bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Shamanism as a Point of Departure: Two Courses on Christianity and Healing
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: November 2023

My two courses on religious healing begin with discussions of shamanism, presented as a type of ritual practice. In the subsequent sections of both courses, we explore historical changes in beliefs and practices associated with Christian healing. We focus on Christianity because my particular research interests prepare me to direct discussion of the role of healing in the historical development of that tradition more effectively than in the history of other religions. But other religious traditions would work just as well in this section of the course devoted to historical study, and instructors with other areas of expertise might revise this section of the course accordingly.
Teaching about Shamanism and Religious Healing: A Cross-Cultural, Biosocial-Spiritual Approach
Authors: Winkelman Michael , Carr Christopher
Published: November 2023

This course addresses the healing and spiritual practices of shamans in the broader context of their roles as diviners, psychopomps, charismatic leaders, public ceremonial specialists, war leaders, intergroup mediators, and material and spiritual ecologists. As two anthropologists, our approach borrows from the classic perspectives of Eliade (1964) on shamanism, as well as Harner’s (1990) concept of “core” shamanism. We distinguish (core) shamans from a universal manifestation of shamanistic healers—practitioners who use altered states of consciousness (ASC) to interact with the spirit world in order to heal and divine on behalf of their communities (Winkelman 1986a, 1990, 1992; see also Carr and Case 2005). Two basic approaches guide our pedagogy: one is cross-cultural and comparative; the other is interdisciplinary, specifically biopsychosocial. The crosscultural, comparative approach involves examining shamanism in multiple traditional cultures and relative to other magicoreligious healing practices. Similarities and differences among various shamanistic traditions are identified, and the social conditions that are associated with them and that shape their particular forms are elucidated. The interdisciplinary, biopsychosocial approach attempts to understand universal aspects of shamanism from perspectives provided by biological, psychological, clinical, and spiritual models, and their relationships to social, cognitive, and ecological processes. This view helps to illustrate shamanistic healing as a part of the human heritage.
Religious Healing as Pedagogical Performance
Authors: Mitchem Stephanie Y
Published: November 2023

Teaching an undergraduate course in the anthropology of religion provided an initial context in which I included religious healing content. I had expected that the topic would serve as a theme demonstrating the dynamics of anthropology of religion. Instead, healing rapidly came to hold the center of students’ attention. I also tried to incorporate some foci on religious anthropology—that is, how different religions have operative anthropologies—because American politics were focused on the possibility of war with Iraq. Again, healing proved to be the window into these differences. My assumptions in structuring the course were, as usual, complicated by encounters with students and university climate. Both I, as the instructor, and my students became caught up in pedagogical performances that encompassed nation, race, gender, and class. This essay discusses some of the dynamics of teaching religious healing in one anthropology of religion course. Within the context of the classroom and university setting and my initial assumptions, I began by constructing a course that seemed to only use religious healing as an example. However, as this essay explains, discussions of religious healing became increasingly central to the students’ experiences of the course and raised more attendant issues than I expected.
Magic, Witchcraft, and Healing
Authors: Payne-Jackson Arvilla
Published: November 2023

I teach the course Magic, Witchcraft, and Healing to both undergraduate and graduate students at Howard University, a historically black university that has a large, international student body. Class discussions revolve around multiple worldviews, bringing to light the many ways in which the supernatural effects the way we live, as well as the similarities and differences across cultures. Students from different cultures, religious backgrounds, and persuasions disclose their beliefs and practices. Most of them begin the course with a general conception of religion as a structured/organized institution or system of faith, in which a Supreme Being or deities merit obedience, reverence, and worship; of magic as illusion and deception performed by a magician on stage; of witchcraft as the practice of people who cast evil spells and participate in strange rituals; and of healing only as curing a disease or restoring health. Students usually see each of these as a separate entity.
The Worldviews Seminar: An Intensive Survey of American Urban Religious Diversity
Authors: Mosher Lucinda A , Jacobs Claude
Published: November 2023

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, a statement commonly heard from New York City’s caregivers was, “We are working to heal this city, one person at a time.” Clearly, improved interreligious understanding would be an important component of this healing; furthermore, the need to heal breaches of interreligious understanding certainly was not peculiar to New York City: it was an imperative for the nation as a whole. The Worldviews Seminar was inaugurated in the aftermath of the events of 9/11/01 to be a mechanism for healing and a vehicle for teaching about how healing is understood and effected by America’s many religions. Our own objective was to equip “healers” (health care professionals, religious leaders, educators) with the cultural awareness and sensitivity needed to go about their work.
Teaching Religion and Healing: Spirituality and Aging in the San Francisco Japanese Community
Authors: Nakasone Ronald Y
Published: November 2023

