bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Islamic Organizations: Soldiers of God
Authors: Esposito John L
Published: November 2023

Modern Islamic organizations have been the driving force behind the dynamic spread of the Islamic resurgence. They have also been the focal point or embodiment of the Islamic threat in the eyes of Western governments as well as many governments in the Muslim world. For some, Islamic movements represent an authentic alternative to corrupt, exhausted, and ineffectual regimes. For many others, they are a destabilizing forcedemagogues who will employ any tactic to gain power. The violence and terrorism perpetrated by groups with names like the Party of God, Holy War, Army of God, and Salvation from Hell conjure up images of religious fanatics with a thirst for vengeance and a penchant for violence who will stop at little. The assassination of Anwar Sadat, the taking of hostages in Lebanon, and the hijacking of planes embody a “Sacred Rage” that has become all too familiar. Yet again the reality is far more complex than its popular image. The majority of Islamic organizations would claim that, where permitted, they work within the political system and seek change from below through a gradual process of reform. Many Islamic organizations today espouse political liberalization and democratization. Their members participate in elections and serve in legislatures and cabinets.
The Chinese Mother of Tibet’s Dhanna-King
Authors: Kapstein Matthew T
Published: November 2023

When scholars of religion speak of conversion, we most often have an individual’s conversion in mind, and this in turn is almost always thought to involve profound and frequently dramatic changes of personal feeling and thought. Students of late antiquity and early medieval religions, however, must frequently attempt to understand reports of not only individual conversion, but also the conversions of peoples, whether due to popular movements, royal fiat, or elements of both. Changes of individual feeling and thought certainly play an important role here, as will be underscored in chapter 3, but so too do social, economic, and political phenomena that have perhaps only indirect relationships with individual religious experience. Thus, instead of personal conversion accounts, the transformations of national narratives must sometimes serve as the primary records of conversion to be interpreted.
Plague, Power, and Reason
Authors: Kapstein Matthew T
Published: November 2023

In the preceding chapters I have emphasized primarily the representation in later Tibetan writings of themes connected with the Tibetan imperial conversion, though by focusing upon the Sbabzhed (The Testament of Ba), I have also sought to suggest something of the manner in which in its early phases the growing myth of the conversion indeed referred back to aspects of the religious situation under the old Tibetan empire. In concluding part 1, let us tum now to the conversion itself, adhering so far as is possible to evidence derived from texts and artifacts that, for the most part, assuredly do stem from the period concerned. On the basis of this material, I shall attempt to sketch out here, not so much a history of events, but rather a speculative reconstruction of the intentions that the early Tibetan adoption of Buddhism involved.
Mark Twain’s Rediscovery of America in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Authors: Rowe John Carlos
Published: November 2023

Twain is famous for his jeremiads against European Imperialism and the United States’ fledgling efforts at colonial expansion in the Philippines; Twain’s name is frequently mentioned in discussions of anti-Imperialism as both a political movement and cultural ethos in the 122 literary culture and U.S. Imperialism turn-of-the-century United States. As scholars have pointed out, most of Twain’s anti-colonial zeal dates from the late 1890s and early 1900s, provoked by such international crises as the Spanish-American War (1898), the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900), and the Boer War in South Africa (1899”“1902). Twain’s rage over U.S. annexation of the Philippines in “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901) and “A Defense of General Funston” (1902), the cruel despotism of Belgium’s Leopold II in the Congo Free State in “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” (1905), and Czar Nicholas II’s exploitation of Russians, Poles, and Finns in “The Czar’s Soliloquy” (1905) belongs to the historical period in which “Imperialism” had entered the popular vocabulary as a term of opprobrium.
Automation in the National Library in Warsaw
Authors: Sadowska Jadwiga
Published: November 2023

The National Library (NL) in Warsaw is the main library in Poland and the biggest one. It was established by a decree issued by the president of the Republic of Poland on February 24, 1928. The staff consists of over 900, including about 450 people who are directly involved in library work. It is situated in two buildings, five kilometers apart. Its collections comprise about five million volumes, covering mainly the humanities.
CASLIN, Priorities of the Czech National Library, and Government Policy on Information and Libraries
Authors: Balik Vojtěch
Published: November 2023

The aims of the Czech and Slovak Library Information Network (CASLIN) project were to connect Czech and Slovak libraries of any type and size to each other, so that they could share the Union Catalog, coordinate their acquisitions or substantially improve loan services, and to guarantee that any user, no matter where he is located, is at once able to communicate with the Union Catalog on-line. The participants undertook (as quoted from the “Statement of Intent;’ the launching document of the CASLIN project) “to lay a solid foundation of a nationwide library network providing both home and foreign users with easy, fast, and unrestricted access to the information stored in or mediated by the libraries and information centers:’
Special Role of the Hungarian National Library in the Formation and Management of Consortia
Authors: Fogarassy Miklós
Published: November 2023

