Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Renewing A Catholic Theology Of Marriage Through A Common Way Of Life: Consonance With Vowed Religious Life-In-Community, Kent Lasnoski

Dissertations (1934 -)

Beginning with Vatican II's call for constant renewal, in light of the council's universal call to holiness, I analyze and critique modern theologies of Christian marriage, especially those identifying marriage as a relationship or as practice. Herein, need emerges for a new, ecclesial, trinitarian, and christological paradigm to identify purposes, ends, and goods of Christian marriage. The dissertation's body develops the foundation and framework of this new paradigm: a Common Way in Christ. I find this paradigm by putting marriage in dialogue with an ecclesial practice already the subject of rich trinitarian, christological, ecclesial theological development: consecrated religious life.

Chapter …

Qoheleth: An Anti-Apocalyptic Genre For A Message Of Joy, Jerome Douglas

Dissertations (1934 -)

How is the interpreter to approach Ecclesiastes? What is the message of the author? What is the genre of the book? Many scholars have posited varying interpretations concerning the message of Ecclesiastes and have observed the number of statements that appear to be conflicting or, at least, in tension with one another. Discussions about the argument and genre label(s) of/ or in Ecclesiastes have not fully considered the author's polemics against the apocalyptic beliefs of his day, 200 B.C.E. This dissertation will propose that the author of Ecclesiastes utilizes a hybrid genre in his work. He, in part, employs an …

The Poetics Of Remembrance: Communal Memory And Identity In Heidegger And Ricoeur, David Leichter

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this dissertation, I explore the significance of remembering, especially in its communal form, and its relationship to narrative identity by examining the practices that make possible the formation and transmission of a heritage. To explore this issue I use Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur, who have dedicated several of their major works to remembrance and forgetting. In comparing Heidegger and Ricoeur, I suggest that Ricoeur's formulation of the identity of a subject and a community offers an alternative to Heidegger's account. For, if Heidegger's critique of subjectivity offers the possibility of a new relationship to history and community, it …

The Way To God Or God's Way To Us: The Theologies Of Edward Farley And James Mcclendon In Critical Dialogue, Thomas W. Harrington

Dissertations (1934 -)

A lively theological debate in recent decades has been the dispute over theological method between "revisionist" and "narrativist" theologians. To explore and evaluate this debate I consider the work of "revisionist" theologian Edward Farley and of "narrativist" theologian James William McClendon, Jr. Farley's method calls, first, for an attempt to uncover faith realities that can be directly perceived, such as the faith community's efforts to remove ethnic boundaries, and, second, for an endeavor to examine how such realities indirectly demonstrate the existence of additional faith realities, such as the character of God. In contrast, McClendon's method calls for an attempt …

The Trinitarian Theology Of Irenaeus Of Lyons, Jackson Jay Lashier

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation is a study of the Trinitarian theology of Irenaeus of Lyons. With the exception of two recent studies, Irenaeus' Trinitarian theology, particularly in its immanent manifestation, has been devalued by scholarship due to his early dates and his stated purpose of avoiding speculative theology. In contrast to this majority opinion, I argue that Irenaeus' works show a mature understanding of the Trinity, in both its immanent and economic manifestations, which is occasioned by Valentinianism. Moreover, his Trinitarian theology represents a significant advancement upon that of his sources, the so- called apologists, whose understanding of the divine nature converges …

Encompassing The Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, And Inscription In The Fiction Of John Mcgahern, John Keegan Malloy

Dissertations (1934 -)

Encompassing the Intolerable examines John McGahern's depiction of individual consciousness struggling with postcolonial Ireland's three dominant and interconnected institutions: nation, family, and the Catholic Church. While McGahern's work, especially the early fiction, is often considered unremittingly bleak, this study argues that his exposure of abuse, repression, and disillusionment within these institutions does not finally entail a pessimistic vision. Instead, through close readings emphasizing character and epiphany, I contend that his texts use the motifs of laughter, memory, and inscription to demonstrate how consciousness can accommodate intolerable realities such as violence and loss rather than becoming defined or controlled by them. …

