Comparative Literature Commons^™

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Developing Global Crisis And Survival Of Human Civilizations, Michael M. Andregg Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

For over thirty years, we have used a phrase “the Developing Global Crisis” to identify a cluster of recurring causal factors of chaos that are especially difficult to deal with. These are: population pressure (not simply growth), corruptions of governance (hard to study in democracies much less in police-states), authoritarian political systems, and militant religions. The West has failed to control these recurring causes of chaos, often by imperial patterns of behavior instead of more enlightened governance. Civilizational scholars in Japan might be able to find better solutions to these problems for Asia and the world if they try hard. …

Strategy Vs. Humanity? American Corporations May Be Facing A Momentous Paradigm Shift In The Age Of Diversity, Equity And Inclusion, Mark Rennella

Comparative Civilizations Review

The business discipline of strategy was born at Harvard Business School in the America of the 1970s, an era of disorienting economic fluctuations and sometimes naked vulnerability that was punctuated by disturbing events like the OPEC oil embargoes and the Iran hostage crisis. By the end of the decade, strategy claimed the imaginations of business executives and relegated its predecessor, marketing, to a distant second place. Marketing, whose focus was serving customer needs to grow demand, was neither tough enough nor quick enough to deal with the sudden appearance of economic and cultural monsters invading American life.

The Russian Sphinx: Contemplating Danilevsky’S Enigmatic Magnum Opus Russia And Europe, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The relations between Russia and the West have never been particularly easygoing or unambiguous, and, presently, they are yet again at an all-time low. The way to better understand, as well as to successfully communicate and cooperate with another society is through learning about evolution (and revolutions) of their (as well as one’s own) history and culture. Are there any important sources in the Russian cultural heritage that could illuminate these ages-old problems, tendencies, and trends? The year 2021 marks 150 years since publication of Nikolay Danilevsky's book Russia and Europe (1871), while the next one, the year 2022, denotes …

The Architecture Of The Universe: A Look Into Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The article advances a synthesized view of the world based on an intelligently communicated undivided Universe. It presents a fundamental component-based architecture and characterizes the controlling role of info-communication processes in the interplanetary system. The Fermi Paradox is then considered, which leads to a discussion about the concept of God as it pertains to Albert Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s theories. The article next introduces the author’s own understanding of God. The approach adopted in this study situates Earth’s civilization within the broader context of extraterrestrial civilizations, and it considers what this means for modern humans. Further research is also suggested …

Ccr Style Guide For Submitted Manuscripts

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Call For Papers/Abstracts And Announcement Of The 2022 Iscsc Conference The Future Of Civilization(S)

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Brandeis Psychology In The Late Fifties: Further Comment On Feigenbaum (2020), Jeffrey H. Golland

Comparative Civilizations Review

Recent articles in this journal spoke about A.H. Maslow and the Brandeis University Psychology Department of the 1960s (Feigenbaum, 2020, Lester, 2020), the first from a former junior faculty member, the second from a former graduate student. I learned from each of them, and they triggered my own memories as an undergraduate psychology major who went on to earn a PhD in clinical psychology. Maslow taught the introductory course in fall semester; I took it in the spring (1958) with Ricardo Morant, who succeeded Maslow as department chair, and held that position for decades.

David Christian. Maps Of Time: An Introduction To Big History. University Of California Press, New Edition, 2004. Leonid E. Grinin, Andrey V. Korotayev, Barry H. Rodrigue, Eds. Evolution: A Big History Perspective. Volgograd: Uchitel Publishing House, 2011., Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

What is history? Or rather, what are the appropriate time-scales that can be constituted as “history”? The general consensus among scholars is that history is the study of approximately the last 5,000 years or so due to the existence of written records. Anything prior to that is generally considered pre-history, at least as far as it concerns the existence of human beings on earth. As for the creation of the earth we live upon, or the solar system our planet dwells within, or the universe as a whole these are considered outside the formal domain of historical …

A Brief Response To Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

I have read with much interest the letter of Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland describing for the Spring, 2022, issue of the CCR his experience as an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University in the late 1950’s.

Steven Pinker. Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, And Progress. New York: Penguin Books, 2018., Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Steven Pinker’s monumental work, Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is an impressive volume. He presents his position so vividly that the book reached the New York Times Bestseller List, and received enthusiastic reviews from diverse scholars and readers. Even Bill Gates regards it as: “My new favorite book of all time.”

The Blocks Of History: A Step-By-Step Model For The Evolution Of Civilizations, Shuai Wang

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Pattern Recognition algorithm in Artificial Intelligence has been applied to many fields and proven to be very effective when seeking out patterns that arise from huge amount of raw data. As world history has evolved, it has revealed the shift of hegemony from one civilization to another, for example, from the Spanish Empire to the Kingdom of France, from the Kingdom of France to the British Empire, and from the British Empire to the United States. As historians have shown, the relevant eras are the Spanish Golden Age, the Age of Enlightenment, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana. Since the …

Thank You To Minna And Gordon Hewes: Friends Of The International Society For The Comparative Study Of Civilizations From The Ecumene, John Grayzel

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ISCSC is always extremely appreciative when it receives a special gift from those who support its intellectual and organizational endeavors. This certainly was the case when it recently received a generous bequest from the estate of Mrs. Minna Hewes, the most substantial financial donation in the history of this organization.

