bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Overturning the Past
Authors: Gutacker Paul J.
Published: December 2022

Chapter 1 traces how the most widely read histories provided important justification for distancing civil government from religion. Eighteenth-century historiography presented the Christian past as a fall from apostolic-era purity into medieval corruption, and blamed this on the post-Constantine establishment of Christianity. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison commended these histories and used arguments from the Christian past in their most important works on religious freedom; likewise, Isaac Backus and John Leland appealed to Christian history in their sermons and political speeches. American religious disestablishment was achieved in part because of a compelling historical narrative: to disestablish state churches would overturn the great error of Christendom and allow for the recovery of pure, apostolic-era Christianity. As disestablishment progressed on the state level, the same narratives appeared in new American tellings of religious history.
Restoring the Past
Authors: Gutacker Paul J.
Published: December 2022

Chapter 2 shows how upstart Baptists, Methodists, and Restorationists succeeded in part because they tapped into widely held narratives about the history of Christianity. In New England, Baptists published arguments from the Christian past to gain converts from Congregationalism and, after decades of historical controversy, realized the need to invest institutional resources to teaching church history. Likewise, American Methodists required their ministers to study their own denomination’s interpretation of Christian history. Leaders of the Stone-Campbell movement, in turn, wrote criticisms of religious historiography but also urged their constituents to study the Christian past. For early Restorationists, church history was of immediate significance for the religious and national renewal they sought. Rather than the past becoming irrelevant in a time of innovation, history proved vital to the democratization of Christianity.
Protecting the Past
Authors: Gutacker Paul J.
Published: December 2022

Chapter 4 turns to Christian history and the education of the Protestant ministerial class. During the first half of the nineteenth century, seminaries navigated a tension between long-standing Protestant historical narratives and newly emerging historiography, some of which appeared more sympathetic toward the Catholic past. This tension can be seen in the careers of three professors: Samuel Miller at Princeton Theological Seminary, James Murdock at Andover, and Philip Schaff at Mercersburg and Union seminaries. Controversies over historical education reflected concern over the future of the nation, particularly in light of rising Catholic immigration. As Catholics built churches and schools, leading Protestant ministers frequently pointed to the Christian past to demonstrate the incompatibility of Catholicism and American liberty. In this context, the next generation of clergy needed just enough church history to bolster their Protestant convictions.
Rewriting the Past
Authors: Gutacker Paul J.
Published: December 2022

Chapter 5 explains how the recovery of women’s place in Christian history shaped the development and contestation of women’s rights. In 1835, Lydia Maria Child published a history of women that offered a new female-centric interpretation of the Christian past. Child’s argument was enlisted by Sarah Moore Grimké, Lucretia Mott, and Margaret Fuller, who used it to argue for women’s rights. At the same time, advocates of domesticity picked up the narrative of women in Christian history for their own purposes. Across the North Atlantic in the 1840s and 1850s, authors increasingly put forward examples of godly motherhood in order to encourage women in their domestic callings. These two diverging interpretations of women in the Christian past were exemplified in works written in the 1850s by Child and Sarah Josepha Hale, respectively. By the middle of the century, scholars and popular authors alike recognized the place of women in Christian history, even as the implications of this past were disputed.
When Does Pressure Become Propaganda?
Authors: Gruffydd-Jones Jamie J.
Published: December 2022

This chapter tests whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is more likely to pass on news of foreign pressure to its public when it appears most hostile. It uses two original databases: of international pressure on China’s human rights after 1978 and articles about this pressure featured in the People’s Daily, the CCP’s mouthpiece. As predicted, the newspaper has been far more likely to report on pressure that comes from the United States, particularly at times of bilateral tension; that touches on issues of territorial integrity; and that addresses existing CCP policies or repeats well-worn criticism. The chapter explores how Chinese media has sometimes hidden high-profile international criticism of domestic crises but also widely discussed instances of quite obscure foreign condemnation, to show that this behavior cannot be merely explained by people’s growing access to sensationalist foreign news.
Implications for China and Beyond
Authors: Gruffydd-Jones Jamie J.
Published: December 2022

