bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From The Crime of the Congo
Authors: Doyle Arthur Conan
Published: November 2023

In the earlier years of his reign King Leopold of Belgium began to display that interest in Central Africa which for a long time was ascribed to nobility and philanthropy, until the contrast between such motives, and the actual unscrupulous commercialism, became too glaring to be sustained. As far back as the year 1876 he called a conference of humanitarians and travellers, who met at Brussels for the purpose of debating various plans by which the Dark Continent might be opened up. From this conference sprang the so-called International African Association, which, in spite of its name, was almost entirely a Belgian body, with the Belgian King as President. Its professed object was the exploration of the country and the founding of stations which should be resthouses for travellers and centres of civilization.
Conrad’s Impressionism
Authors: Watt Ian
Published: November 2023

Mist or haze is a very persistent image in Conrad. It appeared as soon as he began to write: there was an “opaline haze” over the Thames on the morning when he had recalled Almayer; and the original Olmeijer had first come into Conrad’s view through the morning mists of Borneo. In Heart of Darkness the fugitive nature and indefinite contours of haze are given a special significance by the primary narrator; he warns us that Marlow’s tale will be not centered on, but surrounded by, its meaning; and this meaning will be only as fitfully and tenuously visible as a hitherto unnoticed presence of dust particles and water vapor in a space that normally looks dark and void.
Jungle Fever
Authors: Denby David
Published: November 2023

We all come from Africa,” said the one African-American in the class, whom I’ll call Henry, calmly referring to the supposition among most anthropologists that human life originated in sub-Saharan Africa. What Henry was saying was that there are no racial hierarchies among peoples—that we’re all “savages.”
Sharing the Thunder The Literary Exchanges of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Bibb, and Frederick Douglass
Authors: Stepto Robert B
Published: November 2023

In an october 1852 number of Frederick Douglass’s Paper appears a book notice entitled “Stolen Thunder.” Briefly described therein is W. L. G. Smith’s Life at the South; or Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is, one of the many books that followed close upon Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel in an attempt to gain a corner of the market Uncle Tom’s Cabin had singlehandedly created. In regard to Smith’s book, “stolen thunder” has a double meaning, for, according to the reviewer, Smith is not just attempting to “make money out of the popularity of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’” but also seeking “withal a little capital for the ‘patriarchal institution.’”
The Common Law
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

If the “common law” and the “civil law” lie at the center of our attention, we should begin by focusing on what these terms mean. What is the common law? Some people say that the common law is a method—a technique for deriving the law from precedent. There is no doubt that some courts engage in deriving rules by reading precedent and seeking the thread that ties them together, but this purely methodological view of the common law is a modern invention. It ignores the complexity of history and, in particular, the way in which the great text writers fashioned the common law of England.
The Jury
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

The study of comparative law makes us sensitive to features of a foreign system that might seem perfectly normal to a practitioner living within the system. Differences stand out. The native is used to the forest, but the comparativist sees the unusual trees. Three distinctive features of the common law system come to our attention in the case for this chapter: (1) the jury system, (2) the institution of criminal contempt, and (3) the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in the due process clause.
Due Process Ascendant
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

During the drafting and ratification of the Constitution in 1787–88, the great fear was that a central government would be either too weak, like the government under the Articles of Confederation, or too strong and thus potentially tyrannical. Few considered the potential for excessive power in the states themselves. That concern was addressed only in a few clauses, which have been rarely invoked and more rarely applied—especially the Republican Form of Government Clause and the State Bill of Attainder Clause. (See Art. IV § 4; Art. I § 10.) Instead, to the degree that state abuse of powers was considered, it was left to the democratic process and to the state courts’ interpretations of state bills of rights.
Coordinating the States
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

The fundamental task of any constitution is to prescribe how government should be “constituted.” It must define the authority of each branch of government and delineate the boundaries that separate the different branches. In a federal state, like the United States, the additional burden of the constitution is to provide for sets of complicated relationships: (1) the relationship of the federal to the state governments and (2) the relationships among the states. This basic distinction intersects with another, the distinction between legislative and judicial authority. The result is four very difficult points of conﬂict, indicated by Table 13.1. Each of these of four points of intersection requires elaboration.
Contract as Law
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

As the term is understood in both the French and the common law traditions, “contracts” represents the highest achievement of the liberal theory of law. Independent parties come together and make a deal. They act voluntarily and choose their obligations. No one is bound by something not agreed to. Yet, once two or more parties do make an agreement, subject to only a few limits, the law will enforce it between them. At this theoretical level, each person has an equal power to create the rules the law will enforce between them, without regard to whether they were born rich or poor, or one race, gender, religion, or class or another. As claimed by Sir Henry Maine, “the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.” A valid contract is effectively a law created by the parties to the contract. This relationship of the free will of a party to the creation of laws binding the party is surely the reason why the contract is a dominant metaphor in explaining the relationships between governments and their subjects or citizens in liberal society.
Disputed Boundaries: Punitive Damages
Authors: Fletcher George P , Sheppard Steve
Published: November 2023

