American Studies Commons^™

Personalized Gravestones: Your Life's Passion For All To See And Hear, Peter A. Maresco, Ahmed U. Zafar

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the past several years, a trend has developed that in an earlier age would have seemed inappropriate and perhaps even morbid; the increased personalization of gravestones (memorials). What makes this trend interesting is the variety of shapes, designs, manufacturing processes, and types of personalization actually appearing on gravestones, including seven-inch LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens recessed into the face of memorials. This paper discusses gravestones (memorials) in a religious context. It examines the rapidly developing market for elaborately designed memorials both in their traditional forms, typically vertical and created out of granite with just a name and date of …

Cicero And St. Augustine's Just War Theory: Classical Influences On A Christian Idea, Berit Van Neste

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The theology of Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, and the origin of his theory of Just War are subjects of serious scholarly debate. Just War involved the use of the state army to eliminate heresy by killing heretics who refused to convert to mainstream Christianity. The purpose of this paper is to argue that Augustine primarily based his theory of Just War on Cicero's own theory of Just War.

Augustine was quite heavily influenced by Cicero. He credited Cicero with his own conversion to Christianity. He drew heavily from Cicero's works as a basis for many of his own writings, …

Race, Nation, And Religion In The Americas, Edited By Henry Goldschmidt And Elizabeth Mcalister, R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

Goldschmidt, Henry and Elizabeth McAlister, eds. Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

ISBN 978-0195149197

Where Are The Moderate American Muslims? Struggling To Be Seen And Heard On Cable News/Entertainment Programs, Carole A. Chouinard

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

With the continuation of terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists, it is necessary for moderate Muslims Americans to disassociate themselves from terrorist groups and to make their moderate and progressive views known. In the United States, moderate Muslim Americans have been less than successful at having their voices heard through media. The questions in this study ask why that is and will direct two hypotheses at certain cable news/entertainment programs. The first hypothesis asks, as scholar Edward W. Said proposed, if the Islamic world is simply too foreign to be properly understood by western media. The second hypothesis to be …

The Alleged Pragmatism Of T.S. Eliot, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

Before gaining recognition as a poet, T.S. Eliot pursued a doctoral degree in philosophy. His dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley has been a source of longstanding critical dispute. Some read the dissertation as a defense of Bradley’s views, while others read it as a repudiation of Bradley in favor of a kind of American philosophical pragmatism. This essay considers whether the dissertation can be properly characterized as pragmatist, despite Eliot’s enthusiastic and repeated dismissals of William James’ philosophy of truth. Eliot comes closest to a Jamesian view of belief when he writes of the endless ways we can …

"Monkeying With The Bible”: Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation, R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Devotion to the Bible remains an underappreciated aspect of American religious life partly because it fails to generate controversy. This essay opens a window onto America's relationship with the Bible by exploring a controversial moment in the history of the Bible in America: the public reception of University of Chicago professor Edgar J. Goodspeed's American Translation (1923). Initially, at least, most Americans flatly rejected Goodspeed's impeccably credentialed attempt to cast the language of the Bible in contemporary "American" English. Accusations of the professor's irreligion, bad taste, vulgarity, and crass modernity emerged from nearly every quarter of the Protestant establishment (with …

Liberating Visions: Religion And The Challenge Of Change In Maine,1820 To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Susie Boch, Joseph S. Wood, Maureen Elgersman Lee, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation.

Table of Contents:

Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections)

The African American …

Historical Perspectives On Elizabeth Seton And Education: School Is My Chief Business., Betty Ann Mcneil

Betty Ann McNeil, D.C.