History of Religions of Western Origin Commons^™

Interviews In Global Catholicism: Dr. Petra Kuivala, Petra Kuivala

Journal of Global Catholicism

Interview with Dr. Petra Kuivala, University of Eastern Finland

Interviews In Global Catholic Studies: Dr. Judith Hahn, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Interview with Judith Chair of Canon Law at the University of Bonn.

Taking Dominion To End Dominion: The Mennonite Influence On The End Of Russian Serfdom, H. Michael Shultz Jr.

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Serfdom in Russia was abolished in 1861, only 76 years after the first Mennonites were invited into Russia by Catherine II. By examining the lifestyle of the Mennonites who settled in the agriculturally productive “New Russia” (modern-day Ukraine), as well as the impact that the Mennonites had on the Imperial family, peasantry, and government, it is evident that the Mennonites played a recognizable role in bringing about the abolition of serfdom across the empire.

Review: Oliver Jens Schmitt, Biserica De Stat Sau Biserică În Stat? O Istorie A Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, Editura Humanitas, București, 2023, Csaba Szabó

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

A review of Oliver Jens Schmitt, Biserica de stat sau biserică în stat? O istorie a Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, Editura Humanitas, București, 2023. 457pp.

ISBN: 978-973-50-7919-2

Rethinking The Panata To The Nazareno Of Quiapo, Wilson Espiritu Ph.D.

Journal of Global Catholicism

Filipino Catholicism’s hallmark is its festive and colorful celebrations of popular piety, which exhibit the Catholic faith’s embeddedness in people’s lives and culture. One of the most renowned Filipino devotions is rendered to Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno of Quiapo, Manila. The devotion of making a pledge to the Nazareno, known as panata, is commonly understood as a sacred promise that must be kept in return for a request that is granted. In this paper, I propose a theological reading of panata performance that unites devotion to the Nazareno and commitment to the wellbeing of others. This interpretation aims to …

Interpretatio Islamica And The Unraveling Of The Ancient Sabian Mysteries, Maurice Hines

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis makes some bold claims about the identity of the Qur’anic Sabians (Ṣābi’ūn) and their symbiotic relationship with various Near Eastern religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Thrice mentioned in the Qur’an, they clung to an ancient religion - or perhaps the most ancient – that spanned the entire Eastern hemisphere and provided not only the structural foundations of human civilizations, but also their religious, philosophical, and intellectual foundations. However, their creed had undergone a variety of changes over time including a shift in the conception of God from a personal to a transcendent deity, the worship …

This Is The Way: Christian Asceticism Alive In The Star Wars Universe, David Allen Osb

Obsculta

This article is a creative reflection on how the Desert Fathers, especially St. Antony, could be compared in a pastoral way to the Jedi Masters found in the Star Wars Film and Television Canon.

Preoperative Predictors For 30-Day Postoperative Emergency Department Visit After A Bariatric Surgery, Pawan Bhandari

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of US hospitals' widely used critical performance or quality outcome measures is the 30-day emergency department (ED) visit after a surgical procedure. Such ED visits add millions of dollars each year as a cost burden to US healthcare. This study aimed to identify key predictors known before the patient's surgery, contributing to undesirable ED visits within 30 days of a bariatric surgical procedure. The study was conducted in three phases. The first phase of the study engaged a panel of experts to narrow down important preoperative factors for patients undergoing bariatric surgery in the form of a Delphi study. …

By The Power Vesta-Ed In Me: The Power Of The Vestal Virgins And Those Who Took Advantage Of It, Elena M. Stanley

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

Vestal Virgins were high ranking members of the Roman elite. Due to the priestesses’ elevated standing, Romans made use of their inherent privileges. Through analyses of case studies from ancient authors and archaeology, I identify three ways Romans wielded Vestal power: familial connections, financial and material resources, and political sway. I end by exploring cases of crimen incesti, the crime of unchastity, which highlight all three forms. The Vestals were influential women who shared access to power in different ways. The Vestals were active participants in the social and political world of Rome.