This chapter considers the book’s implications for the international community’s efforts to improve human rights in China and around the world. Using case studies of Uganda, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, it argues that regimes can most successfully use international pressure to their advantage in places where the “hostile forces” narrative is resonant, and where they have the media control to manipulate that narrative. The chapter explores how citizens’ support for authoritarian and nationalist policies might grow in the face of a liberal international system and finishes with a discussion of the implications for activists, governments, and international organizations. When public condemnation is used, the chapter suggests practical measures that activists, governments, and international organizations could take to minimize negative consequences on public opinion in the target state.
Virgil's Cinematic Art
Authors: Freudenburg Kirk
Published: December 2022

This book concerns the rhetoric of visual manipulation that provokes readers to envision what is written on the page, treating visual details in ancient epic not as mere scene-setting information or enhancements to any given story, but as cues for performing specific imaginative processes. Through a series of close readings centered primarily on Virgil’s Aeneid, the book aims to show that the experiential effects that Virgil puts into play do serious narrative work of their own by structuring lines of sight, both visual and emotive, and shifting them about in ways that move readers into and out of the visual and emotional worlds of the story’s characters. Whereas most studies of narrative visualization concern seeing, this one concerns watching. And listening. And trying to keep up. Informing the book’s theoretical approach are recent cognitivist and constructivist studies of how audiences watch narrative films and make sense of what they are being given to see. By looking to the world of narrative films, where directors use shots craftily edited to cue audiences to “fill in” for what the camera itself cannot show, the book locates new narrative content lurking in old places, brought to life within the imaginations of readers. The end result is a new approach to the question of how ancient epic tales convey narrative content through visual means.
The “Seeming” of the “Seen”—Narrative as Vision in Ancient Epic
Authors: Freudenburg Kirk
Published: December 2022

The book’s introduction makes a case for a new approach to the problem of visualization in ancient epic, arguing that visual details function not as mere scene-setting information or decorative enhancements to the story being told, but as cues for performing specific imaginative processes. Connections are made with recent film theory, with standard techniques of film editing, and with cognitive studies of visual perception, all of which emphasize the viewer’s own role in creating full visual coherence from limited visual input. Parallels are drawn between devices that film directors commonly use to imply focalization by specific characters, and those used by epic writers, such as Virgil and Homer, for whom such devices serve to draw their readers/listeners not only into specific fields of vision, but into the thoughts and emotional lives of the characters to whom such specific ways of seeing belong.
Seeing as Telling
Authors: Freudenburg Kirk
Published: December 2022

This chapter offers a fresh take on the temple ecphrasis of Aeneid 1, which is one the most studied passages in Latin literature and the first large-scale ecphrasis of the entire work. Through a close analysis of the visual workings of the ecphrasis, it is argued that the whole of it is presented to us as quoted sight; that is, Virgil taking us into Aeneas’ head, letting us experience how Aeneas reckons with what he sees. Not simply “what is there,” in other words, but a particular, highly motivated distortion of what is there, summoned into existence by the specific story elements that Aeneas pounces upon and agonizes over as he tours his way through the continuous narrative picture on the temple walls. Rather than the story on the temple wall, it is the story that Aeneas spins from the story on the temple wall: a selective, reactionary view of the painted frieze, as agonized over by him. By rescuing smaller worlds of pathos and defeat from the singular big triumph that the temple frieze depicts, Aeneas lets us see that there are other, opposite, in fact defiantly oppositional ways of seeing and valuing the very same thing. The chapter concludes with a look at the “match cut” transition that Virgil uses to bring Dido onto the scene at the end of the ecphrasis, comparing it to a similar “lust at first sight” transition in Catullus’ poem on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis.
Introduction
Authors: Fidelis Malgorzata
Published: December 2022

This chapter introduces the main themes, arguments, concepts, and intellectual contributions of the book. It situates the Polish case within the historical literature on the global sixties and stresses the centrality of transnational imagination to youth in Poland, where opportunities for personal travel and interaction with international actors were limited. Instead, imagining the world played a critical role not only in shaping collective desires and actions of young people, but also in defining the broader relations between state and society, and the trajectory of oppositional politics in the years to come. The introduction provides a basic chronology of the sixties in Poland, from the time of the Thaw until the heyday of consumer socialism in 1974, when many aspects of the sixties youth rebellion became part of the official ideology.
Youth as Modernity
Authors: Fidelis Malgorzata
Published: December 2022

