Comparative Literature Commons^™

Ccr Style Guide For Submitted Manuscripts, Carolyn Carpentieri Potter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor’S Note: Want To Help Develop A Textbook On Comparative Civilizations?, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Is anyone here in the United States or elsewhere teaching a course in the comparative study of civilizations at the undergraduate level these days?

Since I was thinking about organizing the writing of a textbook on the topic, I began recently by considering what the major areas were to be covered in such a book. What, I wondered, have been the significant approaches scholars have taken over the past century or so to address the fluid, debatable, tenuous meanings and shapes of civilizations?

Ethiopia: Ancient Glory, Awaiting Recovery, Tseggai Isaac

Comparative Civilizations Review

The name Ethiopia is associated in the Book of Genesis with the creation of the world, indicating a sacred and ancient heritage. We find Ethiopia mentioned as having relations with the ancient Biblical nations such as Israel, Egypt, Assyria, and Mesopotamia. Ethiopians get uplifting gratification in reading specific scriptural references from the Bible and applying them to the country. These Biblical allusions include discussion of the Queen of Sheba and her son, King Menelik the First, born from her relationship with King Solomon, who was himself the son of King David, the founder from whom came the lineal parentage of …

Russia’S Geopolitical Civilizational Narratives And Strategic Direction In The Contemporary Multipolar World Order, Sharyl Cross, Igor Okunev

Comparative Civilizations Review

This article sets forth the foundations for recent geopolitical civilizational narratives in Russia that are influencing Moscow’s contemporary foreign policy behavior and the future direction of the Russian “civilizational state” in the global multipolar world order. This article is not intended to provide justification for Russia’s foreign policy choices and actions, but rather the purpose is to explain Moscow’s official geopolitical narratives, and thus to provide a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the considerations informing Russia’s foreign policy behavior.

Vladimir Putin has been at the helm of leadership in Russia exerting unparalleled influence as President and Prime Minister since …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Christopher Dawson And The Challenges Of Interdisciplinary Studies, Joseph T. Stuart

Comparative Civilizations Review

The following interview was conducted by Ms. Bibi Pelic, the Director of Communications for the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations. The recording is available on the ISCSC YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-hS2SdoZc

How Companies Heal And Maintain Health: A Unique Function Of Corporate Museums In Japan, Aki Kinjo

Comparative Civilizations Review

Capitalism is embedded in our civilization. Despite its faults, weaknesses, and sins, modern civilization cannot prosper without capitalism. Companies are the engine of capitalism. Yet, just like humans, companies make mistakes, sometimes gross. How do companies overcome unforgivable mistakes? This paper argues that corporate museums in Japan play an important role in helping companies heal from their sufferings, recover, and maintain organizational health.

I deploy a cultural approach to management, analyzing corporate museums as a platform for conveying explicit and hidden narratives. A cultural approach to Japanese management helps us understand why Japan has so many corporate museums, well …

How The State Replaces Civilization: The Japanese Exception, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

By conceptualizing civilization and state as integrated systems consisting of interacting subsystems, their similarities and differences can be analyzed. The central hypothesis is that civilization consists of three material subsystems — economy, government, and knowledge — and one non-material subsystem, transcendence. When the transcendent subsystem is diminished or destroyed by decree or overwhelming rational and scientific evidence, the emergence of the state occurs as in the cases of the Mongol Empire, the Soviet Union, and communist China.

The apparent universality of this observation is countered by an examination of the Japanese civilization and state, where imperial transcendence dominated and reinforced …

The Rise Of China And The Concept Of Civilization: Constructing A Conceptual Apparatus For Cross-Civilizational Comparisons, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Rise of China and the Concept of Civilization: Constructing a Conceptual Apparatus for Cross-Civilizational Comparisons

The paper examines the deficiencies of the current understanding of “civilization” in the social science literature, among others exemplified by “civilizational analysis,” and proposes a new concept that adds to the conceptual apparatus of sociological theory — a new, fully independent of others, variant of the cultural process. This independence makes distinctions between civilizations as the root cause of socio-cultural diversity.

