bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Chinese American Women Writers The Tradition behind Maxine Hong Kingston
Authors: Ling Amy
Published: November 2023

Writing Is An Act Of self-assertion, self-revelation, and self-preservation. One writes out of a delight in one’s storytelling powers, out of a need to reveal and explain oneself, or from the desire to record and preserve experience. However, for women brought up in the old Chinese tradition that for eighteen hundred years codified their obedience and submission to the men in their lives-father, husband, son-a tradition that stressed female chastity, modesty, and restraint; that broke girls’ toes and bound their feet as an ideal of beauty; that sold daughters into slavery in times of hardship; that encouraged and honored widow suicides-any writing at all was unusual, even an act of rebellion. Workingclass women did not have the education or leisure, and upper-class women were taught that writing was “an unwomanly occupation, destructive of one’s moral character, like acting” (Han Suyin, Destination 8; 1969).
Intelligibility and Meaningfulness in Multicultural Literature in English (Excerpts)
Authors: Dasenbrock Reed Way
Published: November 2023

Literature In English is an increasingly international, even global, phenomenon. Writers all over the world, from the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and the West Indies as well as from the traditional centers in the British Isles and the United States, use English as a medium for fiction and poetry. One consequence has been that literature in English has become increasingly cross- or multicultural, as writing about a given culture is destined-because of its language, English, and its place of publication, usually London or New York-to have readers of many other cultures. This is not simply a matter of readers in the traditional centers of the English language struggling to understand work rooted in other cultural traditions; a Kenyan reader of a Nigerian or Guyanese or Indian novel is caught up in the same multicultural dynamic as an American reader of that novel.
Susan Brownmiller Talks with Maxine Hong Kingston, Author of The Woman Warrior
Authors: Brownmiller Susan
Published: November 2023

On Thursday night I have dinner with my Honolulu friends Diane Morisato and Susan Yim who are appropriately envious that I am getting to meet Maxine Hong Kingston before they do since, after all, it’s their city. The Woman Warrior has just been published, to rave reviews. Five thousand miles away in New York City it has been instantly celebrated with drums and smoke signals peculiar to the trade. “Who is Maxine Kingstonl” people have asked in print. Who is this unknown Chinese-American woman who has dropped a brilliant, polished gemstone in our midst?
Scholasticism in Calvin: A Question of Relation and Disjunction
Authors: Muller Richard A
Published: November 2023

The name of John Calvin and the term “scholasticism” have seldom been stated positively in the same breath. The reasons for assuming a profoundly negative relationship between Calvin and the scholastic doctors of the Middle Ages literally abound on the pages of Calvin’s Institutes, in the form of his running diatribe against the “schoolmen.” Nonetheless, Calvin’s theology—whether from the perspective of its methods or from the perspective of its contents—did not arise in a sixteenth-century vacuum. Not only did Calvin formulate his theology in distinct opposition to elements of late medieval and early sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism; he also quite subtly felt the influence of the medieval as well as the patristic past. It is worth recognizing from the outset that the Reformation altered comparatively few of the major loci of theology: the doctrines of justification, the sacraments, and the church received the greatest emphasis, while the doctrines of God, the trinity, creation, providence, predestination, and the last things were taken over by the magisterial Reformation virtually without alteration. In addition, many of the differences between the theological methods of the Reformation and those of the Middle Ages can be attributed to the development of logic and rhetoric and to their impact on the relatively stable disputatio, rather than to a vast rebellion in academic approach.
Beyond the Abyss and the Labyrinth: An Ordo recte docendi
Authors: Muller Richard A
Published: November 2023

Since its appearance in 1988, William Bousma’s Portrait of Calvin has received much positive attention, and quite a few reviewers and commentators have indicated that it has marked out a new direction in Calvin studies. There have, of course, been a few doubts raised by reviewers and commentators about the method and the conclusions of the book, but, for the most part, its picture of a deeply troubled Calvin, suspended in an “age of anxiety” between the abyss and the labyrinth, has gone unquestioned. This way of portraying Calvin offers, in fact, an extended case study for Bouwsma’s earlier characterization of the Renaissance as an age of anxiety, a characterization that has broad ramifications for Calvin’s theology. In place of the orderly, disciplined, and highly systematized Calvin of so much past scholarship, Bouwsma presents a terrified Calvin, profoundly at odds with himself and incapable of producing anything like a system of theology.
The Form And Function Of Koan Literature A Historical Overview
Authors: foulk T Griffith
Published: November 2023

Any discussion of koans in the history of East Asian Buddhism needs to start with a definition of the word “koan” itself, for although the word has entered into relatively common English usage, few people have a clear idea of what it refers to, and ambiguities remain even in scholarly studies. The first part of this chapter, accordingly, is dedicated to a brief history of the koan, with particular attention to the etymology of the word and the evolution of its meaning in China and Japan. The second part delineates the range of texts that I take to be “koan literature” and explains my reasons for regarding them as such. The remaining parts of the chapter are dedicated to a form-critical analysis of the complex internal structure of the koan literature and an exploration of how that literature has both mirrored and served as a model for its social and ritual functions.
Indian Literary Renaissance and the Continuing Search for Community (1968—)
Authors: Weaver Jace
Published: November 2023

The signal event in Native literature came in 1968 with the publication of House Made of Dawn by Natachee Momaday’s son, N. Scott Momaday.