The present chapter is a Hungarian case study and deals with the special, practical, and historical role of the Hungarian National Library. I first outline the working environment in which we have been operating for some years. The activities of the National Szechenyi Library have been managerial in nature and concern a major segment of the national library system, the libraries of key importance.
Leaders in an Age of Transition
Authors: Toshio Kuroda
Published: November 2023

Immediately after the Japanese defeat in World War II there was a period when the so-called feudalistic character of Japanese Buddhism was much discussed. At this time there were within the Jodo Shin sect many loud calls for a “return to Shinran” (although of course this was not the first time such calls had been issued) and much investigation of the historical background of Shin’s feudalistic institutional structures and its doctrines promoting submission to political authority. It was concluded by some that it was Rennyo, the eighth hossu (head abbot) of Honganji, who had distorted Shinran’s teachings and established the feudalistic character of the Shin sectarian organization.
Late Rennyo and the Myōkōnin Akao no Dōshū
Authors: Blum Minamoto Ryōen
Published: November 2023

I have addressed the problems associated with the formation of myōkōnin in the early period of Rennyo’s life by considering the example of Kanegamori no Dosai (1399-1488). During this period Rennyo followed Shinran in adopting the standpont that viewed faith (shinjin) as the true cause for Birth. Within Rennyo, however, new ideas were beginning to emerge. In the Mattōshō, Shinran distinguished “one thought-moment nenbutsu of faith” (shin no ichinen) and “one thought-moment nenbutsu of practice” (gyō no ichinen) as fundamentally different yet inseparable, asserting that neither can exist without the other. By contrast, Rennyo began to think it prudent to focus on faith as the core of doctrine, and came to see the importance of affirming the phrase “faith in the merit transfer of the Other Power” (tariki ekōno shin). This is summed up in the dictum “shinjin is the true cause, nenbutsu is the expression of gratitude.” It is on this philosophical basis that the deeply religious Kanegamori no Dosai formed his relationship with Rennyo.
Rennyo and the Renaissance of Contemporary Shin Buddhism: Rennyo’s Place in the History of Shin Buddhism
Authors: Bloom Alfred
Published: November 2023

Elsewhere I have summarized important aspects of Rennyo’s life which were the basis for his successful effort to revitalize the Honganji and create a major, powerful religious movement in medieval Japan. I have suggested that he offers clues for the renaissance of contemporary Shin Buddhism. Honganji in Japan has called his commemoration a time for innovation, which expresses the spirit of Rennyo. The slogan for the Hawaii Honganji mission, for example, is “Live together, work together, in the spirit of Rennyo.” This chapter will look more directly into what we can learn from the spirit of Rennyo and his innovative propagational activities. Both Shinran and Rennyo responded to issues of their own time and circumstance. Differences in their personalities and historical situation show that, while there is a basic unity in their thought, Rennyo adjusted Shinran’s fundamental insights to make them more accessible and understandable to the ordinary person of his day. Shinran unintentionally created a more individually oriented movement. His teaching reflects his inward, introspective and subjective, as well as more scholarly or philosophical character. Shinran spoke pointedly of his religious experience and his personal weaknesses or limitations. He clearly rejected the idea that he was a teacher or had disciples, though they honored him. Rennyo, on the other hand, inherited the movement that Shinran inspired. It had already become institutionalized through the efforts of previous abbots of Honganji and other branches of Shinran’s lineage. Rennyo was concerned with the fortunes of the community in his time and for the future. His personality was more outgoing. He told little about his own religious change or development. He consciously accepted the role of teacher or leader of an emerging movement. He had to deal with the problems of religious power and authority that accompanied his status. Further, his position as a teacher must be considered in the light of his enormous influence, for which there is little comparison among other medieval teachers.
The After-Death World
Authors: Evans-Wentz Donald S , Lopez Donald S
Published: November 2023

Introductory Instructions to the Officiant: Although, heretofore, while in the Chiinyid Bardo, many vivid reminding have been given,-setting aside those who have had great familiarity with the real Truth and those who have good karma,-for them of evil karma who have had no familiarity, and for them of evil karma who because of the influence thereof become stricken with fear and terror, recognition is difficult. These go down to the Fourteenth Day; and, to reimpress them vividly, that which follows is to be read.
Chaplaincies and Days of Religious Observance Under the Continental Congress
Authors: Davis Derek H
Published: November 2023

The religious outlook of the Congress can most readily be ob- served in a closer examination of two specific areas of activity briefly alluded to in the previous chapter: the role of legislative and military chaplains and the declaration of national days of fast and thanksgiving. These practices, which to some degree have become national traditions, originated under legislation passed by the Continental Congress. They are practices that accommodationists today point to as proof that the First Congress (which permitted the continuance of all but the fast day observances) could not have understood the Establishment Clause to prohibit the federal government from advancing religion. Nevertheless, they can be explained on contextual and pragmatic grounds, thus weakening the accommodationist assertion.
Religion and Federalism During the Confederation Period
Authors: Davis Derek H
Published: November 2023