Combined with the idea of humanity as a culturally constituted reality sui generis, this concept allows the construction of the theoretical scaffolding …

Civilization, Civilizations, Civilizational State: Untangling Civilizational Discontents In International Relations Theory, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

Recently, a herd of terminological hybrids have trampled onto the field of International Relations Theory. These include civilizational state, civilization-state, state-civilization, civilizational nation-state, civilizational privilege, and geopolitical civilizational narrative. What do those notions tell us about global tendencies and trends today?

This paper explores the origin, evolution, and meaning of these terms; it also proposes solutions for problems of a nascent, multi-polar, and multi-civilizational world within the framework of an Integralistic Paradigm in IR Theory.

Books Of Interest Spring 2025, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Books that may be of interest to scholars of the comparative study of civilizations and may add significantly to the body of scholarship in the civilizational field are highlighted in this new regular feature. These books are also available for book reviews in future editions of Comparative Civilizations Review. Any suggestions for books to be added to this list may be emailed to Book Review Editor Stephen T. Satkiewicz: [email protected].

The Germanic Legends Of The Gold Of The Rhine And Their Āryan Sources, Alexander Jacob

Comparative Civilizations Review

Medieval German legends regarding the gold of the Rhine have both a mythological source, as the gold of the Nibelung dwarf Andvari, and a historical Burgundian one, as a hoard possessed by the Burgundian princes. Here we point to more ancient sources of these legends, ones that are to be found in the cosmological myths and rituals of the Āryans.

Civilizational States And Nation States: A Few Preliminary Thoughts, Stephen Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Over the first two decades of the 21st century, the older certainties that shaped how we looked at the world have been shaken to their core. Most conceptions of how the world works were the byproduct of the postwar order that governed during the Cold War (1945-1991) and were expanded in the immediate post-Cold War era of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Centering Maternal Breastfeeding In The Old English Metrical Charm 6, Kierra E. Burns

Quidditas

This article examines female authority and self-determination in relation to maternal lactation during early medieval England. While breastfeeding has always been essential to infant survival, its cultural significance extends beyond nourishment alone, reflecting broader social values and assumptions about gender and motherhood. Within this context, early English texts reveal that lactating mothers were regarded as natural authorities in the processes of childbearing and nourishing their infants. Through analysis of historical and literary evidence, this article argues that maternal breastfeeding was viewed in inherently positive and empowering terms with maternal self-determination and authority at the heart of that positivity. The article …

Review: Balthazar: A Black African King In Medieval And Renaissance Art, Karli R. Snyder

Quidditas

Western European medieval and Early Modem art history is full of representations of ethnically diverse peoples. However, there are relatively few examples of scholarly publications that coherently organize these visual representations into a complete analysis of the topic. One recent publication that aims to do just that is Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art. The slim paperback boasts 121 full-color illustrations and features a collection of essays and narratives edited by museum curator Kristen Collins and art historian Bryan C. Keene. The book was published as a companion to the 2019 exhibition of the same …

Review: Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time And Medieval Life, Kaitlyn Garrett

Quidditas

In a topical addition to the Medieval Lives series, Adler and Strohm's Alie Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life provides an overview of the average medieval person's keeping of, value of, and relationship to time. Gillian Adler, Assistant Professor of Literature and Esther Raushenbush Chair in Humanities at Sarah Lawrence College, and Paul Strohm, professor emeritus at Columbia University, combine literary backgrounds to delve into both technical forms of timekeeping and abstract interpretations of time, including "timescapes" and philosophies of passing time and human aging. Alle Thyng Hath Tyme educates readers on technical forms of timekeeping as well as …

Review: The Catholicism Of Literature In The Age Of The Book Of Common Prayer: Poetry, Plays, Works, 1558-1689, Brandon Schneeberger

Quidditas

Anyone who has observed the worship trends of the younger generation of Christians in the last ten to twenty years will have noticed a renewed interest in traditional, liturgically conservative forms of worship. Whether it is interest in liturgy itself, or in the materials of liturgy - ornate vestments, incense, candles, bells, chanting, etc. - young people today display a keen interest in forms of worship and reverence that seem to have been lost in the cultural upheaval of the late twentieth century, a revolution that affected both Protestant and Catholic forms of worship. However effective the late twentieth-century iconoclasm …

Cover

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

"Gladly Wolde He Lerne And Gladly Teche": Balancing Humanity And Pragmatics In Teaching, Peter Steffensen

Quidditas

Teachers of AP courses have to balance passing on love of the subject matter and accomplishing the more pragmatic goals of the course. I have found that in the English classroom those two goals can complement one another when specific approaches are taken to teaching. This article explores those moments when humanity and pragmatics collide in the classroom and provides suggestions for navigating these sometimes conflicting goals.

