Cultural History Commons^™

Diversas De Sí, Entre El Hoy Y El Ayer: Rememoria De Tres Íconos Femeninos Espirituales, La Condesa De Malibrán, Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz Y La Falsa Teresa De Jesús, Ana Gabriela Hernandez Gonzalez 5059749397

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation traces the cultural memory of three magical/religious women of the colonial period: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Condesa de Malibrán and La Falsa Teresa de Jesús. It studies these icons specifically in three different discourses that construct cultural identities in Mexico: colonial discourse (XVI-XVII Centuries), the discourse of national consolidation (XIX-XX centuries) and postcolonial discourse (XX-XIX Centuries). First I describe how the narratives of the colonial period and of national consolidation employ an official lens to place magical/religious women within traditional gender roles. Then I delineate how historical novels in the 21st century employ a postcolonial …

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

Bodies As Living, Twirling Sacrifices: Performing Black Girlhood, Liturgical Dance, And The Black Church Tradition, Brianna Heath

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The purpose of this study is to investigate liturgical dance in the black church tradition as a gendered space. I argue that black girls perform their sexuality as ascribed to hetero-patriarchal ideology—as preached within the black church—through liturgical dance. This ideology akin to politics of respectability separates the sacred from the secular which causes a tension. This tension shows up in the hyper-ness of liturgical dancing. This study discusses this by contextualizing liturgical dance within a history of black concert dance and embodied practices of resistance. This study frames liturgical dance within the black dance tradition, black feminist studies, and …

“A Curiosity Which Has Many Eyes”: Ante-Nicene Church Fathers’ Attitudes Towards Bathing, Lilian C. Chan

Young Historians Conference

Ancient Rome was known for its extravagant public bathhouses. However, as medieval values began to emerge in Ante-Nicene Rome, the Church Fathers condemned the public and mixed-gender nature of these bathhouses. The bathhouses were declared unchaste, immoral, and unhealthy. The reasons the Church Fathers condemned bathing reveal the stringency of the Ante-Nicene Church towards even long-held traditions. However, these reasonings go beyond religious implications and also provide insight into the medical knowledge and sexism in Ante-Nicene Rome.

Superhero Films: A Fascist National Complex Or Exemplars Of Moral Virtue?, Chris Yogerst

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper deals with the "why" regarding our collective desire for superhero narratives. My goal is to build on the many definitions of a superhero and find a framework that we as scholars can use to evaluate how superhero films present inspirational moral virtue and not zealous nationalism of any kind. In the process I want to address the problems with some of the scholarly work done on the connection to superheroes and heroism both historically and immediately after 9/11, particularly those who have argued that American superheroism is a fascist myth, and show how the recent evolution of the …

The Southern Baptist Convention “Crisis” In Context: Southern Baptist Conservatism And The Rise Of The Religious Right, Austin R. Biggs

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, a minority conservative faction took over the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This project seeks to answer the questions of how a fringe minority within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination could undertake such a feat and why they chose to do so. The framework through which this work analyzes these questions is one of competing worldviews that emerged within the SBC in response to decades of societal shifts and denominational transformations in the post-World War II era. To place the events of the Southern Baptist “crisis” within this framework, this study seeks to …

Hebrew Typography: A Modern Progression Of Language Forms, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Influenced by studies in traditional Ashkenazi and Sephardi scripts. The typeface had been designed for the printing of the Koren Tanakh, a first edition printed Jewish Bible processed through an all-Jewish collaboration for the first time in centuries. Koren’s project was inspired by the revival of Hebrew initiated by Haskalah writers in the 18th century. Haskalah writers utilized the language and scripts of written and printed literary texts. Influenced by philosophical and political ideologies of the European Enlightenment, the Haskalah explored Jewish identity through language by defining the secular context through traditional Jewish symbolism and narratives. The Zionist movement of …

Shenoute’S Feast: Monastic Ideology, Lay Piety, And The Discourse Of Food In Late Antiquity, Dana Robinson

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

In the fourth and fifth centuries c.e., food provides a dense and value-laden web of meaning which lay and monastic Christians use to negotiate their identity with the culture at large, but also vis-à-vis each other. The works of Shenoute of Atripe are a valuable source of insight into the workings of this discourse in a Christian community, since they embrace both internal monastic instruction (the Canons) and public sermons (the Discourses). The first half of this paper constructs Shenoute’s ideology of the Christian meal in terms of the larger discourse of food in which it participates. He …

Windows To The Divine: The Development Of Byzantine Art, Sam Klein

Tenor of Our Times

Byzantine art took significant inspiration form its Greco-Roman heritage but then distinguished itself through a shift in focus away from Hellenic realism and towards formal abstractions of Christian motifs. These conventions developed alongside political and theological turbulence to eventually influence a vast area of Asia Minor and Eastern Europe.

