Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, And Criticism In Postwar France, Davide Panagia

Politics

Sentimental Empiricism reconsiders the legacy of eighteenth and nineteenth century empiricism and moral sentimentalism for the intellectual formation of the generation of postwar French thinkers whose work came to dominate Anglophone conversations across the humanities under the guise of “French theory.” Panagia’s book first shows what was missed in the reception of this literature in the Anglophone academy by attending to how France’s pedagogical milieu plays out church and state relations in the form of educational debates around reading practices, the aesthetics of mimesis, French imperialism, and republican universalism. Panagia then shows how such thinkers as Jean Wahl, Simone de …

Welcoming The Stranger: Abrahamic Hospitality And Its Contemporary Implications, Ori N. Soltes, Rachel Stern, Endy Moraes

Religion

Embracing hospitality and inclusion in Abrahamic traditions

One of the signal moments in the narrative of the biblical Abraham is his insistent and enthusiastic reception of three strangers, a starting point of inspiration for all three Abrahamic traditions as they evolve and develop the details of their respective teachings. On the one hand, welcoming the stranger by remembering “that you were strangers in the land of Egypt” is enjoined upon the ancient Israelites, and on the other, oppressing the stranger is condemned by their prophets throughout the Hebrew Bible.

These sentiments are repeated in the New Testament and the Qur’an …

Remember The Hand: Manuscription In Early Medieval Iberia, Catherine Brown

Medieval Studies

Remember the Hand studies a body of articulate manuscript books from the Christian monasteries of northern Iberia in the tenth and eleventh centuries. These exceptional, richly illuminated codices have in common an urgent sense of scribal presence—scribes name themselves, describe themselves, even paint their own portraits. While marginal notes, even biographical ones, are a common feature of medieval manuscripts, rarely do scribes make themselves so fully known. These writers address the reader directly, asking for prayers of intercession and sharing of themselves. They ask the reader to join them in not only acknowledging the labor of writing but also in …

The Worlding Of Arabic Literature: Language, Affect, And The Ethics Of Translatability, Anna Ziajka Stanton

Literary Studies

Critics have long viewed translating Arabic literature into English as an ethically fraught process of mediating between two wholly incommensurable languages, cultures, and literary traditions. Today, Arabic literature is no longer “embargoed” from Anglophone cultural spaces, as Edward Said once famously claimed that it was. As Arabic literary works are translated into English in ever-greater numbers, what alternative model of translation ethics can account for this literature’s newfound readability in the hegemonic language of the world literary system?

The Worlding of Arabic Literature argues that an ethical translation of a work of Arabic literature is one that transmits the literariness …

The Moralist International: Russia In The Global Culture Wars, Kristina Stoeckl, Dmitry Uzlaner

Politics

The Moralist International analyzes the role of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state in the global culture wars over gender and reproductive rights and religious freedom. It shows how the Russian Orthodox Church in the past thirty years first acquired knowledge about the dynamics, issues, and strategies of Right- Wing Christian groups; how the Moscow Patriarchate has shaped its traditionalist agenda accordingly; and how the close alliance between church and state has turned Russia into a norm entrepreneur for international moral conservativism. Including detailed case studies of the World Congress of Families, anti-abortion activism, and the global homeschooling …

Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, And Appearance In Indonesia, Patricia Spyer

Art & Visual Culture

Less than a year after the end of authoritarian rule in 1998, huge images of Jesus Christ and other Christian scenes proliferated on walls and billboards around a provincial town in eastern Indonesia where conflict had arisen between Muslims and Christians. A manifestation of the extreme perception that emerged amid uncertainty and the challenge to seeing brought on by urban warfare, the street paintings erected by Protestant motorbike-taxi drivers signaled a radical departure from the aniconic tradition of the old colonial church, a desire to be seen and recognized by political authorities from Jakarta to the UN and European Union, …

Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism In The Antebellum West, Luke Ritter

History

Why have Americans expressed concern about immigration at some times but not at others? In pursuit of an answer, this book examines America’s first nativist movement, which responded to the rapid influx of 4.2 million immigrants between 1840 and 1860 and culminated in the dramatic rise of the National American Party. As previous studies have focused on the coasts, historians have not yet completely explained why westerners joined the ranks of the National American, or “Know Nothing,” Party or why the nation’s bloodiest anti-immigrant riots erupted in western cities—namely Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. In focusing on the antebellum …

Womanpriest: Tradition And Transgression In The Contemporary Roman Catholic Church, Jill Peterfeso

History

This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change.

