Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Struggle Over Education's Purpose, Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

While reading John D. Roth’s social history of Goshen College, the words of Ecclesiastes 1:9 came to mind: “There is nothing new under the sun.” ­Goshen’s challenges were (and are) similar to other church-affiliated schools. Concerns about “theological drift,” raised at Goshen a century ago, continue not only there but at other faith-based institutions. A faculty member at my university recently expressed similar worry about losing our faith-centered focus, using the same language of theological drift.

Towards A Literary History Of Quaker Writing In The Atlantic World, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Among eighteenth-century Quaker writers, John Woolman was idiosyncratic, as illustrated by the fact that in his journal he recorded an ac-count of his own death. Needless to say, this was not usually done. Instead, it was conventional for posthumously published Quaker journals to include not only an autobiographical narrative of spiritual development but also additional material written by qualified Friends offering further testimony and giving details about how and when the author died. The first printing of Woolman’s journal in his posthumous Works (1774) is accompanied by such material about his 1772 death in York, England, but this was not …

Environmental Aesthetics And Environmental Justice In Jonathan Edwards’S Personal Narrative And John Woolman’S Journal, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

This essay examines the relationship between Christian theology, environmental aesthetics, and environmental justice in colonial America. As opposed to the work of secular writers from the early republic like J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and Thomas Jefferson, the Christian environmental aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards and John Woolman have potential to address questions of environmental justice in American literary history, such as tenant exploitation, African enslavement, and Indigenous displacement. Edwards, however, worked in a pastoral literary tradition, which limited his ability to imagine environmental justice due to his commitment to the doctrine of election. Woolman, on the other hand, worked …

John Woolman, Jay D. Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

John Woolman (b. 1720-d. 1772), a Quaker shopkeeper, tailor, and farmer from West Jersey, traveled extensively throughout colonial America as an itinerant minister and produced writings on the most important social problems of the era. Woolman was part of a group of ministers working for increased discipline and broad reform among Friends. He cared deeply about the right conduct and purity of Quaker meetings for worship, and these concerns informed his social thought, as did his various livelihoods. His experience selling goods from his store and the produce of his farm made him increasingly aware of how the transatlantic economy …

The Matter And (Mostly) Manner Of Mere Christianity, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Presented to a meeting of the Inkling Folk Fellowship (IFF), July 23rd, 2021.

Zoom Session Link: https://youtu.be/F2ZKEPD0YFg

Research Question•Why does Lewis’s work of popular apologetics continue to find a wide readership while other excellent books in the same genre—e.g., Sayers’s Creed or Chaos—do not?

Christianity Today Survey (2000): Most influential Christian books

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1942-44; 1952) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932-67) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1968) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) Richard Foster, …

William Penn’S Imperial Georgic And The Vernacular Landscapes Of Pennsylvania In Eighteenth-Century Quaker Journals, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

This essay analyzes changes in the way Quaker writers represented the landscape of Pennsylvania, particularly the economic features of its built environment, over time. I argue that the promotional writing of William Penn constituted an “official” represent at ion of the landscape, using the genre of imperial georgic to highlight the colony’s productive and lucrative potential for an audience of investors while minimizing the role of indentured servitude, African enslavement, and Indigenous dis-possession in the process of economic development. Eighteenth- century Quaker reformers, however, developed a more “vernacular” portrayal of the landscape that was attentive to the privations of those …

Book Review: The Lion In The Waste Land: Fearsome Redemption In The Work Of C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, And T. S. Eliot By Janice Brown, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Readers of scholarship about C. S. Lewis are familiar with studies that discuss his work and life in the context of his fellow Inklings: Tolkien, Williams, and Barfield. Janice Brown’s decision, however, to treat C. S. Lewis alongside two of his contemporary writers, both non-Inklings—Dorothy L. Sayers and T. S. Eliot—does demand an explanation. Brown must have recognized as much since she begins The Lion in the Waste Land by building a case for considering these three authors together, citing British historian Adrian Hastings, who identifies a “re-appropriation of Christian faith” during World War II and attributes this revival …