After the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969, it was as if floodgates had been opened, and through them poured a steady stream of books by Natives. As Paula Gunn Allen puts it, ‘‘As the last quarter of the century has unfolded, the tiny trickle of fiction begun by Native writers during the first seventy years has become a broad and stately river.” Unlike the publication boomlet of the 1930s and 1940, which quickly subsided, after Momaday’s breakthrough, ever increasing numbers of writers, poets, and critics have found their way into print. The reasons for this development are manifold and complex.
Deadly Silence: Reflections On Homosexuality And Human Rights
Authors: Anderson Victor
Published: November 2023

The black homosexual is hard-pressed to gain audience among his heterosexual brothers; even if he is more talented, he is inhibited by his silence or his admissions. This is what the race has depended on in being able to erase homosexuality from our recorded history. The “chosen” history. But these sacred constructions of silence are futile exercises in denial. We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home.
Sexual Orientation And The Language Of Higher Law
Authors: Hart William D
Published: November 2023

What are “we” trying to do when we use the language of “natural” or “higher” law? Why are claims about sexual orientation especially likely to be articulated in such language? These questions circumscribe my effort to make sense of natural law as a common vocabulary for both advocates and opponents of same-sex relationships. My voyage into these troubled waters is anchored by Victor Anderson’s advocacy and Cheryl Sanders’s opposition. My purpose is not to navigate a safe and neutral middle passage, but to chart my own position by clearly fixing theirs.
Sexual And Religious Pluralism
Authors: Koppelman Andrew
Published: November 2023

The contending claims in this volume may be roughly taxonomized into two competing moral visions. According to one, sex can be morally worthy precisely and only because of its place in procreation. Even the marriages of infertile heterosexual couples take their meaning from the fact that they form a union of the procreative kind, and their bodily union therefore has procreative significance. From this perspective, the movement for same-sex marriage is a misguided attempt to deny fundamental moral distinctions.
The Lengthened Shadow of One Man
Authors: Rubin Julius H
Published: November 2023

Author, theologian, publisher, visionary, charismatic leader, and founder of the Bruderhof, a utopian Christian socialist community that continues to this day, Eberhard Arnold (1883-1935) exemplified Emerson’s char acterization of an extraordinary personality. Today, more than two thou sand of his followers live in seven communities in the United States and Britain “and seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.”
World Christianity and Marxism
Authors: Janz Denis R
Published: November 2023

Denis Janz argues that the encounter with Marxism has been the defining event for twentieth century Christianity. No other worldview shook Christianity more dramatically and no other movement had as profound an impact on so many. Now the Cold War is over and as we approach the end of the century we need, Janz says, to ask ourselves what happened. This book is the first unified and comprehensive attempt to analyze this historic meeting between these two antagonistic worlds of thought and action. The intellectual foundation of this antagonism is to be found in Karl Marx himself, and thus the book begins with an account of Marx’s assault on Christianity. All the diverse philosophical and political manifestations of Marxism were ultimately rooted in Marx’s thought, and supporters based their greater or lesser hostilities toward Christianity on their reading of his critique. Janz follows this with an overview of Christian responses to Marx, extending from the mid-19th century to the onset of the Cold War. He argues that within this time frame Christianity’s negation of Marx was not absolute; the loud “no” to Marx bore with it an important, if muted, “yes.” With this intellectual groundwork in place, Janz turns to an examination of the encounter as it unfolded in specific national contexts: the United States, the Soviet Union, Poland, Nicaragua, Cuba, China, and Albania. The experiences of these countries varied widely, from Poland where Christianity maintained its strongest independence, to Nicaragua where a Christian alliance with Marxism contributed to revolutionary change, to Albania where a Stalinist government attempted to abolish religion entirely. From this survey emerges the evidence that world Christianity has clearly internalized some of the prominent features of its antagonist, suggesting that the “Marxist project” is not as utterly defunct as many have assumed.
Thomas Tomkinson The White Divell Uncased
Authors: Underwood T L
Published: November 2023