Full, Conscious, And Active Participation: The Laity As Ecclesial Subjects In An Ecclesiology Informed By Bernard Lonergan, Mary Utzerath

Dissertations (1934 -)

Unresolved problems and tensions regarding the status and role of the laity persist nearly a half-century following Vatican II. While the magisterium focuses on issues related to the appropriateness or ability of lay persons to carry out roles in the Church that have traditionally belonged to the ordained, sociological surveys indicate that the experience of lay members of the Church in the United States and in much of the Western world includes inadequate formation, confused Catholic identity, marginalization, low levels of commitment in young Catholics, and the steady exodus of Catholics. These problems of the laity are symptomatic of problems …

Intersex And Imago: Sex, Gender, And Sexuality In Postmodern Theological Anthropology, Megan K. Defranza

Dissertations (1934 -)

Christian theologians regularly assume a binary model of human sex differentiation based on the creation narratives found in Genesis. Recent work in theological anthropology has grounded theological concepts such as the social view of the image of God, human personhood, and human relationality on the creation of humans as male and female in heterosexual marital relation. While these anthropologies have merit--particularly in correcting older versions of the imago Dei which privileged the male-- they are inadequate for addressing the phenomena of intersex.

Intersex is a broad term used for persons whose bodies display some physical characteristics of both sexes--historically labeled …

Paule Marshall's Critique Of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through The Trope Of Travel, Michelle Miesen Felix

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study examines Marshall's use of the trope of travel within and between the United States and the Caribbean to critique ideologies of Development, tourism, and globalization as neo-imperial. This examination of travel in Marshall's To Da-Duh, In Memoriam; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; Praisesong for the Widow; and Daughters exposes the asymmetrical structures of power that exist between the two regions. In so doing, my study locates Marshall's concern about the imposition of power in the post-colonial period rather than exclusively in the Caribbean's colonial past. My close reading of these texts draws upon the vexed tradition of …

Hermeneutics, Poetry, And Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis And The Renaissance Epic, Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Dissertations (1934 -)

One of the major claims this study makes is that Spenser desires to teach and cultivate a poetic reader--a reader who will employ interpretation and contemplation to expand the possibilities and places of textual meaning according to the tutelage of Spenser's text. The basis for Spenser's exegetical schema derives in large part from the works of St. Augustine and Richard Hooker. In works such as On Christian Doctrine and the Confessions, Augustine erects a Scriptural interpretative model founded upon charity and faith--a model interested in the process of exegesis as much as the end products of the analysis. Similarly, in …

Making Friends Down Under: The Beginnings Of Lds Missionary Work On Thursday Island, Queensland, Australia, 1961, Fred E. Woods

Faculty Publications

The year 2011 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the beginnings of LDS missionary work on Thursday Island. On this jubilee occasion, it is fitting to ask how the message of Mormonism came to this tiny Australian isle and how American Mormon missionaries adapted to a region far removed from their culture and homeland. Using journal entries, letters, and interviews from the first three full-time elders to preach on the island, it is possible to sketch a portrait of what these young men experienced.

The West's Feet Of Clay: Transmuting The Pillars Of Liberty From Gold Into Dross, Jin Seock Shin

Senior Honors Theses

This study seeks to support the centrality of the Judeo-Christian heritage to the growth and sustenance of liberty, a form of individualism limited by moral values. The pillars of liberty—self-government, private property, representative government, and limited government—reflect the structural contributions made by the Judeo-Christian heritage. Unfortunately, much of Western civilization suffers from a spiritual crisis, which has introduced and exacerbated fractures in the pillars. Pitirim Sorokin’s social and cultural analysis of Western civilization provides a framework to better understand the fractures evident in the history of liberty in Europe and America, and developed in each pillar of liberty—fractures that reaffirm …

