Digital Commons Network^™

Cracking The Book Of Mormon’S “Secret Combinations”?, Gregory L. Smith

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Book of Mormon has been explained by some as a product of Joseph Smith’s 19th century environment. Advocates of this thesis have argued that the phrase secret combinations is a reference to Freemasonry, and reflects Joseph’s preoccupation with this fraternity during the Book of Mormon’s composition in 1828 29. It is claimed that this phrase is rarely, if ever, used in a non Masonic context during 1828–29, and that a type of “semantic narrowing” occurred which restricted the term to Freemasonry. Past studies have found a few counter-examples, which are reviewed, but none from during the precise years of …

Sweet Tea: The British Working Class, Food Controls, And The First World War, Nicholas P. Benson

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

At the onset of the Great War in 1914, Britain was already existing in a precarious economic situation as the state most dependent on foreign goods and trade, a role which was exacerbated by their unique economic and political history which had resulted in the rapid expansion of industry without any interference or protections of the workers by the government. The working class comprised over 80% of the population of Britain, the vast majority of whom were suffering the destitution and poverty brought on by the unrestricted industrialization that had begun over a century earlier. The beginnings of the Great …

Mortal Reason And Divine Infinity: Justifying The Ways Of God To Men In Book Vi Of Paradise Lost, Sarah Plavcan

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

In his epic poem, Paradise Lost, Milton’s goal was to “justify the ways of God to men” (PLI.25-26). For his seventeenth-century Protestant audience, this meant reconciling both the paradox of human free will and divine foreknowledge and the paradox of human suffering and God’s goodness. Although God’s speech in Book III makes an explicit argument declaring God’s justice, this paper will show that Book VI, the War in Heaven, completes this argument by attempting to move the poem’s readers beyond the limits of human reason into a divine understanding of the universe. Through temporal compression and confusion, created by the …

Full Issue

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Who Was Sherem?, A. Keith Thompson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

The Book of Mormon’s first anti-Christ, Sherem, “came among” the Nephites before their first generation was ended. Because he was an eloquent believer in the Law of Moses, there has been a variety of surmise as to his background. Was he a Lamanite, or a Jaredite or Mulekite trader? Was his presence among the separated Nephites evidence of early interaction between the Nephites and other civilisations in Nephite lands from the time of their first arrival? This short article reviews the various suggestions about Sherem’s identity and suggests he was most likely a descendant of the original Lehite party but …

Reflections Of Urim: Hebrew Poetry Sheds Light On The Directors Interpreters Mystery, Stan Spencer

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

In the early editions of the Book of Mormon, Alma refers to the Nephite interpreters as directors. Because director(s) elsewhere refers to the brass ball that guided Lehi’s family through the wilderness, Alma’s use of the term was apparently considered a mistake, and directors was changed to interpreters for the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon. There are reasons, however, to believe that Alma’s use of directors was intentional. I present contextual evidence that Alma was actually using the Hebrew word urim, which was later translated into English as directors (for the interpreters) and director (for the brass ball), …

Seeing Ourselves Through The Eyes Of A Friendly And Thoughtful Evangelical, Daniel C. Peterson

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Some Latter-day Saints will recall Richard Mouw from the introductory remarks that he offered in November 2004 when the Evangelical Protestant apologist Ravi Zacharias was the featured speaker at a special interfaith meeting in the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the course of his remarks, Professor Mouw apologized to Latter-day Saints for the way in which Evangelicals have often treated the Mormon faith. Carrie Moore, of the Deseret News, reported about Zacharias’s speech on 15 November 2004:

Trauma For Everyone: How Ptsd Became The Malady Of Millions, Stewart Justman

Global Humanities and Religions Faculty Publications

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, trauma experts feared that as much as a quarter of the population of New York City needed psychological treatment.  In the spirit of emergency aid, counselors offered Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), a one-session procedure in which those in shock are encouraged to air their emotions and advised of symptoms of PTSD likely to appear in the future.  Evidence from controlled trials, however, suggests that CISD does not promote recovery and sometimes hinders it, presumably by cueing the symptoms of PTSD in the process of warning about them. …

Ripple On Stagnant Water By Li Jieren, And: Fact In Fiction: 1920s China And Ba Jin’S Family By Kristin Stapleton (Review), Shiamin Kwa

East Asian Languages and Cultures Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Twilight In Afghanistan: An Introduction, Feisal Amin Istrabadi, Sumit Ganguly

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Water, Bison, And Horses: Natural Resources And Their Impacts On Native Raids And Relations In Late, Spanish Colonial New Mexico, Dori L. Gorczyca

