Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review: The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights And The Challenge Of Religion, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

Since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, the language of human rights has become a lingua franca among many jurists, philosophers, and theologians. But over the same period of time, the universalist aspirations of human rights language have also attracted myriad critics, both religious and secular. For these critics, the language of human rights isn’t sufficiently common to identify, discuss, and adjudicate moral and political issues. In The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Challenge of Religion, the rightly influential human rights scholar Johannes Morsink develops an argument that …

Review: Tolerance Among The Virtues, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

In increasingly pluralistic liberal democracies, citizens are commanded to be tolerant toward one another. Likewise, intolerance among citizens is criticized. But what exactly is tolerance? Is tolerance a personal attitude toward others whose beliefs and practices we neither wholly accept nor wholly reject? If it is a personal attitude, what does tolerance require from us, epistemologically, morally, and politically, in our interactions with one another? Or given the diverse communities in which we find ourselves, is tolerance something imposed upon us, for example, through coercive policies enforced by our shared social and political institutions? If our shared social and political …

Review: Joas, Hans. The Sacredness Of The Person: A New Genealogy Of Human Rights. Washington, Dc: Georgetown University Press, 2013. Xi+217 Pp. $29.00 (Paper), Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

On what grounds should human rights rest? How should the universality of universal human rights be understood, especially given the putative incommensurability among rival views that obtain in the contemporary world? Do human rights emerge from a particular metaphysics, for example, the idea that human beings are created in the image of God? Or are human rights sufficiently basic that whatever grounds them, for example, respect for humans as ends-in-themselves, is in fact justifiable across any and all moral, political, and religious views? These queries continue to concern both human rights advocates and critics.

Review: Langer, Lorenz. Religious Offence And Human Rights: The Implications Of Defamation Of Religions. Cambridge Studies In International And Comparative Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Lxii+419 Pp. $115.00 (Cloth), Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, including one in which a bomb was hidden under his turban. According to the paper’s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, the cartoons were an exercise in free speech, a value prized in liberal democracies. For him, fear of retaliation from Muslims was leading to self-censorship among Danish authors and artists. Muslim groups protested the cartoons not only within Denmark but also around the world, some of which turned violent. To their minds, the prophet (and members of their faith) had been defamed. Cases like this …

Review: Political Agape Christian Love And Liberal Democracy, Bharat Ranganathan

Religion Faculty Publications

Timothy Jackson’s Political Agape: Christian Love and Liberal Democracy is expansive. Across the book’s twelve chapters, which are themselves bookended by a substantive introduction and conclusion, he covers an impressive range of moral, political, and religious thinkers, including Ronald Dworkin, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Peter Singer, and Jeffrey Stout. He also discusses an array of disparate topics, including adoption, euthanasia, capital punishment, gay marriage, and human rights. His book is also ambitious: he examines these thinkers and topics while aiming to think together commitments to both neighbor-love and liberal democracy, simultaneously navigating between sectarianism …

Review Of Social Class In Applied Linguistics By David Block, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As Block writes in the prologue and the epilogue, the book is primarily about erasure; his motivation for writing the book is to highlight “the substantial and sometimes complete erasure of social class in applied linguistics research due to the ways in which applied linguists frame their discussions of issues such as identity, inequality, disadvantage and exclusion” (pp. ix–x). Overall, Block achieves his goal of illustrating the widespread absence of social class in applied linguistics; however, the book itself makes some missteps in exploring the very construct it claims as its focus.

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter …

Book Review: Empire Of Ashes, Jeanne Reames

History Faculty Publications

Three historical novels about Alexander the Great were published in 2004 to coincide with the November release of Oliver Stone’s epic film on the conqueror: The Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield, who is best known for Gates of Fire (1998) about the Battle of Thermopylae; Queen of the Amazons by Judith Tarr, who wrote about Alexander once before in Lord of the Two Lands (1993); and Empire of Ashes by relative newcomer Nicholas Nicastro.