The codification movement in Continental Europe, particularly in Germany, proceeded on the basis of sharp distinctions among particular bodies of private law. The BGB has one book devoted to the law of obligations and another to “things,” or the law of property, both movable and immovable. Within the law of obligations, there is a sharp distinction among particular kinds of contracts, on the one hand, and unjust enrichment and torts on the other. Each particular body of law within the law of obligations has its own rules, which are subject to the general principles laid down first in the general part governing the entire law of obligations and second in the general part governing the entire civil code.
Police Corruption and Its Control
Authors: Ivković Sanja Kutnjak
Published: November 2023

We entrust police officers with the right to use coercive force when needed, and we expect them to enforce the law. Yet some officers abuse this trust and become notorious law violators themselves: They steal. They accept bribes. They rob drug dealers. They sell drugs. They turn a blind eye when they see other police officers stealing or otherwise violating the laws. The picture of police officers abusing their office for personal gain is itself disturbing, but the problem of police corruption extends well beyond the rule-violating behavior of a few officers. Police corruption distorts police work, encourages the code of silence, promotes resistance to accountability, and undermines the legitimacy of the police and the government.
Measuring Police Corruption
Authors: Ivković Sanja Kutnjak
Published: November 2023

Despite the need to know the exact nature and extent of corruption, the measurement of police corruption — or, for that matter, any other type of corruption — is surprisingly underdeveloped. Unlike for most other crimes, there are no official data on the corruption rate. How much corruption is there? Is the rate rising or falling? Is there more corruption now than in previous decades? Is there more corruption in one city than another, in one government department than another? Has corruption decreased after passage of a law, announcement of an investigation or arrests, or implementation of managerial reforms? Corruption cannot be estimated by examining the Uniform Crime Reports or the National Crime Victimization Survey.
Corruption Control Other Functions
Authors: Ivković Sanja Kutnjak
Published: November 2023

Corruption control is complex. It involves a number of heterogeneous functions, from providing resources for corruption control to monitoring propensity for corruption. The functions are so diverse that they have to be performed by various entities: the police agency itself, the mayor or city manager, prosecutors, courts, the media, and the citizenry. Some functions can be carried out by more than one entity, and others have to be performed by very specific ones. For example, although investigations of corrupt behavior can be conducted by the police agency, prosecutors, or the media, only the courts can mete out punishment in criminal cases. Moreover, it frequently takes several institutions to carry out a certain function. For ex- ample, the task of controlling the police agency’s efforts to control corruption is shared by the mayor, independent commissions, and the media.
Close to Death: Reflections on Race and Capital Punishment in America
Authors: Stevenson Bryan
Published: November 2023

Even before I began representing people on death row, I was opposed to capital punishment. The logic of gratuitously killing someone to demonstrate that killing is wrong eluded me. We don’t rape those who rape, nor do we assault those who have assaulted. We disavow torturing those who have tortured. Yet we endorse killing those who have killed. The death penalty has always seemed to me to be a punishment rooted in hopelessness and anger. My own moral and religious background caused me to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. No one is just a crime. Punishment must be constrained by basic human rights. I also recognized before I became a lawyer that the criminal justice system was replete with arbitrary and unfair decision making, particularly for the poor and people of color. In the almost two decades that I have been working as an attorney for condemned prisoners, I have developed a far more direct and personal understanding of the degree to which this country’s capital punishment system is riddled with flaws and tainted with injustice. I have represented dozens of death row prisoners, most of whom were unconstitutionally convicted and unfairly sentenced to death.
The Theology and Worldview of Muhammad Ibn Abdal-Wahhab
Authors: Delong-bas Natana J
Published: November 2023

Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was both a theologian and a legal scholar. The worldview that he espoused reflected both of these traits. In Islam, correct belief (orthodoxy), although important, is not sufficient on its own to achieve salvation in the Afterlife. Muslims believe that God will judge them on the basis of how they lived their lives, not just on the basis of what they believed. Thus, correct practice (orthopraxy) is also a main determinant in whether one will go to Heaven or Hell.
Jihad: Call to Islam or Call to Violence?
Authors: Delong-bas Natana J
Published: November 2023

