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Articles 1 - 30 of 133
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
2021-2022 Annual Report, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
2021-2022 Annual Report, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Muslim Student Life
This report is a concise overview of the 2021/2021 academic year, and it displays only some of the programs and accomplishments of Muslim students at Syracuse University. It shows that they continue to excel academically, socially, and spiritually. You will recognize that our impact, reach, and presence is not just on the SU campus but goes beyond it.
Leviticus 25’S History Of Inspiring Freedom As A Moral Challenge To Literary-Historical Interpretation, James Watts
Leviticus 25’S History Of Inspiring Freedom As A Moral Challenge To Literary-Historical Interpretation, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Though Leviticus 25’s description of the Jubilee sounds unrealistically utopian to many biblical scholars, the Jubilee ideal has stimulated many movements for freedom and economic reform in the last 500 years. It most famously motivated enslaved people to resist and abolitionists to challenge the institution of slavery. Today it continues to inspire reform movements for land redistribution and fair housing, for sovereign debt relief, and for developing environmentally sustainable economies. The contrast between scholarly assessments of the chapter’s meaning in its literary and ancient historical contexts and its proven power to inspire movements for freedom that were unimaginable to its …
Growth In Confidence And Search For Belonging: A Case Study Of Muslim Student Experience At An American College, Amir Duric
Muslim Student Life
The broader perception of Muslim Student Association (MSA) in the wider society is not always positive. It is often viewed as a conservative organization where all members need to be a specific type of Muslim to fit in or a political space influenced by a foreign group or ideology. Because of this I studied the group, and my findings challenge this view drawing from the semester-long fieldwork, participant observations, and four in-depth interviews with MSA members at Salt City University (SCU). Data collected shows how the group and its members and the broader Muslim community on campus made Muslim students …
Tracing The Genealogy Of Indonesian Muslim Students’ Religious Attitudes: What, Why, And What’S Next, Aziz Awaludin
Tracing The Genealogy Of Indonesian Muslim Students’ Religious Attitudes: What, Why, And What’S Next, Aziz Awaludin
English Language Institute
In 2019, according to Pew Research Center, 83% Indonesian people believed that religion has played a significant role in the contemporary Indonesia. As the most Muslim majority country, Indonesia has lots of problems with religious intolerance. This research poster aims to provide data on Indonesian Muslim students’ religious attitudes as well as the possible causes and the measures to tackle the problems. A desk research method was used to collect secondary data from previous studies. The findings show that most Indonesian Muslim students had intolerant behaviors which might be inherited from environments they had lived in. Several causes of the …
Which Kind Of Relation Do Evangelicals Intend To Establish With The State In Mexico?, Abraham Hawley
Which Kind Of Relation Do Evangelicals Intend To Establish With The State In Mexico?, Abraham Hawley
English Language Institute
This poster defines and classifies the types of relations that, since 1992, Mexican Evangelicals intend to establish with the State. Based on a literature review and in a case study, it is proposed that Evangelicals in Mexico do not seek a unique model for state-church relations, but many. In the Pentecostal church analyzed, two models were identified: 1) a “multi-confessional” regime inspired by biblical theocracy, and 2) a secular regime with “less jurisdictional” and more “ultra-liberal” tendencies.
The Historical Role Of Leviticus 25 In Naturalizing Anti-Black Racism, James Watts
The Historical Role Of Leviticus 25 In Naturalizing Anti-Black Racism, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from foreign slaves. It requires that Israelites be indentured only temporarily while foreigners can be enslaved as chattel (permanent property). This model resembles the distinction between White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves in the American colonies. However, the biblical influence on these early modern practices has been obscured by the rarity of citations of Lev. 25:39–46 in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about slavery. This article reviews the history of slavery from ancient Middle Eastern antiquity through the seventeenth century to show the unique degree to which early modern …
2020-2021 Annual Report: Muslim Student Life In The Changing World, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
2020-2021 Annual Report: Muslim Student Life In The Changing World, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Muslim Student Life
This report is a concise overview of the 2020/2021 academic year, and it displays only some of the programs and accomplishments of Muslim students. It shows that they continue to excel academically, socially, and spiritually. Being a part of the broader Hendricks Chapel community, we organized this report around the Chapel’s overarching values of belief, community, outreach, stewardship, and excellence. You will recognize that our impact, reach, and presence is not just on the SU campus but goes beyond it.
