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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Book Review: No Greater Love: How My Family Survived The Genocide In Rwanda, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann Oct 2019

Book Review: No Greater Love: How My Family Survived The Genocide In Rwanda, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Heroism Science

Tharcisse Seminega is an ethnic Tutsi who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide, along with his wife and all five of his children. His book, No Greater Love: How My Family Survived the Genocide in Rwanda, is his memoir of growing up in Rwanda and surviving the genocide. The book also contains shorter memoirs by his wife and some of his children, some short pieces by some of his rescuers, a selection of documentary evidence, and a timeline of the genocide. The heroes who helped the Seminega family were conditioned to rescue others before the genocide occurred. As the rescuers’ …


Heroic Consciousness, Scott T. Allison Sep 2019

Heroic Consciousness, Scott T. Allison

Heroism Science

This article describes heroic consciousness – how heroes perceive, experience, and think about the world. I describe the transformation of consciousness from its pre-heroic state to its heroic state. Pre-heroic consciousness is characterized by nescient and maladaptive thinking, dualism, separation, mono-rationality, and a naïve sense of empowerment. Heroic consciousness is exemplified by nondualism, unity, transrationality, and the wisdom of tempered empowerment. Heroic consciousness is achieved via three routes: (1) traversing the hero’s journey, (2) effective use of specific spiritual practices, and/or (3) participation in hero training programs. I discuss the implications of heroic consciousness for individual and global well-being.


For Whose Greater Good? The Case Of Hero-Making: Girch And Darius, Gražina Kristina Sviderskyte Aug 2019

For Whose Greater Good? The Case Of Hero-Making: Girch And Darius, Gražina Kristina Sviderskyte

Heroism Science

This article reviews an investigation into the case of Stanley Girch (aka Girėnas) and Stephen William Darius as (multi)transfigured and transforming heroes and seeks to examine a two-fold assumption that has emerged in heroism science, namely that people create heroes mostly for the better and that learning from the past can help assess which heroes are needed. We argue that it may be beneficial to shift the focus of the analysis and follow the reverse course of a hero’s journey, tracing the impact, evolution and origin of the heroic status ascribed to the historical figures, whether individual or collective. Presuming …


Book Review: Unlikely Heroes: The Place Of Holocaust Rescuers In Research And Teaching, Stephanie Fagin-Jones Jun 2019

Book Review: Unlikely Heroes: The Place Of Holocaust Rescuers In Research And Teaching, Stephanie Fagin-Jones

Heroism Science

Representing the first in a new series, Contemporary Holocaust Studies, from the University of Nebraska Press, this valuable book is the result of a collection of papers presented at the Sommerhauser Symposium on Holocaust Education in April 2017 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This biennial symposia, generously supported by third-generation survivor siblings Peter Sommerhauser and Eileen Sommerhauser-Putter, along with The University of Nebraska, focuses on the integration of research and teaching of Holocaust scholarship. The editors thus seek to address an urgent need to bring past and present academic knowledge on the subject of Holocaust rescue into the classroom …


Posthuman Heroes, Joanna Pascoe Jun 2019

Posthuman Heroes, Joanna Pascoe

Heroism Science

This article explores whether narrative texts may help learners grapple with what it means to be human or indeed posthuman in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA) world inclusive of biotechnology and developing artificial intelligence (AI). Narratives with a posthuman hero may provide access to a post-anthropocentric view described by Braidotti (2016) as life-force egalitarianism inclusive of all human, non-human, geo, cross-species, and transversal alliances. Definitions are broad – narrative includes novels, film, television series, visual art; hero is beyond gender, accessible and encompassing all with life force; posthumanism refers to popular culture and critical theory, with links to transhumanism. …


Self-Realization And Validity Surplus In Proactive Heroism, Bryan Smyth May 2019

Self-Realization And Validity Surplus In Proactive Heroism, Bryan Smyth

Heroism Science

This article provides a brief outline of an approach to understanding proactive (or social) heroism in embodied terms, taking this as essential to supporting the idea of ‘the banality of heroism’. I first present an analysis of heroic action in general that shows it as involving self-realization through nonselfsacrificial existential necessity, and then show how in cases of reactive heroic action this necessity is best understood in predispositional embodied terms, such that the agent may be said to quite literally incarnate certain generally accepted norms of the intersubjective ethical context. I then briefly sketch out how this same kind of …


Prosocialization: Lessons Learned From The Upbringing Of Holocaust Heroes, Stephanie Fagin-Jones May 2019

Prosocialization: Lessons Learned From The Upbringing Of Holocaust Heroes, Stephanie Fagin-Jones

Heroism Science

Research on factors associated with heroic rescue during the Holocaust suggest that the parenting and upbringing of the rescuer was significant (Ganz, 1993; Oliner & Oliner, 1988). The research suggests that heroic altruism during the Holocaust was but a natural extension of the rescuers’ integrated moral identities reflecting deep-seated instincts, predispositions, and habitual patterns established in early upbringing according to moral parenting practices, that when acted upon conferred the deepest feelings of meaning, life satisfaction, and sustained well-being across the life-span. This paper explores the implications of these and other findings from the research on heroism during the Holocaust, specifically, …