Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Predictive Factors For Commitment To The Priestly Vocation: A Study Of Priests And Seminarians, Yulius Sunardi

Dissertations (1934 -)

The present study examined factors for priestly commitment and the relationship between priestly commitment and well-being of Catholic priests and seminarians. While evidence for the effectiveness of assessment in identifying the suitability of applicants to the priesthood and evaluating the general psychological health of priests and seminarians has been well documented, the effectiveness of assessment in predicting commitment to the priesthood remains under question. This study addressed such an issue by identifying the individual and sets of factors for priestly commitment using a sample of 120 priests and 52 seminarians. Through Hierarchical Multiple Regression analyses, the present study examined the …

Palliative Care's Sacramental And Liturgical Foundations: Healthcare Formed By Faith, Hope, And Love, Darren M. Henson

Dissertations (1934 -)

Medical history identifies Dame Cicely Saunders as the founder of modern hospice and palliative care for the unique care she gave to the incurably and terminally ill. Less known is how her Christian faith, combined with her knowledge of medicine, influenced her vision. This work retrieves the Christian roots of palliative care and asserts that the practice of faith preserves the practice of medicine from succumbing to medicalized dying--a phenomenon that excessively relies on technology with the implied hope that it will ultimately conquer illnesses and even death. Efficiency and effectiveness ground modern medicine's epistemology. These concepts follow the philosophical …

Apocalyptic Mentalities In Late-Medieval England, Steven A. Hackbarth

Dissertations (1934 -)

Apocalypticism, defined by expectation of an imminent End, assumes many forms and proves influential in the second half of the Fourteenth Century in England. Throughout my study, I demonstrate that a rich apocalyptic environment emerges in works of the period, including those of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the Pearl-poet. In this period, apocalypticism has provided explanations for plague, narratives that make evil more vivid, and arguments for urgent action. It gives contemporary phenomena special meaning. My study is organized around conspicuous centers of meaning that work reciprocally with the apocalyptic, simultaneously defining the End and defined by it. First, I …

Nietzsche's Revaluation Of All Values, Joseph Anthony Kranak

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation looks at the details of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the revaluation of all values. The dissertation will look at the idea in several ways to elucidate the depth and complexity of the idea. First, it will be looked at through its evolution, as it began as an idea early in Nietzsche's career and reached its full complexity at the end of his career with the planned publication of his Revaluation of All Values, just before the onset of his madness. Several questions will be explored: What is the nature of the revaluator who is supposed to be instrumental …

The Creation Of Heaven In The Middle Ages, William Storm

Dissertations (1934 -)

My dissertation focuses on the intersection of the discourses of space and place, art, religion, and politics in poetical accounts of heaven. My study investigates how authors deploy these various traditions to create a heaven that accommodates the needs of a particular audience. Heaven is, according to Yi-Fu Tuan, a "mythical place," which cannot be located. To avoid the problems of a "mythical place," we represent that location with slightly-blurred experiential knowledge or communally-sanctioned practices. The creation of heaven, I argue, does not occur ex nihilo but through a refashioning of knowledge and practices to engage audiences with descriptions of …

From Pastorals To Paterson: Ecology In The Poetry And Poetics Of William Carlos Williams, Daniel Edmund Burke

Dissertations (1934 -)

Modernist poet William Carlos Williams died in 1962 - a landmark year in the history of the modern environmentalist movement. He did not live to see contemporary culture come to the deeper appreciation of humanity's place in the world which we now know as ecology. This dissertation will argue, however, that supporting his entire oeuvre of poetry are philosophical and poetic underpinnings which resonate strongly with - and usefully anticipate - our modern understanding of the interpenetrative relationship between natural and culture, human and nonhuman. I begin by tracing the roots of Williams's "ecopoetics" back to the father of Williams's …

Illuminating The Irish Free State: Nationalism, National Identity, And The Promotion Of The Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme, Mckayla Kay Sutton