In order to understand how womenpriests …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume I, 1809–1836, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

This is the only collection ever made of Bryant's letters, two-thirds of which have never before been printed. Their publication was foreseen by the late Allan Nevin as "one of the most important and stimulating enterprises contributory to the enrichment of the nation's cultural and political life that is now within range of individual and group effort.

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was America's earliest national poet. His immediate followers—Longfellow, Poe, and Whitman—unquestionably began their distinguished careers in imitation of his verses. But Bryant was even more influential in his long career as a political journalist, and in his encouragement of …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume Ii, 1836–1849, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

The second volume of William Cullen Bryant's letters opens in 1836 as he has just returned to New York from an extended visit to Europe to resume charge of the New York Evening Post, brought near to failure during his absence by his partner William Leggett's mismanagement. At the period's close, Bryant has found in John Bigelow an able editorial associate and astute partner, with whose help he has brought the paper close to its greatest financial prosperity and to national political and cultural influence.

Bryant's letters show the versatility of his concern with the crucial political, social, artistic, and …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume V, 1865–1871, William Cullen Bryant, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

On April 26, 1865, as Abraham Lincoln's funeral cortege paused in Union Square, New York, before being taken by rail to Springfield, Illinois, William Cullen Bryant listened as his own verse elegy for the slain president was read to a great concourse of mourners by the Reverend Samuel Osgood. Only five years earlier and a few blocks downtown, at Cooper Union, Bryant had introduced the prairie candidate to his first eastern audience. There his masterful appeal to the conscience of the nation prepared the way for his election to the presidency on the verge of the Civil War. Now, Bryant …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume Iii, 1849–1857, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

During the years covered in this volume, Bryant traveled more often and widely than at any comparable period during his life. The visits to Great Britain and Europe, a tour of the Near East and the Holy Land, and excursions in Cuba, Spain, and North Africa, as well as two trips to Illinois, he described in frequent letters to the Evening Post. Reprinted widely, and later published in two volumes, these met much critical acclaim, one notice praising the "quiet charm of these letters, written mostly from out-of-the-way places, giving charming pictures of nature and people, with the most delicate …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume Iv, 1858–1864, William Cullen Bryant, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

The years just before and during the Civil War marked the high point of Bryant's influence on public affairs, which had grown steadily since the Evening Post had upheld the democratic Jacksonian revolution of the 1830s. A founder of the Free Soil Party in 1848 and the Republican Party in 1856, Bryant was lauded in 1857 by Virginia anti-slavery leader John Curtis Underwood, who wrote to Eli Thayer, "What a glory it would be to our country if it could elect this man to the Presidency-the country not he would be honored & elevated by such an event."

In 1860 …

The Letters Of William Cullen Bryant: Volume Vi, 1872–1878, William Cullen Bryant Ii, Thomas G. Voss

American Philosophy

In January 1872, Bryant traveled to Mexico City, where he was greeted warmly by President Benito Juarez; on this and other occasions he was feted for the Evening Post's sturdy condemnation in 1863 of the abortive invasion of Mexico, which was freshly remembered there. At the close of his visit a local newspaper remarked that the "honors and hospitality which were so lavishly and generously conferred upon him were the spontaneous outpouring of a grateful people, who had not forgotten that when Mexico was friendless Mr. Bryant became her friend." Returning in April through New Orleans and up the …