History Commons^™

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Reflections Across Religions: A Historical Examination Of Common Themes In Zoroastrianism, Judaism, And Christianity, Jason Heckert

Graduate Theses

In the sixth century BCE, the largest empire in the world at the time, the Persian Empire, adopted a monotheistic religion that was based on the teachings of a prophet named Zoroaster. As one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism impacted the beliefs and traditions of Judaism and early Christianity. Similarities among these religions include the ideas of hierarchy among good and evil spirits, actions on earth determining one’s place in an afterlife, apocalyptic themes, and dualism. Zoroastrian beliefs found their way into early Christian culture. The remnants of Zoroastrianism in mainstream Christianity underscores the influence of that ancient Persian …

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Mashiah: Messianism In Jewish Apocalyptic Literature Of The Second Temple Period, Fred R. De Leon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This Thesis challenges notions that have dominated biblical scholarship for more than a hundred years. Up until the end of the twentieth century scholars uniformly believed that the concept of a suffering Messiah was not part of early first century CE Judaism. It was believed to a be a Christian creation. There is however startling evidence of messianic precursors to Jesus, including one who is introduced as the 'Prince of the Congregation' in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is not surprising since the authors of the Tanakh lay the groundwork for an evolving and malleable concept …

From Handmaids To Princesses: How Identity And Politics Impact Definitions Of Biblical Rape, Gabrielle R. Isaac-Herzog

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

The politics of sex in the Bible are complex. They are impacted and limited by the time of the stories, as well as the political landscape and laws of the region. However, since many modern religions have emerged from the text of the Hebrew Bible, it is important for scholars to continue the work of critically examining the texts in the contemporary context. This paper offers a textual analysis of several biblical stories through a feminist and decolonial lens. Through the generation of a taxonomy by which these stories can be categorized, this paper posits that the biblical definitions of …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Italian Jews: A Surprising And Understudied Influence In The Enlightenment, Lura Martinez

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The experience of Italian Jews during the Enlightenment is deserving of much more attention. Not only did Italian Jews such as Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto, a man born in a ghetto, later embrace a form of secularism, but his works and others written by his peers made an impact on the Italian Enlightenment and seemingly contributed to the practice of toleration that appeared in sporadic installments throughout Europe. While the Jewish experience in Europe hails from a long tradition of persecution, with sporadic and incomplete periods of toleration at various points in its history, it is clear that through a promotion …

Is It So Bad To Be Yourself?, Andrew S. Russell

Graduate Theses

Homosexuality has been a topic of recent controversial religious discourse, not only in America, but also world-wide. This begs the question: when did homosexuality become such a divisive issue in religious circles? The purpose of this thesis is to examine how ancient western cultures perceived homosexuality and treated homosexuals. Starting with the pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome, and then looking at how homosexuality was perceived in the ancient Judaic world and into the early Christian community, it seems that homosexuality only gradually became stigmatized as early Christians sought to distinguish themselves as unique in the ancient world.

The Problem Of Jewish Agency In The Holocaust: 1939-1945, Joseph Knapik

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

This paper discusses the nuance of Jewish agency during the Holocaust. It argues that full genocide was thwarted by individual efforts which can illustrate a picture of collective defiance. Utilizing Berger’s definition of agency as, “the capacity to exert control and even to transform to some extent ‘the social relations in which one is enmeshed.’” Focusing attention to after 1939 in ghettos and camps, it investigates period sources such as ghetto witness accounts, orders, and diary entries. It allows for a comprehensive depiction of Jewish agency as neither entirely heroic or lachrymose, as painted by popular depiction.