Mr James Steward or Scott, for so you call your selfe, and I shall call you so too. I have lately seene a pamphlet of yours being wrote against us and acted forth from a most malesious hearte and a poysoned tounge not for any evell wee have dun you but because our prinsepals runs counter to yours, all this you pretend you catched by it and beleived it for some time but I see very well by your languidy that you never beleived it att all but Jesuiticaly came creeping in to spi out our libertye and to get knowledg of all thinges on purpose to write against us. And you begin to show your selfe in your Titlepage, beeing called Muggleton Unmasked or his Atheisticall principals discovered and under this title you have sett down two Scripture verses, as the subject of your Masterpeece and added two more to them page 5 and these 4 Scripture verses must make good prose to your Bookes title and to bee prose sufesiant for the unmasking of Muggleton and must prove him not onely a false prophet but an Athesticall one.
Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity, and the Civil War
Authors: Miller Randall M
Published: November 2023

In 1988, while looking for relics on the Antietam battlefield, a collector happened on an extraordinary discovery. Unearthing a brass hook, ammunition, and buttons at one site, he dug deeper. He found a tooth. The collector and his fellow workers reported the findings to the landowner and then to the National Park Service. Archeologists returned to the spot and eventually uncovered the bones of four Union soldiers, who had been hastily buried and forgotten on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day of the Civil War.
Civil War, Religion, and Communications The Case of Richmond
Authors: Stout Harry S , Grasso Christopher
Published: November 2023

It was inevitable that the juggernaught of the New Social History would eventually catch up with that last bastion of political and military history, the Civil War. After a century of domination by political and military historians, professional and antiquarian, the war is at last recognized for the “total” event that it was: a social convulsion affecting civilian populations as much as armies, women and children as much as men, slaves as well as free blacks, laborers as well as soldiers. To the 50,000 books and articles already written on the Civil War, entirely new histories are appearing that tell the other stories, the stories of noncombatants at war.
The Perception of a Problem Is a Problem
Authors: Zimring Franklin E
Published: November 2023

In a series of works seldom consulted outside the academic fraternity, W. I. Thomas, the dean of American sociologists, set forth a theorem basic to the social sciences: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences....”The first part of the theorem provides an unceasing reminder that men respond not only to the objective features of a situation, but also, and at times primarily, to the meaning this situation has for them.
A Youth Violence Epidemic Myth or Reality?
Authors: Zimring Franklin E
Published: November 2023

Current concerns about youth violence policy have been driven by interpretations of official statistics on youth arrests, as noted in chapter 1. Arrest statistics have been quoted as proof of substantial increases in the violence attributable to young of fenders. These statistics have then been used as evidence that a new and more vicious breed of juvenile offender is the reason for the in crease in arrests. Finally, predictions about future rates of youth violence have been based on projecting recent trends many years in the future.
Adolescents Who Kill
Authors: Zimring Franklin E
Published: November 2023

The teenager accused of criminal homicide is the worst case in a system that seeks to protect young offenders and to preserve their opportunity for normal development into adult hood. Causing a death is inflicting the greatest harm that crime can cause in a developed nation, a type of loss that the economic re sources and insurance mechanisms of a rich nation cannot protect against or meaningfully compensate. If death is caused by intentional infliction of a serious injury, the youth who inflicted the injury will often have intended enough harm so that his or her moral culpability would have been great even if death had been avoided. In such cases, the combination of high levels of personal culpability and the worst case outcome puts maximum pressure on the legal system to generate extensive punishment. Dealing with homicide is an important and particularly difficult part of a comprehensive policy toward youth violence.
Substance versus Procedure
Authors: Fletcher George P
Published: November 2023

When you look at the law from a distance, you see a maze of rules. This is the maze that ensnared the accused Joseph K. in Kafka’s The Trial when he tried to determine whether he was guilty of a crime. If you look at the maze more carefully, you find that the rules break down into two general categories, rules of substance and rules of procedure. The substantive rules define the crimes that are punished in the particular state or country. If Joseph K. was guilty of a crime, that crime would have been defined in the substantive rules of the local criminal law. If those rules are secret or too complicated or too vague to understand, then the legal system inhumanely drives people to anxiety about whether they are guilty of a transgression against the rules.
Punishment versus Treatment
Authors: Fletcher George P
Published: November 2023

All systems of criminal law represent a shared commitment to acquitting the innocent and punishing the guilty. This shared commitment confers upon them a single unifying purpose that centers on the institution of punishment. Without punishment and institutions designed to measure and carry out punishment, there is no criminal law. It is fair to say, then, that the institution of punishment provides the distinguishing features of criminal law. The problem is: What is punishment? Not every form of coercion, not every sanction, constitutes punishment. Not even coerced confinement provides an adequate signal that the criminal law has come into play. One can lock people up for many reasons-for example, quarantine for disease, commitment for mental illness. Not all seizures of the person are equivalent to the old fashioned punishment of flogging. Grabbing a person to prevent him from committing suicide is neither assault nor punishment but rather beneficial coercion.
Justice versus Legality
Authors: Fletcher George P
Published: November 2023