Lost & Found: Order In The Court -- The Party Game, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy.

The second game in the series, Lost & Found: Order in the Court …

Design-Based Research Mobile Gaming For Learning Jewish History, Tikkun Olam, And Civics, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

How can Design-Based Research (DBR) be used in the study of video games, religious literacy, and learning? DBR uses a variety of pragmatically selected mixed methods approaches to design learning interventions. Researchers, working with educators and learners, design and co-design learning artifacts and environments. They analyze those artifacts and environments as they are used by educators and learners, and then iterate based on mixed methods data analysis. DBR is suited for any "rich contextualized setting in which people have agency." (Hoadley 2013) such as formal or informal learning environments.

The case covered in this chapter is a mobile Augmented Reality …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Indigenous Helpers And Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters In Biblical And Cinematic Conquest Narratives, L. Daniel Hawk

Journal of Religion & Film

This article compares the role of ambiguous character types in the national narratives of biblical Israel and modern America, two nations that ground their identities in myths of conquest. The types embody the tensions and ambivalence conquest myths generate by combining the invader/indigenous binary in complementary ways. The Indigenous Helper assists the invaders and signifies the land’s acquiescence to conquest. The Renegade Invader identifies with the indigenous peoples and manifests anxiety about the threat of indigenous difference. A discussion of these types in the book of Joshua, through the stories of Rahab and Achan, establishes a point of reference by …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Authority, Representation, And Offense: Dalit Catholics, Foot Washing, And The Study Of Global Catholicism, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

In reflecting on a sharp scholarly exchange at a conference, this article explores issues of authority, representation, and offense in global Catholic and South Asian Studies. Focusing on the act of foot washing by Dalit Catholics, the article examines how scholarly offense is linked to particular claims of representational authority. The article also puts this discussion within the context of contemporary debates about Western portrayals of Indian culture and society.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

Attitudes About Work And Time In Los Angeles, 1769-1880, Tyler D. Lachman Mr.

Theses

This thesis argues that the industrious Californio people continued to prosper in Los Angeles after statehood in 1850. Certain historians have emphasized the hardworking Californio culture at various points in Los Angeles history. But no one has defended their overall work ethic. Thus, this thesis goes farther than other historians in discrediting the notion that Californio Angelinos died out quickly because they could not sustain success under American leadership.

Breve Acercamiento A La Cuestión Morisca En La Temprana Edad Moderna En España, Farah Dih

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a brief historical overview of the Morisco issue in Early Modern Spain, as well as to analyze some of the most prominent literary production related to it. This study is organized into four chapters that explore the topic from the perspective of three different disciplines: history, historiography and literature. The first chapter establishes a historical framework for the foundation of the Spanish Inquisition, and highlights the ideas of Américo Castro about the coexistence of the three Spanish “castas” (the Christian, the Muslim and the Jewish). The second chapter reviews Francisco Márquez Villanueva’s …

Acercamiento Al Pensamiento Mágico Y La Superstición En El Discurso Literario De La Primera Modernidad Española: Miguel De Cervantes Y María De Zayas, Miguel Magdaleno Santamaria

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this thesis is to serve as a first approach to magical thinking and superstition in the literary discourse of Early Modern Spain, by examining these topics in Miguel de Cervantes’ first Quijote (1605) and María de Zayas’ Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (1637). The methodology followed in this thesis fundamentally includes the points of view of four fields of study. These are: anthropology, history, literature and historical linguistics. Accordingly, this study is thematically divided into four big sections: first, a discussion around the concept of ‘magical thinking’ in relation to religion (from an anthropological point of view); second, …