In an attempt to reconcile their traditional culture with their modern American experience, the Japanese American community of San Francisco initiated a unique experiment in community-based education for eldercare in planning for the newly built Kokoro Assisted Living Facility. Envisioning a seamless blend of modern medicine with culturally and spiritually competent care for Japanese American elders in a multicultural and multifaith setting, the Japanese America Religious Federation of San Francisco (JARF)1 commissioned the design and implementation of “Spirituality and Aging in the Japanese Experience.”
The Newtonian Moment
Authors: Feingold Mordechai
Published: November 2023

Isaac Newton is a legendary figure whose mythical dimension threatens to overshadow the actual man. The story of the apple falling from the tree may or may not be true, but Isaac Newton's revolutionary discoveries and their importance to the Enlightenment era and beyond are undeniable. The Newtonian Moment, a companion volume to a forthcoming exhibition by the New York Public Library, investigates the effect that Newton's theories and discoveries had, not only on the growth of science, but also on the very shape of modern culture and thought. Newton's scientific work at Cambridge was groundbreaking. From his optical experiments with prisms during the 1660s to the publication of both Principia (1687) and Opticks (1704), Newton's achievements were widely disseminated, inciting tremendous interest and excitement. Newtonianism developed into a worldview marked by many tensions: between modernity and the old guard, between the humanities and science, and the public battles between great minds. The Newtonian Moment illuminates the many facets of his colossal accomplishments, as well as the debates over the kind of knowledge that his accomplishments engendered. The book contributes to a greater understanding of the world today by offering a panoramic view of the profound impact of Newtonianism on the science, literature, art, and religion of the Enlightenment. Copiously illustrated with items drawn from the collections of the New York Public Library as well as numerous other libraries and museums, The Newtonian Moment enlightens its audience with a guided and in-depth look at the man, his world, and his enduring legacy.
The Iron Core
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

Imagine a sphere of pitted iron, grey and imperfect like a large cannonball. Think of this dense, heavy ball as the total mass of each day’s serious reported news, the iron core of information that is at the center of a functioning democracy. This iron core is big and unwieldy, reflecting each day’s combined output of all the professional journalism done by news organizations— newspapers, radio and television news, news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, and a few magazines. Some of its content is now created by new media, nonprofits, and even, occasionally, the supermarket tabloids, but the overwhelming majority still comes from the traditional news media. This iron core does not include Paris Hilton’s latest escapade or an account of the Yankees game or the U.S. Open. It has no comics or crossword puzzle. No ads.
Media and Democracy
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

The pivotal decision in establishing the modern relationship between the press and the American government was made around 2 a.m. in a London hotel room in June 1971. The person making that decision—Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times—was excruciatingly uncomfortable to be faced with the dilemma his editors in New York had roused him to resolve. But the decision he made set a new standard of defiantly independent judgment that most Americans seem to value in press coverage, though not necessarily when their favored ox is being gored.

As Eugene Patterson proclaimed in his speech to the nation’s newspaper editors in 1978, the most important modern development in the media’s role in our democracy was the transformation from an “obedient press” to an “adversarial press.” That change took place gradually, but if there was a defining moment of the new aggressive press, it was the New York Times’s decision to publish what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers—and then to continue to publish in defiance of the president.
Media Ethics—The Painful Balance
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

In the spring of 2003, the most spectacular ethical scandal in the modern history of the New York Times virtually paralyzed American journalism. If any news organization is looked to as the standard, it is the Times, and for those of us who love the paper—as I do—this was a horrible failure in several respects. Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old reporter on the make, had managed to find a crease in the paper’s editorial oversight and hidden out in it like a lizard in a crack. In four years at the Times, he had repeatedly had to publish corrections, which should have been a red flag. Sloppiness was only one of his professional crimes. In April, he got caught plagiarizing an article from the San Antonio Express-News, which finally triggered a thorough review of his work.
The New News Media
Authors: Jones Alex S
Published: November 2023

The headline on the cover of the American Journalism Review said it all: “Adapt or Die.” In a frenzy of change, every sector of the traditional news media has been trying to solve the riddle of how to remain solvent and relevant. There have been many “new media” moments for news, when some new technology came along and overturned what had been the accepted way of doing things. Radio allowed President Franklin Roosevelt to speak with Americans in a totally new way. His famous “fireside chats” were revolutionary because he was able to speak in a personal, even intimate, way to a nation that had always before heard its presidents orating with dramatic flourishes. Similarly, in the early days of television, news was delivered with almost funereal seriousness. When Chet Huntley and David Brinkley adopted a more personal style for their newscast, it was an instant hit and changed TV anchormen into welcome friends with whom people forged personal relationships.
Problem and Oprtunity
Authors: Bayley David H
Published: November 2023