Review: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes: Infant Voices In Medieval French Literature, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

Quidditas

Voicing a stirring call for readers to reconsider the silence and lacunae that are traditionally attributed to infancy, in her latest monograph, Julie Singer situates infancy as both an essential critical framework and an instructive, illuminative methodology through which a gaping archival silence can be rectified-that silence being literary representations of the medieval child, and specifically, the spoken life of the medieval child. As Singer argues, infancy and childhood entwine rather indiscernibly with each other in accordance with the medieval attribution of a longue dureé to infancy (Isidore of Seville, for instance, posited infancy as a stage lasting for about …

Review: Shaping Intellectual Disabilities In Early Modern England, Mardy Philippian

Quidditas

In Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England, Alice Equestri has assembled an impressive collection of essays by researchers interested in early modern conceptions of intellectual disability. Like Hobgood and Wood's groundbreaking collection Recovering Disability in Early Modern England (2013) and Leslie C. Dunn's edited collection Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama (2020), Equestri's volume will benefit scholars for some time to come. Of use to both early career scholars and those well established in the field of early modern disability studies, Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England invites readers into twelve individual studies of a diverse …

One Thing Leads To Another: A New Approach To Teaching Medieval Literature In The Twenty-First Century, Nicholas Markellos

Quidditas

Part of the problem with defining the "Middle Ages" stems from nineteenth-century historians' attempts to distinguish the Renaissance as a unique period that brought about modernity. In examining the literature of this period, however, it is clear that there was a certain element of queerness that surrounded this bewildering age. As a literature teacher, I found that my students do not always see these strange and important elements in the antiquated translations of the texts. To that end, I designed a new curriculum unit that approaches the reading of several medieval stories through a queer perspective, as well as a …

Medieval Old Age As Discourse: Conflicting Views And Perspectives In Pre-Modern German And European Literature From The Early To The Late Middle Ages, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

This article revisits and reviews the broad and intense discourse on old age in the medieval and to some extent early modern worlds and examines the major scholarly contributions to this extensive topic. The discussion of old age during the Middle Ages found expression in fields such as history, philosophy, medicine, theology, literature, the visual arts, pharmacy, and military studies. It is not that long ago that old age itself finally gained more interest in historical research, but we can by now rely on a number of well-researched monographs and edited volumes dealing with this highly complex topic. Previous scholarship …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award 2025

Kierra E. Burns

Dante And The Nine Worthies: Glory Or Fame?, Thomas L. Cooksey

Quidditas

In Paradiso 18, Dante is introduced by Cacciaguida, to eight martial heroes: Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Roland, Charlemagne, William of Orange, Renouard, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Robert Guiscard. Joined by Cacciaguida they form a group of nine, suggesting that Dante is playing with the topos of the Nine Worthies, popular in chivalric literature. While there are various prototypes, the canonical version of the Nine was codified by Jacques de Longuyon in his romance Voeux du paon (The Vow of the Peacock), appearing around 1312, a date tantalizingly close to the composition of the Paradiso. A comparison is instructive both …

King Lear'S "Poor, Bare, Forked Animal" And The Cross, Paul J. Stapleton

Quidditas

In William Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear describes the “unaccommodated man” as a “poor, bare, forked animal.” Lear’s comments are ostensibly about Edgar disguised as Poor Tom, but critics have detected in the passage a more general expression about human nature. The term “forked” is regularly glossed as “two-legged,” but there are philological problems with this reading. This paper, therefore, takes into consideration an alternate meaning for “forked” based on sixteenth-century usages that relate the noun “fork” to instruments of torture. The paper discusses the depiction of the cross as a “fork” (Latin – furca) in the antiquarian Justus Lipsius’s …