Sample Syllabus Using Understanding The Bible By Watts, James Watts
Sample Syllabus Using Understanding The Bible By Watts, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Sample syllabus for course using Understanding the Bible as A Scripture in History, Culture and Religion by James W. Watts (Wiley Blackwell, 2021)
Text Are Not Rituals And Rituals Are Not Texts, With An Example From Leviticus 12, James Watts
Text Are Not Rituals And Rituals Are Not Texts, With An Example From Leviticus 12, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Biblical scholars have increasingly realized that textual representations of rituals do not have the same function or meaning as the ritual performances that they describe. A survey of this theoretical distinction in biblical scholarship over the last 25 years shows the impact of this realization, and also several points of resistance. The significance of the distinction between ritual text and ritual performance can be illustrated clearly in Leviticus 12, which describes the rituals required of new mothers after giving birth. The chapter mandates practices that are unique in the Bible and, possibly, novel in ancient Israel’s religious culture. However, they …
Impact Of The Covid-19 On Religious Practices Of Muslim Students In Higher Education, Amir Duric
Impact Of The Covid-19 On Religious Practices Of Muslim Students In Higher Education, Amir Duric
Muslim Student Life
Implications of religious practices in Islam go far beyond religiosity, and this paper analyzed the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and religious practices of Muslim students in higher education. The analyzed data is from the survey of the Muslim Student Life at Syracuse University and the Center for Islam in Contemporary World at Shenandoah University. The survey was conducted through a non-random convenience sampling from March 30th through April 10th of 2020 and had 498 responders. For this study, I analyzed 272 who provided their demographic information. The paper hypothesized and confirmed an overall increase in the engagement with the …
Muslim Students And Covid-19: Understanding The Needs Of Muslim Students Within Higher Education, Amir Duric, Ermin Sinanovic, Mirjakhon Turdiev
Muslim Students And Covid-19: Understanding The Needs Of Muslim Students Within Higher Education, Amir Duric, Ermin Sinanovic, Mirjakhon Turdiev
Muslim Student Life
No abstract provided.
[Rethinking] Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University 2019-2020, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
[Rethinking] Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University 2019-2020, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Muslim Student Life
No abstract provided.
Biblical Rhetoric Of Separatism And Universalism And Its Intolerant Consequences, James Watts
Biblical Rhetoric Of Separatism And Universalism And Its Intolerant Consequences, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The long history of the Jewish and Christian use of separatist rhetoric and universal ideals reveals their negative consequences. The Hebrew Bible’s rhetoric about Israel as a people separated from the Egyptians and Canaanites is connected to Israel’s purity practices in Leviticus 18 and 20. Later communities wielding greater political power, however, employed this same anti-Canaanite pollution rhetoric in their efforts to colonize many different parts of the world. Separatist rhetoric was used to protect small Jewish communities in the early Second Temple period. The Christian New Testament rejected many of these purity practices in order to makes its mission …
Mobilizing The Social Power Of Iconic And Performative Texts For Justice And Reform, James Watts
Mobilizing The Social Power Of Iconic And Performative Texts For Justice And Reform, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
In the ten years of its existence, SCRIPT has succeeded in promoting and publishing an increasing variety of scholarship on iconic and performative texts. Culturally specific studies have provided the basis for comparative theorizing about the phenomena. This body of scholarship has put us in a better position to analyze current events involving iconic books and performative texts. It can also enable us to make creative suggestions for strengthening movements for justice and social reform by ritualizing iconic and performative texts. Here, I provide three examples of how to employ SCRIPT research to strengthen contemporary movements for social and environmental …
Annual Report 2018-2019, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Annual Report 2018-2019, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Muslim Student Life
No abstract provided.