Review Of Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (And Misuses) Language By Roger W. Shuy, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As he states in his preface, Shuy draws on his 30+ years as a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and his 25+ years as an expert witness and legal consultant to create this text that spans the mundane and the riveting, the commonplace and the esoterica of forensic linguistics. In so doing, his book “describes twelve actual cases in which alleged crimes were actually created by the use of various conversational strategies employed by law enforcement and its representatives, where no such crime is actually indicated by the language evidence” (12). When we read the transcripts associated with these cases, …

Book Review: How To Cure A Fanatic, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

How to Cure a Fanatic by the internationally acclaimed novelist and peace activist Amos Oz, is a book I took with me on a recent trip to the Balkans. I decided to read the book and write my review in my flat on Gradacacka Street in the Otoka neighborhood of Sarajevo, given the book’s topic and the problems that have plagued the people of Bosnia for the past fifteen years.

Book Review: Reading Lolita In Tehran By Azar Nafisi, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Azar Nafisi, now the Director of the Dialogue Project at John Hopkins University, does a fine job in this book of piecing together her life as an academic, especially the last two years of her residence in Tehran when she embarked on an adventure to supplement the education of a select group of university students. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a multilayered memoir about teaching Western literature in revolutionary Iran in the late 1990s.

Review Of Masquerade And Identities: Essays On Gender, Sexuality, And Marginality By Efrat Tseëlon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In the introduction to this collection of essays, the editor discusses ‘issues of masquerade as identity construction and as identity critique through a range of styles and narrative forms’ (p. 4). All of the scholarship here relies on a performative viewpoint to explore a range of symbolic and literal ‘masks’ in different social settings. In fact, the book’s blurb prepares us to delve into ‘the role of disguise in constructing, expressing, and representing marginalised identities, and in undermining easy distinctions between “true” identity and artifice.’

Book Review: Culture, Ideology And Society, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Fatos Tarifa’s Culture, Ideology and Society was my companion on a recent trip to the Balkans. Having read and reviewed one of his other books, The Quest for Legitimacy and the Withering Away of Utopia, I thought Culture, Ideology and Society would not only offer a glimpse of how a social scientist turned enlightened diplomat examines the lenses through which sociologists, philosophers, and film makers look at the world, but also some insight into the categories and concepts that are useful in better understanding the Balkans. I believe the book was somewhat successful at doing both.

Review Of Progay/Antigay: The Rhetorical War Over Sexuality By Ralph R. Smith And Russell R. Windes, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

When I was asked to review Progay/Antigay, I actually felt both trepidation and excitement for two reasons. First, I have a personal interest in the subject matter because I am a gay man who considers himself moderately active in both politics and the gay community. Second, I live in Nebraska, a state whose voters recently banned legal recognition of same-sex relationships, whether they be called ‘marriage’ or ‘domestic partnership’ or ‘civil union.’ For these reasons, I felt that the text could potentially elucidate the bitter struggle that we in the Midwest had just been through.

Book Review: The Quest For Legitimacy And The Withering Away Of Utopia, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Many who live in the West have a myopic view of the world and of recent history. They understand the transition from the end of the twentieth century to the start of the new millennium as the replacement of one “evil” with another. The Cold War and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union have been replaced with the War on Terrorism and the battles being waged against Al-Qaeda, Hizballah, and the many other terrorist organizations worldwide, as well as nation states like Iraq and Iran that are said to sponsor terrorist groups. Indeed, the expression “rogue …

Review Of Mediated Discourse: The Nexus Of Practice. London: Routledge By Ron Scollon, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

What I like very much about this book is that it epitomizes the notion of qualitative research. It is a beautifully written exploration of the way mediated discourse gets accomplished, but it also clarifies ways of analyzing discourse with rich discussions of theory and analysis based on a number of illustrations taken from everyday events. Scollon explores an everyday practice that most people probably take for granted, and he proposes a way of examining this ‘practice’ in a new way. This practice is ‘handing’, and it serves as the centerpiece of this book. We ‘hand’ books to each other, we …

