History of Religion Commons^™

Under The Veil: Women's Head Coverings In Tudor England, Savannah Toth

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis seeks to discover and analyze the agency and meaning of the role of women’s head coverings and veils within the context of Tudor Christianity, society, and the fashion world of English culture. By observing the usage of the veil through various lenses, this thesis examines the nuance of the veil as an object and actor in Tudor society that enables yet prohibits personal choice for women. This research uses various sources such as Tudor paintings and portraits, surviving pieces of garments, and written accounts to paint a picture of the impact and significance the veil had in every …

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Understanding Religious Tolerance In Yongchang, China, Liming Gao

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The formation of China is a process of national integration and a fusion of different beliefs. However, under Chairman Mao (1949-1976) and specifically during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), people were reeducated to focus on Communism and expel remnants of traditional Chinese culture including the various religions. Although, after the Cultural Revolution, China reinstated its policy of religious freedom, there were still strict laws against religion. Despite such circumstances, Chinese people still practice their religious beliefs. The Yongchang area, located in Gansu Province in the northwest of China is a typical region of Chinese culture. At the same time, compared to …

The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Latin word virago, in its simplest definition, means “a man-like, warrior woman.” For Christian men and women in the Patristic era and the central Middle Ages, the virago represented a woman who denied all biological characteristics of her womanhood, fiercely protected her virginity, and fully embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity. The virago paradigm of female sanctity, a creation of male writers, reconciled a pervasive fear of the female sex with an obvious admiration for holy women. Additionally, the virago model maintained the supremacy of masculine virtues, upheld a patriarchal hierarchy, and created a metaphorical space that validated …

The Oldest Post-Truth? The Rise Of Antisemitism In The United States And Beyond, Gerald Steinacher

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Antisemitism, the negative stereotyping and hatred of Jews, has overshadowed Western history for 2000 years. In the 20th century, antisemitism led to the Shoah, the systematic state-sponsored murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies. In recent decades, antisemitism diminished significantly in the Western world, and there was hope that this plague would soon be consigned to the past. On the contrary, the past few years have witnessed a drastic increase of antisemitism in Western societies, often paired with far-right activism, racism, and xenophobia. In 2017 in Charlottesville, there were hundreds of marchers giving Nazi salutes, waving …

Stories That Shape Us, Lauren Dubas

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

This club is a Mythology Club that explores popular greek myths through fun and interactive activities. These actives are designed with 4th and 5th graders in mind, and are meant to provide an interesting way to interact with the mythology material presented during each lesson. The lessons do not build off of one another, and can be used in any order and still retain understanding of that myth.

Viewing Heaven: Rock Crystal, Reliquaries, And Transparency In Fourteenth-Century Aachen, Claire Kilgore

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis examines reliquaries and objects associated with medieval Christian practice in fourteenth-century Aachen. The city's cathedral and treasury contain prestigious relics, reliquaries, and liturgical items, aided by its status as the Holy Roman Empire's coronation church. During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1349-1378), reliquaries, pilgrimage, and architecture reflect late medieval interests in vision, optics, and transparency. Two mid-fourteenth century reliquaries from the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, the Reliquary of Charlemagne and the Three-Steepled Reliquary, display relics through rock crystal windows, in contrast to the obscuring characteristics of earlier reliquaries. Not only do the two reliquaries visually …

The Origins And Identity Of Roman Mithraism, Charles R. Hill

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis is a reassessment of scholarship concerning the origins of the cult mysteries of Mithraism in its Roman form during the Imperial Period. While much has been published in the debate over the cult’s true origins, we are still left without a satisfactory answer. The present work is an attempt to reconcile some of the arguments posed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries with those of the later 20^th and 21^st centuries, focusing mostly on the cult’s art and iconography in Mithraea, the central spaces of Mithraic worship. First will be a summary of …

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, …

Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732–1809, Kylie L. Mccormick

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1732 a philanthropic trusteeship was granted the charter to Georgia with the lofty goals of bringing aid to the impoverished in the British Empire and the persecuted Protestants of Europe. Within these goals was an emphasis on using the labor of indentured white servants, an unofficial ban on slavery, and a reluctance to allow Jewish colonists. To understand how both slavery and Judaism took hold in Georgia, this two part study explores the changing labor institutions through the lives of Benjamin Sheftall and his youngest son Levi—the two men who maintained the first Vital Records for Savanah’s Jewry. Benjamin’s …

"Heal Their Land": Evangelical Political Theology From The Great Awakening To The Moral Majority, Joseph D. Harder

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the 1970s, a movement arose among white American evangelicals and fundamentalists that has been labeled variously as the “Christian Right,” or more broadly, “the Religious Right.” While they had not been entirely apolitical in the middle decades of the twentieth century, in the 1970s many theologically conservative Protestants began to organize specifically around their religious concerns, forming a number of groups—of which the Moral Majority was the best-known—in an effort to “bring the nation back to God.” They also moved to the political right, joining forces with “New Right” activists who were seeking to push the Republican Party in …

