Intellectual History Commons^™

Seno'o Giro: Life And Thought Of A Radical Buddhist, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Black Radicals And Marxist Internationalism: From The Iwma To The Fourth International, 1864–1948, Charles R. Holm

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project investigates historical relationships between Black Radicalism and Marxist internationalism from the mid-nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that contrary to scholarly accounts that emphasize Marxist Euro-centrism, or that theorize the incompatibility of “Black” and “Western” radical projects, Black Radicals helped shape and produce Marxist theory and political movements, developing theoretical and organizational innovations that drew on both Black Radical and Marxist traditions of internationalism. These innovations were produced through experiences of struggle within international political movements ranging from the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century to the early Pan-African movements and struggles …

The Unbreakable Circle: An Intellectual History Of Michel Foucault, Chris Mb Moreland

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The following is a chronologically ordered internal intellectual history of Michel Foucault. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether or not Foucault provides a viable critical social theory of bourgeois society. In order to examine this topic, I trace the development of Foucault’s thought during his early, pre-archaeological stage, his archaeological stage, and his genealogical stage. I frame Foucault’s stages as attempts to overcome Kant’s subject/object division—or the paradox that man operates as both a meaning-giving subject and an empirical object—that one encounters in discourses pertaining to the social sciences. Foucault’s pre-archaeological stage is characterized by two humanistic …

The Efficacy Of Mathematics Education, Eric Geimer

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Evidence supports the notion that mathematics education in the United States is inadequate. There is also evidence that mathematics education deficiencies extend internationally. The worldwide mathematics education deficit appears large enough that improving student performance in this educational problem area could yield great economic benefit. To improve the efficacy of mathematics education, education’s root problems must first be understood. Often supposed educational root problems are considered and contrasted against potential deficiencies of mathematics methodologies and curricula that are based on mainstream educational philosophies. The educational philosophies utilized to form early-grade mathematics methodologies and related curricula are judged to be the …

To The Jew First: A Socio-Historical And Biblical-Theological Analysis Of The Pauline Teaching Of `Election' In Light Of Second Temple Jewish Patterns Of Thought, Anthony Thornhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Paul's "doctrine" of election has remained a controversial and enigmatic topic for centuries. Few studies, however, have approached Paul's doctrine through the context of Second Temple Judaism. This study examines Paul's view of election through the lens of Second Temple Jewish texts written prior to 70 CE. In doing so, it is argued that the best framework through which to view Paul's discussion of election is through a primarily corporate model of election. While such a model is rooted in Judaism, Paul departs from his Jewish contemporaries in arguing that the locus of election is in God's Messiah, Jesus.

Stalin’S Boots And The March Of History (Post-Communist Memories), Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

I would like to propose here is precisely the invention of a relation to history and the public sphere of sociality that deconstructs the trauma/nostalgia opposition. The theoretical goal is to separate concrete narrative forms from actual political contents. It follows from the previous point that it might be possible to conceive of historical moments or concrete rhetorical situations in which we need to rely on nostalgic rather than traumatic narratives in order to imagine progressive political change. In these situations, the political task could be the development of a certain “critical nostalgia” that does not try to replace trauma …

Introduction To The Naked Communist: Cold War Modernism And The Politics Of Popular Culture, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The first half of The Naked Communist is devoted to the theoretical and historical foundations of my reading of anti-Communist fictions. After the theoretical introduction, I examine anti-Communist aesthetic ideology by first analyzing its political and then its aesthetic components.

In the second half, I examine the way the culture of anti-Communism defined the “world” as the ultimate horizon of political imagination. Included is a brief overview of some of the most popular texts of the given genre.

Finally, I conclude these chapters with a reading of particular authors.