Drawing Lines: A Suggestion For Addressing The Moral Problem Of Reproducing Immoral Biblical Texts In Commentaries And Bibles, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Some verses of Leviticus express norms that explicitly conflict with the legal and ethical teachings of contemporary Jewish and Christian denominations, and also with the laws of modern nations. Among them are texts mandating that readers treat some other people in ways now widely regarded as immoral, cruel, inhumane, and exploitative—texts that call for and / or have historically justified genocide, indiscriminate capital punishment, slavery, and the subjugation of women by men. National and international law today declares most of these behaviors illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. The moral problem for commentators and publishers is that, by publishing bibles …
Unperformed Rituals In An Unread Book, James Watts
Unperformed Rituals In An Unread Book, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
What is the significance of an unperformed ritual? And what is the meaning of an unread text? The intuitive answer, that unperformed rituals and unread texts have no meaning, is clearly wrong in the case of Leviticus. The rituals depicted in its text mean a great deal, because Jews, Samaritans and Christians continue to ritualize Leviticus as part of their scriptures. Leviticus’s status as the third book of scripture has remained virtually uncontested throughout the histories of these three religions, despite the fact that people do not observe many of its offering instructions or, among Christians, even read much of …
Sensation And Metaphor In Ritual Performance: The Example Of Sacred Texts, James Watts
Sensation And Metaphor In Ritual Performance: The Example Of Sacred Texts, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Rituals obviously utilize the human senses. Theological and mystical interpretations frequently comment on sensation as a source of metaphors for religious experience. However, the discourse used in religious rituals themselves usually avoids using the normal vocabulary appropriate to particular sensations, while focusing on ritual performance instead. This raises the question of whether it is generally the case that ritualizing sensation diverts attention from sensation to ritual behavior, and whether ritual interpretations usually divert attention from the sensation to its metaphorical meaning. This essay addresses these questions with the analytical tools of metaphor theory and ritual theory. To test and apply …
Ritualizing The Size Of Books, James Watts
Ritualizing The Size Of Books, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Rhetoric about books usually emphasizes their semantic contents. Larger-than-average and smaller-than-average books, however, draw our attention to their material form. Size therefore provides one means for ritualizing the iconic dimension of books. While enlarging books quickly exceeds any practical purpose for the sake of public display, shrinking books tends to carry with it pragmatic rhetoric about portability, low expense, and mass production. Yet the popularity of textual amulets across history and cultures suggests that private ritualization drives much of the market for miniatures.
2017-2018 Annual Report, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
2017-2018 Annual Report, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University
Muslim Student Life
No abstract provided.
The Unstated Premise Of The Prose Pentateuch: Yhwh Is King, James Watts
The Unstated Premise Of The Prose Pentateuch: Yhwh Is King, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to God, in marked contrast to many other parts of the Hebrew Bible. This terminological discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the major pentateuchal sources and, on the other hand, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, calls for explanation. Attention to a common and ancient rhetorical strategy of argumentation, the enthymeme, provides an explanation in the form of an unstated premise. The premise that YHWH is Israel’s king strengthened the persuasive force of the prose Pentateuch by remaining unstated.
Breaching The Divide: An Inquiry Into Border Passage, Russell Scheer
Breaching The Divide: An Inquiry Into Border Passage, Russell Scheer
Architecture Senior Theses
This project is an inquiry into the existing threshold that currently separates Israelis from Palestinians in the West Bank. Through the dismantling of the Israeli border checkpoint and reinterpretation of its parts, this project reimagines the sequence of passing through the threshold. By framing the mundane activities of border passage through dramatic scenes, this architecture can reveal themes religion, resources, and surveillance. This architecture also intends to highlight the imbalance of the current conflict and those involved in it, by creating an architecture equally absurd.