There is no more controversial or troubling topic with respect to Islam than that of jihad. Public debates over whether use of a term that many have come to associate with terrorism should even be permitted in the public sphere have come to dominate American discussions of Islam in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These events raised many questions about the relationship between Islam and terrorism. Were the two irrevocably connected or was this a perverse distortion of Islam’s teachings? As information about the perpetrators of these horrific events slowly became available, Americans not only heard a great deal about the exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and his shadowy Al-Qaida terrorist network, but they also became familiar with the term Wahhabi and the fact that fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers involved in these attacks were Saudi. For some, the implications were clear. Wahhabis and Saudis were inherently terrorists.
Setting Up Monasteries
Authors: Kohn Livia
Published: November 2023

The Rules say: The realms on-high of the Three Purities and the ten continents, the five sacred mountains and the various renowned mountains, even the grotto heavens and the openness of the Great Void-they all are places governed by sage beings.
Making Sacred Images
Authors: Kohn Livia
Published: November 2023

The Rules say: Great images do not have form, the fully perfected is free from physical aspects. Utterly clear, they are empty and serene. Sight and hearing cannot match them, and yet they change and transform to be apparent in physical shape. Visible for a little while, they again return into hiding. For this reason, to visualize the perfected, one must first develop an imagination of their sage countenances. To aid this process, one uses cinnabar and green, gold and turquoise to create depictions and shape representations; one makes sacred images of the perfected countenances adorned with powder of white lead.
Levels of Daoists
Authors: Kohn Livia
Published: November 2023

The “Rules and Precepts for Worshiping the Dao According to the Three Caverns” says:

There are six levels of Daoists beyond the bounds [of ordinary society]:

celestial perfected

spirit immortals

mountain recluses

ordained monastics [18b]

devout householders

libationers
Alphabetically Based Textuality and Education in Ancient Greece
Authors: Carr David M
Published: November 2023

Ancient Greece presents a substantially different picture on a number of different fronts to what we saw in the cultures of the Sumero- Akkadian and Egyptian traditions. In the case of the Sumero- Akkadian tradition, we had access to the education-textual system by way of thousands of educational texts combined with explicit descriptions of education in the Edubba literature and mentions of education in hymns and other narratives. In the case of the Egyptian tradition, we had a lesser number of educational texts, along with mention of education in some inscriptions and other literature. But in the case of Greek education, we have virtually no practice texts, and mention of textual education is relatively rare—especially from periods much previous to the Macedonian period. There is a Greek abecedary and syllabary from Tuscany that is dated to the early seventh century that testifies to some sort of Greek education there, and there is a fifth-century find of about one hundred inscribed slabs of slate-like stone from a probable school in the Athenian agora. Otherwise, the combination of a rainy climate and use of perishable writing materials for education (especially papyrus) means that we have no advanced school texts from ancient Greece. As a result, we are missing a key form of evidence that might be used to reconstruct the curriculum and teaching methods of early Greek education.
Education and Textuality in the Hellenistic World Egypt and Other Examples of Hellenistic Hybridity
Authors: Carr David M
Published: November 2023

The Hellenistic period marks a definite shift in many important respects from the pre-Hellenistic one. First and foremost, education and textuality are part of a broader clash of cultures. In contexts like Hellenistic Egypt, participation in elite Greek education marked one as a “Greek” and thus a member of the Greek ruling class, especially if one progressed to the point of having graduated from the gymnasium. Yet I will show in this chapter how this education, particularly on the elite levels, was not open to all, nor was it equally accessible to all students. Instead, education and textuality becomes a central means for legitimating Greek overlordship by way of possession of purportedly superior Greek culture. In response, dominated cultures like Egypt articulated at least part of their resistance to Greek rule through asserting and redefining their own cultural heritage.
Synagogue, Sabbath, and Scripture New Forms of Hellenistic Jewish Textuality and Education Beyond the Temple
Authors: Carr David M
Published: November 2023

So far I have focused my discussion on forms of Hellenistic Jewish textuality and education that were either primarily based in the temple or (largely) implemented by former temple elites. At least some level of temple or priest connection persists in every sort of early Jewish textuality. Nevertheless, as this chapter will demonstrate, we also see—by the first century c.e. at the latest—an increasing distribution of non-temple-based forms of textuality in early Judaism, forms often linked with Sabbath gatherings at early synagogues.
‘Fragments Of A Ghost Story
Authors: El-Shamy Hasan
Published: November 2023