Issues of federalism, that is, matters related to the distribution of powers between the federal government and the states, did not originate with the Constitution. The Continental Congress, the first representative body of the American colonies, frequently found itself enmeshed in considerations of the degree of its own sovereignty in relation to that of the colonies and later the states. Congress’s authority on matters such as interstate trade and commerce, settlement of boundary disputes between states, and foreign affairs was not easily wrested from the states. Federalism affected virtually every area of government. The subject of this chapter is how federalism influenced the formation of the Continental Congress’s policies regarding religion. The focus will be upon identifying those policies adopted for distinguishing a federal matter from a state matter, and how those policies affected the provisions concerning religion that were written into the Constitution.
Christmas Eve
Authors: Reina Manuel
Published: November 2023

Fun and laughter, a golden altar,A family seated round the fireplace Singing and making merry; A sprightly waltz played with grace. Hear the beat of a valiant heart Of a soldier recalling his hometown, A shining goblet of champagne, with crystalline foam crowned.
Samuel’s Christmas Eve
Authors: ón Herminia Chac
Published: November 2023

It was December 24, and it seemed that each and every soul on earth was busy and content. Except, that is, for Samuel. He just could not find a job, and he was so tired of roaming the streets, suffering hunger and freezing from the cold.
The Márgil Vine
Authors: Otero Nina
Published: November 2023

In the year 17 r 8 there came to the little Mission Church of San Antonio de Valero, a visiting priest, Antonio Margil. The Patron Saint of the village was San Antonio; so Father Margil, or Padre Antonio as the people always called him, came not only to assist in the celebration of the great Fiesta of Christmas, but also to do honor to the Saint, his patron.
Christmas Eve
Authors: Gallardo Aurelio Luis
Published: November 2023

Not a blue piece of sky to be seen,Not even the crown of stars above. Frost is covering the fields, The north wind blowing, almost snowing And the little white drops of water Are tiny pearl-like granules.
Loves Me, Loves Me Not
Authors: Bernardo Anilii
Published: November 2023

I did n’t hear from Susie for a few days, and I did n’t bother to call her. I was still stinging from her attitude towards me at Justin’s house. I decided to call her the day after Christmas to give her my present. I was sure she’d be curious about my day at Zach’s.
The Spirituality Of Wilhelm Grimm
Authors: Murphy G Ronald
Published: November 2023

It is of this area with its plentiful meadows and its beautiful encircling mountains that I have the most vivid memories of my childhood. All too soon, however, on the roth of Jan. 1796, my father died. In my mind I can still see the black casket as I look sideways through the window, the pallbearers carrying yellow lemons and rosemary in their hands, as it moved by. I can still picture my father clearly. He was a very hard working, orderly, loving man. I can still see his study, his desk, and, most of all, his bookcases with their books, always kept clean, even the red and green titles of many individual books are still clearly before my eyes.
The Spiritual Unrest The Cultural Context of Liberal Protestant Devotionalism
Authors: Ostrander Rick
Published: November 2023

By the end of the nineteenth century, the scientific attack on prayer and the conservative Protestant response had been clearly stated. American theologians and professors such as Charles Hodge and Mark Hopkins had written their reasoned defenses of petitionary prayer, while revivalism-oriented evangelicals such as Samuel Prime and William Patton had cited numerous answers to prayer to combat the skeptics. Early-twentieth-century evangelicals, as we have seen, inherited this fervent belief in petitionary prayer and perpetuated the tradition in their own writings.’ However, by the early twentieth century, in another part of the American Protestant world, a very different understanding of prayer was just beginning to appear. What could be called a recognizably “liberal” Protestant ethic of prayer did not fully emerge until the 1910s.
The New Belief in Prayer Healing and Intercession in Liberal Protestantism
Authors: Ostrander Rick
Published: November 2023

The previous chapter explored ways in which evangelical liberals exhibited a concern to retain as much of traditional prayer as their ideological convictions would allow while subtly adapting to modern thought. A more obvious indication of the ambivalent nature of Christocentric liberalism was the eagerness with which these liberals latched onto new developments in science to undergird the traditional faith in intercessory prayer and prayer for healing. These two elements in the Christocentric liberal ethic of prayer-prayer for bodily healing and intercessory prayer-require separate attention because the ideological context surrounding them changed drastically in the early­ twentieth century.
Average Racism
Authors: Whalen Terence
Published: November 2023