What would you do if you were sent by the U.S. government to make the police more effective and democratic in a non–English-speaking, third-world country that had just emerged from a bitter and protracted civil war and was experiencing a sharp rise in criminal violence under the new regime? During the civil war an estimated 75,000 people were killed out of a population of approximately 5.9 million. The war ended with a negotiated settlement in which reform of the police figured prominently. Few details were agreed upon, however, apart from a formula for staffing the new police with officers representative of both warring factions.
U.S. Programs and Policy
Authors: Bayley David H
Published: November 2023

How big an enterprise is foreign assistance by the U.S. government to police abroad? What agencies do it? And what forms does it take? The fact is we don’t know. At the present time, there are no authoritative estimates of the amount of police assistance, no roster of assistance programs, and no listing of the departments and agencies, or units within them, authorized to engage in such work (Neild 2001, 2004).
Managing Assistance
Authors: Bayley David H
Published: November 2023

In providing assistance to facilitate the development of democratic policing abroad, there must be both strategic vision and tactical skill. The preceding two chapters discussed the former, specifying the substantive programs that will make the greatest contribution to the creation of democratic police. In this chapter, I will examine the tactics of managing reform assistance. I will specify how the providers of foreign assistance should manage assistance so that its strategic democratic elements are more likely to be accepted and incorporated into local police practice.
Shifting Scholarly Perspectives
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

It seems strange that, while conscious reflection on the methodologies appropriate to the discipline has constituted a significant element in scholarly research in such areas as biblical studies and ecclesiastical history in the course of recent decades, the same has not really been true in the field of liturgical history. There has been very little critical discussion of the particular methods which are applicable to this subject and few serious attempts to formulate principles for the interpretation of primary sources which ought to guide ongoing research.This chapter, then, attempts to do something towards filling that gap with regard to the early centuries of Christian worship.
The Background of Early Christian Worship
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

Apparently driven by a conviction as to the unique character of the Christian religion over against its pagan rivals, older studies of the early Church and its worship generally paid scant attention to the practices of contemporary pagan cults, except to draw attention to the differences which separated them from Christianity. Any influence that these other religions might have had on Christian liturgy was usually reckoned as belonging only to the period from the fourth century onwards, when they were seen as having had a corrupting effect upon the purity of the original practices.Jonathan Z. Smith has alleged that this point of view, particularly prominent among Protestant scholars, was shaped by their desire to equate Roman Catholic and pagan influences on ‘pure’ Christianity.
Worship in the New Testament
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

The number of studies in the last 50 years relating to various aspects of worship in the New Testament has been so great that a comprehensive and detailed account is quite impossible within the limits of this chapter. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with indicating a number of major trends or tendencies that can be observed within this literature, and noting some methodological criticisms which may be raised in connection with them. Some of these trends belong chiefly to older generations of scholarship, while others persist down to the present.
Other Major Liturgical Sources
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

This chapter contains a brief introduction to some of the other major documentary resources which need to be used in any attempt at the reconstruction of liturgical practices in the early Church. It is arranged according to geographical provenance and includes both material dating from the second, third, and fourth centuries and also eucharistic prayers and other liturgical texts which in their extant form are of a somewhat later date but which may be able to cast some light on earlier practices. It can make no claim to be a comprehensive listing, for our knowledge comes from a wide variety of texts, many of which supply only one or two incidental details concerning some individual custom. Nonetheless, it does aim to provide background information to the more widely used sources, and especially those which pose critical problems or other difficulties of interpretation.
The Evolution of Eucharistic Rites
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

As we saw in Chapter 1, at least up to the middle of the twentieth century the majority of liturgical scholars believed that all extant ancient eucharistic rites were ultimately derived from a single apostolic archetype. But as more and more evidence for early practices emerged, they were forced to qualify their theories to some extent. Thus Louis Duchesne (1843–1922), in what became a standard work for first half of the twentieth century, Origines du culte chrétien, maintained that, while there must have been variation in the details of early eucharistic rites and that the celebrant would have had some freedom in improvising the prayers, yet ‘at the beginning the procedure was almost identical everywhere’. Even so, he had to admit that it was not long before ‘local diversities had crept into the ritual.
Christian Initiation: A Study in Diversity
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