These fragments have come down to us on four potsherds, one of which is now at the Louvre, and another at the Vienna Museum; the two others are in the Egyptian Museum in Florence. The Paris ostracon is formed of two pieces joined together, which bear the remains of eleven lines. It has been translated, but not published, by Deveria, Catalogue des manuscrits egyptiens du Musie du Louvre, Paris, 1872, p. 208, and the cartouche it contains has been studied by Lincke, uber einem noch nicht erklarten Konigsnamen auf einem Ostracon des Louvre in Recueil de Travaux relatifi a la philologie et a l’archiologie egyptienne et Assyrienne, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 85-89. Five lines of the text have been published in cursive facsimile by Lauth, who read the royal name Ra-Hap-Amh, and places it in the IVth dynasty (Manetho und der Turiner Konigspapyrus, p. 187). Finally the whole has been given by Spiegelberg, Varia, in Recueil de Travaux, vol. xvi, pp. 31, 32. The two fragments at Florence in Migliarini’s Catalogue are numbered 2616 and 2617. They were photographed in 1876 by Golenischeff, then incompletely transcribed by Erman in Zeitschrift (1880, 3rd fasc.), finally published in facsimile, transcribed, and translated, by Golenischeff, Notice sur Un Ostracon hieratique du Musie de Florence (avec deux planches), in Recueil, 1881, vol. iii. pp. 31. I added a note to Golenischeff’s memoir (Recueil, vol. iii, p. 7) which contains some corrections of no great importance. The two fragments at Florence in reality only contribute one text, for ostracon 2617 appears to be only a copy of ostracon 2616. The Vienna ostracon was discovered, published, and translated by E. de Bergmann, in his Hieratische und Hieratisch-Demotische Texte der SammlungAigyptischer Alterthumer des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses, Vienna, 1886, pl. iv, p. vi. It is broken across the middle, and half of each line has disappeared.
On Those Who Caused Alexander To ‘Drink The ‘Death ‘Potion
Authors: El-Shamy Hasan
Published: November 2023

The commencement of this chapter does not belong to the romance; as Lemm’ has recognised, it is a simple epigraph borrowed from one of the books of the Old Testament, that of Jesus, son of Sirach. Nothing of the narrative itself remains. What I have to say about the Theban version of the romance of Alexander ends here; it may still be hoped that fresh fragments may be found to enrich our collection, and they will enable us some day to recognise with more accuracy their connection with the versions known at the present time. The special value that is now attached to them arises from the fact that, with the fragments of the Romance of Cambyses recently discovered by Schafer, they form the sole evidence that remains to us of the existence of those Coptic manuscripts to which Arab authors so often refer, and from which they assert that they acquired their fabulous history of Ancient Egypt.
Emma: The Picture of Health
Authors: Wiltshire john
Published: November 2023

Educators, naturally enough , have read Emma as a novel about education. More sophisticated, or more self-conscious, latter-day authors and readers have thought it to be about authorship, or about reading. Many accounts exist which see it as a novel about perception, or understand it in epistemological terms, or interpret it as a novel of hermeneutics. Some have even fancied Emma to be about its heroine’s imagination.1 There is hardly a critic who, once having entered the close and intricate world the novel constructs, has not found it hospitable to a coherent and plausible reading, or who has not found something new and interesting to observe in Highbury. But with very few exceptions, no one has yet diagnosed Emma to be a novel concerned with health.
Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form
Authors: Ferguson Frances
Published: November 2023

One of the criticisms leveled at formalist criticism is that it claims to be a universal method but that its practice belies those claims. Skeptical commentators on the New Criticism have regularly conceded its effectiveness with a variety of poetic texts and have granted that a Cleanth Brooks might have had a few useful things to say about the poetry of well-wrought urns and other similarly small and obviously formed objects, but they have at the same time suggested that formalism was out of its depths when it tried to deal with prose. The looseness, bagginess, and monstrosity of the novel, they have said, were more than formalism could swallow.
Consuming Time: Narrative and Disease in Tristram Shandy
Authors: Lawlor Clark
Published: November 2023

One would think that the subject of time and Sterne, especially in Tristram Shandy, had been entirely exhausted, like Yorick’s broken-winded horse. The second quotation in my epigraph is only too well known to anyone having the least acquaintance with Sterne’s writing, dramatizing what has traditionally been conceived as the futile effort of the Modern to write to the moment, and enacting the ultimate victory of time over the writer and therefore over the narrative. Sterne criticism has identified various types of time at play in Tristram Shandy, the most notable being the psychological Lockean time of the individual who associates randomly within his own mind and, relatedly, the temporal structure of the entire narrative as it emanates from Tristram’s erratic consciousness. Some attention has even been paid to Sterne’s own physical-personal time and its relation to the periodic publication of the novel in two-volume installments.
Introduction
Authors: Barnes Linda L
Published: November 2023

The study of healing traditions is well developed in the discipline of anthropology. Much as religion scholars have uncoupled the term “religion” from an unexamined association with any one tradition, so have medical anthropologists—who engage in the cross-cultural study of medicine and healing traditions—challenged the popular assumption that “medicine” is synonymous with “biomedicine,” the dominant, biologically based system of practice. They have argued, instead, that biomedicine is only one of many rich and diverse healing systems developed by human societies, and that biomedical illness categories, therapeutic responses, and meanings of efficacy are not universal. Some of these scholars, however, have been less successful in avoiding the reduction of religious systems to economic, political, psychological, or sociological substrata, with corresponding implications for studying the diversity of religious healing. Nevertheless, at the national meetings of the American Anthropology Association, sessions dedicated to the cross-cultural study of medicine and healing traditions—many of them grounded in religious traditions, worldviews, and practices—occupy approximately one fifth of the program each year.
Teaching the History of Chinese Healing Traditions
Authors: Barnes Linda L
Published: November 2023