By the late 1950s, youth had become a prominent topic in media and expert debates across Europe popularizing the sociological concept of “youth culture.” Chapter 2 traces how this process unfolded in Poland and became a centerpiece of the regime’s efforts to address the challenge of the Thaw. Looking at public projections of youth identity in popular writings, sociological research, and sex education manuals, this chapter shows how the idea of youth came to embody a new type of socialist modernity that promoted moderate consumption, educated leisure, and moral values. Some of the main actors in this chapter are sociologists, writers, educators, and journalists, who served as mediators between the state and young people. Their writings often revealed unexpected progressive and feminist ideas. For example, publications on sexual education stressed the role of ethics and emotions while at the same time promoting female moral autonomy and reproductive rights.
Tensions of Transnationalism
Authors: Fidelis Malgorzata
Published: December 2022

The challenge to the communist state’s monopoly on defining Marxism culminated in students’ and youth’s demonstrations in March 1968 and the state’s violent reaction. In contrast to dominant narratives that depict 1968 in Poland as primarily shaped by the domestic political context, this chapter shows Polish students not simply as protestors against a “totalitarian” regime but as active participants of a contemporary global search for a new kind of leftism. In the process, both the young people and the state projected different visions of transnational solidarities and were influenced by crises happening elsewhere, including the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War in the Middle East. The communist regime eventually deployed and weaponized the transnational imagination against the protestors by launching a powerful antisemitic campaign. Stigmatizing protestors as Zionists and foreign agents, the campaign solidified a racialized understanding of the “Polish nation,” which had lasting political consequences.
The Counterculture
Authors: Fidelis Malgorzata
Published: December 2022

While political groups tended to turn inward after 1968, the search for transnationalism survived in the hippie communities that emerged in Poland in the late 1960s. This chapter follows the hippie counterculture, from the creation of unique personal styles and formation of communes to experimentation with sex and drugs. At the heart of this chapter are the subjective perceptions of being a hippie in Polish society, including interaction with a variety of actors ranging from the security apparatus and the Church to parents and the older generation. Polish hippies searched for an alternative way of life to both communism and traditional national culture, while also distancing themselves from any anticommunist or reform movements. This chapter also uncovers the astonishing influence of the counterculture on the wider society, including youth styles in the early 1970s and state-sponsored acts of cultural diplomacy, for example the international festival of avant-garde theater in Wrocław.
Conclusion
Authors: Fidelis Malgorzata
Published: December 2022

The conclusion sums up the preceding chapters and takes the reader to the post-1974 era, discussing the impact of the sixties movements on later developments in Poland, including the formation of the anticommunist opposition, and exploring the ways that Poles’ perceptions of global connections changed during the 1970s and 1980s to become less politicized and more oriented toward the global market and consumerism. At the same time, dissident politics became explicitly anticommunist, while their evocation of international human rights often served to enhance nationalist thinking at home. This influenced the nature of the transition to democracy and Poland’s relationship to the outside world in the years that followed. Ultimately, the collapse of communism in 1989 was not a rapid break from the past but a continuation and reworking of earlier trends in a post–Cold War environment, from youth culture to modernity and globalization.
A Cross-National Comparison of Residential Care for Children and Youth
Authors: James Sigrid
Published: December 2022

This chapter describes the conceptual and methodological approach that serves as the foundation for the subsequent individual contributions by country. Each succeeding within-country chapter will be organized around a completed matrix that aims to facilitate cross-country comparisons around conceptually meaningful dimensions for residential care. The matrix was developed by the author of this chapter as part of a five-country Erasmus+ project (2018–2021) and further modified for purposes of this book. In this chapter the genesis, development, and use of the matrix will be detailed and its significance for a deeper and focused understanding of residential care discussed. Key variables including residential care system/program features, staff training and personnel, and characteristics of children and youth in residential care will be explored along with data collection issues and challenges.
Residential Care for Children and Youth in England
Authors: Holmes Lisa , Berridge David , Thoburn June
Published: December 2022

This chapter documents a declining use of residential care in England in favor of foster family care when out-of-home care is needed. It also discusses recent policy reviews and reform efforts that incentivize innovative residential practice. Research on placement outcomes and child and youth characteristics is also provided. The chapter concludes with a standardized matrix that provides information on the current policy context, key trends and initiatives, characteristics of children and youth served, preparation of residential care personnel, promising programmatic innovations, and present strengths and challenges. Growth in private (for profit) residential care is noted, as is an increase in unregulated placement.
Residential Care for Children and Youth in Scotland
Authors: Johnson Dan , Steckley Laura
Published: December 2022