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation focuses on the ways in which the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme influenced perceptions of Irishness in the fraught context of postcolonial nation building. The Irish Free State, established by a treaty with Great Britain in 1921, faced the difficult task of maintaining order and establishing stable institutions for the new state. One of the government's most audacious efforts to achieve these objectives was to construct the largest hydroelectric dam in the world on the River Shannon in 1925 with the help of German contractors from Siemens-Schuckert. The first half of the dissertation deals with several ideological issues brought to …

(Re)Making The Gentleman: Genteel Masculinities And The Country Estate In The Novels Of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, And Elizabeth Gaskell, Shaunna Kay Wilkinson

Dissertations (1934 -)

While perpetually redefined and reimagined by conduct books writers, social philosophers, and literary figures of the eighteenth century, the gentleman is a term that holds significant cultural and social cache through the nineteenth century. My project seeks to untangle the discourse around the gentleman by examining how women writers use work to re-categorize the gentleman and to open access to genteel masculinity for professional men and other marginalized masculinities. The dynamic that we can observe in courtship novels--texts where the interconnectivity of gender allows for the interrogation of performance--enables us to recognize how the professionalization of gender has exploited the …

"Now These Things Happened As Examples For Us" (1 Cor. 10:6):The Biblical-Narrative Depiction Of Human Sinfulness, Stephen Frederick Jenks

Dissertations (1934 -)

For several decades voices from various sectors of Christianity have decried the loss of compelling language for sin. The atrophying of sin language is of no small moment due to the organic connection between theological loci. Sin talk relates to salvation-talk, human-talk, and Christ-talk. Further, the loss of compelling sin language threatens to silence the church's voice in the culture.

Both classic and contemporary theologies of sin, pursuing the essentialist methods of the past, attempt to define sin and derive the fullness of the doctrine of sin from these distillations. However, many of these renderings of sin are insufficiently attentive …

Stabilitas In Congregatione: The Benedictine Evangelization Of America In The Life And Thought Of Martin Marty, O.S.B., Paul Gregory Monson

Dissertations (1934 -)

Historians and theologians commonly overlook how the Benedictine revival of the nineteenth century arose not only in Europe but also in the United States. Monks from Bavaria and Switzerland looked to America as a providential setting for restoring the Benedictine Order to its original glory through missionary activity. As missionaries, their vision manifested a reinterpretation of the Benedictine tradition and its principle of stability. Embodying this vision was the life and thought of Martin Marty (1834-1896), a Swiss-Benedictine monk who became the first abbot of St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana and later a missionary and bishop in Dakota Territory. Despite …

Mary's Fertility As The Model Of The Ascetical Life In Ephrem The Syrian's Hymns Of The Nativity, Michelle Weedman

Dissertations (1934 -)

My thesis is that Ephrem uses Mary's pregnancy in his Hymns on the Nativity both as a model for the ascetical life and as a way of explaining, theologically, what it means to be a Christian ascetic. For Ephrem, Mary is the first to have her body transformed through the union of Christ and humanity, a transformation that prefigures both the resurrected body and the common Christian experience of Christ prior to that. Thus, the fact that Mary was physically pregnant is theologically significant for Ephrem. Mary's personal and free response to God's invitation uniquely illustrates that the transformative experience …

Argument In Poetry: (Re)Defining The Middle English Debate In Academic, Popular, And Physical Contexts, Kathleen R. Burt

Dissertations (1934 -)

The core problem that drives my dissertation is to find a definition for what has been called Middle English “debate poetry” that accounts for the wide variety of themes, topics, and styles which poems labeled as ‘debates’ cover. The limitations of overly focused and restrictive definitions of the term ‘debate poetry’ encountered by previous scholars illustrates the initial problem of using a generic term that lacks a common vocabulary or framework for discussion. The result has been that each scholar who investigated a poem linked to this tradition used a different definition suited to his or her particular text(s) of …

Dangerous Knowledge? Morality And Moral Progress After Naturalism, Daniel Diederich Farmer

Dissertations (1934 -)

From the perspective of at least some of our valuing practices, the advance of the sciences can seem to constitute a threat. The question I take up in this dissertation is whether or not naturalism--understood as the picture of the world and of ourselves bequeathed to us by the sciences--should be understood as a threat to our moral practices, to moral living. On the account I defend, the knowledge we gain from empirical inquiry need not undermine moral living in toto, although a naturalistic mindset does raise some possibly dangerous questions for particular inherited moral norms and ideals.