In recent years the political and racial meaning of Poe’s work has been the focus of intense critical debate, and undoubtedly the positions generated from this debate will have enduring consequences not only for Poe scholars but also for all those investigating the importance of race in American culture. Elsewhere I have argued that Poe’s lifelong struggle with the publishing industry constitutes a kind of deep politics that should matter more than his awkward and infrequent forays into partisan rhetoric (Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses, 27-39). Poe, that is to say, should be distinguished from the publicspirited intellectuals of his age, for whereas these intellectuals embraced a wide variety of civic and political causes, Poe’s political agenda was conspicuously confined to problems of production, ranging from the poverty of authors to the corruption of publishers to the emergence of a vaguely ominous mass audience.
The Idea of Accommodation: From Humanism to Politics
Authors: Rummel Erika
Published: November 2023

In the 1530s “concord” became a catchphrase used on both sides of the religious debate. There was agreement about the goal, but not about the terms on which it could be reached. In the first years after the Diet of Worms, concord implied a return of the sectarians to the Catholic fold. By the end of the 1520s, however, Lutheranism had become entrenched, and the parties were now looking for a temporary settlement, pending the decisions of a universal council. During the 1530s the notion that a religious peace might be brought about through mutual concessions gradually obtained currency and formed the basis of a series of religious colloquies.
Order, Sequence, and Selection
Authors: Elman Yaakov
Published: November 2023

In the tenth century, nearly 800 years after the Mishnah’s “publication,” R. Sherira Gaon described how Rabbi Judah the Prince, the Mishnah’s editor, “compiled ... and added to it what was in his time, and reconciled it[s difficulties) properly.” In reconstructing the Mishnah’s formation, R. Sherira repeatedly emphasized Rabbi’s faithfulness to his sources-primarily the earlier compilation of R. Meir-and the faithfulness of the latter to his sources. “And not in his own words [lit., “from his (own] heart”] did Rabbi compile them,” or, “nothing was omitted or added but for a few places” -this theme recurs in his description of the process, along with a detailed series of proofs for his contention. The motive for this emphasis is clear: the anti-Karaite polemic which underlies R. Sherira’s history of the Oral Torah.
The Hebrew Narrative Anthology in the Middle Ages
Authors: Yassif Eli
Published: November 2023

The history of the Hebrew story in the Middle Ages corresponds, to a great extent, to that of the literary anthology. In turn, the evolution of the Hebrew tale in the Middle Ages is linked to what was arguably the most important cultural phenomenon of the early Jewish Middle Ages, namely, the “separation of disciplines.” Talmudic literature, central to the literary activity of the preceding period- and, to a great extent, of the Middle Ages as well-is an all-encompassing creation. This one composition incorporates most of the period’s cultural components: scriptural commentary and medicine, law and astronomy, linguistics and historiography, prayer and liturgical poetry, botany and agronomy, all in the course of a single, unbroken, and largely undifferentiated discussion. By the height of the geonic period (eighth and ninth centuries), a tendency had evolved to create special works on law and Hebrew grammar, Jewish philosophy and hermeneutics, liturgical poetry, and Jewish history. This important cultural phenomenon was undoubtedly connected to the parallel development in Arab culture of the first centuries of Islam. Arab scholars in Iraq and Persia, the lands in which the phenomenon first manifested itself in Jewish culture, distinguished between separate branches of knowledge, defined the various subjects, and devised special works in the different branches. The question of who influenced whom is of no consequence here. Jewish culture may have borrowed the norms of the ruling culture, or perhaps Jewish culture’s internal needs led to the creation of new modes of expression, which influenced Muslim culture. Like any complex cultural phenomnon, it was undoubtedly the result of a number of interlocking factors, and only the particular confl4ence of an encompassing cultural atmosphere with the specific needs of the Jewish world of that time can explain its appearance.
Sefer Ha’aggadah
Authors: Kiel Mark W
Published: November 2023

“Hebrew literature has been waiting for such a book.” So Hayyim Namahn Bialik proudly announced that his and Yehoshua Hana Rawnitzki’s Sefer ha’aggadah was soon to appear. His claim to have answered the call of history was uncharacteristically immodest of him and, to be sure, he omitted his boast when, in 1908, he reprinted the article in which it appeared as the introduction to their classic anthology. In any case, it was not entirely accurate either. It clearly was, as Bialik said, “a great and plentiful literary anthology, which includes, in a suitable arrangement, all the characteristics and types, of all the important branches of the aggadah.” But Hebrew literature had, in fact, long been afraid of such a book. Wissenschaft, too, displayed a studious lack of interest in the subject as Bialik was now presenting it. The need for such an anthology of aggadah had manifested itself slowly and only recently. Once it appeared, however, Sefer ha’aggadah’s impact on Jewish literary culture for nearly a century to follow was extraordinary by any measure. As a result of Sefer ha’aggadah, similar works followed and academic interest in the subject grew, as did the number of dissertations. It also became a phenomenal best seller. It was the first and most successful effort to create a classic folk literature in Hebrew that could stand alongside the great European collections.
Certainty, Ambiguity, and Evil
Authors: Thysell Carol
Published: November 2023