Prior to the late 1950s scholars paid considerably less attention to the history of rites of initiation than to the evolution of eucharistic rites. One of the principal reasons for this imbalance was that baptism and confirmation had, in the practice of most churches, generally been relegated to the status of ‘pastoral offices’ – rites performed more or less in private for individuals as the need arose – rather than being seen as part of the mainstream of the liturgical life of the Church. Consequently, until the later phases of the twentieth-century liturgical movement began to have an impact on initiation rites, there was not the same sensitivity to their theological and liturgical shortcomings nor the same pressure for their revision as was felt in the case of the Eucharist, and it was these things that provided the main stimulus for historical research. What little exploration of the origins of Christian initiation there was mostly occurred among Anglicans, for whom the nature and purpose of confirmation, and to a lesser extent the question of baptismal regeneration, were hotly debated issues during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Ministry and Ordination
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F
Published: November 2023

The origins and development of Christian ministry has been an even more hotly debated topic than the evolution of Christian liturgy, and for much longer. At first, and especially from the Reformation onwards, the debate focused principally upon whether the offices of bishop and elder/presbyter were quite different from the very beginning, or alternatively were indistinguishable in New Testament times, and monarchical episcopacy therefore a later development. Subsequently, the argument of the Dutch Protestant theologian Vitringa at the end of the seventeenth century, that the Church modelled its presbyterate after the pattern of the Jewish synagogue, influenced the thinking of many nineteenth-century scholars. But that was not the only theory advanced in that period.
The Breakup of Unity
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

The Dance in the Diversity of Life for the time being, dance as an all-inclusive function of life has vanished. Within the foreseeable future, the critics of the dance will probably not dance in the Alhambra, as Chesterton hoped. The unity between dance and the rest of life seems irretrievably destroyed, Today neither poetry, nor music, nor dance is a common form of expression for man’s feelings and thoughts; rather, the dance, like the other arts, is the talent of a small group and the pleasure of a somewhat larger one. Even purely as a form of entertainment, it gives expression-again like music-only to specific feelings, and those not exactly the most noble. In connection with religion, with work, it is scarcely alive, or not at all. The opinion is therefore defensible that the structure of the transition from unity to diversity of life, as far as the art of dance is concerned, has already been completely realized; that in this case the transition is not something with eternal meaning, but only points to a period that is over and gone. That is, it would be a defensible opinion if it were not for the fact that the most recent developments in the art of dance, and above all the flourishing of the folk dance, have reopened to us unimagined perspectives and long-lost possibilities.
Enmity Between Dance and Religion
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

Hostility The enmity between religion and the dance is ancient. Opposition arises to the dance in the early Christian Church, but at that time the dance presented no direct danger, limited as it was to the professional dance. But the Germanic folk dances were still based on the practice of life among Christians, and were thus still too “religious,” in the primitive sense, for the Church to come to terms with. This opposition had its most relentless form in the late Middle Ages. A fifteenth century manuscript from the Prussian State Library contains a detailed polemic against the dance. It does not differ essentially from the common argument of today: “For this reason St. John Baptist lost his holy head: that it was given to the daughter who could dance so well.”The circumstance that folk dances were performed joyously in or near the churches may share in the responsibility for the antipathy of the priest hood toward the dance, but the basic cause of the conflict lies deeper. We shall return to it presently.
Holyplay
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

Dance and Dram A Throughout the world, the drama arose from a holy play whose purpose was to assure the cycle of life. At decisive moments, such as seedtime and harvest, or midwinter and mid summer, the holy play is performed. One or more speakers step out of the chorus, mimetically representing spring, winter, death, life, or the animals, daemons, or gods from whom an advantage is expected.
The Breakup of Unity
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

Art is Not Imitation Art is not animitation of the movement of life. Art has its own movement. “Art does not reproduce the simple object, but only the object which has already been perceived aestheti cally. One might say, paradoxically, that art is not an imitation of things, but an imitation (arbitrary production) of aesthetic experiences.”
Holy Words
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

The Work Song We know of songs which, in an earlier age, were sung during work, and which even today occasionally accompany some activity. The work song is, or was, known during tamping down of soil, grinding, rowing, sowing-during all work which demands regular movement. Even those jobs which are not typically rhythmic make use of accompanying words. “If there’s no song while it’s brewing, the beer won’t be good,” says an old German proverb. Travelers in the Indonesian archipelago have observed that the song which accompanies rowing exerts a visible influence on tempo and power. We have received reports from American factories that experiments have been made toward in creasing production with the help of recorded music.
The Holy Image: Influences
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