In defense …

Love For God And Earth: Ecospirituality In The Theologies Of Sallie Mcfague And Leonardo Boff, Rebecca A. Meier-Rao

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines the theologies of North American Ecofeminist Sallie McFague and Latin American liberation theologian Leonardo Boff in order to answer the question - What are the features of a Christian spirituality capable of helping people to clear vision, transformation and hope in this time of socio-ecological crisis? In the sixth chapter I also briefly engage the work of Carmelite contemplative Constance FitzGerald, as she both reinforces and deepens the theologians' answer to the above question.

The dissertation begins with a short explanation of the interlocking ecological and social crises, and offers a basic understanding of Christian spirituality as …

The Word Is An Angel Of The Mind: Angelic And Temple Imagery In The Theology Of John Mansur, The Damascene., Elijah Nicolas Mueller

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation looks at the scriptural images of angel and temple, as they occur in key works by John Damascene: on the Heresies, chapter 100 "On the Ishmaelites;" Three Treatises on the Divine Images, and on the Orthodox Faith. Angelic and temple imagery forms an important core which holds together liturgy, ascesis, and theophany. These types of images constitute a consistent mode for understanding theology and anthropology. As part of revelation, they are important in the early Islamic context. Angel and temple imagery were used by John Damascene to push back against Islamic revelation claims and Islamic challenges to the …

Big Men On Campus: Administrative Response To Title Ix And The Development Of Women's Sports In The Big Ten Conference, 1972-1982, Jeffrey T. Ramsey

Dissertations (1934 -)

Signed into law in 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments was designed to eliminate gender discrimination throughout the American educational system. Title IX applied to all educational programs at any level of schooling including admissions, financial aid, academic programs, and social organizations. However, Title IX has primarily been associated with college sports. Since 1972, female participation in intercollegiate athletics has increased dramatically. Yet additional opportunities for

women in sports have not come easily. Significant battles between university leaders and the government about how this piece of legislation was to be enforced have persisted throughout the decades since passage of …

"A Spreading And Abiding Hope": A. J. Conyers And Evangelical Theopolitical Imagination, Jacob Shatzer

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this work I argue that A. J. Conyers provides a promising example for countering various weaknesses in evangelical theopolitical imagination. I make this argument in two ways. First, I provide a critical reading of Conyers's overall scholarly project, seeking to understand it in its own context and in conversation with other scholars. In particular, I draw on the influence of Jürgen Moltmann, Johannes Althusius, Eric Voegelin, the Southern Agrarians, and Richard Weaver on Conyers's thought. I then focus on Conyers's political theology, exploring how he diagnoses the modern world and what he proposes for remedies. I explore Conyers's political …

"Heavenly Theologians": The Place Of Angels In The Theology Of Martin Luther, Christopher J. Samuel

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines a virtually untouched aspect of Martin Luther's theology: his angelology. Specifically, it argues four main points: that Luther does, over his corpus, present an angelology; that his angelology is indebted to and in conversation with the prior theological tradition; that his concern with the angels is evident throughout his career; and that his major angelological concerns are pastoral in nature. Furthermore, it presents Luther's answers to four basic angelological questions: 1) what are the angels?; 2) what is the angels' role in Creation?; 3) what is the nature of their relationship with humanity?; and 4) what is …

Receptive Ecumenism And Justification: Roman Catholic And Reformed Doctrine In Contemporary Context, Sarah Timmer

Dissertations (1934 -)

Receptive Ecumenism is a reassessment of the ecumenical process, in light of the remaining challenges and difficulties faced by ecumenists. It recognizes that ecumenism might need to adjust to the complex diversity of the Christian church today, especially amidst a culture that no longer sees diversity as a negative thing. The goal of traditional ecumenism, visible unity through theological and ecclesiological convergence, is put aside in favor of an ecumenism of mutual enrichment and self-examination. The Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is an example of traditional ecumenism. This dissertation examines some strengths and weaknesses of the Joint …