The chapter authors describe Scotland as at a tipping point for change with its residential care provision. They detail recent legislative initiatives and an independent care review. Renewed emphasis on the critical importance of relationships and youth rights is also noted. The chapter concludes with the matrix used throughout this volume, which includes the current policy context, key trends and initiatives, characteristics of children and youth served, preparation of residential care personnel, promising programmatic innovations, and present strengths and challenges. Scotland has a relatively low rate of utilization of residential child and youth care among all forms of out-of-home care.
A Review of the Teaching Family Model/Boys Town Family Home Program
Authors: Daly Daniel L. , Thompson Ronald W.
Published: December 2022

In the United States, the Boys Town Teaching Family Model, in its earliest iteration as Achievement Place, pioneered the use of applied behavior analysis in a group home setting and designated specially trained married couples (Teaching Parents) as the primary agents of intervention. From its origins in Achievement Place, the Boys Town Teaching Family Model has systematically included ongoing evaluation of all program components in its many replications both on the home campus in Omaha, Nebraska, and in many sites around the United States. Largely as the result of the corpus of this evaluation and related research, the Teaching Family Model at Boys Town, as an accredited and founding member of the Teaching Family Association, has been awarded the scientific rating of 3 (Promising Research Evidence) with “high” relevance for child welfare by the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare.
Residential Care for Children and Youth in the Netherlands
Authors: Knorth Erik J. , Harder Annemiek T.
Published: December 2022

This chapter describes residential care in the Netherlands, a country ranking highest on children’s mental well-being, physical health, and academic and social skills. Residential care represents approximately 50% of all children in out-of-home care. Recent developments include the development of small-scale residential settings, including family-oriented residential care and shared family care. A strong emphasis on residential care research in several leading universities and a longstanding commitment to social pedagogy are assets to the residential care sector. The chapter concludes with the matrix used throughout the book, including the current policy context, key trends and initiatives, characteristics of children and youth served, preparation of residential care personnel, promising programmatic innovations, and present strengths and challenges.
Residential Care for Children and Youth in Italy
Authors: Palareti Laura , Canali Cinzia , Rigamonti Alessandra , Formenti Laura
Published: December 2022

This chapter describes the transition from an institution-based to a community-based approach to child welfare in Italy. Like many countries, Italy has seen a significant decline in residential placements from the early 1960s to the present. The legal and administrative developments that stimulated this shift are explored, as are some of the consequences, such as a far greater range of agencies involved, requiring strong interprofessional work. National guidelines for residential care are seen as a positive step, but implementation has been slow. Additional needs are for clearer definitions of the varieties of residential care offered and more research focused on needs and outcomes. The chapter concludes with the matrix used throughout the book, which provides information about the current policy context, key trends and initiatives, characteristics of children and youth served, preparation of residential care personnel, promising programmatic innovations, and present strengths and challenges.
The “New Era” in Victorian Therapeutic Residential Care
Authors: McNamara Patricia
Published: December 2022

This chapter offers an overview of developments in policy, practice and research since the advent of what was described as Victoria’s “new era” of therapeutic residential care a decade ago. Not all developments have been positive. However, advances have clearly been made in policy development. Raising the leaving care age in Victoria is one of the most important because it has the capacity to much improve post-care education and training outcomes. Reducing the size of residential homes to better meet individual need and facilitate best possible matching of young people is another welcome development. Practice improvements such as higher staff training benchmarks and more intensive therapeutic responses to young people and families are also noteworthy. Perhaps most important is the gradual reframing of Victorian therapeutic residential care as an opportunity for hope, healing, and moving forward; too often it has been deemed a “last resort,” signaling the young person’s arrival at the “end of the line” after a dispiriting out-of-home-care journey.
Defensive Realism
Authors: James Patrick
Published: December 2022

Chapter 15 is about defensive realism. Exponents of this theory see the international system as one that, in general, does not facilitate expansionism. The specific form that the quest for power takes under such circumstances is pursuit of security. Three theories about the causes of war, each with an overlapping set of contributing factors, fit within defensive realism. The first theory emphasizes first-mover advantage as a property of the international system that can set in motion processes that threaten its stability. A second theory focuses on windows of opportunity, which aggressor states, figuratively speaking, may jump through in pursuit of gains at the expense of others. Third, and finally, the offense-defense balance possesses potential to destabilize a system. The dangerous situation is one in which the offense is at an advantage, whereas dominance for defense is less likely to encourage efforts toward conquest.
Introduction
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

