Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Noble Pagans And Satanic Saracens: Literary Portrayals Of Islam In Medieval Italy And Iberia., John Spencer Jones

Honors Theses

The medieval Christian world is generally associated with a kind of religious zealotry that would seem to preclude the development of nuanced understandings of the religious Other. The heightened interreligious contact in regions such as Iberia and the Italian Peninsula, however, made room for relationships with members of other faiths that resulted in more developed ideas about these other creeds. This honors thesis examines the portrayal of Islam in the Christian literature of medieval Italy and Iberia, dating from the late 11th century to the middle of the 14th century. It categorizes a few types of the literary “use” of …

[Introduction To] On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, And The Dark Arts Of Civilization, Peter I. Kaufman

Bookshelf

Many progressives have found passages in Augustine's work that suggest he entertained hopes for meaningful political melioration in his time. They also propose that his “political theology” could be an especially valuable resource for “an ethics of democratic citizenship” or for “hopeful citizenship” in our times. Peter Kaufman argues that Augustine's “political theology” offers a compelling, radical alternative to progressive politics. He chronicles Augustine's experiments with alternative polities, and pairs Augustine's criticisms of political culture with those of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt.

This book argues that the perspectives of pilgrims (Augustine), refugees (Agamben), and pariahs (Arendt) are better staging …

Scandal And Mass Politics: Buganda's 1941 Nnamasole Crisis, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

Summers discusses Buganda's 1941 Nnamasole crisis following the Christian marriage of Irene Namaganda, Buganda's queen mother who was pregnant with her slightly older lover. Namaganda's Christian marriage was powerfully scandalous, profoundly violating expectations associated with marriage and royal office. The scandal produced a political crisis that toppled Buganda's prime minister, pushed his senior allies from power, deposed the queen mother, exiled her husband, and changed Buganda's political landscape. The scandal launched a new era of public mobilization and protest that took Buganda's politics beyond the realm of deals between the oligarchy and British elites, and into public gossip, newspapers and …

The Psychology Of Conversion, James Roy Smith

Master's Theses

The present study of conversion is approached through the medium of psychology, which, like the Christian religion, is extremely interested in human beings. Christianity owes to psychology a great debt of gratitude for the light which it has thrown upon the vast recesses of the human mind and upon the possibilities in the personality which Christianity would convert.

There has been no hesitation to employ whatever information psychology may offer concerning the processes at work in conversion,together with any technique which might serve to increase its likelihood. It is not the purpose of this thesis to champion the cause of …