Scout's Daughters : Race And Creative Development In Contemporary Adolescent Literature, Amanda Malloy

Honors Theses

At the heart of what Roberta S. Trites titles ―adolescent literature‖ – works written both for and about young adults—is a question of agency (Disturbing 7). In Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, Trites asserts that adolescent novels attempt to answer the question of young adults who wonder if they ―should or even can affect the world in which they live‖ (1). Trites‘ argument is based on the idea that the distinguishing characteristic of adolescent literature is its focus on ―the social forces‖ that …

Networks Of Resistance : Black Virginians Remember Civil War Loyalties, Amanda Kleintop

Honors Theses

On June 22, 1877, William Charity explained his neighborhood’s Civil War loyalties to special commissioner Isaac Baldwin of the Southern Claims Commission (SCC): “The colored people were mostly all for the union.” Charity, a free black Virginian, recognized that “mostly” did not mean all. He went on to suggest: “some of them were blind.” As a self-identified Unionist, Charity had difficulty envisioning a black man who was not loyal to the Union cause and emancipation during the Civil War. Current debates, however, have seized on those black Virginians Charity called “blind,” taking the “mostly” Unionist majority for granted. Like Charity, …

Crusader, April 1, 2011, College Of The Holy Cross

Student Newspapers

The student newspaper for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Articles include coverage of campus events and issues, sports, editorials and special features.

The Assumption Of All Humanity In Saint Hilary Of Poitiers' Tractatus Super Psalmos, Ellen Scully

Dissertations (1934 -)

In this dissertation, I focus on the soteriological understanding of the fourth-century theologian Hilary of Poitiers as manifested in his underappreciated Tractatus super Psalmos. Hilary offers an understanding of salvation in which Christ saves humanity by assuming every single person into his body in the incarnation. My dissertation contributes to scholarship on Hilary in two ways.

First, I demonstrate that Hilary's teaching concerning Christ's assumption of all humanity is a unique development of Latin sources. Because of his understanding of Christ's assumption of all humanity, Hilary, along with several Greek fathers, has been accused of heterodoxy resulting from Greek Platonic …

Book Review, Edward Udovic

Mission and Ministry Publications

Book review of: Berthelon, Pierre. "Antoine Chevrier: Pretre selon l'Evangile 1826-1879," (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2010. Pp. 143. Paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-09179).

Marriage Apartheid And The Tyranny Of American Morality, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

An essay on implications of marriage equality debates in the Unites States.

The Record Industry In Transition, Monica Caro

Whittier Scholars Program

The objective of this paper is to examine how technology and the internet has shaped the business model of the record industry. For decades the record industry operated under a service-type model before eventually transitioning into an industry of physical products. The industry's transition began with the consolidation of major record companies by media conglomerates. Driven by their venture for profit, major record companies only capitalized on artists with the greatest potential of generating revenue. Consequently, this compromised artistic creativity and ultimately encouraged by the development of an increasingly homogenized music market. Furthermore, this paper analyzes how major record companies …

Up Too Late: A Novel Excerpt, Peter Bayless

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Tyler Sexton is a male in his mid-twenties whose life seems to have ground to a halt before it truly began. Despite the opportunities afforded him by a successful college education and an upper-middle-class family background, Tyler's life since the death of his father from heart disease has become one dominated by malaise, living alone and working a dead-end job as a grocery store customer-service manager, clinging to the family members he has left. Now, with his mother suffering from a debilitating fight with cancer and his sisters either starting their own families or withdrawing even further into episodes of …

My Secret Life In Film: A Memoir, Kelly Grey Carlisle

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This creative dissertation is an original work in the genre of memoir, and consists of the first two sections of my book, My Secret Life in Film. I believe that my book speaks to contemporary experiences of childhood, violence, sexuality, and faith, and complicates conceptions of a ‘normal’ family. When I was three weeks old, my mother, who worked as a prostitute, was murdered near downtown Los Angeles. Her case remains unsolved, and I do not know my father. Her own parents were unwed. At first I lived with my maternal grandmother and the woman I believe to have been …

