Cultural History Commons^™

Catholics & Cultures As An Act Of Improvisation: A Response, Thomas M. Landy

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay responds to seven articles published in the same issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism on the use of Catholics & Cultures, a multimedia website, as a pedagogical resource for college classrooms. The site is deliberately presented in a fashion that undermines notions of center and periphery and presents Catholicism from a lay, lived-religion perspective as the multicultural faith that it is, minimizing reference to religious typologies. Particular attention is given to how to navigate tensions around theorizing, categorizing and sorting information for cross-cultural comparison. Given scholars’ current state of knowledge, writing about and teaching about global Catholicism …

Catholics & Cultures: A Panoramic View In Search Of Greater Understanding, Stephanie M. Wong

Journal of Global Catholicism

While internet-based technologies can open up greater awareness of the world or create self-perpetuating echo-chambers, the Catholics & Cultures project aspires to do the former. Aiming to ‘widen the lens’ on the variety of Catholic communities and practices, the site delivers on this goal by introducing viewers to a vast array of articles, pictures and videos from around the world. The organization of the site by country and by certain key features of lived Catholicism offers some interpretive guidance. However, the project could be strengthened as a pedagogical resource if it were more extensively thematized and hosted reflections on potential …

The Value Of Online Resources: Reflections On Teaching An Introduction To Global Christianity, Hillary Kaell

Journal of Global Catholicism

Reflecting on my experience teaching Introduction to Global Christianity, this essay ponders questions at the heart of undergraduate teaching: How can we encourage students to utilize online sources? How can we empower them to seek out answers to their questions? It offers practical examples of how I have used the Catholics & Cultures website in my classroom at a large public university. In particular, I reflect on my experience working with students who are mostly of Catholic heritage, but from many cultural and social contexts.

Teaching Sexuality On The Catholics & Cultures Website: A Refreshing Turn Toward The Longue Durée, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

I present a close reading of the Catholics & Cultures (C&C) website’s treatment of sexuality-related issues and discuss this material in relation to debates about how to teach sexuality in religious studies and theology classrooms. The C&C website occasionally and intermittently uses a typical “contemporary issues” approach that considers sexuality in relation to legal and legislative decisions and government policies. In contrast, country profiles consistently situate sexuality in relation processes like nation building, urbanization, and lay Catholics’ growing authority. My interpretation highlights the site’s decision to emphasize the longue durée, long-term and deep structural processes driving cultural and religious changes. …

Ritual Among The Scilohtac: Global Catholicism, The Nacirema, And Interfaith Studies, Anita Houck

Journal of Global Catholicism

More than six decades after its publication, Horace Miner’s 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” remains a reliable pedagogical tool, remarkably successful in helping students see their own ethnocentric biases. Catholics & Cultures has potential to do similar work. The site lacks some of what makes Miner’s text so effective, in particular its capacity to bring about a sudden shift in perception. The site also shares some of the article’s limitations, particularly in focusing on ritual to the relative exclusion of other aspects of religion. That said, the site can help students gain the religious literacy and develop the …

Focus On The Busy Intersections Of Culture And Cultural Change, Laura Elder

Journal of Global Catholicism

The dynamics of religious resurgence reveal the important ways that religious ritual and performance are meaning making spaces which are not self-contained or cut off from the rest of culture, but rather are a key locus of cultural change. A renewed emphasis on the busy intersections of meaning making – as rituals are connected, disconnected, and reconnected to other domains of social life – would improve the utility of the Catholics & Cultures website for understanding global cultural change. And a renewed emphasis on cultural change would also provide a better means for exploring reflexively by seeking to understand both …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Introducing Catholics & Cultures: Ethnography, Encyclopedia, Cyborg, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In introducing the Catholics & Cultures site and the articles in this special issue, this essay initially locates the overall Catholic & Cultures project within the traditions of ethnography and encyclopedia. Drawing extensively on the work of J. Z. Smith, this essay reflects upon the theoretical implications of emphasizing the diversity of Catholicism in and through a web-based platform that facilitates comparative study and pedagogy. This essay then more specifically considers the web-based aspects of Catholics & Cultures by identifying a nascent cyborgian aesthetic in the site and considering how the site might eventually engage post-modern themes and concerns.

The Arena Players, Inc.: The Oldest Continuously Operating African American Community Theatre In The United States, Alexis Michelle Skinner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hay (1994) gave the Arena Players the moniker, “the oldest continuously operating African American community theatre company” in the U.S. But, if Black Theatre is increasingly found in mainstream venues in regional theatre and Broadway while Black Drama is relegated to syllabi, where is the living practice of African American, or black, community theatre? And what guarantees its survival? Craig (1980) and Fraden (1994) give voice to black critics, like Locke (1925), in co-creating objectives for black theatre during the FTP which took stage as the Negro Little Theatre continued. Hill & Hatch (2003) solidify the geographical and ideological connections …

The Grizzly, March 25, 2021, Simra Mariam, Marie Sykes, Dylan Melby, Gillian Mccomeskey, Shelsea Deravil, Layla Halterman, Faith Denner, Claire Vance, Rosalia Murphy, Ava Compagnoni

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Fairytales on Campus • Rumor Debunked: Upper Wismer Will Not be Raising the Price of a Meal Swipe! • Bonner Leaders Address Food Insecurity in Norristown • The Beginning of Spring • Fulfill Food Bank Run by Guadagno '80, Fights COVID-19 Hunger • Opinion: Break Days - Useful Alternative or Useless Excuse for a Spring Break?; A Disappointed Senior Class • ACHA Health Survey Returns • Update on Spring Sports

March Madness With A Twist, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

After a year with no “March Madness” that turned into one of the maddest years of our lifetime, the calendar has rolled through twelve months and the lure of television money has resurrected “March Madness.” Some things look very familiar.