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall and the beginning of East German unification with West Germany, a politician from the East was heard to say, “We wanted justice and we got the rule of law.” The disappointment was understandable. Justice has the appeal of knowing what is right and securing it immediately. Justice offers instant gratification. The rule of law requires time, patience, and procedures of high ritual. Justice stands to the rule of law as fast food hamburgers compare with an eight-course meal.
The Poem of Queen Esther
Authors: Delgado João Pinto , Slavitt David R
Published: November 2023

This is a translation from the Spanish of a long poem based on the biblical book of Esther. The author, Joao Pinto Delgado (c. 1585-1653) lived in Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, and France. The choice of subject for this poem, with its theme of resistance to murderous oppression, was a subversive act of protest against the persecution of th Jews by the Inquisition. Today, it is equally resonant with the events of the Holocaust. It is also an elegant piece of Renaissance writing. Slavitt's skillful translation preserves the thyme scheme of the original, and wonderfully evokes the lavishness and sensuousness of Pinto Delgado's descriptions.
Bloody Constraint
Authors: Meron Theodor
Published: November 2023

Chivalry, one of Shakespeare’s central themes, retains its pertinence and topicality in our rules for international humanitarian law and the conduct of war. Against a background of Medieval and Renaissance sources as well as Shakespeare’s historical and dramatic realms, Professor Meron considers the ways in which law, chivalry, morality, conscience, and state necessity are deployed in Shakespeare to promote a society in which soldiers behave humanely and leaders are held to high standards of civilized behavior. In doing so, he illustrates the literary genealogy of such contemporary international humanitarian concerns as the treatment of prisoners and of women and accountability for war crimes. An insightful consideration of modern humanitarian law as seen from the perspectives of both Shakespeare and history, Bloody Constraint will also interest students of Medieval and Renaissance studies.
Koonjaen, Floup, and the Forging of a Diola-Esulalu Religious Tradition in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Baum Robert M
Published: November 2023

The forging of an Esulalu religious tradition from the older traditions of Koonjaen and Floup began during a period of political, economic, and environmental uncertainty throughout the lower Casamance. This tradition began to take shape after the fall of the Floup state, when ritual elders and the cults they controlled became the major force for the maintenance of the social order. Indirect links to European traders operating in the Casamance region expanded the market for captives, rice, and beeswax while increasing the availability of such goods as iron, firearms, cloth, and cattle.1 Contact with Europeans, through various African middlemen, also introduced new diseases. The greater mobility of people through various trade networks helped spread both new and old maladies with far greater speed. All of these changes had to be explained within an Esulalu system of thought and controlled through the development of appropriate ritual forms. Central to the task of creating an Esulalu cultural tradition was the development of a system of thought that could appeal to both Floup and Koonjaen populations within the townships. The Floup majority itself was not unified; each lineage traced its origins back to a particular Huluf or Ediamat township. In many cases, lineage names reflected these diverse origins.2 Settlers from each of these communities had their own shrines and a strong sense of loyalty to their group, a loyalty that was far stronger than their initial allegiance to the new townships.
The Elaboration of Tradition: Esulalu Religion, 1800-1880
Authors: Baum Robert M
Published: November 2023

While the nineteenth century was a period of increasing interaction with the French and with other African groups, the people of Esulalu preferred to contact these newcomers at Carabane or the stranger villages, rather than in the townships. They were suspicious of French and Muslim Senegambian motives for entering the region and sought to control the influences of their new neighbors. They carefully protected the autonomy of Esulalu community institu-tions, while adapting to new conditions associated with cross-cultural contact. They limited their involvement in the religions of the newcomers to the purchase of saints’ medals and gris-gris to ensure good health, good luck, or safety in war. Furthermore, they steadfastly refused to plant such cash crops as peanuts, which the French suggested, but which had the potential of undermining Esulalu’s elabo rate system of rice cultivation.
Introduction
Authors: Olivelle Patrick
Published: November 2023

The Upanisads translated here represent some of the most important literary products in the history of Indian culture and religion, both because they played a critical role in the development of religious ideas in India and because they are valuable as sources for our understanding of the religious, social, and intellectual history of ancient India. The Upanisads were composed at a time of great social, economic, and religious change; they document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions. It is in them that we note for the first time the emergence of central religious concepts of both Hinduism and of the new religious movements, such as Buddhism and Jainism, that emerged not long after the composition of the early Upanisads. Such concepts include the doctrine of re-birth, the law of karma that regulates the rebirth process, and the techniques of liberation from the cycle of rebirth, such as mental training associated with Yoga, ascetic self-denial and mortification, and the renunciation of sex, wealth, and family life. Even though theoretically the whole of the vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth, in reality it is the Upanisads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanisads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism.
Katha Upanisad
Authors: Olivelle Patrick
Published: November 2023

