bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Priestesses and Ritual:Feeding the Kami-sama
Authors: Sered Susan 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
I had come to Okinawa to study priestesses’ rituals. I had read that men are not al lowed into the sacred groves, so I anticipated witnessing rituals that previous (male) ethnographers had not been able to see, but that they had considered important enough to write books and articles about. I arrived in Okinawa during a ritually dry time of year and was told by villagers and priestesses just to wait, and I would be able to see really important rituals starting in December. When I began to accompany the priestesses, I saw that on the mornings before the rituals they were excited and that after the rituals they were tired. Yet whether we were in the utaki (sacred grove) or at the kami-ya (village shrine), I found it difficult to figure out when the actual “ritual” took place or of what it consisted. Most of what the kaminchu did looked to me either like preparation for the ritual or postritual re laxation and munching. In chapter 2, I explained that Okinawan kami-sama do not really “do” or “act.” Their significance is in their presence rather than in their authority or actions. In this chapter, we see that the same is true of priestesses. Priestesses (embodied kami sama)-like disembodied kami-sama-emit good spiritual energy, and so villagers want to have them present at a variety of occasions. Like disembodied kami-sama, priestesses must be invited-they do not come on their own volition to rituals. Like disembodied kami-sama, priestesses’ spiritual energy needs to be focused or concentrated-that is the meaning of what looked to me like preparation for the rit ual. And finally, when kami-sama-embodied or disembodied-are present, they are given food.
Priestesses, Yuta, and Ogami People
Authors: Sered Susan 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The priestesses of Henza are not the only ritual experts on the scene. A variety of categories of religious specialists accomplish in Henza what in many other cultures is accomplished by one category-or by an ordered hierarchy-of experts. Aside from religious leaders who identify themselves as associated with an other religious tradition (for example, the Buddhist priests who come to the village from the main island in order to officiate at funerals), Henza is home to at least twenty different ritual-specialist roles. Many of these roles are limited: A particular person or family is responsible for a shrine or for bringing a certain type of food to rituals. Together with the priestesses, the ritual experts most salient in the lives of villagers are yuta and ogami [prayerJ people-almost all of whom are women. In previous chapters, in order to discourage readers from assuming that the content of these roles is the same as that of shamans in other better-known societies, I have chosen to translate both of these words ambiguously as “shaman-type practition ers”; in this chapter I shall explain how these roles are understood in Henza.
The Irreducible Individual
Authors: Stevenson William R 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Without question, Calvin’s individual believer takes on an order of importance easily surmounting his classical and medieval counterparts. Now the direct repository of God’s will and of God’s grace, he embodies the pivotal human contact point with divine reality. The individual conscience becomes, as it were, the Archimedean fulcrum by which the triune God discloses his will in the midst of historical circumstance. Indeed, Calvin understands conscience to be the key operating component of each human being, and so the principal source of political maturity. The Created, and Fallen, Individual Endowed in creation with both “natural” and “supernatural” gifts, human beings as originally conceived frame a wondrous whole, “among all God’s works, ... the noblest and most remarkable example of his justice, wisdom and goodness” (1.15.1, 183). Not only are they endowed with both body and immortal soul but also with intact and functioning parts of the soul, namely, “understanding” and “will” (1.15.7, 194-95). Moreover, they are fully equipped for communion with their Creator and their fellow human beings; they are equipped with the “supernatural gifts” of spiritual discernment, of “faith, love of God, charity toward neighbor, [and]zeal for holiness and for righteousness” (2.2.12, 270).
Theindividual As Part Of The Whole
Authors: Stevenson William R 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
An account of Calvin’s teaching that spotlights only his apparent tendencies to nourish liberal individualism would remain seriously incomplete. For these tendencies compose only a part of Calvin’s vision for political community. To appreciate Calvin’s more subtle and distinct contributions to early modern thought, we must take note of his immediate sense of ambiguity and paradox in the face of God’s love and rule; we must see the creative tension in which he placed individual believers under the interposing eye of God’s sovereign grace. Although Calvin may have inadvertently nourished the emphasis on individual freedom we associate with liberalism, he was no liberal. In fact, in his essay Calvin warns his readers explicitly about the dangers of narrowly interpreting Christian freedom. The believer ought not to think that Christian freedom means to “shake off all obedience” or to “break out into unbridled license.” Christian freedom emphatically does not “take away all moderation, order and choice of things” (3.19.1, 834).3 Indeed, the cornerstone of a solid understanding of Christian freedom lies in Calvin’s concise statement: “Christian freedom is, in all its parts, a spiritual thing. Its whole force,” he goes on, “consists in quieting frightened consciences before God” (3.19.9, 840). No autonomous concept, Christian freedom reveals itself as “an appendage of justification” (3.19.1, 833).4 Because believers receive their justification before God only by means of Christ’s mediation and not from any self-deservedness, their freedom manifests itself as liberation from the “curse” of sin according to which they would otherwise be judged. The question is not, says Calvin, “how we may become righteous” but, rather, “how, being unrighteous and unworthy, we may be reckoned righteous” (3.19.2, 834). As the obverse of the irreducible individual, then, Calvin reveals to us the individual as partial and incomplete, as part of a larger whole beyond his “puny capacity” (3.6.5, 689) to understand. Here conscience plays its role less as independent vision and more as a link to larger duty.