A Newcomer's Guide To Kabbalah, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

Kabbalah is a mystical and highly spiritual form of Judaism. Popularized by its endorsement by high-profile celebrities like Madonna, the average layperson knows enough about Kabbalah to recognize it as a vaguely familiar term, but not much else. This article strives to serve as an entry-point for both an intellectual and a popular audience to help familiarize readers with core components of Kabbalah and to help to begin fostering an appreciation for this very sophisticated faith. Matters of history, philosophy, science, doctrine, and more pertaining to Kabbalah will be discussed in this article

Re-Playing Maimonides’ Codes: Designing Games To Teach Religious Legal Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Lost & Found is a game series, created at the Initiative for

Religion, Culture, and Policy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology MAGIC Center.1 The series teaches medieval

religious legal systems. This article uses the first two games

of the series as a case study to explore a particular set of

processes to conceive, design, and develop games for learning.

It includes the background leading to the author's work

in games and teaching religion, and the specific context for

the Lost & Found series. It discusses the rationale behind

working to teach religious legal systems more broadly, then

discuss the …

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

On The (Male) Fringes: How Early Religious Women Remain “Subordinate” In World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

Second Wave feminist researchers identified male-dominated curriculum formats in late twentieth century curriculum materials. This study builds off their work and advances the conversation of women’s inclusion by current United States secondary world history textbook content via a feminist lens to determine the extent of women’s agency in the accounts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The purpose was to determine if textbooks portrayed these patriarchal religions as exclusively male, thereby presenting inaccurate portrayals of the religions and the agents involved, which directly violates NCSS Standards. This study used critical discourse analysis to identify patterns of female marginalization and omission, indicating …

Jews And The Sources Of Religious Freedom In Early Pennsylvania, Jonathon Derek Awtrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historians’ traditional narrative regarding religious freedom in the colonial period and early republic focuses on Protestants and sometimes Catholics to the exclusion of other religious groups; the literature also emphasizes the legal dimensions of freedom at the expense of its cultural manifestations. This study, conversely, demonstrates that Jews, the only white non-Christian minority group in early Pennsylvania, experienced freedom far differently than its legality can adequately explain. Jews, moreover, reshaped religious freedom to include religious groups beyond Protestant Christians alone. But such grassroots transformations were neither quick nor easy. Like most of the Anglo-American world, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” excluded …

Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities [Table Of Contents], Carlin A. Barton, Daniel Boyarin

Religion

“A timely contribution to a growing and important conversation about the inadequacy of our common category ‘religion’ for the understanding of many practices, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs—especially of peoples in other times and contexts—that we usually classify as ‘religion.’” —Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University

Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732-1809, Kylie L. Mccormick

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1732 a philanthropic trusteeship was granted the charter to Georgia with the lofty goals of bringing aid to the impoverished in the British Empire and the persecuted Protestants of Europe. Within these goals was an emphasis on using the labor of indentured white servants, an unofficial ban on slavery, and a reluctance to allow Jewish colonists. To understand how both slavery and Judaism took hold in Georgia, this two part study explores the changing labor institutions through the lives of Benjamin Sheftall and his youngest son Levi—the two men who maintained the first Vital Records for Savanah’s Jewry. Benjamin’s …

The Scapegoat, Katherine Ludwig

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

This essay responds to a claim made in the aftermath of an Anti-Semitic attack. It discusses the treatment of Jews in Europe around the time of the Holocaust and what may have motivated this treatment.

Mobile People, Mobile God: Mobile Societies, Monotheism, And The Effects Of Ecological Landscapes On The Development Of Ancient Religions, Edward Surman

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Despite the wealth of scholarship concerning the origins of religious beliefs, practices, and cultures, there has been little consideration of the impact of ecological landscapes on the development of ancient religions. Although the influence of the natural environment is considered among the variables in explaining the development of various economic, political, and other social systems throughout history, there is a specific gap concerning its impact on the origins of religious systems. The argument which is taken up in this writing is the correlation between agriculturally marginal landscape and the development of monotheism. Specifically that the religions of the ancient Iranians …

Cesarean Section And Religious Hierarchies In Fifteenth- Century Europe, Isobel Mouat

