Comparative Literature Commons^™

Liah Greenfeld And Civilizational Dialogue: For Continuing A Legacy, Manindra Nath Thakur

Comparative Civilizations Review

One fine morning, I dropped into my room at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. Monika took an appointment to meet and discuss her project. I was curious to know about her work and wanted to see if there was anything to learn from it. Within no time, I discovered that she was influenced by a professor and that we had many common concerns. I listened carefully and was convinced by her impression. We decided to initiate a conversation. Suddenly, a few months later, she informed me about Liah Greenfeld’s sad demise. Our conversation could not take off.

Reflection On Liah Greenfeld’S Influence On My Work: National Consciousness And The Sociological Imagination, Oliver Benoit

Comparative Civilizations Review

Few scholars have influenced my intellectual development as much as Liah Greenfeld. While my academic interests emerged from an attempt to understand the Grenada Revolution and its collapse in 1983, it was Greenfeld's work that provided clarity to the questions I asked and the conceptual tools I employed to answer the question: What caused the collapse of the Grenada Revolution? Her scholarship redirected my attention away from conventional explanations rooted exclusively in economics, ideology, or political institutions and toward the cultural foundations of modernity itself. More specifically, Greenfeld's theory of nationalism provided a framework through which I came to embrace …

Unconventionality In Liah Greenfeld's Thought, Francesco Duina

Comparative Civilizations Review

As certainly all of her readers recognize and many of the contributions to this special issue will point out, Liah Greenfeld’s writings covered an almost unparalleled breadth of themes and empirical levels ⎯ from the very macro to the very micro. Hence, she produced seminal contributions to the study of empires, globalization, states in history, nationalism, economic systems, the arts, religions, groups and organizations, terrorism, animals and humans, the social sciences, science in general, mental illnesses, and the mind. Most recently, she had turned her attention to civilizations (Greenfeld, 2016, 2025). The rigor of her writing was equally impressive: it …

Following Through Dialogues: A Chinese Scholar’S Reminiscence Of Professor Liah Greenfeld, Xinqi Jia

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ordinarily, a Chinese teacher of ethics who had never set foot in a Western country before the age of forty and a Jewish-American sociologist born in the former Soviet Union would have no reason to cross paths. Yet, throughout 2010, they spent an entire year in Boston in close contact. Should anyone someday write a biography of the late Professor Liah Greenfeld, this story alone would be excellent material for exploring how her theory has influenced the world, and how, as an outstanding theorist, she continually expanded the boundaries of our understanding of it.

Liah Greenfeld On Antisemitism As A Defining Characteristic Of The Monotheistic Civilization, Efraim Karsh

Comparative Civilizations Review

One cannot overstate the scholarly and intellectual loss occasioned by the untimely death of Boston University Professor Liah Greenfeld. Through her prodigious interdisciplinary research, Professor Greenfeld has established herself as one of the foremost social science theorists of our time and a worthy heir to the great firstgeneration nationalism scholars, in particular Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and Anthony Smith.

Was Love Invented In Sixteenth-Century England? A Few Comments On Liah Greenfeld’S Theory Of Emotions, Dmitri Panchenko

Comparative Civilizations Review

According to Liah Greenfeld, there are three kinds of emotions. Primary emotions (such as pain, pleasure, fear, positive and negative excitement, hunger, and satiation) and secondary emotions (such as affection, sorrow, and anger) can be observed in both animals and humans. However, most human emotions ⎯ tertiary emotions ⎯ are more complex. “These, though not unusual among our pets, do not exist in the wild. Tertiary emotions are emotions such as love, ambition, pride, self-respect, shame, guilt, inspiration, enthusiasm, sadness, awe, admiration, humility and humiliation, sense of justice and injustice, envy, malice, resentment, cruelty, hatred; one can go on almost …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Shifting Faith Among Indigenous People In Arunachal Pradesh, India: Revisiting Greenfeld's Civilizational Framework, M. Amin Khan

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper examines changing religious demography in Arunachal Pradesh through Liah Greenfeld's theory of civilization as a self-generating and self-reproducing symbolic reality. Using decadal Census data (1971–2011), it traces the demographic decline of Indigenous/Tribal religions classified under “Other Religions and Persuasions” (ORP) alongside the widespread growth of Christianity and the more limited growth of Hinduism. The analysis argues that these demographic shifts reflect more than religious conversion; they reveal differential capacities for cultural reproduction. Whereas civilizations endowed with codified first principles and enduring institutions sustain continuity across generations, Arunachal Pradesh's largely localized and orally transmitted indigenous traditions have proven less …

Professor Greenfeld’S Last Class: Notes For Online Lectures On “The Science Of Humanity,” Delivered To Students And Scholars Primarily From India, July 2025, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The question for this class is: What is humanity?

We all believe we all know what it is, don’t we? After all, there is hardly any subject more important for us, a question on the answer to which other subjects depend — political, social, economic. Answers to questions such as: what are human economic needs and desires; what political structures are optimal for humans; is democracy, for instance, a universal human desire; should politics in every nation be democratic, or, perhaps, authoritarian governments are better; is freedom a natural need, does it make life better, does equality?