Soldiers Of Science--Agents Of Culture: American Archaeologists In The Office Of Strategic Services (Oss), Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

"Scientificity" and appeals to political independence are invaluable tools when institutions such as the American School of Classical Studies at Athens attempt to maintain professional autonomy. Nonetheless, the cooperation of scientists and scholars with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), among them archaeologists affiliated with the American School, suggests a constitutive affinity between political and cultural leadership. This relationship is here mapped in historical terms, while, at the same time, sociological categorizations of knowledge and its employment are used in order to situate archaeologists in their broader social and political context and to evaluate their work not merely as agents …

Daniel Hannan, Thomas Paine, And The Rhetoric Of Outrage, Danae Brack

Masters Theses

The purpose of this rhetorical study is to examine the textual charisma of Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Daniel Hannan's speech "The Devalued Prime Minister of a Devalued Government" and how that charisma made these artifacts successful in spreading outrage surrounding the historical and political events of their respective eras. The author uses Weber's theory of charisma filtered through Rosenberg and Hirschberg's expanded theory identifying lexical charisma, or the charisma of messages. The author analyzes Paine's and Hannan's use of persuasiveness, believability, and powerfulness, translating each of these characteristics into specific cues that can be identified in the individual texts. …

Capitalism And The Science Of History: Appleby, Marx, And Postmodernism, Patrick D. Anderson

Grand Valley Journal of History

Joyce Appleby has written an extensive amount on the origins and development of capitalism, but her work is influenced by her belief that history is a science with at least some objectivity. She rejects Marxism as a relic of past historians with naïve beliefs about finding the laws of nature, but she also rejects postmodern criticisms of history because they undermine any chance for objectivity. Appleby believes the historian can be objective even if politics necessarily colors his or her work. For Appleby, her support of capitalism leads her to make policy recommendations with her historiography, recommendations that change with …

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

The Intelligentsia Without Revolution: The Culture Of The Silver Age, Andrei Ariev

Russian Culture

The most effective definition of "the intelligentsia" might read: “Russian intellectuals who are generally opposed to the government.” But even Russia’s traditionally powerful government has collapsed at times, leaving a vacuum of authority. This was precisely the historical situation at the beginning of the twentieth century. It made an indelible impression both upon thinkers, such as Rozanov, and on politicians, such as Lenin.

Jihadis And The Use Of The Terms Terrorism And Terrorist, Aaron Zelin

Re-visioning Terrorism

Previous studies on the usage of the terms terror, terrorist, and terrorism have taken a Western perspective on how these terms should be defined and then deployed, but the viewpoint of the “terrorist” (in this case jihadis) has yet to be examined. This study analyzes how jihadis understand these terms and critically assesses their interpretation based on classical Islamic doctrine. The basis and “proof” for jihadis’ legitimization of using terror is based upon the Qur’anic verse 8:60, but when taken into context and traditional understanding, jihadis miss the mark. Yet, at the same time, when exploring the linguistic root for …

Reading, Writing, And Religion: Institutions And Human Capital Formation, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We …

Review Of The Library: An Illustrated History, Glenda A. Thornton

Michael Schwartz Library Publications

Review of The Library: An Illustrated History

Evolutionism And Historical Particularism At The St. Petersburg Museum Of Anthropology And Ethnography, Sergei Kan

Dartmouth Scholarship

The paper describes the early 20th century debates between several leading Russian anthropologists, including Lev Shternberg, on the best way of displaying artifacts in the newly refurbished Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology in St. Petersburg. These debates revealed major tensions and contradictions between evolutionism and historical particularism, as well as universalism and nationalism within Russian anthropology of that era.

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

To Waken Fond Memory: Moments In The History Of Gettysburg College, Anna Jane Moyer

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Between 1975 and 1989 Anna Jane Moyer produced a series of essays for the Gettysburg College alumni magazine capturing “moments” on campus and in the town of Gettysburg since 1832. Treating people, places, and notable events over the course of the College’s first 150 years, Moyer’s sketches reached an appreciative audience at the time. But with the Gettysburg College 175th anniversary approaching, it seemed appropriate to make her writing more readily available to alumni, friends of the College, students, and scholars.