Review Of English Grammar: Prescriptive, Descriptive, Generative, Performance By Kathryn Riley And Frank Parker, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Riley and Parker's English Grammar served as the text in a dual-level course that I teach called The Structure of English. I had not taught this particular class before, and I was very interested in this book because it presents a variety of approaches to grammar in highly accessible language. The book also appeals to me pedagogically because it assumes little or no background knowledge of linguistics generally or even grammar specifically on the students' part. Riley and Parker (R&P) divide the text by theme; that is, the book begins with prescriptive grammar, continues with descriptive grammar and generative …

Review Of English Syntax: From Word To Discourse By Lynn M. Berk, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Berk prefaces this book by stating that her ‘overall approach is loosely discourse/functional’ and that she tries ‘to ensure that students learn the basics of English grammar but that at the same time they come to understand the richness and complexity of the system’ (xv). In the main, B fulfills her promise by exploring a variety of grammatical concepts and the way many of those grammatical structures function discursively.

Book Review: The Man Who Tried To Save The World: The Dangerous Life And Mysterious Disappearance Of Fred Cuny By Scott Anderson, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Occasionally a biography is written about an individual who is "cut" from a different piece of cloth than the of the rest of us. The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny is such a biography. Scott Anderson. a war correspondent who has covered numerous connects around the world, tells the story of this most extraordinary humanitarian relief expert. Fred Cuny considered the interests of strangers to be more important than those of his own and eventually gave his life in the pursuit of rendering assistance to those who most needed …

Book Review: Ethics For The New Millennium, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Ethics for the New Millennium is a book written by the Dalai Lama that came to my attention at the request of a few of my students who wanted to start a reading group. Although the book remained in my office, I took the Dalai Lama's ideas about ethics with me when I visited China, a country that bears Buddhism's mark. Whether you agree with bis views or not, you cannot help but admire him; nor do you have to be a Buddhist to enjoy this readable and interesting book, a quick and easy read intended for the general reader.

Review: Representing: Hip Hop Culture And The Production Of Black Cinema By S. Craig Watkinsreview, Nikitah O. Imani

Black Studies Faculty Publications

S. Craig Watkins's Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema is an imposter. That is to say, the "hip hop" part of the subtitle has nothing to do with the substance of the text as I read it, leaving one to wonder whether it was chosen as a marketing strategy.

Book Review: To End A War, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

If asked to name career diplomats who have tackled some very difficult international crises, many foreign policy makers would put Richard Holbrooke near the top of the list. Not many negotiators have wielded moral principle, power, and reason as well as Holbrooke. His book on the Bosnia negotiations leading up to the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement is timely, given the ethnic cleansing that is being carried out in Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia's Serb Republic. Once again we are faced with unrest in the Balkans. We have seen the daily newspaper headlines change from "24 Albanian Men Killed in …

Book Review: Chechnya: Tombstone Of Russian Power, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From December 1994 to August 1996, Russia was engaged in the Chechen War, a Vietnam-style quagmire that exemplified, on the one hand, the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power, and, on the other hand, "one of the greatest epics of colonial resistance in the past century.'' No analysis can hope to understand the totality of forces that lend to the stability (or instability) of nations with large minority populations unless it first examines the conditions that led to the Russian defeat in Chechnya. At the center of that problem lies an interesting issue. What aspects of …

Book Review: The Decolonization Of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge And Power, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power includes fourteen essays, some of which are revised papers presented at a cultural studies conference in Amsterdam in 1991, that contribute to the rapidly growing library of literature on postcolonial theory by exploring the dimensions of decolonization.

Book Review: The Price Of A Dream: The Story Of The Grameen Bank And The Idea That Is Helping The Poor To Change Their Lives, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

A simple logo, a red and green arrow, is commonly found on buildings in villages and cities scattered across the South Asian country of Bangladesh. The logo, as unpretentious as its creator, signifies the presence of one of the many offices of the Grameen Bank, a credit institution founded in 1976 by the charismatic economist Muhammed Yunus. The history of the Grameen Bank, and of how the bank has worked to alleviate poverty through an innovative entrepreneurial approach to development in one of the poorest nations in the world, is the subject of David Borstein's readable and often entertaining book.