The Grizzly, March 18, 2021, Simra Mariam, Morgan Grabowski, Gillian Mccomeskey, Samirah Deshields, Jenna Smith, Claire Vance, Ava Compagnoni, Rosalia Murphy

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

How the Institute for Student Success is Supporting Students This Semester • Ursinus Adds Interdisciplinary "Health and Society" Major • Ursinus Vigil Marks Disability Community National Day of Mourning • Talia Argondezzi Talks Women's History Month • Athletes Looking Forward to Spring Season Games • Opinion: How My Externship Went in the Pandemic; My Favorite Classes • Senior Mental Health Check-up • Softball on a Comeback

Infectious Ideas: Why Do Radical Innovations Take Root?, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Living in the midst of a pandemic, we have all become familiar with the idea of contagion. An epidemic spreads through exposure to an infectious agent, like a novel virus. In a basic contagion model, the spread of a disease is a function of contact with the agent and its degree of infectiousness. Epidemiologists often model the risk of contagion as a function of contact (or frequency or level of contact) with the infected and the agent’s virulence.

When it comes to triggering radical institutional change, do ideas work the same way?

In a recent article, a team of …

The Grizzly, March 11, 2021, Simra Mariam, Ava Compagnoni, Layla Halterman, Ben Goetz, Katie Cressman, Jenna Smith, Griffin Banks

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Community Health Class Applies Service Learning to COVID-19 • Job and Internship Fair Review • Kelly Piotrowicz '20: The Alumna's Volleyball Legacy • Recap of Black History Month at the IIE • Opinion: Wismer, Do Better; Netflix Recommendations • Spring Sports Will Make a Return • Farewell Wentz

Over The Edge: Suburban Planned Communities, The Second Frontier, And The Rise Of 80s High School Films, Daniel Mcclure

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

While many 1980s youth-oriented films often sold various images of consumption, Over the Edge was one of the early prototypes of the genre, offering a more sober—a more 70s—outlook on youth attempting to find meaning and identity in a corporate-driven, materialistic space called American suburbia. Both a setting for paradise as well as an existential hell for the youth growing up amidst it, the film mobilizes the West and its frontier-like majesty haunting the characters’ space in the planned development of New Granada—a place where families are safe and entrepreneurs can thrive. Specters of the West haunt the film—from the …

The Grizzly, March 4, 2021, Simra Mariam, Ava Compagnoni, Caitlin Vinsonhaler, Jenni Berrios, Amelia Kunko, Madison Handwerger

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Important Health and Wellness Survey Launches on Campus • Freshman 101: People to Get to Know on Campus • Alpha Phi Epsilon • The Life of Campus Safety Officer Will McCoy • Opinion: Is the Movie Ever Better Than the Book? • Coach Check-in: Janelle Benner • Men's Tennis Rebuilds

Investigating Resilience Through The Rhetoric Of The Revolution, Leah Danielson

Conspectus Borealis

In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cuba's core values and the rhetoric used by revolutionary leaders. To do so, I frame my paper around two critical questions; how was it that revolutionary leaders created such a deep loyalty to their cause, and in what ways has that loyalty continued today? As such, I will investigate how the rhetorical choices exemplified in linguistic, visual, and other ethnographic observations, collected in a trip to Cuba in 2020, represent a Cuban society that continues these revolutionary characteristics as is carried out through themes of community identity and belongingness, a desire to …

March 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates our Cherished Seniors; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

Amjambo Africa! (March 2021), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In this Issue

Museveni of Uganda..........2/3

College applications andscholarships ........................4/5

Publisher’s Editorial/BetterDays Ahead? ..........................6

Translations

French ............................7/24

Swahili............................8/24

Somali ............................9/24

Kinyarwanda...............20/24

Portuguese ...................21/24

Influential Black leaders .....10

Community masks fromTracey Sesselberg.................11

World Market Basket ..........12

Fishermen feed MainersHealthy cooking with Yvonne ElingaOrganization updates .........13

Burundi Star.........................14

Messan Jordan Benissan inCamden ................................15

Photo essay/Onyx Emelo ...16

Helping kids in Angola.......17

News from Africa................18

Avoiding scams & fraud .....19

Biden proposes immigration changes .................................27

The Shanachie, Volume 33, Number 2, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

In this issue: Pandemic squelches parades, but spirit of St. Patrick lives on --Hartford: First church bought in 1829, St. Patrick's built in 1849 -- Enfield: Irish priests, nuns and laypersons -- Litchfield County: St. Patrick's, St. Bridget's, St. Columcille's -- New London County: St. Patrick's Cathedral -- Mystic: High Street became Irish Hill -- Fairfield County: St. Augustine and St. Patrick team up; The little church on the Redding Ridge since 1880 -- Hartford County: Collinsville began with a snowstorm -- Middlesex County: St. Patrick and St. Bridget of Kildare -- Farmington: St. Patrick's parish prepares for a second …