The Apocryphal Acts In A Literary World
Authors: Thomas Christine M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The assertion that the Apocryphal Acts were most like the ancient Greek novel, and shared their genre, purpose, and intended audience, has become common. The first problem with this designation, however, is that it raises more questions than it answers. The ancient novel, sometimes called the ancient romance, like our modem counterpart, agglutinates with other genres, preventing easy classification. Ancient novels incorporate letters, speeches, dramatic monologues, and topographical descriptions, such as those practiced in rhetorical instruction. The plots of the romantic novels derive from New Comedy, and the interest in travel and in the local color of exotic places can be found already, in prose, in Herodotos, and in the of Hekataios ofMiletos; the epic precursor is the Odyssey. Scholarly discussion still continues about the precise definition of the ancient novel and the delimitation of those works belonging to the category. Particularly vexing are those novelistic texts that have closer affinities to history or biography. Recourse to ancient literary theory brings little benefit, since the ancients neither had an exact analog to our modem concept, “novel,” nor do the texts that we now consider ancient novels even enter their theoretical discussions. The two references to them in ancient literature are nontechnical and disparaging.
Narrative Fluidity As A Generic Characteristic
Authors: Thomas Christine M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Although blessed with a relatively extensive and variegated set of witnesses, the Acts of Peter lack any extended testimony to the original Greek text beyond that of the martyrdom account, extant in two manuscripts. The only other testimony emerges from the fourth-century vellum fragment (P. Oxy 849). None of these three Greek witnesses attests the Acts of Peter in their original form. Each of the manuscripts of the martyrdom account (Codex Patmos 48 and Codex Vatopedi 79) represents an independent excerpting from the longer version of the Acts of Peter, for they begin the martyrdom account at different points. Vatopedi begins with the episode of the rich and promiscuous benefactress Chryse (=AcVer 30), but Patmos begins only after the death of Simon, at the episode concerning Agrippa’s four concubines (=AcVer 33). The vellum fragment (P. Oxy. 849) is also a truncation of the longer narrative.
The Discourse Mobilized: The Debate over William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner
Authors: Rushdy Ashraf H A 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
William Styrons The Confessions of Nat Turner and John Henrik Clarkes William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond represent not only a novel and a book of literary criticism, respectively published in late 1967 and early 1968; rather, they together form a site of historical and cultural contestation at a crucial moment in the post-civil rights era.
Conclusion
Authors: Rushdy Ashraf H A 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
By the end of the 1980s, a large and distinctive body of writing about American chattel slavery had appeared in the form of both historical representations emphasizing the material conditions in the lives of slaves, the healthy legacy of slave cultures, and the infrapolitics of slave resistance; and in fictional works carefully and painstakingly tracing the courage, love, and anxieties of enslaved men, women, and communities.
Society and the Promise to David
Authors: Schniedewind William M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the second book of Samuel, the prophet Nathan tells King David that God will give to him and his descendants a great and everlasting kingdom. In this study Schniedewind looks at how this dynastic Promise has been understood and transmitted from the time of its first appearance at the inception of the Hebrew monarchy until the dawn of Christianity. He shows in detail how, over the centuries, the Promise grew in importance and prestige. One measure of this growing importance was the Promise’s ability to coax new readers into fresh interpretations.
The Legacy Of The Promise To David
Authors: Schniedewind William M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The Promise to David leaves a long literary legacy. Texts that deal with issues of vital importance to the community attract redaction, supplementation, editorial glossing, commentary, and complete rewriting. Part of the measure of a text’s ongoing vitality is its ability to coax new readers into fresh interpretations. An example is the interpretation and revision of the covenant code from Exodus in the book of Deuteronomy. The process of redaction and supplementation continues in the Temple Scroll from Qumran, and even after the canon is considered closed in works like the Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael or in Sifre Devarim. Texts of vital importance like the Covenant Code or, in the present case, the Promise to David, invited interpretation and revision from the very moment the text was produced. I would also argue that striking proof for the long development of biblical tradition (in contrast to the recent fashion, which makes it an invention of the Persian or Hellenistic period) comes from the study of inner-biblical discourse. We should hardly be surprised that texts like the Promise to David were continually reworked and reinvented.