Human history is read from the remains of places and things left behind by people living in a changing world. During the medieval era, that world was defined by a warming climate that had significant impacts on the people of the northern hemisphere. The results were the Vikings, the desiccation of North Africa, and the expansion of southeast Asian states. Hindu, Islam, and Christian religions all spread during this time, as climate change enabled travel, and religion demanded it. In the Americas, the warm period made life difficult along the west coasts, while conditions in portions of the interior became ideal for the spread of cults to a Wind-That-Brings-Rain god.
Lost in Ancient America
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

The four surviving men of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition traversed North America and the Gulf of Mexico from Florida and Texas through Arizona and Mexico between 1528 and 1536. Along the way they encountered descendants of cultures that had coalesced during the earlier Medieval Warm Period. More attuned to cultural details than other Spanish conquistadors, the four men—most notably Cabeza de Vaca—record tantalizing details of the descendants of those earlier medieval-era people. The Apalachee yet used a great circular council house. The Avavares spoke of a dagger-wielding god. Southwestern and North Mexican peoples all along the way understood the travelers as god-men of lore.
Ballcourts at Snaketown
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

How religious practices and ceremonies moved across North America may be understood by looking at cultures where they did not move. The Hohokam of Arizona were agriculturalists who lived in the Sonoran Desert to the southwest of their culturally unrelated neighbors, the Ancestral Puebloans. Historically speaking, the Hohokam were derived from the people of North and West Mexico who had been, in turn, affiliated in some ways with the Toltecs of the Postclassic period in Mesoamerica. Chalchihuites-culture sites such as La Quemada and Alta Vista reveal the linkages. But the Hohokam did not participate in the storm-god religion common to the Toltecs, Huastecs, and Ancestral Puebloans. The reasons for this remain a mystery, especially since Hohokam farmers did play the Mesoamerican ballgame, a ritualized sport that, oddly, was unknown among contemporaries to the north and east.
Paddling North
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

While Mesoamerica was drying out during the medieval era, the Mississippi valley was experiencing optimal warmer and wetter agricultural conditions. The urban complex that resulted at Cahokia was a result of the potential to grow maize as well as the special watery and cavernous landscape of the region. Cahokians emplaced hundreds of upright ceremonial poles and built borrow-pit reservoirs, elevated causeways, thousands of pole-and-thatch buildings, and great, flat-topped, rectangular and circular pyramids of earth. Many of the buildings and ceremonies, including human sacrifice, were aligned with or timed to the long cycle of the Moon. Caddo influences are obvious, and Cahokia in many ways appears to have recapitulated Mesoamerican urban life, even down to the importation of the Mesoamerican god Wind-That-Brings-Rain, or Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl.
Smoking Daggers
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

Key elements of Cahokia, such as its well-known chipped-stone daggers and the human-face earrings of its elites, are copies of Mesoamerican ritual objects associated with the Wind-that-brings-rain and other related gods. Other items, sacrificial practices, causeways, and architectural constructions indicate the presence of Caddos at Cahokia or, perhaps, the travels of both Caddos and Cahokians to and from Mesoamerica. Given the quantities of Gulf Coast marine shell at Cahokia, it is likely that Cahokians mounted pilgrimages south into Caddo country and beyond into Huasteca. Besides the shell artifacts themselves, support for such claims exists in the form of Cahokian occupations hundreds of miles from their city. The evidence of libation ceremonies at one, Cherry Valley, sit on Crowley’s Ridge at the interface of Indigenous territories and histories. Tribal nations today have a good basis to claim descent from the medieval-era city.
First Medicine
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: December 2022

With its substantial powers over life and death, water itself emerges as a key historical actor in Medieval America. The circular shrines that people built to the Wind-that-brings-rain or Thunder gods were the places wherein people appealed to those powers for life-giving precipitation and the healing powers of water generally. Such shrines and their rituals were, thus, places of healing, and people would have been drawn to them. Given their importance, the history of such buildings can be traced, similar to the history of saunas in Europe and Asia. The big history of North America cannot be told without understanding the power of circles generally, which extends the story back thousands of years to the Hopewell and Poverty Point cultures in North America, and to the Teuchitlan and Cuicuilco cultures in Mesoamerica.
Propositions
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: December 2022

