Intellectual History Commons^™

Guide To The Benjamin Spence Research Collection, 1877-1925, Noah Smith

Archives & Special Collections Finding Aids

Nearly all content in this collection comes from microfilm of the Bridgewater Independent, covering the years from approximately 1880 to 1925. Dr. Spence spent ten years printing out pages from the microfilm, cutting the content into individual articles, and putting them onto index cards filed by subject. He included hand-written notes and dates on the cards. His research focusing on the years represented by the collection resulted in a collection of ten written works on this time period, referenced together as, Bridgewater, Massachusetts: A Town in Transition. Links to the digital files of these works can be found …

Unknowable Truths: The Incompleteness Theorems And The Rise Of Modernism, Caroline Tvardy

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This thesis evaluates the function of the current history of mathematics methodologies and explores ways in which historiographical methodologies could be successfully implemented in the field. Traditional approaches to the history of mathematics often lack either an accurate portrayal of the social and cultural influences of the time, or they lack an effective usage of mathematics discussed. This paper applies a holistic methodology in a case study of Kurt Gödel’s influential work in logic during the Interwar period and the parallel rise of intellectual modernism. In doing so, the proofs for Gödel’s Completeness and Incompleteness theorems will be discussed as …

The World As We Know It: Maps And Atlases From Special Collections, Archives And Special Collections, Luke Meagher

Library Exhibits

Selections of maps and atlases from Sandor Teszler Library’s Special Collections are presented in this exhibit to show how, over time, cartographers have represented the world as we know it.

“To Multiply Corn Two-Hundred-Fold”: The Alchemical Augmentation Of Wheat Seeds In Seventeenth-Century English Husbandry, Justin Niermeier-Dohoney

Arts and Communication Faculty Publications

Agricultural reform movements proliferated in seventeenth-century Europe. For many who sought to make farming more economically productive, the practices of chymistry offered a way to accomplish these goals. Placed in the context of the development of a “vegetable philosophy,” or a theory of generation and growth across mineralogical and botanical domains, this article examines the application of chymical techniques in the attempt to enhance wheat seeds through seed-steeping and “fructifying” experiments among seventeenth-century agricultural reformers, particularly in England. I focus on three main sources: instructional husbandry manuals describing how to create “fructifying waters” to fertilize these seeds, the writings of …

"Rusticall Chymistry": Alchemy, Saltpeter Projects, And Experimental Fertilizers In Seventeenth-Century English Agriculture", Justin Niermeier-Dohoney

Arts and Communication Faculty Publications

As the primary ingredient in gunpowder, saltpeter was an extraordinarily important commodity in the early modern world. Historians of science and technology have long studied its military applications but have rarely focused on its uses outside of warfare. Due to its potential effectiveness as a fertilizer, saltpeter was also an integral component of experimental agricultural reform movements in the early modern period and particularly in seventeenth-century England. This became possible for several reasons: the creation of a thriving domestic saltpeter production industry in the second half of the sixteenth century; the development of vitalist alchemical theories that sought a unified …

Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Teaching And Testing Textual Analysis In Reacting To The Past: Thucydides And Jigsaw Method Discussion, Cary Barber

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

The activity this work presents is designed to both strengthen and evaluate students’ ability to think critically about ancient texts within a Reacting to the Past gaming environment (specifically in the game ‘The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.’). The activity is part of a preliminary set of assignments meant to improve students’ sense of the game’s historical, social, political, economic, and religious context. Moreover, the activity helps to ensure that students can incorporate texts appropriately into speeches, writings, and general gameplay.

Using the Jigsaw Method of discussion, I organize students into ‘numbered’ (I, II, III, etc.) groups of …

Interview Of Margaret Mcguinness, Ph.D., Margaret Mcguinness Ph.D., Stephen Pierce

All Oral Histories

Dr. Margaret McGuinness was born in 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island. She went to an all-girls Catholic high school called St. Mary’s Academy Bayview in Providence where she graduated in 1971. McGuinness went on to major in American Studies and Civilization as an undergraduate at Boston University graduating with a B.A in 1975. She continued her work at Boston University where McGuinness earned a master’s of theological studies (M.T.S) focusing on Biblical and Historical Studies in 1979. She would move to New York to work on her dissertation at Union Theological Seminary finishing with her Ph.D. in 1985 concentrating on …

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

"Martin Luther King, Jr.'S Greater Vision: Manually Bending The Arc Of Time Towards Justice", Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

This speech was given by Dr. Kristopher Burrell on January 16, 2017at St. Paul’s Church — National Historic Site, Mount Vernon, NY.

"How Mature Are We? The Enduring Legacy Of Martin Luther King, Jr.'S 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech", Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

This speech was given by Dr. Kristopher Burrell on January 15, 2018 at St. Paul’s Church — National Historic Site, Mount Vernon, NY.

Crusader Orientalism: Depictions Of The Eastern Other In Medieval Crusade Writings, Henry Schaller

Summer Research

This paper examines the ways in which different texts (crusade chronicles, French epic poems, and crusade sermons) written during the early Crusades and Crusader States created a coherent portrait of the East. It compare the ways Edward Said’s Orientalism, which examines colonial texts, and the effect their portrait of the East had on European identity, with texts of the Crusades. These texts cast the Orient into a place that was the antithesis of Christendom, defining what it meant to have a Christian, European white identity. This was done through representations of: threatening sexuality, skin color, unlimited wealth, and a fictional …

Pulse - A Consultation, Barry J. Mauer

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen’s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will …