Love Medicine Voices and Margins
Authors: Sands Kathleen M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is a novel of hard edges, multiple voices, disjointed episodes, erratic tone shifts, bleak landscapes, eccentric characters, unresolved antagonisms, incomplete memories. It is a narrative collage that seems to splice random margins of experience into a patchwork structure. Yet ultimately it is a novel, a solid, nailed-down, compassionate, and coherent narrative that uses sophisticated techniques toward traditional ends. It is a novel that focuses on spare essentials, those events and moments of understanding that change the course of life forever.
Where I Ought to Be A Writer’s Sense of Place
Authors: Erdrich Louise 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In A tribal view or the world, where one place has been inhabited for generations, the landscape becomes enlivened by a sense of group and family history. Unlike more contemporary writers, a traditional storyteller fixes listeners in an unchanging landscape combined of myth and reality. People and place are inseparable. The Tewa Pueblo, for example, begin their story underground, in complete darkness. When a mole comes to visit, they learn there is another world above and decide to go there. In this new place the light is so intense that they put their hands over their eyes to shield them. Grandmother Spider suggests that they adjust their vision to the light by gradually removing their hands and she points them to Sandia Mountain, the place where they will live. A great deal of wandering, bickering, lessons learned, and even bloodshed occur, but once there, they stay for good.
Interviews with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris
Authors: Erdrich Louise , Dorris Michael , Wong Hertha D 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Louise Erdrich: I think of any label as being both true and a product of a kind of chauvinistic society because obviously white male writers are not labeled “white male writers.” However, I suppose that they’re useful in some ways. I could as well be “woman writer” or whatever label one wants to use. But I really don’t like labels. While it is certainly true that a good part of my background, and Michael’s background, and a lot of the themes are Native American, I prefer to simply be a writer. Although I like to be known as having been from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and from North Dakota. It’s nice to have that known and to be proud of it for people backhome....
WonB: Collaboration is an idea that makes many writers who emphasize individual creativity uneasy. You two work together. Would you describe your collaborative process?
Vision and Revision in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine
Authors: Chavkin Allan 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Love Medicine made Louise Erdrich famous almost overnight. This novel prompted an unusual amount of critical attention, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has since become a work frequently anthologized and taught in colleges and universities. Yet in 1993 Erdrich republished the novel after revising it, adding four new chapters and a new section that become the second part of “The Beads,” and resequencing the chapters; the title page of the book was changed from Love Medicine.• A Novel to Love Medicine.• New and Expanded Version. Although occasionally writers have revised and “corrected” published books, there have been very few instances in which a major modern novel has been so substantially revised and expanded as Love Medicine was.
Conclusion
Authors: Selby Martha Ann 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In contemplating the interpretive foci and critical methods for these three literary establishments, I have come to several conclusions. In my opening pages, I addressed the problem of attempting to arrive at a definition of what we might term a “Pan-Indian classical love lyric.” On the level of fundamental materials-that is, the building blocks in South Asian intellectual, emotional, and geophysical environments that provide the necessary “gestalts” from which poetic conventions are built-we can speak of “commonalities.” On this very basic level-the level of the “pre-text”-there are indications that reflexively lead us to search for many common threads, for it quite naturally follows that many of the poetic conventions that we find in Old Tamil, Sanskrit, and Mahara tri Prakrit verse appear to be the same: they have been formulated, in many instances, from the same environmental gestalts. However, we can only arrive at a unified definition if we choose to leave these poems somehow denuded, that is, if we peel away issues of authorial nuance, questions of aesthetic response, and the issues surrounding the identities of intelligent readers. If we choose, as did I. A. Richards and other past and present adherents to the school of New Criticism, to read poetry only as “text,” as an authorless, readerless entity without history or potential pluralities of meaning, then, yes, a monolithic definition of what a love poem is in the south Asian classical context can easily be devised.
The Lovers Muse to Themselves "Grow Long, Blessed Night"
Authors: Selby Martha Ann 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The twenty poems included in this chapter represent the words of women and men in solitude, speaking to themselves, to their own hearts, to the moon; sighing out their desires, regrets, and memories into the blank, lonely night. The first seven poems are spoken by women and are quite straightforward in expression and meaning. The remaining poems are all spoken by men (the commentators occasionally remark that these poems are either “spoken by the hero to his own heart, or alternatively, to a male confidante” or to a travelling com¬ panion. Poems 13.8 and 13.9 are the words of men who are totally undone by the artifices and charms of their lovers. Poems 13.10 and 13-11, the first a Prakritgatha, the second a Tamil poem from Kur.untokai, reflect the heroes’ befuddlement at finding their lovers bold by night, but shy or indifferent by day. Poems 13.12-13.18 are all heroes’ recollections-either tortured or fond, sometimes both--of past sexual pleasures, of returning to their homes to embraces after long journeys, and of acutely painful moments of parting. Poem 13 .19 is a man’s soliloquy about his lover’s growing indifference, and the final poem, from the Tamil anthology Kur.untokai, is an outburst of despair set in the marutam landscape, that of horrible quarreling and infidelity after marriage. According to U. Ve. Caminataiyar, the spealcer has been consorting with other women, and he speaks this poem to his own heart but within earshot of his wife.