This book is a defense of an ontology of propositions and of some logical resources for representing them. It begins with an austere formulation of a theory of propositions in a first-order extensional logic, but then uses the commitments of this theory to justify an enrichment to modal logic—the logic of necessity and possibility—as an appropriate framework for regimented languages that are constructed to represent any of our scientific and philosophical commitments. Both the proof theory and the model theory of a first-order quantified modal logic are developed in detail, and it is argued that these formal resources help to sharpen questions about ontology and predication. The clarification of predication helps to provide a motivation for extending our ontological commitment to properties and relations that are expressed by predicates, and for extending the logic to a higher-order modal logic that provides a conception of metaphysical modality that allows for the contingent existence, not only of persons and physical objects but also of properties, relations, and propositions. Even though both the specific ontological commitments defended (to propositions, properties, and relations) and the logical resources that are used to defend them (modal and higher-order logic) were famously rejected by W. V. Quine, the book adopts a self-consciously neo-Quinean methodology and argues that the theory that is developed helps to motivate and clarify Quine’s naturalistic metaphysical picture.
Propositions
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: December 2022

A theory of propositions with just two primitive predicates, truth and consistency, is formulated in first-order extensional logic, and it is argued that a theory of this kind should be acceptable to one with Quine’s ontological scruples. But if we accept that there are propositions, we should assume that regimented languages of the kind that Quine aimed to construct should express propositions, and this assumption motivates and helps to justify the use of a language with modal operators in which to formulate our theories. Quine rejected modal logic, and while it is acknowledged that there are good reasons to criticize the foundations for modal logic given by its early developers, it is argued that the theory of propositions provides a different foundation that is not subject to those criticisms. The move to modal logic does raise some new questions that are to be discussed in later chapters.
First-Order Modal Logic and a First-Order Theory of Propositions
Authors: Stalnaker Robert
Published: December 2022

This chapter is a technical digression with two aims: The first is to make explicit the proof theory and model theory for the first-order modal logic that has been proposed as a framework for regimented languages. The model theory is a version of possible-worlds semantics that allows the domains of individuals to vary from world to world. The second task is to make explicit a representation of the formal theory of propositions proposed in Chapter 2 in this modal framework. The first task includes giving a completeness theorem for the modal logic. The second task includes an argument that there is no paradox in a theory of propositions with a truth predicate that applies to the propositions expressed in the language of that theory.
Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism
Authors: Bachrach Emilia
Published: December 2022

This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in relationship to a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg’s early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early modern North India, these texts continue to be popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat—the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of “reading” inform and are informed by intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, the book provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.
Introduction: An Ethnography of Reading
Authors: Bachrach Emilia
Published: December 2022

The Introduction presents Vārtā Sāhitya (“Chronicle Literature”) as a performative canon—a repertoire of written texts and the different modes through which people engage with these texts. Laying out the book’s methodology, arguments, and chapter outline, the Introduction also argues that though particularly significant for understanding the dynamics of Pushtimargi Hinduism, studying how modern devotees read and interpret Vārtā Sāhitya also offers important insight into how religious reading functions more broadly. Religious reading functions as a set of practices that enable devotees to make centuries of tradition mesh with, and transform, their contemporary worlds. In this study, “reading” includes various analytic and affective modes of individual and collective engagement with religious texts, but also various forms of oral and written discourse. Through these practices, devotees put their personal lifeworlds into dynamic conversation with the landscapes of their beloved texts. In the iterative process, both readers and texts are transformed.
Commentarial Reading
Authors: Bachrach Emilia
Published: December 2022

This chapter introduces several pivotal moments in the modern formation of the Pushtimarg, including the well-known Maharaja Libel Supreme Court case of 1862, during which the scriptural authority of Vārtā Sāhitya and its representation of the Pushtimarg as an “authentically Hindu sect” was called into question. The chapter demonstrates how in the aftermath of such historical moments Pushtimargis restored a sense of community through a deliberate cultural reauthorization of their vernacular literature. This reauthorization was achieved in part by embedding within the hagiographies new styles of written commentary aimed at making the texts palatable to modern readers. The rise of late 19th-century print capitalism, which initiated the circulation of the vārtās as published books, was also an important factor in facilitating this cultural reauthorization. Examples of late 19th- and 20th-century written commentaries reveal a distinct concern for how Pushtimargis might continue to find devotional inspiration from their premodern literary tradition.
Public Reading
Authors: Bachrach Emilia
Published: December 2022