The reformers believed that nothing could inspire a sense of confidence more readily than to hear a leader expound upon the clarity and stark reality of evil. Luther, in his Bondage of the Will, for instance, rails against Erasmus’s disinterest in assertions, since to deny the clear claims of Scripture is to deny the promises of God. Luther holds back not at all in decrying such evils as he sees in “lukewarm” theology. And, as I have shown in chapter 2, Calvin is equally certain of the evil he perceives in the ideas and practices of the spiritual libertines. For the magisterial reformers, the ability to name evil correctly and clearly was closely allied with their understandings of justification by faith. Their claim for the clarity and perspicuity of Scripture made the naming of evil an essential ingredient in the proclamation of the gospel they had come to understand and believe.
Discerning the Marguerite
Authors: Thysell Carol
Published: November 2023

As I have shown in chapter 3, Marguerite de Navarre was well aware of the school of thought to which Ficino and Pico belonged, but her theological anthropology had more in common with that of Calvin. Nevertheless, her penchant for allegory is obvious in her religious poetry, particularly in The Prisons, the itinerary of an individual’s spiritual growth toward mystical union with God. As much of the theology of the reformers as she did share, Marguerite de Navarre never adopted their literal historical interpretation of Scripture. Throughout her life she maintained an allegiance to allegorical interpretation, but not the fourfold method of medieval exegesis. As I will show, she adopted instead the secular Renaissance allegorical rhetoric to which she had been introduced by the new learning coming into France from Italy.
More Verse Forms
Authors: Wolosky Shira
Published: November 2023

We have had an opportunity to examine the sonnet as a verse form. We have also looked at the question of poetic conventions, seeing how these can be quite small units, such as an image that is returned to repeatedly in the history of literature (the rose); or how conventions can involve larger structures, indeed whole topics, such as love, and ways of handling them. We now can see that in a sense a verse form is itself a kind of convention, with a history that is recalled each time a poet uses the form. What is paramount in each case is how the form of the poem is significant and functional—the part it plays in the way the poet shapes the poem’s material.
The Lutheran Counterpoint: David Chytraeus And Nikolaus Selnecker
Authors: Backus Irena
Published: November 2023

Although scholars have recently devoted some attention to David Chytraeus, he remains a little-known figure and his biblical commentaries have remained unstudied to this day. Before discussing his Explicatio Apocalypsis, a few words about the author and his contribution to the spread of Lutheranism are thus necessary.
Hitchcock
Authors: Versluis Arthur
Published: November 2023

Before we discuss some of the more well-known figures of the American Renaissance, we should take a look at the work and life of a remarkable man whose inner and outer lives, more than most, are depicted as falling neatly into two categories rarely if ever discussed together. This man, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, is most well-known as a prominent American military figure and as an eminent advisor to President Lincoln during the entire Civil War—in short for his outward life, which was certainly exciting and eventful. Hitchcock is also well known in another vein entirely, for although he led an unusually active life, he also pursued esoteric studies throughout at least his last twenty years and published books on topics that ranged from Shakespeare to Swedenborg to alchemy. Hitchcock is important for us not only because he knew personally a number of major American literary figures with similar interests—including Emerson and Poe—but also because he is a representative figure for understanding how esotericism was transmuted into literary forms during the mid­nineteenth century.
Hawthorne
Authors: Versluis Arthur
Published: November 2023

We have already encountered Hawthorne’s work, albeit via the unpleasant comments of Poe. It is little surprising that Poe would accuse Hawthorne of plagiarism, for the two authors share a great deal. Above all, for our purposes, the work of both features many of the various currents of Western esotericism. Whereas Poe’s use of esoteric themes is relatively unexplored, however, Hawthorne’s is much more well known and has been discussed in much more scholarly detail. One of the most useful books for understanding Hawthorne’s use of some esoteric themes is William Bysshe Stein’s Hawthorne’s Faust (1953), which as its title suggests, is essentially about the Faust archetype as central to much of Hawthorne’s work. The Faust archetype is revealing here because it suggests much about the particular way Hawthorne drew upon many of the same esoteric currents as Poe or the Transcendentalists.
Alcott
Authors: Versluis Arthur
Published: November 2023

None of the American Transcendentalists was so ridiculed as Amos Bronson Alcott. Throughout his life, Alcott was a thoroughgoing religious radical whose pronouncements often were too much even for Transcendentalists like Emerson, although they themselves had abandoned Unitarian liberalism as too conservative. Although many critics have noted and lampooned Alcott’s eccentric modes of “prophetic” expression from his “Orphic Sayings” in The Dial onward—some considering him deluded and even insane—much in Alcott’s work becomes far more comprehensible when one considers a central hidden source of his inspiration: German mysticism exemplified in the work of seven-teenth-century Protestant mystic Jacob Böhme.
Emerson
Authors: Versluis Arthur
Published: November 2023