The Katha (also called Kathaka) Upanisad belongs at least formally to the Kathaka school of the Black Yajurveda. It is clear, however, that this Upanisad is a late work and did not form an integral part of the Brahman.a of that school. Its relationship to that school, however, is established by the episode of Naciketas and Death (see KU 1.1-4 n.). This episode (together with other sections dealing with the establishment of various ritual fires), in all likelihood, was originally part of the Kathaka Brahman.a, although it is now found in the Taittiriya Brahman.a (3.11.8.1-6) and not in the Kathaka (for a discussion, see Witzel 1977).
Lanyer
Authors: Woods Susanne
Published: November 2023

Aemilia Bassano Lanyer published poetry to and for women in 1611, at the height of the largely misogynistic reign of James I. Her verse complements and extends our view of her contemporaries, such as Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne, whose work in turn provides a context for her unique and engaging voice. This book situates Lanyer within the rich tradition of Jacobean poetry.
Introduction
Authors: Sered Susan
Published: November 2023

Eight middle-aged and elderly women enter the kami-ya (village shrine). They sit on tatami mats on the floor and chat. Gradually, the conversation ceases. One of the women instructs a male assistant to light incense and place it on the altar. This woman, flanked on either side by her associates, turns toward the set of three rocks arranged on the altar and pours sake (rice wine) over the rocks. All of the women kneel, press their hands together, and quietly murmur prayers. The eight women then file outside, where a bus provided by the town hall drives them to the beginning of a trail that leads into the jungle. They begin their ascent, single file, the male assistant walking in front in order to clear away vines and look out for poisonous habu snakes. After fifteen minutes of steady climbing, they pause at a clearing. The male assistant walks on. The women take out five-piece white robes from the bags they have been carrying and quietly don the robes. The eight kami-sama* continue their trek into the increasingly dark jungle, finally reaching the sacred grove. There are two stone benches where they sit and weave crowns of leaves and vines to put on their heads. One of the kami-sama goes further into the sacred grove, stopping at a small stone altar on which rest six conch shells. She squats in front of the shells, prays briefly, and “feeds” rice and sake into the open ing of each shell. She then joins her fellow kami-sama at the benches, taking her place on the center seat. The male assistant pours sake for each kami-sama; they pray briefly and quietly. The eight kami-sama rise and begin their journey back to the bus. The bus driver takes them to the edge of the village, and the kami-sama walk to the village square, where they are met by clan members and by the village headman, who bows and pours sake for each kami-sama. Clanswomen provide food and drink for the kami-sama. After a small meal the kami-sama rise, take off the white robes and hang the crowns of leaves on special nails in the village square. Eight middle-aged and elderly women then walk home to prepare food for their families, to weed their vegetable gardens, and to do their housework.
Divine Dis-order:Signs, Symptoms, and Sitting in the Right Seat
Authors: Sered Susan
Published: November 2023

In Okinawan culture, where cosmology is unelaborated and rituals are relatively low-key, priestesses concentrate, represent, and embody divinity. The priestess is not a ritual practitioner, she is the ritual; she is not a theological expert, she is the theos. Typically, when I asked a priestess to tell me about her duties as a priestess, her answer would emphasize how she became a priestess rather than what she does. This emphasis reflects the identity and position of priestesses as manifestations of kami-sama. Because the significance of the priestess role lies in being rather than in doing, telling how one came to be a kami-sama is an intrinsic part of the role. In a broad variety of cultural situations, religious autobiography is an affirmation of the integrity, sanctity, and particularity of one’s life path and beliefs. Com plex, bewildering, or ineffable religious truths, represented in the person of the re ligious narrator, become immediate, convincing, and comprehensible. In the case of religious leaders, an autobiography is also an affirmation of one’s right to lead. A life story, whether oral or written, is both the calling card and the proof of authenticity of a religious leader. In short, a good (that is, convincing, dramatic, and theologically relevant) life story has the potential to establish both the credentials of the leader and the efficacy and truth of the religion. Because of the theological and social significance of religious leaders’ autobiographies, uEstablishing the mythical ideal, or what might better be called the biographic image, takes precedence over a simple chronicling of biographical facts” (Reynolds and Capps 1976: 4). In other words, religious leaders and experts use narrative to construct a culturally recognizable religious profile. The life story of a religious leader is often, as Laurel Kendall says regarding a Korean shaman whose initiation she has documented, "a collective enterprise with a long gestation, begun in the divination sessions when she tells her story to a shaman and is in turn told its meaning” (1996: 25).
The Problematics of Power
Authors: Sered Susan
Published: November 2023