Freedom Indivisible: Gays And Lesbians In The African American Civil Rights Movement, Jared E. Leighton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work documents the role of sixty gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals in the African American civil rights movement in the pre-Stonewall era. It examines the extent of their involvement from the grassroots to the highest echelons of leadership. Because many lesbians and gays were not out during their time in the movement, and in some cases had not yet identified as lesbian or gay, this work also analyzes how the civil rights movement, and in a number of cases women’s liberation, contributed to their identity formation and coming out. This work also contributes to our understanding of opposition to …

Community, Power, And Memory In Díaz Ordaz's Mexico: The 1968 Lynching In San Miguel Canoa, Puebla, Kevin M. Chrisman

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On September 14th, 1968, approximately 1,000 enraged inhabitants wielding assorted makeshift weapons formed a lynch mob that brutally murdered four people and injured three others in San Miguel Canoa, Mexico. According to the generally accepted account, Canoa’s inhabitants feared that recently-arrived Universidad Autónoma de Puebla employees, in town on a weekend mountain-climbing expedition, were in actuality communist agitators threatening the town’s social order. The lynching in Canoa received limited press coverage and was subsequently overshadowed by the much larger government orchestrated Tlatelolco massacre that occurred in Mexico City, on October 2, 1968. While Tlatelolco remains an important historic event from …

The Sociology Of Harriet Martineau In Eastern Life, Present And Past: The Foundations Of The Islamic Sociology Of Religion, Deborah A. Ruigh

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This paper is a critical analysis of Harriet Martineau’s philosophical stance and epistemological modes, her systematic sociological methodology, her use of this methodology, and her sociology of religion. How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), and other relevant works will be used to examine Martineau’s evolving epistemological modes as well as her sociology of religion. How to Observe, Martineau’s treatise on systematic sociological methodology and cultural relativism, will serve as an exemplar for analysis of Martineau’s methodological practice as evidenced in Eastern Life. The research problem herein is three-fold: (1) to examine …

Administrating The Non-Muslims And "The Question Of Jerusalem" After The Young Turk Revolution, Bedross Der Matossian

Department of History: Faculty Publications

The historiography on the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 in general has mainly concentrated on the impact of the Revolution on the Ottoman Turkish society. Rarely do we see works that deal with the impact of the Revolution on the non-dominant groups in the Empire from a comparative perspective. How did the different ethnic groups view the Revolution? How did the Revolution influence the dynamics of power inside these groups? What were the relations between the Revolution and the religious groups within the Empire? How did the local /central government view the transformations taking place among the non-Muslim communities in …

The People's Hour And The Social Gospel: George Howard Gibson's Gilded Age Search For An Organization Of The Kingdom Of God, Michelle D. Tiedje

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Previous studies of the Social Gospel movement have acknowledged the fact that Social Gospelers were involved in multiple social reform movements during the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. However, most of these studies have failed to explain how the reform experiences of the Social Gospelers contributed to the development of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospelers’ ideas regarding the need to transform society and their strategies for doing so were largely a result of their personal experiences as reformers and their collaboration with other reformers. The knowledge and insight gained from interaction with a variety of reform methods …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska's Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966–1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976–1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992–2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources pertaining to the settlement of the …

Great Plains Region From Encyclopedia Of Religion In America, Volume 2, Robert H. Stoddard

Geography Program: Faculty Publications

To understand the religions of a region, it is helpful to examine its environmental characteristics and the history of human occupation of that land because interpretations and forms of worship often reflect the environment with which believers cope. Although characteristics of the natural environment are intricately incorporated into most ancient religions, this relationship may be less obvious in religions with creeds and set of beliefs enunciated by historic figures. Here focus is on how the religious history of the Great Plains distinguishes it from other parts of America.

A Checklist Of Published Writings In French By Early Modern Nuns, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The great amount of writing by early modern nuns that was published during the Ancien Régime is underexploited because no master list of it exists. For example, at least ninety books by some sixty different nuns were published between 1600 and 1700, and many more that have been published since. The Checklist of over 300 items is an effort to fill this gap. Besides books authored by nuns, it includes many biographies that contain samples of their writings. Short occasional texts, such as death notices, lettres circulaires, and legal factums have generally been excluded, however. Unless another location is noted, …

Calvin’S Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism And Anti-Jewish Polemics During The Reformation, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

The nature of Calvin’s tractate Reponse to questions and objections of a certain Jew (Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam responsio) has long been a matter of some dispute among Calvin scholars. The nineteenth-century editors of Calvin’s works considered the book to be “meager and weak,” no doubt assuming that Calvin was responsible for composing both the questions and answers. In the twentieth century, scholars have been more inclined to see some evidence of an actual dispute between a Jew and a Christian in the book. Most notably Salo Baron suggested that the work reflects an exchange that Josel of …

Johannes Buxtorf I And The Circumcision Incident Of 1619, Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Johannes Buxtorf I has frequently been portrayed in the scholarly literature as a vigorous proponent of missions to the Jews and an implacable foe of their religion. The circumcision incident of 1619 casts a slightly different light upon Buxtorf and his relations with the Jews. While Buxtorf made his religious objections to Jewish circumcision clear, his opinion of the event and the city council's reaction to it differed markedly. Differing views of what constituted "appropriate" behavior for Christians toward Jews lie at the heart of this unhappy incident.