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Female Gothic And Marianne Dashwood: The Gothic Heroine Of Sense And Sensibility, Samantha Cottle

English (MA) Theses

In the late eighteenth-century, the rise of the English Gothic novel propelled an extension referred to as the Female Gothic. Through the complexity of the English Gothic genre, writers—particularly women writers—explore the intersectionality of gender, class, natural horrors, and race, creating a space where the heroines of these Gothic novels exist beyond the confinement of the domestic sphere. The Female Gothic was a way for these women writers to acknowledge the natural horrors that plagued the experiences of being a woman—it addressed the oppression of a patriarchal society in which the subversion of the female body was perceived as an …

Guest Editor’S Introduction: Liah Greenfeld And The Future Of Comparative Civilizational Studies, Monika Monika, Guest Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

Every scholarly life leaves behind unfinished questions. Professor Liah Greenfeld was acutely aware of this. Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, her research never settled into the repetition of established arguments. Each major work emerged from the unresolved problems of the previous one, enlarging both the scope of its inquiry and the range of disciplines with which it engaged. Nationalism led her to questions of modernity (Greenfeld, 1992) and the foundations of economic development (Greenfeld, 2001). The growth of the modern economy and the emerging new forces of globalization, in turn, raised broader questions about the self and …

In Memoriam: Liah Greenfeld A Reflection From The President Of The Comparative Civilizations Forum, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

It is with sorrow and gratitude that the Comparative Civilizations Forum dedicates this special 2026 Fall issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review to the memory of Professor Liah Greenfeld, who passed away in May of this year.

Professor Liah Greenfeld was a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist — and more than any single label can hold. Across four decades at Harvard and then at Boston University, she built a body of work, from Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity to The Spirit of Capitalism to Mind, Modernity, Madness, that stepped outside the boundaries the modern academy likes to draw. …

Liah Greenfeld: Scholar, Thinker, Friend, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Professor Liah Greenfeld and I met several years ago when she submitted an article to the Comparative Civilizations Review. Her thoughtful demeanor and personal kindness to all were quickly evident, but so, too, was her scholarship, especially her probing theories of state, society, and civilization.

From Margins To Center: Los Deslenguados In The Borderlands, Brissa S. Porras Villalobos

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Borderland literature is a subgenre that often includes narratives of migration, tribulations, identity development, and resilience. It foregrounds the collaboration of vulnerability, isolation, connection, and power, showing that hybridity is a source of cultural energy. Acknowledging the borderland and its culture is crucial because it challenges stereotypes, validates marginalized voices, and celebrates heritage in all its complexity. By centering these experiences, borderland literature affirms the potential of living between cultures, prioritizing the recognition of the in-between, valuing and celebrating the space where identities are continually reshaped, histories are reclaimed, and resilience is nurtured rather than neglected. Using Gloria Anzaldúa's theory …

A Comparative Critique Of Masculine Domination In Madame Bovary (1856) And Gemma Bovery (1999), Aqeela Hamarthya Czecheska Humayra, Diah Kartini Lasman

International Review of Humanities Studies

This study examines how social construction influences the representation of female autonomy through the transition of medium and temporal context. Its primary focus is to compare the mechanisms of masculine domination in Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary (1856) with Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel adaptation Gemma Bovery (1999). Utilizing Hutcheon’s adaptation theory (2013) and de Beauvoir’s existential feminism (1949), complemented by Freytag’s dramatic structure analysis (1900) as the main framework, this research proceeds from the premise that the transposition from text to visual medium has significant implications for changes in narrative strategies and plot. This study highlights the differing manifestations …

Improving Post-Rehabilitation Discharge Outcomes Through A Care Coordination Bundle, Cavene Facey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hospital readmissions remain a significant quality and patient safety concern across the United States, particularly among patients transitioning from rehabilitation settings to home or community-based care. Ineffective care transitions, fragmented communication, inconsistent discharge planning, and inadequate follow-up contribute to preventable hospital readmissions, increased healthcare costs, and poorer patient outcomes. Evidence consistently demonstrates that structured transitional care interventions and standardized care coordination processes improve continuity of care while reducing readmissions and enhancing patient satisfaction The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to develop an evidence-based Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) designed to improve post-rehabilitation discharge outcomes through implementation …

“He Had Named Himself The Stranger”: From 'Germanic' Heroic Hospitality To Elvish Memorial Mediation In Tolkien’S Book Of Lost Tales, Paolo Pizzimento Dr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article examines the narrative functions of strangeness and hospitality in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales, focusing on Eriol’s transformation from foreign traveller into listener, witness, and transmitter of Elvish tradition. Through a comparative reading of selected Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon texts—particularly Hávamál, Gylfaginning, and Beowulf—it identifies recurrent literary configurations in which hospitality regulates admission, identity, reciprocity, danger, and access to knowledge. The comparison is morphological rather than genetic: it does not posit direct derivation or a uniform Germanic code. Drawing on Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, the article argues that Tolkien redirects …

Echoes Of Medieval Timekeeping In Middle-Earth And Valinor, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Throughout his six-plus decades of work spent tinkering with his invented world and its mythology, Tolkien experimented with numerous calendars and timekeeping schemes, some relying upon direct pre-telescopic observations of the heavens and others mathematical calculations. This paper investigates medieval resonances and echoes in a sample of his various schemes, demonstrating how Tolkien’s use of medievalist timekeeping is consistent with, and greatly adds to, his creation of a self-consistent invented world

Medieval, Magical, Or Melodramatic? Depictions Of Elrond Half-Elven In Film And Television Adaptations, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Elrond Half-elven acts as an important bridge between the First, Second, and Third Ages of Middle-earth, as well as between multiple species (Maia, Elf, and Human). He thus presents writers and directors of film and television adaptations with both challenges and opportunities to investigate intersections between the medieval and the modern, myth and magic, fidelity to the original and creative exploration. Adaptations often condense and simplify plot points and scenes for the sake of time or story/telling. In the case of Elrond, this means that we should expect changes in his main scenes in The Hobbit (Elvish sword identification and …