Nothing in my formal training prepared me to teach about the history of Chinese healing traditions. As a religion scholar I had, to be sure, studied the history of Chinese religions and, as an anthropologist, had explored the entry of Chinese healing practices into the United States, particularly in Boston, but it was not the same thing. Still, I had friends and colleagues who were historians of Chinese medicine. When offered the chance to design a course of my choice for my spring semester as visiting faculty in the Religion Department at Brown University in 1999, it seemed like a good time to fill in this rather substantial hole in my own background.
Ometeotl Moyocoyatzin: Nahuatl Spiritual Foundations for Holistic Healing
Authors: Hernández-Ávila Inés
Published: November 2023

This essay is based on my initial experience teaching a course focused completely on the ancient and contemporary Nahuatl, or Aztec, tradition. I regularly offer NAS 157 Native American Religion and Philosophy (a core course for our Native American studies undergraduate majors and minors), with a focus on a grouping of traditions, one of which is usually the Nahuatl tradition. I have often wanted to create a course dedicated entirely to this tradition and its influence on contemporary Chicana/Chicano and Mexican spiritual expressions and understandings of healing, so this project provided me with the opportunity to use the space of NAS 157, in fall 2003, to design, teach, and reflect upon a new course proposal (NAS 159), which I have now drafted as a result of this experience.
Medicine, Healing, and Spirituality: A Cross-Cultural Exploration
Authors: Arai Paula K R
Published: November 2023

The perspectives of modern Western scientific (allopathic) medicine and several Asian healing and spiritual practices are the focus of a course I teach, titled “Medicine, Healing, and Spirituality.” Analysis of cultural and religious influences on the concepts of illness and health and the relationship of body and mind directs the inquiry.
Religion and Healing for Physician’s Assistants
Authors: Glennon Fred
Published: November 2023

This course on religion and healing came about in response to Le Moyne College’s efforts to develop a Physician’s Assistants (PA) program. The originators wanted the program to have a Le Moyne stamp, which meant that it needed to add some key humanistic disciplines, especially philosophy, literature, and religion. Le Moyne is a Jesuit college in Syracuse, New York, and a central part of our mission is to develop whole persons who appreciate diversity and are committed to service and justice regardless of their chosen professions. A PA program that only prepared students for the scientific and practical aspects of the profession was unacceptable. That is why the school wanted to be sure to add courses in the humanities, especially religion and ethics, to prepare students for the broader human context into which their practice would take them.
The Voltaire Effect
Authors: Feingold Mordechai
Published: November 2023

The steady diffusion of Newtonian ideas into Europe before Newton’s death is, then, undeniable. But in France, as we have seen, it was confined primarily to the domain of mathematicians and natural philosophers, as well as to a small circle of educated men who had acquired a taste for such studies. Wider dissemination required the arrival on the scene of the unique genius of Voltaire. What made Voltaire so effective an agent – apart from an unparalleled ability to seduce an audience by a masterful combination of shock and wit – was his disinterested status. Neither mathematician nor physicist, but a literary giant aloof from the academic disputes that had embroiled the previous generation, Voltaire’s voice carried force. In other words, Voltaire’s stature as an amateur in matters of science was the source of his contemporary appeal, demonstrating for the first time the accessibility of Newton’s ideas to nonspecialists.
Objectivity’s Last Stand
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

Bad journalism has the world’s attention, and endless hours are spent by those who care about news dissecting what is bad and why. “Bias” is a word that gets used a lot. “Unfair” and “unbalanced” are also familiar epithets, as are “shallow” and “lazy.” “Inaccurate” is usually part of the rap.

But what is good journalism? What makes journalism good? Everyone would agree on accuracy. For most consumers of news, the next requirement would be lack of bias: journalism should be fair and balanced. More than two-thirds of us say we preferred getting news from sources without “a particular point of view,” according to a 2007 poll by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Curious Story of News
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

The history of news is studded with unlikely moments that proved pivotal and outlandish characters who changed everything. There was no stranger moment in the saga of news than October 11, 1898, when Adolph Ochs, the out-of-money publisher of the failing New York Times, rescued his paper from a lethal enemy and changed the course of American journalism at the same time. It was a mess he had gotten himself into because of his own vanity and frenzied ambition, and one he escaped by inspired and desperate guile. This was the same man—the grandfather of Punch Sulzberger—who later became an icon of journalistic probity and a model for all publishers. But that October, he was a man who was cornered.
News papers on the Brink
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

“Do you play golf?” said George Irish, then the president of Hearst Newspapers, one of the nation’s major chains, in response to my question about his perspective on the newspaper business in these tumultuous times. I responded that I used to play with my father. He nodded and continued with a note of pain, “The newspaper business used to be like playing golf on a par three course where you stood on the tee and you knew the exact distance to the hole. Now the newspaper business is like standing on the tee of a par five, shrouded in fog. You can’t even see the green, and overnight they’ve moved all the bunkers and sand traps.”