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

Cesarean section in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century was entangled in a web of legal, political, religious, medical, and ideological tensions. An act of desperation to save the child after the mother died, the procedure was embedded in the popular imagination and imbued with symbolic power. While it was promoted by the Catholic Church to save the souls of the infants through baptism, Jewish communities viewed the procedure with wariness due to its perceived unnaturalness. The coupling of divergent religious views on the procedure, a strained religious environment, and changes in the occupational landscape of obstetrics resulted in …

Jewish Games For Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions In The Digital Age, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Rather than a discontinuity from traditional modes of learning, new explorations of digital and strategic games in Jewish learning are markedly continuous with ancient practices. An explication of the close connections between traditional modes of Jewish learning, interpretive practice, and gaming culture can help to explain how Jews of the Digital Age can adopt and are adapting modern Games for Learning practices for contemporary purposes. The chapter opens by contextualizing a notion of Jewish Games and the field of Games for Learning. Next, the chapter explains the connections between game systems and Jewish traditions. It closes with a case study …

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

For Such A Time As This: The Impact Of Christian Missionaries On The Birth Of Reform Judaism In Charleston, South Carolina, 1824-1846, Ashley Goldberg

All Theses

The first generation of Americans born after the Revolution found themselves in uncharted territory, defining what it meant to be an American in a country that did not yet know itself. The impact was far reaching, as old institutions struggled to adapt to changing mores. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the city of Charleston, South Carolina was home to the largest Jewish population in America; it too found itself in the midst of the struggle between the old ways and the new. How should Judaism adopt or adapt to the customs of a new country, one dominated …

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

A. Chadwick Thornhill

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

The Book Of Enoch And Second Temple Judaism., Nancy Perkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the ancient Jewish text the Book of Enoch, the scholarly work done on the text since its discovery in 1773, and its seminal importance to the study of ancient Jewish history. Primary sources for the thesis project are limited to Flavius Josephus and the works of the Old Testament. Modern scholars provide an abundance of secondary information. These scholars include R. H. Charles, D. S. Russell, Albert Baumgarten, Seth Schwartz, George Nickelsburg, and James VanderKam. The Book of Enoch was composed from roughly 300 BCE to 10 BCE. The Book of Enoch stands as substantial proof that …

Moses Mendelssohn's Approach To Jewish Integration In Light Of His Reconciliation Of Traditional Judaism And Enlightenment Rationalism, Robert J. Clark

History and Government Faculty Publications

Prior to the eighteenth century, European Jews lived in separate communal structures at the discretion of their host countries.¹ A very few found places of influence and wealth as "court Jews" and lived as aristocrats, but their acceptance in society was limited, subject to official approval, and came at a price.² There had always been opportunities for Jews to integrate into European society, albeit not without complication, via assimilation and conversion.³ But the ability to enter the social order as Jews and find a place to belong without rejecting their heritage and religion proved elusive. The emergence …

Freud's Dream Of Interpretation, Ken Frieden

Books

Frieden explores methods of dream interpretation in the Bible, the Talmud, and in the writings of Sugmund Freud, and brings to light Freud's Troubled relationship to his Judaic forerunners. This book reveals unfamiliar associations in intellectual history and challenges received ideas in biblical, Talmudic, and Freudian scholarship.

Ua68/10/1 Sociological Symposium No. 1 – The Sociology Of Death, Wku Sociology

WKU Archives Records

Table of Contents

• Fulton, Robert L. & Gilbert Geis. Social Change & Social Conflict: The Rabbi & the Funeral
• Kane, John J. The Irish Wake: A Sociological Appraisal
• Loveland, Glenn G. The Effects of Bereavement on Certain Religious Attitudes & Behaviors
• Morgan, Al. The Bier Barons
• Porter, William H., Jr. Some Sociological Notes on a Century of Change in the Funeral Business
• Salomone, Jerome J. An Empirical Report on Some Controversial American Funeral Practices
• Spilka, Bernard, Robert J. Pelligrini & Kathryn Dailey. Religion, American Values & Death Perspectives
• Strauss, Anselm L., Barney G. Glaser & Jeanne C. Quint. The Nonaccountability …