Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Separating God's Two Kingdoms: Regular Baptists In Maine, Nova Scotia, And New Brunswick, 1780 To 1815, Ronald S. Baines

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The trans-national Regular Baptist tradition in the northeastern borderlands of Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick grew rapidly from 1780 to 1815. The spiritual imperatives of this Calvinistic group with its commitment to believer’s baptism of adults and closed communion churches made them distinctive, and a central argument here is that the worldly implications of “Two Kingdom” theology, founded on the strict separation of religious and civil realms, was central to Regular Baptists’ success in the region in this period. Three leading ministers whose actions as authors, itinerants, and as organizational leaders receive especially close attention: Maine-based ministers Daniel Merrill …

Pluralism As A Social Practice: A Pragmatist Approach To Engaging Diversity In Public Life, Mary Leah Friedline

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation lays a theoretical framework for rethinking the ways in which political and moral philosophers conceive pluralism and diversity in public life. I argue that many philosophers who write on the topic do not have a sophisticated understanding of religion, are not sufficiently attentive to historically produced power differentials, and/or do not adequately recognize the intersectional dimensions of diversity. Building on Jeffrey Stout’s notion of democracy as a social practice, and supplemented with Cornel West’s understanding of democratic faith, I use my more complex account of diversity to argue that pluralism is best approached as a social practice, instead …

The Unlimited Absorbs The Limits: Analyzing The Religious And Mystical Aspects Of Virginia Woolf's Work Through The Lens Of William James, Zachary J. Beck

MSU Graduate Theses

Commentators on the work of modernist author Virginia Woolf have frequently remarked upon the “religious” and “mystical” aspects that appear throughout Woolf’s oeuvre, but have found it difficult to reconcile these aspects of Woolf’s work with her self-expressed atheistic beliefs. For those who have sought to resolve the tension between the “religious” and “mystical” features of Woolf’s work and Woolf’s (lack of) personal religious beliefs, the work of American psychologist and philosopher William James has proven to be a starting point for investigations into selections of Woolf’s oeuvre that seem to exhibit “religious” and “mystical” characteristics. There continues to exist, …

“Our Heaven Begun Below”: A Contemporary Theology Of Eucharistic Sacrifice In The Wesleyan Tradition, Geoffrey C. Moore

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In 1984, The United Methodist Church adopted a new eucharistic rite which asserts that Christians “offer ourselves…as a holy and living sacrifice, in union with Christ’s offering for us.” The language of sacrifice employed here is much stronger than that of any of the previous rites used by the Church, or any of its successors, as far back as the first English rite written by Thomas Cranmer. While the Cranmerian rite calls for a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the new rite calls for the communicant to offer themselves as a “holy and living sacrifice,” a change which calls for …

Music And Communal Division During The French Wars Of Religion, Cameron G. Wade

Honors Theses

This Senior Honors Thesis explores the social and cultural impact of confessional musical composition and performance on the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). Because Huguenots and Catholics identified with and were widely identifiable by their respective musical styles, cultural divisions between each confession were emphasized by differences in music. This capacity of sacred and confessionally-influenced secular music to highlight and reinforce societal divides is evidenced by the interconfessional violence that accompanied the public performance of sacred music in cities as well as the pressures imposed on composers to create music which clearly aligned with their respective confessions. As the wars …