The First Great Awakening: Revival And The Birth Of A Nation, Kory Ray Thomas Quirion

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The First Great Awakening left an indelible mark on the development of America. With roots stretching back to the Christian Reformation of the 1500’s, the Great Awakening swept the young colonies with the fires of evangelical fervor. The revival shook the very foundations of colonial society. Following in its wake was a rebirth of reformed philosophy and theology that planted the seeds of self-government and political autonomy in the fertile soil of the Americas. By 1776, that seed had blossomed into a vibrant revolutionary movement that questioned the very fabric of Old World society. This article explores the rich Christian …

How Liberal Korean And Taiwanese Textbooks Portray Their Countries’ “Economic Miracles”, Frances Chan

Student Work

A 2015-2016 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Frances Chan (Timothy Dwight College '16) for her essay submitted to the Department of History, “How Liberal Korean and Taiwanese Textbooks Portray their Countries’ “Economic Miracles”.” (Peter C. Perdue, Professor of History, advisor.)

Frances Chan’s essay “How Liberal Korean and Taiwanese Textbooks Portray their Countries’ “Economic Miracles,” is a fascinating exploration of the creation of historical memory as seen in textbooks on the history of postwar economic development in Korea and Taiwan. Drawing on her remarkable linguistic skills in both Korean and …

In Search Of Askia Mohammed: The Epic Of Askia Mohammed As Cultural History And Songhay Foundational Myth, Joe Wilson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis offers a detailed historical analysis of The Epic of Askia Mohammed, a foundational myth that ranks among the more well-known global tales of cultural heroes and state formation. The sudden regime change that resulted in the collapse of the Songhay Sunni dynasty and the ascent of the Songhay Askia dynasty in 1492-93 is one of the most important events in West African history. This swift rebellion reversed decades of destructive economic and religious policies. As such, the memory of these dynamic and transformative times was captured by the griots, the oral historians of the Sudan. Nouhou Malio, …

"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Roman Catholic clergy in the Border States—Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—interpreted the United States Civil War. Overall, it argues that prelates and priests from the region viewed the war through a religious lens informed by their Catholic worldview. Influenced by their experiences with anti-Catholicism and nativism as well as the arguments of the Catholic apologist movement, the clergy interpreted the war as a product of the ill-effects of Protestantism in the country. In response, the clergy argued that if more Americans had practiced Catholicism then the war could and would have been avoided. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates …

Migration In Slavic Village, The History Behind The Cleveland Central Catholic Ironmen., Mary C. Brondfield Mrs., Matt Aber Mr.

Migration in Global Context Symposium

This presentation is a collaborative effort by two educators from the disciplines of art and history. The PowerPoint presentation documents the the cross curricular migration themed event that explored migration in Slavic Village, Ohio. Historical speakers and visits to historical sites engaged students throughout the event. Through oral history and the visual arts students engaged in project based learning.

Whitefield's Music: Moorfields Tabernacle, The Divine Musical Miscellany (1754), And The Fashioning Of Early Evangelical Sacred Song, Stephen A. Marini

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Evangelical hymnody was the most significant form of popular sacred song in eighteenth-century Anglo-America. John and Charles Wesley built their Methodist movement on it, but little is known about the music of their great collaborator and eventual rival, George Whitefield (1714-1770). The essential sources of Whitefield's music are the development of ritual song at his Moorfields Tabernacle in London, his Collection of Hymns for Social Worship (1753) prepared for that congregation, and a little-known tunebook called The Divine Musical Miscellany (1754) that contains the first and definitive repertory of music known to be sung at Moorfields. This essay recovers Whitefield's …

Tracing Paintings In Napoleonic Italy: Archival Records And The Spatial And Contextual Displacement Of Artworks, Nora Gietz

Artl@s Bulletin

Using a Venetian case study from the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, this article demonstrates how archival research enables us to trace the spatial life of artworks. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic policy of the suppression of religious corporations, followed by the appropriation of their patrimony, as well as the widespread looting of artworks, led to the centralisation of patrimony in newly established museums in the capitals of the Empire and its satellite kingdoms. This made the geographical and contextual displacement, transnationalisation, and change in the value of artworks inevitable.