Paths and Boundaries “Art is the signature of man.”248 The first thing we know of prehistoric man is the fact that he drew. It is hardly conceivable that such a typically human form of expression as art, or more comprehensively formulated, such an essentially human awareness as that of beauty, should find no entrance to that deepest depth into which religion leads us. It cannot be assumed that holiness and beauty are hermetically sealed off from one another. But we have seen how both tend to draw apart, how they attack one another. On the other hand, they always search for one another. Again and again religion searches for art, because it cannot live without form and figure. Art always comes to religion as to the broader and deeper stream into which its floods can pour. The religious work of art, an expression of the holy through beauty, is not a mere pipe dream, but reality; a reality that we find less rarely since modem man lost the approach to the magical, existential context. On the contrary, we can say of almost all great artists that they have religious meaning and try to express a particular aspect of the holy. That is true for Rembrandt and Goethe, for Beethoven and Ibsen, for Michelangelo and George.
The House of God Becomes a Human House: Alienation and Conflict
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

The House Can No Longer Be A Temple In this realm alienation proceeds from two sides: first from religion, which no longer wishes to store its goods in the house of art; and from art, which wishes to build its own house where it may dwell all alone. The house can no longer be a temple; in fact, temples can no longer exist. God is too great to be able to reside in a house that was made by hands, so says religion. It speaks classically and beautifully in Solomon’s prayer of consecration before the new temple. This is called the dwelling place of God, a “place for him to dwell in forever”; it is still said that God’s “name,” that is, his being, shall be within it; yet it is clearly recognized that no human edifice can shelter the holy: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!” (I Kings 8:27) And “the place of God’s dwelling” is heaven, from which he hears and forgives when some one prays in the temple. God does not hear in his house, but in heaven: thus the king prays “that thy eyes may be open night and day coward this house,” which was made by men (I Kings 8:29).
Influences
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

The Last Defense of External Continuity In our search for the essential continuity, we must once more protect our selves against the external continuity which forces itself upon us. Nine tenths of the “religious works of art” which we know evidence no inner, essential continuity between holiness and beauty, having only a purely external connection, which admittedly can be very refined, violating neither arc nor religion, but not proclaiming their unity.
The Republic of the Arts
Authors: van der Leeuw Gerardus
Published: November 2023

Something more catches our attention here, where we have penetrated into the center of art and religion. Before we attempt to determine the last, worst, connection between the two, there arises the question of the relationship of the arts among themselves. We have already spoken about “art,” about the world of art, and about the artist, but there are phenomena and facts which bring usonce more to practical matters. We are of the opinion that the essence and goal of art are found in representa tion, in the image, in fonn, in the figure.
The Anglican Tradition and the Virginia Founding Fathers
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

The name “Episcopal” traced back to the tumultuous Commonwealth period in English history, when clergy and laity who desired continued rule by bishops employed that term for themselves. To some extent, members of the Church of England used it for their church during the colonial period. In later centuries the term Anglican (from the Latin for “English”) came into common use to describe churches in any country that held the faith and practice of the Church of England.
The Religious Views of John Adams
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

If Washington’s religious views remain a subject of disagreement today, those of John Adams arouse no such debate. Adams was the first president who was a Unitarian-a faith that, in Adams’s case, could be described with some accuracy as “Chris-tian Deism.” Since the time of Adams, Unitarianism has broadened in America to include schools of thought that view themselves as neither theistic nor Christian.
The Religious Views of James Madison
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

Mr. Madison was sent to Princeton College,-perhaps through fear of the skeptical principles then so prevalent at William and Mary. During his stay at Princeton a great revival took place, and it was believed that he partook of its spirit. On his return home he conducted family worship in his father’s house. He soon after offered for the Legislature, and it was objected to him, by his opponents that he was better suited to the pulpit than to the legislative hall.
The Religious Views of James Monroe
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in a home four miles from the birthplace of George Washington. He was the eldest son of Spence Monroe, a small planter in Westmoreland County. Born into an Anglican family, Monroe was baptized in Washington Parish. He studied at Campbell town Academy, a noted academy run by the Reverend Archibald Campbell, the rector of Washington Parish; future Supreme Court Justice John Marshall was a classmate.
The Wives and Daughters of the Founding Fathers
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

All of the first five presidents of the United States were influenced to a great extent by Deism. Of the ten wives and female children (natural or adopted) of these presidents, however, seven appear to have been orthodox Christians. These seven include Elizabeth Kortright Monroe and her two daughters, Eliza Hay and Maria Hester Gouverneur, whom family tradition describes as orthodox Episcopalians.
A Layperson’ S Guide to Distinguishing a Deist from an Orthodox Christian
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

The Christian Right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its religion on others,” declares the website of Free Inquiry-one of many sources that rejects the assertion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.
Three Orthodox Christians
Authors: Holmes David L
Published: November 2023