Of all the authors of the American Renaissance, arguably the most influential was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a vast body of critical discussion has arisen about his work. Yet the influences on his writing remain difficult to pinpoint, not least because Emerson himself hid them. I have elsewhere analyzed at length his indebtedness to Asian religious traditions, and here will concentrate on what it was in the European intellectual inheritance that predisposed Emerson toward Asian religious traditions.1 Although Emerson’s reading was vast, and one certainly needs to avoid claiming any one influence on him as the primary one, still it is the case that much in Emerson’s work reflects his reading of Hermetic, theosophic, and Swedenborgian esoteric texts. It was out of this reading that he developed not only his cosmological, but also his metaphysical perspectives.
Waiting
Authors: Fenn Richard K
Published: November 2023

Increased Exposure to The passage of time typifies a world that has undergone high levels of secularization. What distinguishes modernity is that individuals have lost a collective time frame that relieves their own sense of temporal anxiety. However, they continue to be caught up in an experience of time over a long span that encompasses death in both the past and the future. The individual’s personal sense of time is therefore likely to be longer, more encompassing of past and future, and hence more serious than the time frames of corporations and institutions that are dealing only in relatively short-term time horizons. The modern hero is one who seizes the moment and exposes himself or herselflike Faust to the “torrents of time.” It is the fool who is willing to be kept waiting.
Kings and Captives
Authors: Tedlock Dennis
Published: November 2023

Stories of lordly warriors who were captured, presented at court, and then sacrificed provided subjects for Mayan sculptors, painters, and writers throughout what archaeologists call the Classic period (300-900 A.D.). During the eighth century in particular, prisoners of war became a major focus of attention. They appear, among other places, in scenes painted on cylindrical vases that were used for mixing chocolate beverages. Among the workshops where these vases were produced, three happened to be near Rabinal. One of them was fifty kilometers to the north, at the ruins known as Chamá. Another was sixty kilometers to the east in the middle part of the valley of the Río Motagua, near the present-day town of San Agustín Acasaguastlán. And a third was seventy kilometers to the west, near the town of Nebaj.
Silent Flim & The Triumph Of The American Myth
Authors: Cohen Paula Marantz
Published: November 2023

Silent Film and the Triumph of the American Myth is a broad cultural study that connects the rise of film to the rise of America as a cultural center and world power in the twentieth century. Cohen argues that through the medium of silent film, America was able to sever its literary and linguistic ties to Europe, assert its cultural independence, and forge a unique form of cultural expression. Silent films drew on elements developed in popular forms of representation like photography, landscape panoramas, and vaudeville performance to create a medium that more accurately represented the American experience.
Afterword The “New Economy” at Century’s End: Market Access, Innovation, and Being Bill Gates
Authors: Peritz Rudolph J R
Published: November 2023

For more than a century in the United States, images of free competition have inspired policy debate about commerce, government, and their proper relationship. In the process, this imagery has given form to our aspirations for freedom from the abuses of both government and private economic power. Championing the cause of “industrial liberty” in Trans-Missouri (1896), Justice Rufus Wheeler Peckham dismantled the railroad cartel and extolled the virtues of “small dealers and worthy men.”
Introduction Persons, Passages, and Shifting Cultural Space
Authors: Shulman David , Stroumsa Guy G
Published: November 2023

The “self,” whatever we might mean by this term, is surely not an entity, nor should we use the pronoun “it” when we speak of self: language traps us in the very first sentence in this domain. Similarly, to speak of transforming some non-it into something else is bound to be misleading, as if a self could be held in language, or in the mind, long enough to be transformed. The entire problem has a somewhat provincial, Western aspect, as we can see from the striking absence of analogous concepts to our notion of self in other civilizations. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a universal theme at the heart of all the major religious cultures of the world that has to do with effecting structured transitions in the inner world of the living subject, who seems always to require such change. Moreover, these transitions fall into certain prevalent categories, with distinctive correlations to other parts of the person as culturally imagined, and to the reality in which this person is believed to live.
On Becoming a Fish Paradoxes of Immortality and Enlightenment in Chinese Literature
Authors: Li Wai-Yee
Published: November 2023