He was speaking out of frustration and worry and no small amount of anguish. The day before, the San Francisco Chronicle, a Hearst paper, had announced that it was cutting a quarter of its news staff.
Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

This book is the most authoritative, arguably the definitive appraisal of some of the claims that are directly made or are imbedded in the incredibly successful work of popular fiction by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code; it is not an essentially partisan Christian rebuttal of The Da Vinci Code (as are virtually all the books currently available) but a truly historical assessment by a noted early Christian scholar. Brown's novel is unusual in that the author makes the statement up front that the historical information in the book is all factually accurate, and many readers presumably have taken the author at his word. Some of these "facts" are surprising and provocative, such as that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, that this union produced an offspring whose holy lineage has been preserved down to today, that Emperor Constantine suppressed secret Gospels that attest to these stories, etc. Ehrman discusses the historical truth behind these claims from a scholar's perspective. His focus is on the historical Jesus, the historical Mary, the development of the early Christian church, the writings of the early Christian Gospels, and the role played by Constantine in the formation of what has come down to us as the beliefs and scriptures of the Christian religion. Ehrman writes: "I should stress that I am not objecting to Dan Brown's inventing claims about early Christian documents as part of his fictional narrative; the problem is that he indicates that his accounting of early Christian documents is historically accurate, and readers who don't know the history of early Christianity will naturally take him at his word. But there is more fiction than fact, not just in the plot of The Da Vinci Code, but also in its discussion of the early documentary record about Jesus."
The Discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

As Leigh Teaming explains the “real” nature of Christ to Sophie Never in his drawing room, he points out that even though the Gospels of the New Testament portray Jesus as divine and not human (a view that, as we have seen, is itself wrong), there were other Gospels from early Christianity that provide a more historically accurate portrayal, in which Jesus is seen as human. These Gospels, he tells her, have been discovered in relatively recent times, in the archaeological finds of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the documents unearthed near Nag Hamada, Egypt. These, he indicates, are among the earliest surviving Gospel accounts of Jesus and can be used to correct the canonical view of him as divine.
The Historical Jesus of Our Sources
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

Throughout The Da Vinci Code there are statements made about the historical Jesus—he is said to have been a mortal prophet, to have been married to Mary Magdalene, to have produced a child with her, to have given her the instructions about how to carry on his ministry in the church after his death, and so on.
Evaluating Impact
Authors: Bayley David H
Published: November 2023

The United States and the larger international community have used foreign assistance to promote police reform as part of encouraging the development of democratic government. Considerable investment both human and material has been made in this strategy. Does it work? Has international assistance made foreign police significantly more democratic and thus contributed to the establishment of democratic government? This chapter will attempt to answer this question. It will focus primarily on the impact of American assistance, with some commentary on multinational experience.
The Breakup of Unity
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

From Carmen to Literature An ancient Egyptian pyramid text, which, like all others of its kind, is a formula of incantation, in its introductory words separates itself so far from the realm of magic that there must have been room here for a completely independent joy in the dark beauty of what is pictured:
The Building of the House of God
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

The House of God In the context of our lives, “building” means constructing a house of God. It has this meaning even when we are not speaking of a temple or a church. House or city, in the same way as temple, is the bearer of a divine power, which is fixed in a particular place through the act of building. The boundary which separates the building site from the rest of the world is thus one of the most important constituents of primitive architecture. Whatever lies outside offers no security, is surrendered to all powers. The power which is known, and for which a house is built, resides within. The ancient Roman pomoerium is the holy boundary of the city, indicating the limit of the sovereignty of the gods. The ancient Germanic enclosure (Einfriedung) is a guar antee of peace (Frieden), with its boundary a boundary of power. Even today, the British Queen must beg entrance from the authorities of the City of London at the Temple Bar.
Paths and Boundaries
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

At the end of each chapter we have attempted, in a preliminary “theo logical aesthetics,” to indicate the theological significance and position of the art in question. The task now remains to seek the unity of art, as such, in a general treatment, What do all the arts have in common, from the theological point of view? What is the mid-point about which everything turns? And what have we discovered up to now? The dance reflects the movement of God, which also moves us upon the earth. The drama presupposes the holy play between God and man.
The Image of God
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