The sketches now republished in To Waken Fond Memory remind readers that the culture of a liberal arts college …

Endless Enlightenment: Eye-Operated Technology And The Political Economy Of Vision, Michael Gardiner

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite a residual popular temptation to see the posts of cultural analysis as signs of temporal closure, the logic of global visual media is strengthening, not weakening, metaphors of visibility which remain intact from the Enlightenment. Here I describe a stand-off between post-Enlightenment critiques (as in some sectors of Cultural Studies) and a narrow power base which is defined by producing light and managing the very conditions of visibility. For the world's most powerful state, still strongly bound to its original Enlightenment foundations, intervention into other states' sovereignty is increasingly justified by evidence from spy planes (rather than …

First Recipients Of Anthropological Doctorates In The United States, 1891-1930, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

This article seeks to show the origins of the professionalization of anthropology by examining early doctoral dissertations in this field and their authors. The bibliography consists of citations with biographical details of the authors, when known, of doctoral dissertations in anthropology from United States educational institutions up to 1930. One hundred twenty-four citations are given in all, representing 18 institutions. Forty-one of the dissertations were not written for degrees in anthropology. Besides documenting the existence of anthropological work outside recognized graduate programs of anthropology, the bibliography provides a demographic profile of anthropology and shows the distribution of subdiscipline concentrations and …

Excerpt From Wrestling With Rustin, Or The Left Will Rise Again, Maybe, John D'Emilio

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Four years ago, CLAGS sponsored a conference on the state of gay and lesbian history. I was one of several presenters in a session on biography. None of us on the panel had consulted beforehand. But by the beginning of the third or fourth presentation, a common pattern had emerged, and the audience erupted with laughter. Each one of us had opened our remarks with a mixture of apology and denial: we each were not, we assured the audience, writing a biography!

Sacred Texts And Introductory Texts: The Case Of Mead’S Samoa, Terence E. Hays

Pacific Studies

A survey of 118 introductory anthropology textbooks published in the period 1929–1990 examines the ways in which Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa has been presented to college undergraduates. In contrast to Derek Freeman’s claim that her conclusions about Samoan sexuality and adolescence have been reiterated (approvingly) in an “unbroken succession of anthropological textbooks,” it appears that this work has been ignored almost as often as it has been cited. Criticisms of Mead, although relatively few and almost entirely methodological, have also been incorporated into textbooks, both before and following Freeman’s 1983 book, Margaret Mead and Samoa. Whether or …

The Past From The Present: Comments On The Social Construction Of Machiavellianism, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article presents different meanings of the term Machiavellianism and posits a mechanism of social construction to explain these differences.

Book Review Forum On Gananath Obeyesekere's The Apotheosis Of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking In The Pacific, David Hanlon, Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Nicholas Thomas, Valerio Valeri

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Michael W. Young's Review Of Nancy Mcdowell's The Mundugumor: From The Field Notes Of Margaret Mead And Reo Fortune, Michael W. Young

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Rivers (W.H.R.) Revisited: Matriliny In Southern Bougainville, Part 2: The Nasioi, The Buin, Discussion, Douglas L. Oliver

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Rivers (W.H.R.) Revisited: Matriliny In Southern Bougainville, Part 1: Introduction, The Siwai, The Nagovisi, Douglas L. Oliver

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review Forum On Nicholas Thomas's Out Of Time: History And Evolution In Anthropological Discourse, Richard J. Parmentier, Jonathan Friedman, David Hanlon, Bradd Shore

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Orchestration Of Nature's Writing Surfaces, Laurie M. O'Reilly

Anthós Journal (1990-1996)

This articles stretches Derrida’s notion of writing by positing that writing itself might be thought of as "that which can be read or interpreted." This breaks the absolute bond between writing and human handicraft and suggests new ways of understanding the way we interpret natural phenomena. This paper traces this concept through numerous natural phenomena and suggests that perhaps the limits of meaning might have more to do with the interpreter’s range of understanding when it comes to natural gestures and "writings." In the end writing comes to be understood as durative, or has having duration. In this interpretation comes …

George W. Stocking, Jr.'S Review Of Michael W. Young's Edition Of Bronislaw Malinowski's Malinowski Among The Magi: “The Natives Of Mailu”, George W. Stocking Jr.

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.