The Society For The Propagation Of The Gospel In Foreign Parts And The Assimilation Of Foreign Protestants In British North America, Anne Polk Diffendal

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from its foundation in 1701 to the beginning of the American Revolution attempted to minister to non-English white settlers in the North American colonies. The Society sent clergymen to Dutch, to Germans, to Swedes, and to French Huguenots in various provinces, gave financial help to foreign ministers, and distributed books to foreign churches. Anglican religious services were open to foreigners living near the Society's missions. These activities have been chronicled in 1952 in a dissertation by William A. Bultmann, who published two articles from that paper. One is a …

The Origins Of Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Clericalism, Frederick C. Luebke

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Cannibals - mountebanks - charlatans - pious and whining hypocrites - necromancers - pseudo-Christians - mystery mongers. These are among the epithets which Thomas Jefferson applied to the clergy of the Protestant denominations and of the Roman Catholic Church as well. It was they who "perverted" the principles of Jesus "into an engine for enslaving mankind"; it was the Christian "priesthood" who had turned organized religion into a "mere contrivance to filch wealth and power" for themselves; they were the ones who throughout history had persecuted rational men for refusing to swallow "their impious heresies." This attitude of Jefferson, with …

The Secular Activities Of The German Episcopate 919-1024, Edgar Nathaniel Johnson

University Studies (University of Nebraska) (1888–1984)

The appearance of the monarchical bishop in the early organization of the church is its most outstanding feature. His diocese so far supplants in importance the early Christian community, that in his own person he becomes almost synonymous with the church itself. In the respect paid him and in the affluence of his outward display he vies with the Roman provincial governor. The increasing patrimony of the church comes under his guiding hand, and with time he becomes the dominant administrator in those towns where Roman municipal administration was decadent. Every bishop to some extent nourished ambitions similar to those …

A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission And Non-Resistance To The Higher Powers: With Some Reflections On The Resistance Made To King Charles I. And On The Anniversary Of His Death: In Which The Mysterious Doctrine Of That Prince’S Saintship And Martyrdom Is Unriddled, Jonathan Mayhew

Zea E-Books in American Studies

After the Restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660, the new king and his first Parliament declared the anniversary of the beheading of his father Charles I (January 30, 1649) a religious holiday with a special commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer, naming the late monarch a saint and martyr. This holiday was not generally celebrated in Massachusetts until the emergence of several Anglican churches there in the early eighteenth century. In 1750, Jonathan Mayhew, the twenty-nine-yearold pastor of the West (Congregational) Church in Boston, took occasion to dispute the first Charles’ credentials …

The Negro Christianized. An Essay To Excite And Assist That Good Work, The Instruction Of Negro-Servants In Christianity (1706), Cotton Mather, Paul Royster , Editor

Electronic Texts in American Studies

There were Africans in New England before there were Puritans there, and by 1700 they numbered about 1,000 out of a total population of 90,000. Roughly half of them lived in Massachusetts, and were concentrated in Boston and the coastal towns. Puritans actively participated in the trafficking of enslaved persons, importing Africans from the West Indies and sometimes selling native American prisoners overseas.

Cotton Mather’s household contained enslaved Negro servants, and his congregation at the Second (or North) Church included both merchants of slavery and persons of African descent. The pamphlet reprinted here appeared in 1706 without his name, but …

The Life And Death Of That Reverend Man Of God, Richard Mather, Teacher Of The Church In Dorchester In New-England. A Facsimile Reprint With An Introduction ..., Increase Mather, Benjamin Franklin V, William K. Bottoroff

Electronic Texts in American Studies

We most often turn to American Puritan prose to glean historicalor biographical data. If we seek a biography that spans the evolution of American Puritanism from its nadir in England through its zenith in the New England of the 1630's to 1650's, and to the beginning of its decline as symbolized by the "Half-Way Covenant" in 1662, we may turn to Increase Mather's biography of his father, The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather. It includes the background for the elder Mather's decision to emigrate to New England (events leading to his suspension from …

A Declaration Of The Sad And Great Persecution And Martyrdom Of The People Of God, Called Quakers, In New-England, For The Worshipping Of God, Edward Burroughs

Zea E-Books in American Studies

From 1656 through 1661, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced an “invasion” of Quaker missionaries, who were not deterred by the increasingly severe punishments enacted and inflicted by the colonial authorities. In October 1659, two (William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson) were hanged at Boston; in June 1660, Mary Dyar (or Dyer) became the third; in March 1661, William Leddra became the fourth (and last) to suffer capital punishment or “mar-tyrdom” for their Quaker beliefs.While members of the Society of Friends rushed to Massachu-setts to test the harsh sentences under the newly enacted laws, other Friends in England simultaneously petitioned Parliament and …