Wives Address Their Philandering Husbands "More Than Three Are Bees Sucking Honey from Budding Flowers"
Authors: Selby Martha Ann 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The fifteen poems in this chapter all represent the voices of unhappy wives (the commentaries attached to a few of these verses suggest that the speakers could also be unmarried women who are lashing out at inconstant lovers). This section opens with two poems that depict protesting wives as their husbands set out on long journeys. Poem 15.1, a Prakrit gatha, is a bit opaque in meaning but commentator Mathuranath Sastri offers this interpretation, adopting the voice of the wife: "Whoever might be cut off from my heart for just an instant would naturally be remembered. But a man who lives night and day in my heart, how can I remember him? "The point seems to be that a love that lives in memory is not a love worth having! Poem 15.2, from the Sanskrit Amarufataka, ends in a bald suicide threat. Poem 15.3, a Tamil verse from Kuruntokdai, is addressed to a crowing rooster (but meant for the husband's ears). Since this unusual poem is set in the Marutam landscape, we can surmise that the husband has been sleeping with other women but has decided to return home. Poems 15.4-15.10 all record the voices of women as they bitterly quarrel with their men. All of these poems(with the exception of poem 15.4, a Prakrit gatha), are from the Amaru collection and demonstrate the pure genius of the authors associated with this anthology-their ability to create monologues and dia longues such as these, employing highly complex, algebraic meters while maintaining a perfectly colloquial tone, is unparalleled in other South Asian literary traditions. The final six poems all directly allude to rivals. Verses 15.10 and 15.11, from the Tamil anthology Ainkurunuru, are spoken by a women whose body has been ruined by childbirth. Her husband has taken on lovers, and she shames him. This is a theme that is unique to the Tamil tradition. The final poem in this series, a Prakritgatha, is spoken by a senior wife: She says this obliquely to her husband, who has focused all of his affections on a new co-wife. The senior wife compares herself to a serviceable, durable shawl that is warm in winter-what good is an ox against the cold?
Starving for Salvation
Authors: Lelwica Michelle Mary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In recent years, eating disorders among American girls and women have become a subject of national concern. Conventional explanations of eating problems are usually framed in the language of psychology, medicine, feminism, or sociology. Although they differ in theory and approach, these interpretations are linked by one common assumption—that female preoccupation with food and body is an essentially secular phenomenon. In Starving for Salvation, Michelle Lelwica challenges traditional theories by introducing and exploring the spiritual dimensions of anorexia, bulimia, and related problems. Drawing on a range of sources that include previously published interviews with sufferers of eating disorders, Lelwica claims that girls and women starve, binge, and purge their bodies as a means of coping with the pain and injustice of their daily lives. She provides an incisive analysis of contemporary American culture, arguing that our dominant social values and religious legacies produce feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction in girls and women. Trapped in a society that ignores and denies their spiritual needs, girls and women construct a network of symbols, beliefs, and rituals around food and their bodies. Lelwica draws a parallel between the patriarchal legacy of Christianity, which associates women with sin and bodily cravings, and the cultural preference for a thin female body. According to Lelwica, these complimentary forces form a popular salvation myth that encourages girls and women to fixate on their bodies and engage in disordered eating patterns. While this myth provides a sense of meaning and purpose in the face of uncertainty and injustice, Lelwica demonstrates that such rigid and unhealthy devotion to the body only deepens the spiritual void that women long to fill. Although Lelwica presents many disturbing facts about the origins of eating disorders, she also suggests positive ways that our society can nourish the creative and spiritual needs of girls and women. The first step, however, is to acknowledge that female preoccupation with thinness and food signifies a strong desire for fulfillment. Until we recognize and contest the religious legacies and cultural values that perpetuate eating disorders, many women will continue to turn to the most accessible symbolic and ritual resources available to them—food and their bodies—in an attempt to satiate their profound spiritual hunger.
Bodies Of Evidence, Bodies Of Knowledge Contemporary Approaches, Historical Perspectives, New Directions
Authors: Lelwica Michelle Mary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Religious thinkers have often been notorious for intellectual parochialism. The seemingly archaic language and methods of traditional theology, next to the skepticism and jargon of modem and postmodern thought, make cross-disciplinary exchange nothing short of a miracle. But what falls through the cracks between apparently disparate bodies of knowledge may be precisely what is needed in order for us to see more clearly. This chapter endeavors to explore some of this between-the-cracks material. The explicit purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of contemporary approaches, historical perspectives, and new directions in the study of eating disorders.