syracuse and related worship of Artemis Alpheioa in the Peloponnese suggest that Pindar’s references to the cult highlight a mythic tradition shared by the Peloponnesians and Syracusans.
Fluid Identities
Authors: Lewis Virginia M.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 4 argues that Pindar activates the River Akragas as a civic symbol in three of his five odes for victors from Akragas. Along with Syracuse, Akragas was one of the two most powerful Sicilian cities in the fifth century, and the influential Emmenid rulers celebrated their athletic successes by commissioning four odes by Pindar. A fifth ode for Akragas is unique as the only example of an ode in celebration of a victory in a musical competition that survives from classical Greece. A preliminary survey of local references in these odes suggests that the River Akragas became a recurring symbol that echoed the crab on Akragantine coinage of the period. Already in the earliest of the Akragantine odes, Pythian 12, the poet represents Akragas as a morphing figure that shifts from city to nymph to river, emphasizing the equivalency drawn between the three and the importance of the river as a symbol of civic identity. Later, in Olympians 2 and 3 (in celebration of Theron’s chariot victory of 476), Pindar draws a spatial analogy between the Akragantines and the inhabitants of the Isle of the Blessed and the mythical Hyperboreans, respectively, that depends on their link to the river. Through close reading and analysis of Olympian 2, this chapter suggests that the River Akragas becomes a locus of Akragantine civic identity in this poetry.
Conclusions and Test Cases
Authors: Lewis Virginia M.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 5 explores the odes for Psaumis of Kamarina and Ergoteles of Himera. After a brief survey of the history of the two cities and the cultural context for the poems, the chapter then argues that Psaumis and Ergoteles offer contrasting examples of the way that Pindar mitigates the status of hybrid citizens in Sicily by writing the victors themselves into their local landscapes and civic ideology that is bound to the landscape. As examples of an immigrant (Ergoteles) and, at least possibly, a Greek of Sikel ethnicity (Psaumis), Ergoteles and Psaumis contrast with the tyrants Hieron and Theron. The poet, it suggests, emphasizes Psaumis’ control of both the landscape and cityscape of Kamarina in Olympian 4 and Olympian 5 and converts him into a quasi-mythical benefactor of the city. On the other hand, Ergoteles, an exiled Cretan, is integrated into the civic fabric of Himera through a bath in the hot springs of the Nymphs. This chapter proposes that Pindar’s emphasis on landscape in the Sicilian odes is a feature that transcends the divide between tyrant and non-tyrant victors. As in the odes for Syracusans and Akragantines, local landscapes in the odes for Kamarina and Himera participate in the formation of civic traditions. It argues, however, that in the cases of odes for victors who are themselves establishing their civic status the victor himself becomes affiliated with the local landscape through Pindar’s poetry.
Introduction
Authors: Hanifi Shah Mahmoud
Published: September 2019

The Introduction describes the larger Elphinstone Project that contextualizes this book. It provides a brief biography of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859) and outlines his scholarly work and its enduring impact for both Afghanistan Studies and Indian Studies. Elphinstone's tenure as Governor of Bombay (1819-27) and his 1841 "The History of India" highlight the discussion of his prominent location in the field of British Indian and colonial studies. Elphinstone's 1815 "An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul" is discussed through contemporaneous book reviews and references to the book's current status as a canonical text in the field of Afghanistan Studies. Short summaries of each chapter conclude the Introduction.
Political Mobilization in Autocracies in the Digital Age
Authors: Weidmann Nils B. , Rød Espen Geelmuyden
Published: September 2019

Chapter 2 first defines the main concepts of the book. It uses the well-known framework of explanations for political protest, consisting of individual motives, resource mobilization, and political opportunity. In comparison to conventional communication technologies such as newspapers, television, and phones, the advent of the Internet affects protest mobilization in different ways: it increases the speed and availability of the network, changes the nature of the transmitted information, and possesses a network structure that can be less susceptible to government interference. The chapter reviews the existing literature on the relationship between Internet technology and protest within the framework of motives, mobilization, and political opportunity. Even though this literature has recognized that the Internet is neither exclusively beneficial nor detrimental to protest mobilization, it still has failed to identify the conditions under which digital technology helps protesters or autocratic governments.
Internet Technology and Political Protest
Authors: Weidmann Nils B. , Rød Espen Geelmuyden
Published: September 2019

The chapter proposes a refined theoretical approach to distinguish the conditions under which digital technology fosters the emergence of protest, and under which it suppresses it. At the core of this theory is the observation that control of the Internet is asymmetrical, where governments decide when and where to introduce and expand this technology in their countries. Facing economic pressure to innovate, governments will try to minimize political risks using the Internet to improve governance, but also to censor content and improve surveillance. Hence, increasing Internet penetration should be related to reduced protest occurrence in the long run. Once protest has broken out, however, it is difficult to quickly contain the spread of ongoing dissent through online channels, which is why the Internet may foster the persistence and diffusion of protest. The chapter also highlights that the effect of digital communication on protest has to be considered in conjunction with traditional means of repression that continue to be available to autocratic governments.