Cross-culturally, religion and religious leadership tend to be associated with or presented as manifestations of power over nature and power over people. Ceremonies that induce the soil to produce more crops or that induce the body to behave ac cording to God’s law rather than according to “natural instinct” are classic religious expressions of power over nature. Rituals of power over people include initiation ceremonies that sacralize the authority elders hold over initiates (cf. Bledsoe 1980), witchcraft accusations against individuals or groups who do not live exactly as religious authorities decree, and wedding ceremonies in which a man or his family’s ownership of a woman’s reproductive resources is legitimated. Religious control over people or nature by God, religion, or law often is made explicit: A prime example is the Buddhist aspiration to escape from the physical and emo tional bonds that tie the soul to this world and its inhabitants (bonds which perhaps not surprisingly-are believed to be stronger for women than for men; cf. Kirsch 1985 on Thailand). Power over people and power over nature tend to coincide in male-dominated religions. Sherry Ortner, in her now-classic 1974 essay “Is Female to Male as Na ture is to Culture?” argued that human culture is constituted through defining it self in opposition to nature-nature is, by cultural definition, what is not culture. According to Ortner, nature and culture not only stand in binary opposition to one another, they also stand in a conceptual relationship of hierarchy: Culture is seen as superior to nature because it is understood to be what conquers nature.ortner further suggested that in many if not all human societies, women—because of childbirth and child rearing—are perceived as more associated with nature and therefore inferior to men and culture. In her recent writings, Ortner has clarified this argument, underscoring the importance of religion in the patriarchal enterprise.
Un-gendering Religious Discourse
Authors: Sered Susan
Published: November 2023

When you are born the kami-sama pick certain people and put a stamp [inkan] on them, and it doesn’t matter whether they are male or female. (male yuta) VILLAGE PRIESTESS: Only when it comes to ogami. In Okinawa, all festival activities are done by women, the number of men is small in these things. I also wonder why women do this! In light of the attitude toward power and authority that characterizes Henza’s cultural ethos, it is not surprising to find that the statement “women dominate Oki nawan religion” is not articulated by villagers.Rather, it is an assessment made by scholars, most of whom are Japanese, American, or European. In numerous conversations, I asked villagers why their religious leaders are women. As we see in the following pages, the most common initial response was: 'Are they?” If I insisted on continuing the conversation (by saying "yes, they are”), villagers typically offered sociological explanations ranging from demography (counting off the religious leaders in order to verify that they are indeed all women), localizing and temporaliz- ing (explaining that women’s religious leadership is limited to specific times and locations in which particular social or historical forces have caused this to be so), social-role theory (men’s and women’s subsistence work leads to certain religious roles), distinguishing between description and prescription (between what happens to be the case and what should be the case), analysis of confounding variables (factors other than gender that confound easy interpretations of behaviors as gender- linked), and socialization theory (women are not innately more religiously gifted, but rather they are educated to know the correct rituals). Taken together, these sociological theories proclaim that gendered religious behavior is not universal, not absolute, not immutable, not particularly desirable, and not natural.1
GenderBendingr)and Ritual Deconstruction
Authors: Sered Susan
Published: November 2023

In chapter 1, I portrayed Henza social life as characterized by yasashii interactions and social categories. Because of extensive contact with foreign cultures (Japanese, Chinese, American, Philippine, and others), Henza vil lagers are aware that other people live differently, yet it is rare to hear villagers say that their own ways are better. Henza villagers seldom reify their own social arrangements or institutions. Nevertheless, social organization does tend to gener ate a force or stamina of its own. Even when there is little or no ideological bolster ing or justification for particular social patterns, just the fact that “this is how things are and how they have been for a long time” may tend to make them appear immutable and necessary. Anthropologists explain that rituals function to convince participants that their cultural norms and organization are good, true, and eternal; through religious ritual people worship their own social structure (Durkheim 1915, Geertz 1969). Even rituals that seem on the surface to turn normal social arrangements upside down-so-called rites of reversal (Gluckman 19 65)-actually serve to prove to participants that their ordinary social arrangements are necessary; disorder is fun for a few hours but untenable as a permanent lifestyle. In the anthropological literature, rites of reversal defuse potentially disruptive social forces via temporary inversions that set conflict within a ritual discourse that neutralizes the threat and therefore results in the continuation of the status quo. In this model, ritual liminality (“time-out” from normal cultural demands and structures; see esp. Turner 1981: 159-160) is followed by reintegration-by putting things back together again.
Sovereign Grace
Authors: Stevenson William R
Published: November 2023

The Reformation thinker John Calvin had significant and unusual things to say about life in public encounter, things which both anticipate modern thinking and, says William Stevenson, can serve as important antidotes to some of modern thinking's broader pretensions. This study attempts to give a coherent picture of Calvin's political theory by following the stream that flows from his fascinating short essay, "On Christian Freedom," one chapter in the magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion. Stevenson argues that a full examination of this essay yields not only a more thorough explication--and historical placement--of Calvin's political ideas proper but also a more complete and coherent picture of their theological underpinnings.
The Acts Of Peter, Gospel Literature, And The Ancient Novel
Authors: Thomas Christine M
Published: November 2023