Christopher I. Beckwith. Empires Of The Silk Road: A History Of Central Eurasia From The Bronze Age To The Present Day. Princeton And Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011., Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

Empires of the Silk Road is an ambitious work that fulfills its stated ambitions, fully. Written with boldness and authority, it packs many punches and pulls few. Author Christopher I. Beckwith manages to cover ~5,000-years-worth of Central Eurasian history in this single volume; he sees those events differently than your common or garden-variety Central Eurasian historian/philologist and demonstrates patiently and precisely why he does so in a way that is rich and insightful. Beckwith’s work is both complex and concise. It is provocative and persuasive. It is frequently captivating, often surprising, occasionally perplexing, and sometimes slightly weird 1 (not that …

Ottomanism: A Transition From Byzantinism To Balkanism, Blagoj Conev Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ottomanism as an ideology and way of life is nothing but a pale copy of Byzantinism. Ottomanism is the direct successor of the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire), which is the legal and sole successor to the only Roman Empire. But Ottomanism itself has not been sufficiently studied because much more attention has been paid to the way the Ottoman Empire was governed than to the identities that it sought to define as its own, which were in fact nothing more than a faint copy of Byzantinism before 1204.

Ottomanism can be defined as the imperial identity of the …

An Attempt To Arrive At The Meaning Of Civilization As The Third Millennium Dawns, Mojtaba Sadeghi Independent Scholar

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilizations may be understood as phenomena subject to differing perspectives. This article views civilization from the perspective of Geography. A civilization is a “Geographical Space” that arises from complex interactions over time. The core of civilization from a geographical perspective is this: every civilization is a geographical space, but not every geographical space is necessarily a civilization. A civilization has a “cultured soul” and an “advanced body.” We may use this approach to understand, measure, critique, and emancipate civilization in the third millennium.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Is Music The Barometer Of Society? Exploring How Music Mirrored Society From The Ancient World, China To Central Europe In The 21st Century, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” ― Confucius

“What music do you listen to?” Would this be a valid question to ask a presidential candidate or person looking for a high political office today? If mankind had followed the advice of Confucius, many disastrous episodes in history might have been prevented.

Music is one of the most wonderful achievements of mankind. As far back in history as we know, music has been part of man’s life. Whether it …

Mamikon Airapetian. World Civilizations And Economic Cycles: A Comparative Historical Analysis. Part 1. Concepts And Determinants Of World History. Moscow: Editorial Urss Publishers, 2020, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The author of scholarly materials under review is a prominent Russian scholar, Doctor of Economics Prof. Mamikon S. Airapetian, the Leading Researcher of the Department of Macroeconomic Forecasting and Planning of the Financial University (FinU), Moscow, Russia.

In his book entitled World Civilizations and Economic Cycles: A Comparative Historical Analysis (Airapetian, 2020) Dr. Airapetian introduces an original, fundamental paradigm of global history. In order to substantiate and present his ideas, the author turns to a vast array of classical and contemporary scholarly sources as well as introduces a significant number of new concepts, such as, for example, the notions of …

Harry Redner. Beyond Civilization: Society, Culture And The Individual In The Age Of Globalization. Routledge, 2014., Mariana Tepfenhart

Comparative Civilizations Review

Harry Redner was a reader at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a visiting professor at Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and Harvard University. His book has three parts: An Overview of History, The Present Predicament of History, and The Future Prospects of Civilization.

The book addresses two major issues affecting our society today. One of them is globalization and its effect on civilization. The topic is analyzed not only from a cultural perspective but also from a political and cognitive standpoint. The second issue is technology and its place in a global society. Redner argues Western civilization’s development of …

Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism And The Genres Of Decolonization, Jini Kim Watson

Literature

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization.

Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers’ conference …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Letter From The President, Lynn Rhodes

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Crusading As Philosophical Construct: Thoughts And Actions Of Pope Urban Ii, St. Bernard, And Peter The Venerable, Peter Hecht M.Ed., M.A.

Comparative Civilizations Review

The First Crusade was a penitential Holy War to aid the Byzantine Empire and to liberate Jerusalem from the perceived threat of Muslim occupation. The Second Crusade was also a penitential war, but this time it was to support the territory reclaimed by the First Crusade. Many scholars believe that these were the only relevant goals of these crusades. My focus in this paper is to contextualize the many possible goals for the early crusades, and to understand the necessary and complex rationalization of ecclesiastical leadership. This research is intended to contribute to the development of a more nuanced understanding …

The Phenomenology Of Civilization: A Dialogue Between Profs. Gabriel Breton And George Drury At Monteith College Plus, Two Associated Commentaries On Civilization By George Drury, Kenneth Feigenbaum Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

This dialogue on the nature of civilization took place on the stage at Wayne State University fifty- seven years ago on January 29, 1964, and shortly thereafter. It was part of an interdisciplinary course titled “The Science of Society,” given by Monteith College.

Book Review: Max Weber. Politik Als Beruf (“Politics As A Vocation”), Bertil Haggman

Comparative Civilizations Review

“Politics is a strong and slow drilling of hard boards.” (Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern….) This is a quote from the work of one of the most famous sociologists ever, German Professor Max Weber. In 2010 a new edition of his work Politics as a Vocation was published in Berlin, Germany. It is the first in a planned series of new editions of works of the great German sociologist including Staatssoziologie (Sociology of the State) and Wirtschaftsgeschichte (General Economic History).