Signifyin' Black Power: Soul On Ice And The Subversion Of Normative Whiteness, James David Fife

Theses and Dissertations

This study emphasizes the methodology of linguistic resistance in Eldridge Cleaver's best-known work, Soul on Ice. Through a process of signification, Cleaver works to redefine key words and concepts that form a web of racialist and racist thinking called normative whiteness. By emptying key terms, like those of "life," "liberty," and "property," Cleaver's text attempts to offer a new, less biased foundation on which a more inclusive and pluralistic American narrative can be written, a move that both makes his rhetoric significantly different from that of many contemporary resistance writers and positions him as an important link in a …

Lafayette’S Trial Of The Nineteenth Century: The Scandal, Rumor, & Politics Of Mrs. Helen J. Gougar, Jennifer L. Adams

Communication & Theatre Faculty Publications

Helen M. Gougar appeared before the Indiana Supreme Court in 1897 to argue on behalf of suffrage for women. Judge James McCabe said Gougar made “one of the most forcible, logical and concise legal arguments ever made before this court. Not one man in a hundred acquits himself so well.’’

The Death Of Jefferson Davis, Kasey J. Dell

History Theses & Dissertations

Although there are numerous studies of Jefferson Davis and countless more of the Civil War and its consequences, little work has been done to study what the death of Jefferson Davis revealed in terms of the United States' reunification. A political nonperson in the nation's capital, Davis was never fully pardoned and did not receive full rights of citizenship in his lifetime, giving him a unique position in society. Moreover, as the former president of the Confederacy, he was a polarizing figure whose death elicited strong emotions.

The response to Davis's death, almost twenty-five years after the Civil War ended, …

Political Science Spring 2011, Dan Sabia

Political Science Newsletter Spring 2011

No abstract provided.

Migration, Community, And Stereotype: Shaping Racial Space In The Twentieth-Century Urban West, Stefani Evans

Psi Sigma Siren

African Americans who migrated to western cities in the twentieth century encountered a polyglot mix of Euro Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. Diverse western populations dictated that western racial contests over space and power would evolve differently from those in the North or the South. This paper examines the discourse on white, Latino and African American racial landscapes in western cities through themes of migration, community formation, and white stereotypes and community responses to those stereotypes in seven key monographs and two articles published between 1993 and 2005.

Price Ceilings And Rationing: The Base Ingredients Of The Black Market Food Industry In Nevada During World War Ii, Richard B. Keeton

Psi Sigma Siren

After the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans braced themselves for what would surely be a long, hard-fought war. In World War II, brave young United States soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice across the seas on both the European and Pacific fronts. However, the millions of citizens on domestic soil also made countless sacrifices in a national mobilization to support the war effort. People in Nevada and across the nation gave up everyday conveniences and seemingly ordinary items to show their support for the troops. Government agencies instituted tight rationing guidelines on a variety of consumer goods. Perhaps the …

Bad Girls And Biopolitics: Abortion, Popular Fiction, And Population Control, Karen Weingarten

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Thrifting, Angela Sorby

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Theology Of Confessionist Dialogue: A Theology Of Religions In The Religious Situation In Korea, Young Seok Song

ATS Dissertations

This dissertation constructs a new theology of religions, naming it a confessionist dialogue. By examining the traditional and contemporary religious atmosphere of Korea, I demonstrate how Korean Christians have often had an anti-relational attitude toward other religions, which caused religious conflicts and created anti-social expression in Korea. I also show that only a few religious pluralists have engaged in an active dialogue with other religions in Korea. By survey research, I found that the majority of Korean Christians have acknowledged the necessity of relationship with other religions, but they have a fear of religious pluralism, which makes them hesitant to …