Like the other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles - stories of the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity - the Acts of Peter provides a window into the processes of oral and written composition that shaped early Christian narrative. Thomas looks at the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts and argues that ‘transmissional fluidity’ - the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms - is a characteristic the Acts share with many related works, from the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel to the Greek romance about Alexander the Great and the Christian Gospels of Jesus. The fluidity of these narratives allowed them to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences.
Reading Tamil Cankam Poetry
Authors: Selby Martha Ann
Published: November 2023

In this chapter and in the two that follow, I have constructed brief histories of reading and interpreting love poems selected from the anthologies discussed in my introduction for each language, incorporating material from rhetorical texts and commentaries written as early as the second century B.C.E. and as recently as 1957, when Narayaqacami Aiyar’s extensive commentary on Nar.r.i’t7-ai was first published. Defined in semiotic terms, the shifting, changing “signifieds” are the focus of these histories, not the more static, fixed “signifiers.”
A Different Kind Of Salvation Cultivating Alternative Senses, Practices, and Visions
Authors: Lelwica Michelle Mary
Published: November 2023

To see the spiritual dimensions of girls’ and women’s struggles with food and their bodies is to recognize the search for meaning and wholeness that these struggles intimate. Girls and women are not merely starving to be thin. They are starving to be well. Literally and figuratively, they are hungering for a sense of fulfillment and well-being-what theologians have traditionally referred to as “salvation.” Classic Christian references to “salvation” are tied to notions of human sinhumans’ alienation from God as mythically depicted in the story of the Fall from Eden. In this story, sin is unleashed into the world by the act of a woman eating. For centuries this scenario has been used to justify women’s subordination to men and their confinement to the physical realm of cooking, cleaning, and bearing children.
Pilgrimage and Praise
Authors: Prentiss Karen Pechilis
Published: November 2023

Pilgrimage is a prominent feature in Indian religious traditions. The pervasiveness of pilgrimage, whether ihonor of a natural site, a founder figure, or a god, has prompted many to consider it a pan-Indian phenomenon; for example, Stella Kramrisch asserts that “the sacred geography of India recognizes the whole country as a field of more than human activity. It is carried by the rivers, from the celestial region where they have their prototype and origin, down to the earth.” When traditions of pilgrimage are taken collectively, this is an accurate impression. However, even a brief review of the literatures of pilgrimage reveals images of profound and overwhelming regionalism. In the eyes of any given pilgrim, then, all parts of India are not equal; it matters where one stands.

In the classical Sanskrit tradition, the earliest use of the word tīrtha, which eventually came to designate pilgrimage, occurs in Vedic and Upani adic sources. In these ancient ritual and philosophical texts, the noun tīrtha, which is derived from a verb meaning “to cross over,” is associated with both material and symbolic properties and powers of rivers. Diana Eck suggests a threefold image of efficacy: the “nourishing and purifying power” of the river as a place to drink and to bathe; the river as a symbol of crossing over, where “one launches out on the journey between heaven and earth”; and the power of ritual, suggested in the homologies between the falling river and the falling Soma, and between the sacrifice and a tirtha as “a crossing place where all the elements of this world are brought together in symbolic microcosm for the vertical crossing of the sacrificer to heaven.” In this context, the river is understood to have purifying, perhaps even expiatory, powers; it is an auspicious place to begin a spiritual journey; and it is a microcosm, containing all efficacious elements within it.
Regional Voices through Song
Authors: Prentiss Karen Pechilis
Published: November 2023

Tradition and the scholarship that draws on it have identified the conversion of a Pallava king from Jainism to Śaivism as an important moment of transition in the history of Tamil Śiva-bhakti.

The Periya Purāṇam narrates a story about Appar, who undergoes and miraculously survives numerous trials of torture that lead to the conversion of the king who had ordered the trials. In the larger narrative of the “Appar Purāṇam,” the emphasis is on the conversion of Appar himself, which precedes his trials with the king. According to the story, Appar used to be a Jain and then finally saw the light of Siva through the persistent intervention of his sister; his own conversion is a theme found in his bhakti hymns and developed in the biographical account. Thus, the story of the king’s conversion in the Periya Purāṇam mirrors Appar’s own conversion in the bhakti poetry.
The Challenge of Monotheism
Authors: Seeskin Kenneth
Published: November 2023

Etymologically mono+ theism implies belief in or worship of a single deity. But belief in a single deity is at most a necessary condition for monotheism. A religion that recognized Zeus as the only deity would not be considered monotheistic even if its adherents insisted that besides him, there are no other gods. It matters little whether a person worships a single god or a large number if that god is nothing but a glorified version of something found on earth.
Racial Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and Antebellum Virginia*
Authors: Higginbotham Leon , Kopytoff Barbara K
Published: November 2023