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

During the Spanish colonial period in New Mexico’s history, the area became a place where cultural, social, and economic mixing of various Native American groups and Spanish settlers frequently occurred. Certain peoples, such as the Pueblo, lived in an agrarian society and worked in close proximity to the Spanish. Other peoples, such as the Comanche, Apache, and Navajo, developed hostile relationships with these foreigners, and their raids on the Spanish, Pueblo, and each other changed the dynamic of their settlements. Sources from Spanish and Church officials, along with travel logs, discuss the effects of natural resources, such as water and …

"Under The Auspices Of Peace": The Northwest Indian War And Its Impact On The Early American Republic, Melanie L. Fernandes

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This paper examines the influence of the Northwest Indian War on the development of the early United States republic. In the years between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 and the establishment of a new federal government in 1789, the United States frontier was plagued by rivalry between citizens and Native Americans. The United States federal government viewed the success and progress of the nation as contingent upon possession of the Northwest Territory, and as such developed and adjusted their Indian policies to induce the Indians to peacefully accept United States authority in the Northwest Territory. The violence …

Gender And The Popular Heroines (And Heroes) Of The Young Adult Dystopia, Kara E. Hemphill

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For the past few years, dystopian stories have ruled the young adult fiction aisles and the box office. Taking the reins from similarly popular predecessors like Harry Potter and Twilight, the genre has set itself apart by telling stories of action, war, and heroism that are often led by a young female protagonist. This project examines a variety of gender-related themes in six young adult dystopian novels, chosen for their popularity and subject matter. While it is not a comprehensive look at the genre, it is meant to analyze some of the most widely known works, which is important because …

Negotiating The Doing To Being Boundary In J. Robert Clinton's Leadership Emergence Theory, Charles W. Sattgast

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the research of J. Robert Clinton only a third of leaders finish well. Clinton describes a developmental barrier he refers to as “the doing to being” boundary that many leaders face in their forties or fifties. This barrier requires leaders to undergo a paradigm shift from finding their meaning and fulfillment in achievement to ministry that flows out of being. According to Clinton many leaders fail to successfully negotiate this important transition which contributes to the alarming failure rate of leaders. This research project addressed this problem by exploring the nature and meaning of doing and being and …

From Local To Global: Purpose, Process, And Product In The Narratives Of Eighth Grade Language Arts Students, Amira Saad Kassem

Wayne State University Dissertations

Using a convenience sampling of 10 eighth-grade language arts students, this exploratory case study examined in depth the literacy processes used by ten 8th grade students to generate various multimodal artifacts that comprise their final projects and the nature of the literacy transactions that fostered these processes over the course of one year in this language arts classroom. Following closely (via the case studies in Chapter Five) how four of the ten students used the literacy events of the classroom to claim spaces to perceive and perform their voices and visions, the study revealed how these students were able to …

Review: Killing By Remote Control: The Ethics Of An Unmanned Military, Edited By Bradley Jay Strawser, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Dr. Harry van der Linden's review of: Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military, edited by Bradley Jay Strawser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 (264 pages, cloth).

Drone Warfare And Just War Theory, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This book chapter addresses two questions. First, can targeted killing by drones in non-battlefield zones be justified on basis of just war theory? Second, will the proliferation and expansion of combat drones in warfare, including the introduction of autonomous drones, be an obstacle to initiating or executing wars in a just manner in the future? The first question is answered by applying traditional jus ad bellum (justice in the resort to war) and jus in bello (justice in the execution of war) principles to the American targeted killing campaign in Pakistan; the second question is answered on basis of principles …

Introduction: Gendering Genocide Studies, 1st Edition, Amy E. Randall

History

When it comes to understanding genocide, gender matters. This has not always been evident, and even today there are critics and skeptics. Indeed, when feminist scholars in Holocaust studies first began examining women’s experiences and gender questions, their scholarship was ignored or met with hostility by many academics and others, including some survivors. Opponents expressed various concerns, including the idea that gender research and analysis would “trivialize” or “politicize” the Holocaust, de-emphasize the centrality of anti-Semitism and racism to Nazi persecution,¹ and promote “comparative victimhood or creat[e] unequal victims.”² Studying the gendered dimensions of genocide, however, does not …

Interrogating The "Collapse" Of The Roman Empire: Historiography And Instruction, Jon Pesner

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

No abstract provided.