With the image of God, we have arrived at theology. The times when it seemed that theology and arc could have no understanding of each other are past. Artists no longer look down upon dogma, and theo logians are at least willing to consider art as a problem. In Holland, admittedly, there still exists the semi-Puritan opinion of those who think that God would gladly see us despise his gifts. But in a period which is painfully aware that it is no longer able to raise itself to the biblical height, one can hardly share the attitude of Schopenhauer that biblical subjection, especially in the New Testament sense, is unsuitable for the pictorial arts.
Religion in the American Colonies in 1770
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

On my arrival in the United States,” the famous French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early nineteenth century, “the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention.” If in 1770-six years before the thirteen colonies became the United States-a different group of foreign visitors had traveled the narrow roads of the colonies, they would have agreed with de Tocqueville’s later observance.
Brown II and Subsequent Desegregation Developments
Authors: Klarman Michael J
Published: November 2023

The Court invalidated school segregation on May 17, 1954, but it ordered no immediate remedy and deferred reargument on that issue until the following term. The remedial issue posed several questions for the justices. First, should they order immediate desegregation or allow a gradual transition, and should they impose any deadlines for beginning or completing desegregation? Second, how detailed should the remedial decree be? The Court could dictate specifics about the desegregation process, remand to district courts to formulate decrees, or appoint a special master to take evidence and propose orders.
Brown’s Direct Effects
Authors: Klarman Michael J
Published: November 2023

Many commentators have called Brown the most important Court decision of the twentieth century, perhaps the most important ever. Yet judicial decisions can matter in many different ways. This chapter considers Brown’s direct consequences: How much school desegregation did it produce? The following chapters examine a variety of possible indirect effects. Even before Brown, a couple of northern states that had some formerly segregated school districts began to desegregate, in response to social and political forces emanating from World War II. In 1947, New Jersey passed a constitutional amendment that barred school segregation, and the governor ordered aggressive enforcement of it, including the withholding of state funds from districts that continued to segregate. In 1949, Illinois enacted a similar funds-withholding law. By the early 1950s—before Brown—officially sponsored segregation had largely disappeared from both states, showing that school desegregation could occur without a mandate from the Supreme Court.
Why Massive Resistance?
Authors: Klarman Michael J
Published: November 2023

Why did Brown so radicalize southern politics in the short term, leading candidates for public office to compete for the most extreme segregationist positions? There were white racial moderates in the South—people who favored compliance with court orders, opposed school closures, and would have tolerated gradual desegregation. Brown II had consciously appealed to such moderates and sought to empower them. Why did that strategy fail so abysmally? Why were so few moderate voices heard in the South after Brown?
“Jim Crow Snapshots”
Authors: Tidwell John Edgar , Sanders Mark A
Published: November 2023

The conductor had ordered all the Negroes who were deadheading to go on up to the head car. Still the coach was packed and jammed when the trio got on at Waxhaw. It was Sunday night and they were chirped up by liquor and their togs. They looked all around the coach, and then pointedly at the conductor who was taking up two seats with his tin box, bag, papers, and tickets. “Well,” sighed one dolefully, “I suppose we’ll have to sit on the floor.” “I didn’t pay my fare to sit on no floor,” said another. The first one got a seat by squeezing in beside an ample woman who lifted her child to her lap. His luck pleased him and he started agitating, “You’ll grow tall standin’. Little man like you is.” The big fellow looked hard at the back of the conductor’s head. The conduc-tor was busy rustling papers, obviously getting ready to check out at Monroe.
“A Tour Of History: Old New Orleans”
Authors: Tidwell John Edgar , Sanders Mark A
Published: November 2023

The stretch along the gulf from Pascagoula to Biloxi to Pass Christian to Bay St. Louis to Mulatto Bayou prepared me for New Orleans. Old French bungalows in shady thick gardens; the crosses and Catholic shrines; the shacks propped on stilts at the edge of the bays and bayous; the oyster shell roads bending into lush wildernesses where the tangled elephant-eared or lance-like plants showed all shades of green; cypress knees hunching swollen out of the muck; flowers delicately hued or like flame or startlingly white; sluggish bayous set in green frames; bearded water oaks and willows; straight long-leaf pines; palmettoes; the blue waters of the gulf, dazzling in the sunlight—all were fit settings for easy living Latins. The beauty of crepe-myrtles and magnolias belonged here, but so did the littered beaches, briny and tangy, smelling of fish at low tide. Old Spain was here— the hanging moss went by the name of “Spaniards beard,” and the yucca by the name of Spanish dagger. Old France was here in the houses, the cemeteries, and the people—Cajuns, Creole whites, Creole Negroes. It was hard to tell, looking at these olive, sloe-eyed brunettes, where one started and the other left off. The Indians had been here, leaving traces in the high cheek-bones and long, coarse, blue-black hair of many of the people, white and colored. But the Choctaws were gone; the grandsons of the Congo were here to stay.
What Did Judas Betray and Why Did He Betray It?
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