Beacons Of Peace And Tolerance: The Politics Of Memory In Judeo-Moroccan Cultural And Historical Institutions, Audrey Ming An Hirsch

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Bayt Dakira, a historical, religious, cultural, and academic institution located in the heart of Essaouira’s old medina, seeks to conserve Jewish-Moroccan memory and promote values of peace and tolerance as exemplified by the city’s history of Jewish-Muslim coexistence. As an institution dedicated to conserving the culture of a people that have all but virtually emigrated from Morocco, Bayt Dakira’s purpose is initially unclear. This study uncovers the ways in which Bayt Dakira is an example of a seemingly apolitical institution being wielded to advance national and international political agendas. As an officially apolitical place of cultural and academic exchange, Bayt …

Postcolonialism And The Missionary Experience In The Book Of Mormon, Diana Witt

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

In their irreverent 2011 musical, The Book of Mormon, writer-composers Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Robert Lopez satirize the work of Mormon missionaries. This paper analyzes the musical's book and lyrics, its cultural context and reception, and postcolonial scholarship. The paper argues that while The Book of Mormon operates as a postcolonialist text by critiquing cultural hegemony, it also reinforces stereotypes and practices present in colonization like othering and cultural colonialism.

Coping With Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, And The Modern State. Jonathan Laurence (Princeton, Nj: Princeton University Press, 2021). Pp. 606. $35.00 Paper. Isbn: 9780691172125, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A book review of Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism, and the Modern State by Jonathan Lawrence.

Battles Of The Mind: The Reaction Against Progressive Education, 1945-1959, Ben Yturri

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis discerns the relationships between three interrelated movements of the post-war period (circa 1945-1959): the overwhelming concern among leading intellectuals regarding the relationship between the individual and society, the post-war debates over education, and rising religious observance. Following WWII, the nation’s leading scholars and social critics addressed the most important problem facing the country and, for that matter, the world: how to avoid totalitarianism. Almost naturally, such anxieties influenced new debates over education. Broadly speaking, these controversies involved two related disputes over the efficacy of progressive education and the proper relationship between church and state. After World War II, …

Editor's Introduction, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Religious Mega-Events And Their Assemblages In Devotional Pilgrimages: The Case Of Círio De Nazaré In Belém, Pará State, Brazil, José Rogério Lopes, André Luiz Da Silva

Journal of Global Catholicism

The article presents a typological categorization of contemporary mega-events and their characteristics, in order to interpret the assemblages mobilized by sectors of the Catholic Church in traditional devotional pilgrimages in the northern region of Brazil. It uses ethnographic accounts of the Círio de Nazaré feast, in Belém, Pará state, Brazil, considered the largest Catholic procession in the West, in order to analyze how the promotion of this event is organized through institutional and market logics that overlap with the religious phenomenon, evincing a contemporary trend. These assemblages open a field of possibilities for institutional religious reproduction and generate concentric flows …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

Determining How Team Communication And Project Outcomes Evolve In A Midwestern Healthcare Company: A Case Study Approach, Gregory J. Ash

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine the perspective of the Business Operation team and IT team during project team communication and interaction towards an awareness of the critical business processes and systems needed to ensure project success. For companies to remain competitive, a catalyst for growth through software development projects is required. Impediments to successful software project outcomes include inefficient communication, one-sided team communication, siloed team interaction, lack of business knowledge, lack of information sharing, and insufficient training resources. This study was a Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Design with survey questions for the quantitative component and open-ended questions …

Infectious Ideas: Why Do Radical Innovations Take Root?, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Living in the midst of a pandemic, we have all become familiar with the idea of contagion. An epidemic spreads through exposure to an infectious agent, like a novel virus. In a basic contagion model, the spread of a disease is a function of contact with the agent and its degree of infectiousness. Epidemiologists often model the risk of contagion as a function of contact (or frequency or level of contact) with the infected and the agent’s virulence.

When it comes to triggering radical institutional change, do ideas work the same way?

In a recent article, a team of …

Religion Wrecked Her Mind: Religious Insanity In The Nineteenth Century, Courtney Lacy

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I analyze how the line between good and bad religions, as constructed through secularism, influenced whether or not practitioners of religion were sent to insane asylums or, at least, considered by their peers or family to be at risk of insanity or on the brink of it. Exploring these questions revealed the link between religion and insanity but also showed how some religious practices (especially ecstatic behavior) placed believers at even greater risk because of the threat to the secular and progressive narrative encouraged by the people around them.