There is probably no better place than Virginia to examine the origins of the American doctrine of racial purity and the related prohibitions on interracial sex and interracial marriage. Many people applaud Virginia as the “mother of Presidents” (four of the first five Presidents were Virginians) and the “mother of revolutionaries,” such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Patrick Henry. Yet few stress that colonial Virginia was also the “mother” of American slavery and a leader in the gradual debasement of blacks2 through its institution of slavery.
“Nothing Will Come of Nothing”: The Love Bond and the Meaning of the Zero
Authors: Turner Frederick
Published: November 2023

As we have seen, the Sonnets and The Winter’s Tale develop a concept of nature as a process of creativity and growth, where human invention and imagination are a continuation of nature’s own tradition of self-transcendence. But this faith in nature is achieved in the teeth of what seems to be a much more persuasive idea: that nature is instead a mechanistic process of cause and effect, gradually running down over time, and that human beings are part of the same process. What would our ethics look like if we adopted this view? Three hundred years before European philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Sartre found their own answers to this question, Shakespeare had already explored it in his great tragedy King Lear.
“My Purse, My Person”: How Bonds Connect People and Property, Souls and Bodies
Authors: Turner Frederick
Published: November 2023

The shocking proposition of King Lear is not just that love is more reliable as a reciprocal bond, with goods and services given and received, than as an unconditional one-way gift. It is that the accounting zero, the balanced books, of the reciprocal bond can become a source of infinite spiritual profit. This is the case because nature is enriching itself through its own growth and creativity, and if we accept ourselves as part of nature, we can share in that profit; and through our peculiarly human (yet no less natural) abilities of personal relationship and artistic invention we can convert that profit into moral, spiritual, and aesthetic goods as well. In King Lear these propositions are explored largely through the negative instance of what happens when people attempt to live as if they were not true, as if the only choices were ruthless selfishness and selfless sacrifice; and Shakespeare shows unequivocally in the case of Cordelia that an interested, bonded love is no less capable of beautiful self-sacrifice than its imagined unconditional alternative. In The Merchant of Venice, which is the main subject of this chapter, Shakespeare gives us a profound analysis of the positive case, in which most of the major characters accept that we are indeed animals, but no less capable of free choice than if we were angels; and that genuine human love is always interested, always reciprocal, but no less generous for all that.
What Is “Tibetan Scholasticism”?
Authors: Kapstein Matthew T
Published: November 2023

During the eleventh century, Tibetan Buddhism entered a period of renewed development and change. The collapse of the old Tibetan royal dynasty had taken place, according to traditional accounts, following the assassination of the anti-Buddhist monarch Lang Darma, probably in 842,1 and the ensuing power vacuum persisted for a full four hundred years. Local lords vied for ascendency, and religious authority was no less contested than temporal power. As cultural life was gradually restored, Tibetan seekers and adventurers began to look outside Tibet for authoritative sources of Buddhist teaching, with the result that throughout the eleventh century we find Tibetan translators and pilgrims journeying to India and Nepal in search of gurus, Scriptures, and esoteric lore. These developments were particularly prominent in Western Tibet, where the great translator Rinchen Zangpo (958-1055) was patronized by the monarchs of the Guge kingdom. There, too, the saintly Indian scholar and adept Atisa (982-1054) was invited to teach, beginning in 1042. The careers of these two notable Buddhist monks mark the start of what Tibetan historians call the “later spread of the teaching” (bstan-pa phyi-dar), or the age of the “new translations” (gsar-’gyur).
Samantabhadra and Rudra
Authors: Kapstein Matthew T
Published: November 2023

I do not propose to examine the historical origins of the myths of Samantabhadra and Rudra in the compass of the present chapter. Even limiting one’s field solely to Buddhist materials, it would be essential to consider an extensive body of Indian literature—above all, the many Buddhist tantras—even before seeking to elaborate peculiarly Tibetan developments. And in Tibet itself, we would have to investigate the manner in which the Indian versions of these myths were variously assimilated and transformed through the historical ramification of Tibetan Buddhism into a great number of distinct lineages and schools.
The Amnesic Monarch and the Five Mnemic Men
Authors: Kapstein Matthew T
Published: November 2023

In the literature of the Great Perfection (rdzogschen) traditions of the Nyingmapa school of Tibetan Buddhism, the words dran-pa, “memory”(= Skt. smrti, smara,:za), and dran-med, “freedom from or loss of memory, unconsciousness, inattentiveness” (= Skt. vismrti, asmrti), are very frequently encountered, among other terms formed on the lexeme dran-, “to remember.” Though no systematic exegesis of the use of these terms within the tradition itself has yet come to my attention, it appears nonetheless possible to attempt a tentative account of the role of certain basic terms relating to memory in a few distinctive contexts.