Scriptures' Indexical Touch, James Watts
Scriptures' Indexical Touch, James Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Touching and holding books does not usually evoke the language of sensation. Touching a book indexes the reader in relationship to the book. Holding a book of scripture indexes a person as faithful to the beliefs and practices that are commonly associated with that scripture. In portraiture, the direction of a book’s indexical function is usually clear. Scribes, professors, lawyers and politicians pose in their libraries, often with book in hand, to depict themselves as scholars. The fact that scriptures are books makes a vocabulary of textual agency available for describing their symbolic function. The indexical link between book and …
Priestly Lineages In History And Rhetoric, James W. Watts
Priestly Lineages In History And Rhetoric, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
A comparison of Cross’s reconstruction of the Oniad high priestly line with his Mushite theory lays the basis for re-evaluating historical scholarships’ interest in ancient Jewish priestly families. In the religious politics of the Second Temple period, the Aaronide priestly dynasties were the Mushite priesthood. Differentiating priestly families earlier in Israel’s history raises questions about methodology and purpose as well as evidence.
Narrative, Lists, Rhetoric, Ritual And The Pentateuch As A Scripture, James W. Watts
Narrative, Lists, Rhetoric, Ritual And The Pentateuch As A Scripture, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
The Pentateuchʼs juxtaposition of different genres within a narrative framework provides some of the evidence for building source- and redaction-critical theories of the Pentateuchʼs literary history. Rhetorical analysis suggests, however, that such genre juxtapositions are characteristic of an ancient Near Eastern strategy of persuasion. The Pentateuchʼs inset genres, especially its lists of instructions and laws, generated most of its normative force that, together with its ritualization, led to its scripturalization as Torah.
The Historical And Literary Contexts Of The Sin And Guilt Offerings, James W. Watts
The Historical And Literary Contexts Of The Sin And Guilt Offerings, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Many interpreters have noted that the common nouns, hattat and asham, carry legal connotations in Akkadian and non-priestly parts of the Hebrew Bible. In P, they also serve as the names of the “sin” and “guilt” offerings. The fact that the offering names evoke legal documents and treaties suggests that they were introduced because priests were playing a larger role in legal matters, or at least wished to. The demise of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah provide plausible reasons for why the Temple would have been looking for additional sources of revenue in the form of the sin …
Writing Commentary As Ritual And As Discovery, James W. Watts
Writing Commentary As Ritual And As Discovery, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
This study combines rhetoric, ritual studies, and comparative scriptures studies to open new avenues for understanding both biblical texts and their cultural history as a scripture. Labelling commentary as ritual, specifically as a ritualized genre of text, leads to the observation that commentary not only contributes to the Bible’s status as a scripture, it depends on that status as well. Ritual theories provide explanations for the dynamic interaction of tradition and innovation in commentary writing. Analysis of commentary writing and reading as a form of ritualizing the semantic dimension of a scripture provides a step forward in understanding how religious …
From Ark Of The Covenant To Torah Scroll: Ritualizing Israel’S Iconic Texts, James W. Watts
From Ark Of The Covenant To Torah Scroll: Ritualizing Israel’S Iconic Texts, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Torah scrolls are the central icon of Jewish worship. Interpreters usually regard such ritual uses of physical Torah scrolls as a consequence of the Pentateuch’s textual authority and canonization. However, the traditions about tablets of commandments carried in a reliquary ark show that ritualization of texts in the iconic dimension began early in Israel’s history. Was the Pentateuch itself developed with such iconic uses in mind? That is, was the Pentateuch shaped to replace the tablets and the ark? Evidence for such shaping appears in ambiguities surrounding Pentateuchal traditions about the tablets and scrolls of the law. These passages equate …
Scripturalization And The Aaronide Dynasties, James W. Watts
Scripturalization And The Aaronide Dynasties, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
Priests claiming descent from Aaron controlled the high priesthood of temples in Jerusalem and on Mount Gerizim in the Second Temple period. These Aaronides were in a position to influence religious developments in this period, especially the scripturalization of the Torah. The priests’ dynastic claims were probably a significant factor in the elevation of the Pentateuch to scriptural status. This claim can be tested by correlating what little we know about the Aaronide dynasties with what little we know about the scripturalization of two different portions of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch and Ezra-Nehemiah.
The Political And Legal Uses Of Scripture, James W. Watts
The Political And Legal Uses Of Scripture, James W. Watts
Religion - All Scholarship
No abstract provided.