Aradical in the politics of his time but a traditionalist in religion, Samuel Adams has been titled the “father of the American Revolution.” Because he consistently urged New England to return to its earlier and simpler life,writers have also called him “the Cato of the American Revolution.” But Adams is best known as “the Last of the Puritans,” a title that accurately portrays his orthodoxy in a time of religious change.
Introduction: Blackhawk’s Land
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

Davenport was draped with lights and colored buntings on the day Susan Glaspell was born, in anticipation of the great event that would occur three days later: the centenary of America. In individual towns and in the official venue in Philadelphia, the country did not turn back to its past, as the bicentennial would do, but used the occasion to proclaim its future. The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition was a celebration of a society coming of age, advertising-as much to its own people as to the world-the technology, produce, inventions, arts, and possibilities of America at the end of its first century. Over a period of 159 days, almost ro million visitors journeyed to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park to see what was called “the greatest gathering of wonders in the world”: a 284-acre field transformed into a Victorian pleasure park, with elaborate lawns, flower beds, trees, waterfalls, and fountains surrounding the 249 ornate iron and glass buildings that held the exhibits. Machinery Hall contained the leading attraction, the Corliss engine, the biggest steam engine in the world, whose twice-a-day start-up was heralded as a marvel of the coming generation. More specialized exhibits of produce and technology were housed in the 24 state and 9 international venues. In the Iowa building, for instance, the Gaume electro-motor, produced in Davenport, was placed next to a display of Reids Yellow Dent-corn pioneer hybrid.
Delphic Days
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, is only ro6 miles from Davenport, but for Susan the distance must have seemed much further, because her move took her out of a familiar environment and launched her into a world no longer circumscribed by the peccadilloes of Davenport society or the preoccupations of her own family. Distance may, in fact, have prompted her decision. It would have been more natural for her to select the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, closer to her home and less expensive, but instead she chose private Drake University, founded in 1881. She entered as a junior, waving two years because of her Latin certificate, and in two years more she received a bachelor of philosophy degree. She was an excellent student and took a rigorous program, including Greek, French grammar and literature, history, English literature, ethics, Biblical literature, psychology, and philosophy in her first year. For her to have gone away to college at all was an unusual step; to take such a curriculum was even more extraordinary. Most young women who wanted postsecondary education opted to remain in Davenport, where there were a number of institutions whose curriculum was directed toward turning out women prepared to take up their places as wives and mothers in society. Elizabeth McCullough Bray, in a series of articles on the literary life of Davenport, published in the Davenport Democrat in 1929, describes the rare woman who broke the mold and sought more academic pursuits, perhaps with Susan in mind: “This girl brought home a bachelor’s degree.
A Greek Out of Time
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

It is impossible to trace the life of Susan Glaspell without discussing in detail the life of George Cram “Jig” Cook. She was his third wife; he was her only husband. They were married just eleven years, but their lives were connected far earlier and the ties between them carried on long after his untimely death. Davenport was their shared birthplace, three years apart. Susan’s first direct contact with Jig probably occurred in 1895, when his name and that of his mother began appearing in her Weekly Outlook society column: items about their travels to Chicago, entertaining out-of-town guests, going on ice-skating parties. She also covered the opening of Jig’s play In Hampton Roads, which he co-authored with Charles Eugene Banks in 1897. They may have been friends from this period, ten years earlier than the first meeting she cites in The Road to the Temple. In notes for his unpublished, autobiographical novel, “The Pendulum,” Jig introduces a character he describes as a young newspaper woman, born in 1876, whose mother has Irish roots and who put herself through college and wrote short stories. The protagonist meets her when she comes to interview him on his return from study abroad in 189 5. As a result of the meeting, the reporter completely changes her direction in life: She quits her job, enrolls in the state university where he is an instructor, and becomes his disciple and prize student.
The Monist Society
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

In 1904, exactly at the time that Jig’s marriage was unraveling, Susan returned to Davenport from Chicago, moving back with her parents, brother Ray, and grandmother, Frank having left the previous winter for Lewiston, Montana, to try his hand at lumbering. Three years earlier she had come back to launch her writing career; this time she was already something of a celebrity, at least in her hometown. The Trident, the tricities’ weekly literary newspaper, edited by feminist Ella G. Bushnell-Hamlin was now referring to “Miss Susan Keating Glaspell” “prominent among Davenporters who are ‘doing things’ and coming to the front”; and by March 1905, when her grandmother Glaspell died, the obituaries referred to “the well known author Susan Glaspell.” Such praise was not unwarranted. She had already amassed an impressive publication record for her fiction and continued to do freelance work for Chicago newspapers, writing feature stories on regional political figures. However this growing reputation did not necessarily free her from conventional Davenport life. At home, her mother once more coddled and protected her, and her father bemusedly observed her progress. Even the news articles about her work struck a proprietary note, describing a bright girl whom “our city is proud to claim as her own.”
A Home by the Sea
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