In a famous anecdote from the Zhuangzi (ca. fourth century B.C.E.), Zhuangzi and his favorite opponent in disputation, the logician-Sophist Huizi, debate the joy of fish: Two modes of knowledge and reasoning are juxtaposed here. Huizi’s certainty is based on the logic of difference: analogous distinctions or disjunctions between man and fish, and between himself and Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi, by contrast, plays on the logic of fluid boundaries and claims to overcome division of self and other. Instead of meeting Huizi’s logical argument on its own terms, he radically redefines it and affirms intuitive communion: he knows the joy of fish by standing on River Hao. Huizi concedes to not knowing Zhuangzi; Zhuangzi for his part must presume to know Huizi’s mind, even as he knows the fish. He attributes motives and emotions to Huizi’s question: implicit recognition of Zhuangzi’s own knowledge, possibly envy and irritation. The keyword is you (roam, wander, play), which describes the movement of both Zhuangzi and Huizi, as well as that of the fish: the repetition here marks empathic continuity. Roaming is associated with the state of being free, at ease, and disinterested, whereby the mind can be most creative and best apprehend the world. To roam, wander, or play is also to overcome boundaries, to move from one state of being to another, to achieve the self-transformation in Daoist transcendence of the opposites of self and other, dreaming and waking, life and death.
Religion and Biography in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
Authors: Finkelberg Margalit
Published: November 2023

The ancient Greeks defined man’s place in the universe through his relation to the gods. The very fact that the word “mortal,” 0vT}’t6i;, was as legitimate a designation of man as the word “man” proper clearly indicates that the existence of the “immortals,” a0ava’tot, was a necesary factor in man’s self-definition. It was generally recognized that between men and gods there was a gap that could not be bridged. To quote what Homer makes Apollo say to Diomedes, who dared to raise his weapon against the god: “Never think yourself the gods’ equal - since there can be no likeness between the make of immortal gods and of men who walk on the ground.” Any attempt at transgressing the line dividing men and gods was considered a religious offense which was inevitably followed by punishment from the gods. “The jealousy of the gods,” cp06voi; 0erov, and “trespassing,” ul3pti;, known to us only too well from Greek sources, are the two ideas that illuminate the nature of the phenomenon with great precision.
The Ins and Outs of Self-Transformation Personal and Social Sides of Visionary Practice in Tibetan Buddhism
Authors: Gyatso Janet
Published: November 2023

can begin in no other way than by stating that Tibetan Buddhism is utterly consumed with programs of self-transformation. From the stone floor of the cave to the home of the village lama, the ritual assembly of the monastery, and the exalted seat of power of the Dalai Lamas, self-transformation often seems to be the only interesting game in town. Its presumptions are at the heart of the famous “patronpriest” dynamic and much of the political and economic power that religious heirarchs could wield in Tibet up to the middle of the twentieth century. This essay presents what I see as some of the main threads in this large phenomenon. But I must note right away that I will have to neglect several other important threads, for example, the more indigenously Tibetan ones constituted by clan identities and loyalties, whose associated conceptions about personhood fed importantly into the Buddhist industry of self-transformation. Not only am I limited by space; the connection between Tibet’s religions and its social history in any event has barely begun to be explored by any scholar, modem or traditional Tibetan. Nonetheless there is much we can learn merely by considering the formally Buddhist ideologies and iconographies that were so centrally ingredient to the image and status of the Tibetan religious master.
Postlude: The Interior Sociality of Self-transformation
Authors: Handelman Don
Published: November 2023

As I grow silent and make my consciousness quiet, in keeping with an interior context of self-transformation, I become aware of a simple phenomenon that I’ve always known yet rarely attended to. My inner world is made up of an ongoing conversation that I continuously carry on with myself. Within myself, I talk to myself in fairly ongoing and continuous ways (just as I dream to myself while sleeping). Through this little phenomenological experiment, I discover that I do indeed hear (or more accurately, feel or sense) voices, at times one and at times a multiplicity of voices within myself-that is, within my self. Often I am a monologue, sometimes a dialogue, sometimes more. At times, these voices address one another as “I” and “you,” but at other times “I” and “I” seems more the case as they agree, contest, interpolate, laugh at, comment on, and cry with one another. They may flow together into a single voice or, indeed, different voices resonating through a variety of registers of self-engagement.1
A Few Words from the Author
Authors: Ludmer Eugenio Cambaceres,Lisa Dillman,Josefina
Published: November 2023

When some poor devil strolling peacefully down the path of life with a song on his lips finds that his chosen tune rankles certain diseased ears; when he senses himself suddenly set upon by an angry mob who advance on him, catch up to him, hound him, struggle to snatch his billfold and rob him of name, fame, and reputation– as those banknotes he has earned with his sweat are otherwise known– what is he to do? In the attempt to avoid a savage beating, he hides quickly–albeit against a corner of the wall used by the indecent public as a urinal– he wields a cane righteously, or if they catch him unawares, lacking an alternative form of refuge, he takes up his umbrella in the manner of a sword and crouches behind it to fend off the fists of the big boys and the fingernails of the little ones who–like puppies at a dogfight– try to get a leg up and join in the action as well.
Debating Professionalism and Control Over Lawyers’ Work
Authors: Mather Lynn , McEwen Craig A , Maiman Richard J
Published: November 2023