"Dark And Wicked Things": Slender Man, The Folkloresque, And The Implications Of Belief, Jeffrey A. Tolbert

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper I examine the media discourses surrounding the May 2014 stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha, Wisconsin by two of her friends, supposedly to please the online legendary monster Slender Man, and several subsequent events which media outlets also attempted to link to the horror meme. I consider the implications of folkloric believability, by which I mean the interplay of belief about a tradition’s status as folklore, which in turn has important implications for the believability of the tradition’s content. I argue that an understanding of the processes through which individuals interact with and shape emergent traditions …

The Impact Of Kenya African Soldiers On The Creation And Evolution Of The Pioneer Corps During The Second World War, Meshack Owino

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Essence Of English Identity: Gender's Role In The Stability Of The Nation In English Literature, From The Anglo-Saxons To The Victorians, Natalie Marie Whitaker

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis, using Jungian analysis, investigates how the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, William Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Charles Dickens's David Copperfield reflect the interdependent spheres of gender relationships that affected societal perceptions of English national identity and stability for over a thousand years. Historian Geoffrey Hindley writes, "the historical reality of an English identity grew out of the traditions of loyalty and lordship from the epic heritage of a pagan past embodied in the poem of Beowulf in a common vernacular tongue.” In the three periods examined here, men and women had responsibilities in marriage that were defined by the societal ideals …

Horse-Stealing And Man-Hanging: An Examination Of Vigilantism In The Missouri Ozarks, Connie Sue Yen

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to determine what factors did or did not have an impact on the formation of the Slickers, the Regulators, and the Sons of Honor, three vigilante organizations that formed in the Missouri Ozarks during the nineteenth century. Primary source documents indicate that vigilante organizations formed in Missouri, and throughout the United States, for a variety of reasons. This study disproves the theory that vigilante violence in the Missouri Ozarks was based on any social or political struggle between an old or new order. This study contributes to our understanding of Ozarks history, as well …

A Condensed History Of Israel, Michael Smith

Michael D. Smith

No abstract provided.

Claude De France: Debussy's Great War Of 1915, Arun Rao

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

“A Lonely Wandering Refugee”: Displaced Whites In The Trans-Mississippi West During The American Civil War, 1861-1868, David Paul Hopkins, Jr.

Wayne State University Dissertations

Historians have written a great deal about the American Civil War and, until recently, much of that scholarly activity has focused on military battles and the effectiveness of the Union and Confederate armies on the war’s outcome. During the past few decades, social historians have tried to dig beneath that narrative to situate the war in the eyes of American citizens and how that war affected their lives. With this, there has been a focus on the Northern and Southern homefronts, African Americans, and soldiers’ motivations to fight – all rooted in the wartime experience. In this discussion, however, there …

Ugandan Politics World War Ii (1939-1949), Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

World War II shaped Uganda's postwar politics through local understandings of global war.¹ Individually and collectively Ugandans saw the war as an opportunity rather than simply a crisis. During the War, the acquired wealth and demonstrated loyalty to a stressed British empire, inverting paternalistic imperial relations and investing loyalty and money in ways they expected would be reciprocated with political and economic rewards. For the 77,000 Ugandan enlisted soldiers and for the civilians who grew coffee and cotton, contributed money and organizational skills, and followed the war news, the war was not a desperate struggle for survival. Ideological aspects …

Middlemarch And The Franco-Prussian War, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

By the early summer of 1870, George Eliot's work on Middlemarch, then consisting of the Vincy, Lydgate and Featherstone material, seemed to have stalled. In a journal entry of 20 May, George Eliot confessed that she was not hopeful about future work: 'I am languid, and my novel languishes to O'.1 And in fact the last references to Middlemarch in her journal date back to the previous September: on 11 September she had reached page 50 and the end of chapter 3, and then on the 22nd she maintained that she was stuck: 'im Stiche gerathen' (Journals, 138). There followed …

The Global Dystopian: Twenty-First Century Globalization, Terrorism, And Urban Destruction, Ryan Frank Peters

Dissertations

The new millennium has witnessed a staggering outpouring of literature, film and art which depict dystopian and post-apocalyptic societies. These stories have come in the form of massively popular films like the Matrix and Hunger Games trilogies; Emmy-winning television adaptations such as The Walking Dead; and Pulitzer Prize-winning novels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize-nominated Never Let Me Go. In the last five years, a wave of critically-lauded video games – The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, and Dishonored come immediately to mind—have depicted dystopian worlds while reaching mass audiences. Combined, The Last of Us and …

Research And Reality: Towards Responsible Medical Research For Catholic Universities, Michael Patrick Mccarthy

Dissertations

It is frequently noted that 90% of medical research stands to benefit only 10% of the population. While others dispute the numbers, there is little doubt that disparities exist in the global agenda for medical research. One needs no clearer example of research—not to mention public health and health care delivery—disparities than the Ebola outbreak that plagues West Africa. Despite these disparities, Catholic universities continue to engage in the social practice of medical research that deviates very little from the national funding priorities established through the National Institute for Health.

This dissertation argues that these unjust disparities are perpetuated by …