By placing the asylum narrative in conversation with …

Leveraging Machine Learning To Identify Quality Issues In The Medicaid Claim Adjudication Process, Cyrus Hoseini

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Medicaid is the largest health insurance in the U.S. It provides health coverage to over 68 million individuals, costs the nation over $600 billion a year, and subject to improper payments (fraud, waste, and abuse) or inaccurate payments (claim processed erroneously). Medicaid programs partially use Fee-For-Services (FFS) to provide coverage to beneficiaries by adjudicating claims and leveraging traditional inferential statistics to verify the quality of adjudicated claims. These quality methods only provide an interval estimate of the quality errors and are incapable of detecting most claim adjudication errors, potentially millions of dollar opportunity costs. This dissertation studied a method of …

Padre Pio, Pandemic Saint: The Effects Of The Spanish Flu And Covid-19 On Pilgrimage And Devotion To The World’S Most Popular Saint, Michael A. Di Giovine

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the Catholic world, pilgrimages and other devotional rituals are often undertaken to foster healing and well-being. Thus, shrines dedicated to saints are particularly relevant in times of pandemic. Pilgrimage to the shrines associated with 20th century Italian stigmatic, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, known as one of the Catholic world’s most popular saints, is particularly informed by this notion, as Pio is understood as a healing saint thanks to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy that marked his ministry during his lifetime, as well as belief in the miraculous nature of his relics. Pio’s hometown of Pietrelcina and …

Digital Occult Library, Alexis Brandkamp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is a website, titled Digital Occult Library, hosted by the CUNY Commons and built with WordPress. The site address is:

digitaloccultlibrary.commons.gc.cuny.edu

It features (in this iteration) twenty-five unique pages with information on and discussion of occult and esoteric topics. It also hosts a forum that can be accessed and utilized by anyone, not just those registered on the Commons. The purpose of the site is to inform three types of interested parties on the highlighted topics: a general audience with no current knowledge of the occult, practitioners of esoteric traditions, and academics. Not only is the …

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …

Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating The Tradition Of Shared Worship In North Macedonia, Ksenia Trofimova

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction …

“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study introduces the Csatka pilgrimage, which is one of the most significant festive events for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Csatka, a small and secluded village, became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Roma since the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of Roma, entire families from Hungary and the surrounding countries arrive to the feast on Nativity Day at the beginning of September. For them, however, the rite is not only about religious actions, but also about their powerful role in strengthening Roma ethnic identity. Through the analysis of the rite, we can gain a good …

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …

Retaining Moroccan Millennials To The Workplace, Omaima Hajjami

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this present study is to understand the factors that influence Moroccan millennial employees to stay at or to leave their organizations. To reach this purpose, the study followed a qualitative phenomenological research design, using interviews as a data collection type. Interviews were conducted with ten Moroccan millennials who have worked or still work in a private organization based in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco. Findings of this study discovered five factors that influenced Moroccan millennials to stay, including links with co-workers, good leadership style, responsibilities and tasks, training opportunities, and career advancement. Additionally, five factors were …

Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …

A Study Of Quality Requirement Conveyance For Assignments In Technology And Engineering Master’S Degree Programs, Heather J. Mccain

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quality requirements are not easy to define. In higher education, defining quality requirements and communicating those requirements to students may be accomplished through a variety of mechanisms. Students still may not know what it takes to get a good grade on an assignment and may have to wait for an instructor to clarify the assignment. This study was conducted because students and instructors may have different opinions as to which forms of feedforward and what technology are best to convey assignment requirements. The purpose of this study was to determine effective feedforward mechanisms as well as the technology used to …

Teaching And Testing Textual Analysis In Reacting To The Past: Thucydides And Jigsaw Method Discussion, Cary Barber

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

The activity this work presents is designed to both strengthen and evaluate students’ ability to think critically about ancient texts within a Reacting to the Past gaming environment (specifically in the game ‘The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.’). The activity is part of a preliminary set of assignments meant to improve students’ sense of the game’s historical, social, political, economic, and religious context. Moreover, the activity helps to ensure that students can incorporate texts appropriately into speeches, writings, and general gameplay.

Using the Jigsaw Method of discussion, I organize students into ‘numbered’ (I, II, III, etc.) groups of …