This chapter considers how in-person and virtual public readings (e.g., pravacans, or “religious lectures”) have been used by various interlocutors to negotiate changing physical and social-institutional structures. The chapter’s primary example is a debate over temple (re)construction and corresponding changes in the ritual worship of Krishna. Those who oppose (re)construction argue that such projects are antithetical to the teachings embedded in sectarian literature and strip the Pushtimarg of its distinct identity by rendering sectarian temples, known as havelīs (lit. “palatial homes”), as ordinary mandirs (temples). The chapter unpacks the nuances of these debates, analyzing how interlocutors with various commitments defend their positions via specific interpretations of devotional literature and their own direct communication with Krishna. The debates analyzed reveal the multiple ways in which individuals rely on practices of public reading to articulate a vision of the Pushtimarg’s future as an increasingly affluent and transnational Hindu community.
Women’s Reading
Authors: Bachrach Emilia
Published: December 2022

This chapter follows the lives and reading practices of Pushtimargi hereditary leader Goswami Indirabetiji and three ardent female devotees. Goswami Indirabetiji’s role as a public exegete is directly connected to how these devotees and other women describe their own reading practices as helpful in mitigating tensions between their familial roles and their roles as Krishna’s caretakers. The chapter argues that female devotees and their hereditary leader counterparts strategically innovate traditional techniques of reading to their advantage. In doing so, they renegotiate the structure of their personal social-devotional relationships as women and the public identity of the Pushtimarg. The chapter also argues that women’s practices of reading are as affectively significant as they are analytically meaningful. In this way, religious reading contributes to the ways that women cultivate their own personal well-being, as well as the well-being of their household Krishna deities, families, and broader community.
Introduction
Authors: Zhu Victor
Published: December 2022

While Edwards’s theology has been studied extensively since the 1950s, no published monograph on his millennialism is available. The standing controversial issues include Edwards’s awareness of the millennial chronology and geography, his contributions to Puritan millennial thoughts, and the political or apolitical nature of his millennialism. Living in eighteenth-century New England Colony, Edwards was confronted with several theological and intellectual challenges, which include Arminianism, Arianism, and Socinianism, as well as Deism, humanistic rationalism, and religious skepticism. In this context, Edwards went on developing his millennialism in light of his Christological, Judeo-centric, and cosmic theological visions.
“This Lower World Shall Be All over Covered with Light”
Authors: Zhu Victor
Published: December 2022

By situating Edwards’s millennialism in the Reformed tradition, one finds that he serves as a typical example of a dramatic paradigm shift in the millennial views of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. As a summary and climax of this shift, Edwards expected a one-thousand-year millennial kingdom. This kingdom is earthly, inchoate, and arriving in the distant future. The futuristic and terrestrial view was informed by Edwards’s hermeneutical approach and theology, and it highlighted God’s glorification. This was a significant departure from Calvin and other reformers. While Edwards aligned himself with a few groups among his Puritan contemporaries, his millennialism diverged from them in several aspects, including a millennial chronology, the first resurrection of the slain saints, and Christ’s spiritual reign on earth.
“As the Cold Increases . . .”
Authors: Zhu Victor
Published: December 2022

A once-prevalent misinterpretation of Edwards’s millennial feature is his anticipation of its imminence. While he agreed with those who held an imminent millennialism in many aspects, Edwards was convinced of a long but gradual advancement of the divine redemptive work before the millennium. Several factors were at work: his awareness of the complexity of the work of redemption, his expectation of the final universal revival, and his belief in the divine wisdom, sovereignty, and glory manifested in the progressive realization of the millennial kingdom. Anticipating an earthly millennium that will be realized in the distant future and highlighting its apolitical features, Edwards diverged from many of his optimistic colleagues who were expecting an imminent inauguration of a golden age. In his millennialism, Edwards rejected the over-optimism of the Reformation and Puritan ages.
Edwards’s Judeo-Centric Vision of the Millennium
Authors: Zhu Victor
Published: December 2022