At 5:00 P.M. on April 14, 1913, after a festive luncheon at the Brevoort Hotel with friends, Susan Glaspell and Jig Cook, their marriage sanctioned by the mayor of Weehawken, New Jersey, walked up the elegant gangplank of the side-paddled steamship Priscilla at Pier I4 in the lower Hudson River for the trip to Provincetown, the first place in which they would officially live as man and wife. They could have taken a variety of routes to this small fishing village on the tip of Cape Cod. The New England Steamship Company went to Boston, and the steamer from there connected to Railroad Wharf in Provincetown. Alternatively, a train from Boston to Fall River met a local train running through the length of the Cape. But Jig, who had tried several combinations, settled on the most expensive, $3.00, and the most romantic. With mahogany paneling, gold-leaf filigree, and mirrored salons, the Fall River Line was more than a means of transportation to a distant point; it was, as one contemporary critic describes it, a “convenient extravagance.” The traveler could leave New York City in the early evening, have a fine dinner served by “two of the most perfect headwaiters in the world,” walk the promenade deck serenaded by a live orchestra playing the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhiiuser “very decently,”
The Verge and Beyond
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

This should have been a happy period for the Provincetown Players. The Emperor Jones had put them on the map, brought in new members, and swelled the treasury to over $30,000 from the long uptown run and national tour. Critics who had previously looked askance at the little theatre in the Village were now clamoring for free press passes. Yet problems plagued the group. In response to the criticism that theirs was the work of amateurs-a mark of praise in its early days-they spent more on production values. A h,500 set for Evelyn Scott’s play Love did nothing to camouflage poor acting and weak direction. New personal jealousies also surfaced. Those performing uptown received salaries commensurate with Broadway standards; those who remained on MacDougal Street nursed the bruised egos that came with small paychecks. The Players’ stage had been a laboratory for playwrights to use for their experiments; it was now a place to launch vehicles heading north beyond Fourteenth Street. Symptomatic was the warfare that broke out in May over who would be going to London when Jones made its debut there in the fall and who would play in Suppressed Desires, scheduled to open the bill. Susan was ill over the fighting and took to her bed, disgusted by the pettiness that seemed to have intensified along with the glory the company had garnered over the past year. In-the-trenches battles for a cause never frightened her, as her act of writing Inheritors during the height of the Red Scare illustrates, but this battling reflected how far short the group was from fulfilling.
The End of the Dream
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

Because of the heated debate about The Verge, the run was extended to eighteen days, finally closing to make way for the previously announced second bill, Theodore Dreiser’s twenty-seven-character play The Hand of the Potter, one critic noting that while The Verge was considered too vague, this play is all too clear in its degeneracy. Audiences agreed, and the Players found themselves with a depleted subscriber list, a deficit of $1,500, and a disgruntled Dreiser, in California, receiving periodic reports about the progress of the rehearsals and the debacle after the opening. In one note, Jig quotes a sentence from a review of The Verge: “On Broad-way there is repetition OnMacDougal street there is revelation. Let those go who are not afraid.” These words did little to quiet Dreiser, who blamed Jig, as theatre head, for what he believed was a sloppy production of his play. In contrast to this failure, The Verge continued to gather interest once the monthly journals began to appear, carrying more extended and generally positive reviews, such as those by Stark Young and Ludwig Lewisohn. In response, the Theatre Guild took over the production and moved it to the Garrick Theatre on December 6, where it began an eleven-matinee run. After Potter closed, it returned to MacDougal Street for holiday performances, December 26-31. While the entire run of the play never approached anything like that of The Emporer Jones, it did have its champions among respected critics and audience members, who were personally touched by Claire’s plight and impressed by Glaspell’s ability to stage it.
Interlude Delphi, 1922-24: The Road to the Temple
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