Immanent Frames: Meiji New Buddhism And The 'Religious Secular', James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The secularization thesis, rooted in the idea that “modernity” brings with it the destruction—or, at least, the ruthless privatization—of religion, is clearly grounded in specific, often oversimplified, interpretations of Western historical developments since the eighteenth century. In this article, I use the case of the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai 新仏教同志会) of the Meiji period (1868–1911) to query the category of the secular in the context of Japanese modernity. I argue that the New Buddhists, drawing on elements of classical and East Asian Buddhism as well as modern Western thought, promoted a resolutely social and this-worldly Buddhism that …

"Mistris Hutchinsons Double Weekly-Lecture": Puritan Assemblies And The Antinomian Controversy Of 1636-38, Courtney H. Forster

Senior Honors Theses

The Antinomian Controversy of 1636-38 was a complex religious conflict concerning politics and disruption of Puritan society. It began when the Massachusetts Bay colony split into religious factions within the Church at Boston. At the height of the controversy it seemed a majority of the congregation favored a grace-only means of salvation. Most in authoritative positions believed religious works were important to the societal foundation of a holy Puritan community. With the feared breakdown of society looming over them, they would prosecute and convict Anne Hutchinson for violating the cohesion of the colony. Hutchinson was a prominent woman in the …

Eleff On Shapiro, 'Changing The Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History', Zev Eleff

Hebrew Theological College Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Rethinking Greece: Despina Lalaki On Hellenism, State-Building, Archaeology And The "Democratic West", Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Peasant Revolts As Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes For Radical Buddhism In Modern Japan, James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

The late Meiji period (1868-1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic …

Opium Eaters: Buddhism As Revolutionary Politics, James Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

There is no one, single answer to the question: What is or are ‘Buddhist politics’? Rather than seek general historical trends or broad tendencies, in this chapter I explore the meaning and implications of the modern, Western conception of ‘politics’ as understood in relation to key features of Buddhist doctrine. In particular, I pose the question of whether we might fruitfully conceive at least certain interpretations of Buddhism—or perhaps, of Dharma—as politics, rather than ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy.’ I argue that twentieth century progressive Buddhists Seno’o Girō (1889–1961) and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) were not so much in conflict with …

Jewish Apocalypticism: An Historiography, Natalie Latteri

Theology & Religious Studies

Chapter 3 of 'A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse' in the series Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, Volume: 64

Design Research: Typography Within The Israeli Linguistic Landscape, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

A linguistic landscape signifies language used within a physical or virtual public space, in which communication is presented in typographic form, portraying a message to an audience. Within the state of Israel, the linguistic landscape presents a unique situation in which it is common to view municipal and commercial multilingual signs that are designed using Hebrew, English, and Arabic letterforms. By studying the diverse linguistic landscape within Israeli urban environments, the article offers perspectives on the use of multilingual visual language, based on discussions with five Israeli designers in the summer of 2015.

The Intellectual Fallout From World War I, William Dean

Faculty Scholarship – History

Many books link World War II to postmodernism, but few link World War I in the same way. The author here explores the intellectual fallout from World War I as the context of the roots of post-modernism. His limited purpose in this paper is to explore one of many possible links between the unanticipated carnage of World War I, through existentialism, to the attack on meaning in history posed by postmodernism. The postmodern drive towards individual isolation and autonomy has a corrosive political impact on our world, as it does on individual well being.

One of the internal inconsistencies that …

History Abroad: How Do Denmark And The U.S. Measure Up?, Louis T. Gentilucci

Student Publications

By viewing bias itself as a product of history, educators and scholars can understand it better in their own times. By studying the historical path of the United States and Denmark, scholars can see that the nature of history can have subtle but important impacts on common education. Even when educators are aware of potential bias, history itself warps its dissemination.

'Fors Clavigera', The Young Women Of Whitelands College, And The Temptations Of Social History, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

On the first of May each year from the 1880s onward the young women at Whitelands teacher training college in London celebrated by throwing to the wind the timetable that normally dictated how their every moment would be spent. Instead, they adorned the college in flowers, donned in white dresses, and spent the day dancing, singing, and reading poetry. The tradition of May Day helped to poke a hole in the rather dour institutional regimen of Whitelands, which opened the way for many smaller, everyday acts that gradually reworked the ethos of the college.

Black Radicals And Marxist Internationalism: From The Iwma To The Fourth International, 1864-1948, Charles R. Holm

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project investigates historical relationships between Black Radicalism and Marxist internationalism from the mid-nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that contrary to scholarly accounts that emphasize Marxist Euro-centrism, or that theorize the incompatibility of “Black” and “Western” radical projects, Black Radicals helped shape and produce Marxist theory and political movements, developing theoretical and organizational innovations that drew on both Black Radical and Marxist traditions of internationalism. These innovations were produced through experiences of struggle within international political movements ranging from the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century to the early Pan-African movements and struggles …

Zen And The Art Of Treason: Radical Buddhism In Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan, James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. At the same time, there was a stream of ‘resistance’ among a few Buddhist figures, both priests and laity. These instances of progressive and ‘radical Buddhism’ had roots in late Edo-period peasant revolts, the lingering discourse of early Meiji period liberalism, trends within Buddhist reform and modernisation and the emergence in the first decade of the twentieth century of radical political thought, including various forms of socialism and anarchism. This …

Harlemites, Haitians And The Black International: 1915-1934, Felix Jean-Louis Iii

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On July 28, 1915 the United States began a nineteen year military occupation of Haiti. The occupation connected Haiti and the United States and created an avenue of migration in the country. As a consequence of extreme racism in the South and segregation in the Northern states, the majority of the immigrants moved to Harlem. The movement of people reinvigorated the relationship between African Americans and Haitians. The connection constituted an avenue of the interwar Black International. Using newspapers articles, letters, and press releases from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Yale Beinecke Rare Books and …

Quantitative Literacy And The Humanities, Rachel Chrastil

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.