The accomplishments and achievements of a person’s entire lifetime can be overshadowed or even obliterated by a single incident. Most of my under- graduate students know about Richard Nixon for one reason: Watergate. And which of us knows anything about the actor John Wilkes Booth apart from the fact that he shot Abraham Lincoln? What do people know about Judas Iscariot? He betrayed Jesus. But what exactly did he betray? And why did he betray it? To make sense of my thesis—that the commonly held answers to these questions are probably wrong, or at least inadequate—I need to set the stage by reviewing a couple of important background issues.
Virginia, Kentucky, and the Complex Politics of Early Republican Federalism
Authors: Robertson Lindsay G
Published: November 2023

Chief Justice Marshall himself anticipated that questions might arise as to why he ventured so far beyond the minimum rationale necessary to support the Court’s finding that the Illinois and Wabash purchases were in valid. To forestall such inquiry, he attributed the “degree of attention” that he “bestow[ ed] upon this subject” to “the magnitude of the interest in litigation, and the able and elaborate arguments” advanced by Harper, Webster, Winder, and Murray.1 The true explanation is somewhat more com plicated. Marshall’s motives were mixed. Like others of his generation, his interests were not entirely divorced from his politics. His decision in Johnson reflected his institutional concern for the power of the Supreme Court and his personal concern to secure land grants to Revolutionary War soldiers.
Reception and Authenticity
Authors: González Marcial
Published: November 2023

In one of the many theme-packed scenes in Danny Santiago’s Famous All over Town, the novel’s fourteen-year-old Chicano narrator, Chato, pays a visit to Max Pilger, a sympathetic but somewhat idealistic school counselor. Pilger recognizes Chato’s academic potential, despite the boy’s poor grades. But the counselor remains puzzled by a dramatic drop in Chato’s IQ test scores from 135 to 95 in just one year. He decides to examine Chato himself with a series of Rorschach inkblot tests and other images. Chato reads all the images pessimistically, while Pilger counters with more optimistic interpretations. The boy says of one image, “A giant man-eating butterfly [with] blood dripping from its mouth” (67). The counselor explains that most people see “happy dancing girls.” Pilger asks Chato why he sees sadness in all the pictures; the boy replies that all the pictures are sad. “The sadness is in you, son,” Pilger says. “I don’t see sadness at all.” Then Chato blurts out, “You’re not a Mexican” (67).
The Power of Recirculation
Authors: Garvey Ellen Gruber
Published: November 2023

Recovering the reading practices of actual readers anchors the more theoretical considerations of reception. Present-day readers can be interviewed and surveyed (Radway; Long), but traces of historical readers have to be sought in diaries, reviews, letters, and even court records (Sicherman; Zboray and Zboray; Augst; Ginsburg). Many nineteenth-century readers, male and female, kept scrapbooks of items clipped from their newspaper reading.
Accuracy or Fair Play?
Authors: Nord David Paul
Published: November 2023

When Isaac Russell noticed a small story in the New York World of 24 April 1916, he did something countless newspaper readers have done over the centuries: He got angry. He dashed off a letter denouncing the “defamatory tone” of the story, the “distorted words,” and the lack of context for quotations. “What good does it possibly do the world,” he wrote, “to wrench words far away from the situation that was proper, respectful, and in taste, into something wild-eyed, intemperate and unseemly?” (26 Apr. 1916).1 Though anger has always been a fairly typical reader response to newspaper journalism, Isaac Russell was no typical reader. He was himself a news-paper reporter, and the person whose words were “raided and distorted” in the World were his own. The story quoted from a speech that Russell had given the evening before, assailing the New York papers for their unfair treatment of antiwar activists.
Political Talk and the Flow of Ambient Television
Authors: Press Andrea , Johnson-Yale Camille
Published: November 2023

I arranged with Janelle to show up at 10:30 on a Thursday morning. When I arrived at the scheduled time, the salon was locked. As I waited in the parking lot I noticed a woman in a battered old car right next to me in the parking lot. She was sleeping. Sensing me watching her, she stirred and sat up. “Are you waiting for Janelle?” I inquired. “Yeah, she told me to come at 9:30, so I’m waiting. I know she’ll show up.” She had been napping in her car for an hour waiting for Janelle to open the shop. I realized that now I had no idea when Janelle would show up, so I ran out to the bank, as I had forgotten to bring cash for my subject payment to Janelle. When I returned almost an hour later Janelle was just opening the salon.