When The Worst People Are The Best Rhetoricians: (Mis)Using Rhetoric In C. S. Lewis’S The Last Battle, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In discussing John Milton’s manipulation of the reader in Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis comments generally on the art of rhetoric: “I do not think (and no great civili-zation has ever thought) that the art of the rhetorician is necessarily vile. It is in itself noble, though of course, like most arts, it can be wickedly used” (53). From comments in his letters and essays, we know that Lewis thought frequently about his own work as a Christian apologist, concerned that he pursue truth in his arguments rather than trying to win an argument at all costs. In fact, he …

“Friend Thou Art Often In My Remembrance”, Jay D. Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

A recently discovered letter by Elizabeth Ashbridge expands the very small archive of documents related to this important Quaker minister, gives scholars a better understanding of the circles in which she moved, and offers an occasion for reflection on epistolary writing in the eighteenth century. Written to her fellow Quaker Margaret Bowne, the letter fascinates as a dense record of the overlapping transatlantic, commercial, and ministerial connections Friends maintained during the period. It also illustrates the persistence of Pauline epistolary tropes in the context of an ostensibly “secular” familiar letter, reminding scholars of the pitfalls of thinking of the secular …

A Difference Of Degree: Sayers And Lewis On The Creative Imagination (Chapter In The Faithful Imagination), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis were writers who thought deeply about the creative imagination, the creative process, and the relation of these to their Christian faith. Both were practitioners, as well as theorists, producing multiple works of fiction, drama, apologetics, and poetry. Both wrote for a variety of audiences including scholarly and popular and believed that literary works could be entertaining as well as edifying, could both delight and teach, as the classical and renaissance writers put it. Finally, both authors addressed the creative imagination in their essays, books, and letters. While a comprehensive treatment of their …

C. S. Lewis' Ambivalence Toward Rhetoric And Style, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

While C. S. Lewis has been called by many names (scholar, teacher, speaker, philosopher, literary critic, and theologian, to name only a few), rhetorician is the name he often used to describe himself, and, based upon his life and body of work, it is perhaps one of the most appropriate titles for him. As James Como asserts, "[Lewis'] rhetorical temper provided a compulsiveness and a posture that could be resolved only in argument. Training, taste, and talent equipped him for an academic and apologetic career, to the exclusion of nearly all others ... Lewis was the quintessential Homo rhetoricus, knew …

"When The Light That's Lost Within Us Reaches The Sky" Jackson Browne's Romantic Vision (Chapter Seven Of Rock And Romanticism: Blake, Wordsworth, And Rock From Dylan To U2), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "In "Michael: A Pastoral Poem," William Wordsworth imagines "youthful Poets, who among these Hills I Will be my second Self when I am gone." 1 In his recent critical study, Andrew Bennett suggests that Wordsworth and the other British Romantic poets continue to have an impact on the poetry and poetic theory of our times: "Contemporary culture, indeed, is pervaded by developments in conceptions of poetry and art that are associated most fully with the Romantic period."2 As Sayre and Lowy state, "Far from being a purely nineteenth-century phenomenon, Romanticism is an essential component of modern culture."3 One contemporary …

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling (Book Review), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

What Love Looks Like, As I Recall, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "I am standing in a funeral home in Wichita, Kansas, looking at my grandmother's face. It appears fuller than it did when I last saw it. When she was alive. Her gray hair is styled more formally than usual. Only her glasses look the same. Behind the lenses, however, her eyes show none of their usual sparkle, the way they seemed to twinkle when she made a joke or heard or read an insightful comment- or listened to me play my guitar. I am a junior in high school, and I have no clue how I'm going to go …

Books, Theology, And Hens: The Correspondence And Friendship Of C. S. Lewis And Dorothy L. Sayers, Laura K. Simmons, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

"That Lewis and Sayers had much in common and that their lives intersected in a number of interesting ways throughout their careers is common knowledge for even the casual follower of either author. What does not seem to have been appreciated or explained sufficiently in the scholarship to date is the nature of the friendship between these two influential Christian authors. Therefore, it is this friendship we wish to shed light on, using as our primary source the correspondence between Lewis and Sayers from 1942-1957. In addition, we look at what the biographers of each author have to say about …