Decisions such as these lie at the heart of lawyers’ day-to-day work. Whether they are made reflectively or reflexively, such choices underline the substantial discretion that results from the indeterminacy of attorneys’ professional roles. Ultimately, legal practice is constituted out of these many small judgments. How do lawyers think about and actually make these decisions? What guidelines and standards do lawyers use in deciding how to relate to clients and to opposing attorneys; about when, how, and with whom to negotiate; and about how at the end of the day to evaluate their own work? Do the answers to these questions flow more or less automatically from the lawyer’s formal training and expertise? To what degree do they reflect the lawyer’s own self-interest, the particular interests of the client, or the broader public interest? Such questions lie at the heart of discussions among scholars and bar leaders about the meaning of professionalism. They are the central issues of this book.
Maintaining Control over Clients
Authors: Mather Lynn , McEwen Craig A , Maiman Richard J
Published: November 2023

The degree to which members of an occupational group enjoy independence in decision making is equally important as expertise as a criterion of professionalism. Independence is complicated, however, for professions that provide service to paying clients or customers. Professional advice may collide with the equally important principle of client and consumer autonomy—the idea that clients should be able to accept or reject the professional’s guidance. The primacy of this latter principle is well recognized by official professional canons of both medicine and law. But in rejecting the professional’s advice, the client is in some sense rejecting the professional’s—and the profession’s—authority. Therefore, a central challenge of professional practice is not only to make judgments and give advice but also to persuade clients to accept these as their own.
Ralph Ellison’s Trueblooded Bildungsroman
Authors: Burke Kenneth
Published: November 2023

The several pages I wrote you by way of first draft have vanished. One usually feels either desolate or furious about such a slip, depending upon one’s inclination to think of the notes as either lost or pilfered. But in this case I am neither. For I had already decided on a new start, and my first effort hadn’t seemed quite right, anyhow. I had taken off from comments in my Rhetoric of Motives (1950) with reference to “the Negro intellectual, Ralph Ellison,” who said that Booker T. Washington “described the Negro community as a basket of crabs, wherein should one attempt to climb out, the others immediately pull him back.” I sized up the black man’s quandary thus: “Striving for freedom as a human being generically, he must do so as a Negro specifically. But to do so as a Negro is, by the same token, to prevent oneself from doing so in the generic sense; for a Negro could not be free generically except in a situation where the color of the skin had no more social meaning than the color of the eyes.” I moved on from there to a related “racist” problem, sans the accident of pigment, as dramatized in the role of Shakespeare’s Shylock; and then on to promises of being purely and simply a person (and visibly so) “thereby attaining the kind of transcendence at which all men aim, and at which the Negro spiritual had aimed, though there the aim was at the spiritual transcending of a predestined material slavery, whereas the Marxist ultimates allow for a material transcending of inferior status.”
Against Tradition
Authors: Sunstein Cass R
Published: November 2023

Incompletely theorized agreements are not the only possible response to divisions on basic principles or to a situation of polarization among diverse social groups. Many people have argued that in a situation of this kind, it is best to follow traditions. In fact traditionalism has often been urged precisely on the ground that if we follow our ancestors, we will not have to resolve the hard issues that divide us. People who tend to disagree, or who are not sure what they think, might be able to agree to follow the past. Long-standing practices might command assent, and deserve to command assent, precisely because they are long-standing. Those who have different views about liberty or equality might be willing to accept the authority of long-standing practices. And if diverse people are willing to listen to tradition, perhaps they will not go to unjustified extremes, even if like-minded people are speaking mostly to one another. Two central advantages of traditionalism seem to be its modesty and its anchoring effect—making it unnecessary for people to think anew about what should be done. If fresh thinking is a recipe for instability and error, traditionalism, in democracy and constitutional law, seems to be quite attractive.
A Passion for Justice
Authors: Yarbrough Tinsley E
Published: November 2023

Following college at Goucher, the Warings’ daughter, Anne, had moved to New York and married Stanley Warren, an executive with the American Broadcasting Company. When her parents divorced, she wrote Judge Waring’s cousin Dorothy Waring shortly after her father’s death, her “sympathies were ... overwhelmingly with” her mother. Annie Waring had lived in New York briefly after the divorce. Anne and Stanley saw her often there and admired her “quite . . . remarkable adjustment to a very difficult set of circumstances.” They were saddened when she elected to return to Charleston and to the humiliating proximity of her ex-husband and rival, remaining there until her death in 1954. “We were sorry,” Anne wrote Dorothy Waring,

particularly as my father and stepmother still lived at 61 Meeting. I can understand that mother was lonely in New York, but I fear that the friendships she hoped to rediscover in Charleston were not as rewarding as she had hoped. To be cast in the symbolic role of martyr in order to nurture the discontent and disapproval of a society is indeed tragic.