Unlike some Puritan divines who advocated supersessionism or an England-/America-centric view, Edwards upheld a Judeo-centric millennialism: the land of Israel would be the ideal location of the millennial kingdom on earth; and the people of Israel after their eschatological restoration will play critical and decisive roles in commencing the millennium. By giving Israel a significant place in the millennial kingdom and following his redemptive-historical vision, Edwards decentralized the land and people of England and New England in his millennial vision, hence departing from many Reformed predecessors and Puritans. While his millennial view is Judeo-centric, Edwards distanced himself from the Israel-superiority spectrum. His expectation of Israel’s restoration is based on his conviction of God’s faithfulness and glorification.
“As the Waters Cover the Seas”
Authors: Zhu Victor
Published: December 2022

While Judeo-centric, Edwards’s millennialism is also cosmic. His vision of the millennial kingdom extends from New England and Israel to China and other parts of the heathen world. For Edwards, the interaction among heaven, hell, and earth extends throughout redemptive history, so his millennial vision involves both visible and invisible worlds: earth, heaven, and hell. Among his Reformed forefathers and Puritan contemporaries, Edwards stood out in his anticipation of China being included in the millennial kingdom. Confronting the Deists who viewed China as a case to challenge the authority of Christian orthodoxy, Edwards took the same case to refute their natural theology and defended the necessity of biblical revelation and divine redemption, though his interpretation of Chinese philosophical classics appears problematic and unconvincing at times.
Shifting the Focus
Authors: Seligson Kenneth E.
Published: December 2022

The chapter begins by introducing why, despite increasingly nuanced understandings of Pre-Colonial Maya socio-ecological resilience and perseverance, the focus in the broader public imagination continues to be on the Terminal Classic “Maya Collapse.” The overarching arguments of the book are introduced, which include the following: (1) That the most incredible thing about Pre-Colonial Maya civilization is not that it collapsed, but that it endured for over seven centuries; and (2) that the most significant lesson we can learn from the Pre-Colonial Maya is to be flexible when it comes to our human-environment relationships and practices. The chapter then includes a brief overview of the rise and eventual breakdown of Classic Maya civilization to orient the non-specialist reader. The main areas of Classic Maya conservation and sustainability practices that will be the focus of the book are introduced, including forestry, agriculture, water management, burnt lime production, and stone processing. It concludes with an introduction to the environmental mosaic of the Maya lowlands. The Maya area should not be thought of as a homogeneous territory, but rather a mix of microenvironments sharing some tropical characteristics but requiring highly localized socio-ecological adaptations.
From Camera Lucida to Lidar
Authors: Seligson Kenneth E.
Published: December 2022

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the advances in archaeological technology, methods, and theoretical frameworks that have changed our understanding of human-environmental relationships in the Pre-Colonial Maya lowlands. It begins by summarizing the origins of the earliest ideas about the Classic Maya Collapse, and how contemporary public understandings are lagging behind changing ideas in academic circles. After a brief description of the earliest scholarly investigations in the lowlands, it focuses more specifically on recent advances in technological and methodological approaches applied to the study of the ancient Maya. These include environmental science methods like lake core and mineral formation analyses, as well as microscopic botanical analyses. The chapter concludes with an in-depth discussion of the application of lidar airborne laser-scanning technologies to the study of ancient settlement patterns, population estimates, and land-use strategies. This exploration of scientific methods used to reconstruct past environments and climatic records provides a basis for understanding many of the developments discussed in the succeeding chapters.
Water
Authors: Seligson Kenneth E.
Published: December 2022

This chapter provides a brief overview of Classic Maya water-management systems, highlighting both the challenges of securing year-round access to water and the variety of solutions engineered by communities across the lowlands to address them. In many regions, communities learned from the shortcomings of their Preclassic forebears and diversified their water capture and storage strategies. The relatively stable climate of the Classic Period contributed to the steady growth of communities for over seven centuries, but the population expansion presented its own challenges. As communities like Tikal and Edzna expanded, they adapted their water-management systems by augmenting the scale of existing reservoir and canal networks and constructing new, smaller reservoirs away from the site center. A massive, centrally planned terrace network transformed the landscape of the Vaca Plateau around Caracol to slow runoff, capture water, and saturate the soil. Palenque’s engineers continued to carve new building surfaces out of the site’s waterlogged perch on the edge of the highlands by diverting streams and runoff channels into paved conduits. In the Puuc region, Classic residents supplemented existing communal surface reservoirs with individual household cisterns. Throughout the lowlands, communities modified their natural environments to their advantage. Even a relatively stable climatic period in the tropics can include significant swings in precipitation from year to year and from subregion to subregion. Classic communities prepared for these uncertainties by diversifying water-management strategies and continuing to adapt their practices.