Reflecting The Eternal: Dante's Divine Comedy In The Novels Of C. S. Lewis (Book Review), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Staging Intercultural Ireland: New Plays And Practitioner Perspectives, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

All scholars of world literature, especially those trained in the traditions of Western thought, must ultimately grapple with the question of privilege: In opening up a space for all voices to be heard, care must be taken to avoid coopting those voices. Academics must always be aware of our own motivations so that discussions of multi-cultural literature do not appear anthropological, mere examinations of other cultures from a worldview that seems ubiquitous but which comes from a place of unconscious-perhaps- superiority. Critics from Edward Said, in Orientalism, to Gayatri Spivak, in "Can the Subaltern Speak?" to Chinua Achebe in …

Faith And God (Chapter 3 Of "Reflections: Virginia Woolf And Her Quaker Aunt, Caroline Stephen"), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

"Beyond the bulwark of family, for both Caroline Stephen and Virginia Woolf, the institution of the Church was central in fostering a patriarchal fortress that kept women in an inferior position. For Caroline, turning away from the church tradition of her forefathers led her to the Quaker tradition as a way to honor both her God and herself as a woman. For Virginia, that same impulse led her away from the church as well, and although she did not embrace the tenets of Quakerism, much of her work is certainly imbued with a Quaker sensitivity to mysticism and spirituality."

Beyond The Inward Light: The Quaker Poet In Community, Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

It's a privilege to be granted a chance tq address a gathering like this: a room full of people whose Quaker way of life and thought are so very central to their work that they spend time and resources to get together and talk about it. We've been blessed with a common gift, and it isn't a small one.

That said, I suspect I'm not the only one here who sometimes wonders how, or even if, what I do matters. Yet even among you, my group of fellow self-doubters, I must lobby for my own elevated position: as a poet …

Maria Redux: Incarnational Readings Of Sacred History (Chapter 7 Of Building A New World), Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Noah and the Ark. Jonah and the Big Fish. Mary's yes to the Angel. Jesus's yes in the Garden of Gethsemane. Pilot's no and his wife's please, don't. Lot's wife and her last, homeward look. To whom do these sto- ries belong? And how should we read them, each from our particular corner of incarnate humanity? Here is what my corner looks like: I am a woman; I am a feminist; l am a literary critic; I am a product of Westernized Christianity. I write and read from the space where these words overlap, but what does that mean when …

Chaoskampf, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "The road to Camp On High was a two-lane highway that snaked uneasily up the side of Cedar Mountain. Quinn sat in the back of the van, next to a window that looked out into empty space. Somehow, the other kids were sleeping through this, three neat rows of lolling heads, ear buds dangling. Earlier in the ride, sturdy evergreens had covered the mountainside, jutting upward and waiting to catch the van that would, any second-Quinn was convinced-careen over the edge. But by now the trees had grown fragile and sparse, exposing gashes of red-orange rock and promising nothing."

Living By The Code: Authority In Gerard Stembridge's The Gay Detective, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Irish drama has few representations of police officers as anything but a trope for authority, tending to avoid any substantive character development. Likewise, it has few representations of homosexual characters, and when such representations do exist they are often caricatures. Reductive portrayals of police often arise from the complex relationship the Irish have with authority and with the legal system. But one of the few exceptions to this trend, and the only play to tackle the representation of a police officer and a homosexual at once, is Gerard Stembridge’s play The Gay Detective (1996). The play offers up the character …

Why Some Evangelicals Are Trying To Stop Obsessing Over Pre-Marital Sex, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

What About The Boys?, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

No Rape Victim, Male Or Female, Deserves To Be Blamed, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

The Pros And Cons Of Abandoning The Word 'Feminist', Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

The Child Is The Father Of The Man - Mad Men, Episode 8, Abigail Rine

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Review Of Mcfee's "That Was Oasis", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Review Of York's "Cold Spring Rising", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Review Of Clabough's "Inhabiting Contemporary Southern And Appalachian Literature", Bill Jolliff

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.