At 7:30 A.M., March r, 1922, the small, ocean-going passenger vessel the Themistocles left New York harbor bound for Piraeus with Susan and Jig aboard. “Snow blowing canary singing,” Jig noted as his diary entry for the day.1 “The ‘Themistocles’ was less expansive than the man for whom it was named,” Glaspell wryly recalled. Better equipped and far more spacious ships crossed to Greece, but a more comfortable booking would have meant a two-week delay; and Jig did not want to be in New York when The Hairy Ape opened eight days later. Because the ship was small, they were able to become friends with the ship’s captain and at least two of their fellow passengers: Miss Eldridge, an archeologist, who was on her way to work on a dig at Calliphon, and William Rapp, who, like Jig, was a lover of Greek culture and was working on some writing projects in Athens and Istanbul. Susan loved the crossing, despite the wind and snow that followed the boat during the first weeks en route, and she spent much of her time on deck, talking with Eldridge and Rapp. Jig was usually holed up studying his massive Liddell and Scott Greek dictionary, which he had found on Fourth Avenue in New York two days before they sailed, and which he carried under his arm as he moved around the boat and later put in a place of honor in his room in Delphi.
The Federal Theatre Project
Authors: Ben-Zvi Linda
Published: November 2023

Like her homes, Susan's friends had been hers, and Norman had gained access to them thanks to her. Several, including the Hapgoods, only tolerated him for her sake. Mary Vorse, alienated from Susan during the Norman years, now, in 1933, picked up the threads of their relationship. Susan's closest confidants during this period were Katie and John Dos Passos, Dorothy Smith, and Stella “Knobby” Roof, a former “Smooley,” who shared Susan’s Provincetown house during the winter and spring of 1933. Susan was now drinking heavily and still unable to write. While she talked about the latter problem, she found it difficult to admit the former. She prided herself that she was able to keep up a good front and that friends assumed “Susan is fine.” In fact news of her situation was well known.
“Old Buck”
Authors: Tidwell John Edgar , Sanders Mark A
Published: November 2023

Buckner telephoned the day after Christmas; he was on his way to New River, North Carolina, for boot training as a Marine, and he had a short layover. Yes, naturally, he would be right out. I had not seen Buck for fifteen years. When I was teaching at Lincoln University, in Missouri, Buck needed money to get through school and I needed some-body for odd chores. The rambling old house that I had rented was not easy to keep straight, especially since I had started my hobbies of collecting theme papers, books, and phonograph records. Buck liked the records and was a curious reader of whatever books looked interesting. He was probably most indispensable, however, for the yarns he spun and the characters he guided to the front door. The two most startling madmen were Revelations, the garrulous preacher, and an escaped patient from Kankakee, Illinois. The latter told me a pitiful tale of how his foot had been purposely broken in the hospital. He talked so coherently that I had no suspicions of him; later I learned that he had been captured across the river and returned to the asylum as a dangerous lunatic.
“Club Car”
Authors: Tidwell John Edgar , Sanders Mark A
Published: November 2023

It was a slow train through Northern Alabama, stopping, as a fellow traveler put it, “at every pig path.” I got on at midnight, and had at least an eight-hour trip to Atlanta. There wasn’t to be any sleeping I discovered: the porter and brakeman saw to that by continually slamming the door between the baggage compartment and the Jim Crow smoker. They had to work; why should anyone sleep? This wasn’t a Pullman anyway. I had the choice seats, the two facing each other on the side with the toilet. The conductor’s “office” was across from the toilet; in the two other seats, one of which had been turned, two fellows sprawled facing each other. I put my feet up on the opposite seat and smoked myself into a semi-daze. I caught a few phrases from the talk of the fellows who were less curious about me than I was about them. One fellow gave his name as Young. His little daughter was asleep in the first seat of the main part of the Jim Crow coach. She came into the smoker once for a drink of water. Ever so often Young and his fellow traveler would get up and go look at her.
“On The Government”
Authors: Tidwell John Edgar , Sanders Mark A
Published: November 2023

When Eugene Talmadge campaigned in Greensboro, Georgia, his stock assault on the Rosenwald Fund was peculiarly ironic. Other sections of the state had profited from Rosenwald funds in education, but Greene County had an added debt. A Rosenwald fellowship enabled Arthur Raper to complete Preface to Peasantry, a thorough study of the county’s possibilities and needs. This book attracted the attention of Will W. Alexander, a director of the Rosenwald Fund, and led to his interest in Greene County as Administrator of the Farm Security Administration. Because of this interest, the county has been “on the government” for four years, and all of the demagoguery in the world cannot destroy the facts of its progress. Arthur Raper has written three works on Greene County, his doctor’s thesis (1931), Preface to Peasantry (1936), and Tenants of the Almighty (1943) which traces the county’s social history. Greene County was once fertile and prosperous, but concentrating on cotton after the Civil War, it slowly declined in fertility and wealth. Dairy farming in the early years of this century brought back something of prosperity, but another war, bringing in forty-cent cotton, returned the county to cotton farming and trouble.