Religion and beliefs Books
Columbia University Press Nietzsche Versus Paul
Book SynopsisA fresh interpretation of Nietzsche's engagement with the work of Paul the Apostle, reorienting the relationship between the two thinkers while embedding modern philosophy within early Christian theology.Trade ReviewWritten in a precise and economical style, crystallizing its points with aphoristic clarity, Nietzsche Versus Paul reconstructs a series of "Christian" moments found throughout the Nietzschean corpus and so reveals a surprisingly consistent, sophisticated, and cunning structure. This contribution goes far beyond the circles of Nietzsche scholarship, where it will certainly be received as a fresh and powerful intervention. Indeed, it is an original conceptualization of atheism, nihilism, secularization, and modernity as well, and will be warmly received by scholars of philosophy and religion, especially, those interested in their intersection. -- Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley Nietzsche versus Paul is a wonderful, philosophically engaging book, meticulous -- even relentless -- in its argumentation, arresting in its interpretive scope, and dedicated to the surprisingly neglected presence of Christianity in Nietzsche. -- Gil Anidjar, Columbia University A brilliant reconstructive projective which fills a genuine lacuna in recent scholarship in history, philosophy, and theology alike. Nietzsche versus Paul is coherent, well formulated, and of extraordinary importance for all of the larger philosophical and historical discussions which have emerged, surprisingly, to become some of the most pressing 'theory' topics of our time. -- Ward Blanton, University of KentTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. From Dionysian Tragedy to Christianity 2. From Judaism to Christianity 3. Jesus-Christ and the Two Worlds of Early Christianity 4. Paul: The First Christian 5. Science and Art After the Death of God 6. Beyond Modern Temporality Notes Bibliography Index
£79.20
Columbia University Press Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis
Book SynopsisWu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, is the only woman to have ruled China as emperor. How did she ascend the dragon throne? This multifaceted history suggests that China's rich pantheon of female divinities and eminent women played an integral part in the construction of Wu Zhao's sovereignty.Trade ReviewThis is a fascinating study of the only female emperor in the whole of Chinese history. By delving deeply into the religious underpinnings of Wu Zetian's power in a way that not even the most dedicated approach to her utilization of Buddhist scriptures and doctrines alone could manage, this investigation illuminates the unique quality of Wu Zetian's reign far more effectively than previous studies. Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers is a solid piece of well-documented scholarship, yet it is vibrant and entertaining throughout. -- Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania Wu Zhao is one of world history's most fascinating figures and the most powerful woman in China's long past. N. Harry Rothschild sheds new light on the ideological underpinnings of Wu Zhao's rise to power and unprecedented female dynasty. The Buddhist prophecies justifying her rule are well known, but Rothschild uncovers a more complex story that includes wise mothers and potent goddesses drawn from the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions. In lively prose, Rothschild reveals an ever-evolving pantheon of female paragons that Wu Zhao deployed strategically before and after claiming the throne. -- Jonathan Karam Skaff, author of Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors With painstaking research, unerring insights, rich prose, and a sense of humor, Rothschild lavishly illustrates the political genius of Wu Zhao, China's only female emperor. Indicating her keen political instincts and expansive knowledge of China's cultural traditions, Rothschild adeptly delineates how, over the span of her fifty-year rule, Wu Zhao selectively made use of different goddesses and heroines to match the specific circumstances of her career's twists and turns. -- Keith N. Knapp, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina This book is a tour de force of textual analysis and historical detective work that leaves previous sensationalistic accounts of Wu Zhao's rise to power in the dust. -- Suzanne Cahill, University of California, San Diego Exhaustively researched... Tricycle What an original and remarkable story N. Harry Rothschild tells-of ancestors, power, and leadership. How a woman in an ancient, male-dominated culture employed art and poetry, history and mythology, and ritual and violence to create an ancestral line that consolidated her own gender-bending authority; the story of how Empress Wu invented herself as China's sole female ruler, the Emperor Wu Zhao. -- Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism A lively and captivating narrative that is sure to please both specialist and student alike... Rothschild deserves tremendous applause. Studies in Chinese Religions Highly revealing... The amount of material that has been drawn upon to achieve this result is impressive. International Journal of Asian Studies [An] informative and entertaining excursion into the religio-political machinations of perhaps the most (in)famous woman in Chinese history. -- Stuart H. Young Religious Studies ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Dynasties and Rulers Through the Mid-Tang Wu Zhao's Titles at Different Stages of Her Career Reign Eras from 655 to 705 Acknowledgments Introduction: Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Female Political Ancestors I. Goddesses of Antiquity 1. Wu Zhao as the Late Seventh-Century Avatar of Primordial Goddess Nuwa 2. Sanctifying Luoyang: The Luo River Goddess and Wu Zhao 3. First Ladies of Sericulture: Wu Zhao and Leizu II. Dynastic Mothers, Exemplary Mothers 4. The Mother of Qi and Wu Zhao: Connecting to Antiquity, Elevating Mount Song 5. Ur-Mothers Birthing the Zhou Line: Jiang Yuan and Wu Zhao 6. Wenmu and Wu Zhao: Two Mothers of Zhou 7. Four Exemplary Women in Wu Zhao's Regulations for Ministers III. Drawing the Numinous Energies of Female Daoist Divinities 8. The Queen Mother of the West and Wu Zhao 9. The Mother of Laozi and Wu Zhao: From One Grand Dowager to Another 10. Rejected from the Pantheon: The Ill-Timed Rise of the Cult of Wei Huacun IV. Buddhist Devis and Goddesses 11. Dharma Echoes of Mother Maya in Wu Zhao 12. Bodhisattva with a Female Body: Wu Zhao and Devi Jingguang Conclusions Appendix: Wu Zhao's Pantheon of Female Political Ancestors Glossary of Chinese Places, Names, and Terms Notes Bibliography Index
£80.39
Columbia University Press Pauls Summons to Messianic Life Political
Book SynopsisCompares the Pauline dialectic of awakening to attempts by Hellenistic philosophers to rouse their contemporaries from moral lethargy and to the Marxist idea of class consciousnessTrade ReviewA courageous and welcome grappling with contemporary philosophers by a New Testament scholar who has expertise in the history, languages, and methodologies of reading Paul. Paul's Summons to Messianic Life reminds us of the relevance of New Testament scholarship to important contemporary debates on universalism, time, and even political action. -- Laura Nasrallah, Harvard Divinity School A manifesto for a Paulinism received histories have strategically forgotten, Welborn's book presents a compelling rethinking of the historical Paul in ancient contexts that substantially transforms the way we hear Paul in recent theoretical or philosophical conversations. -- Ward Blanton, University of Kent Paul's Summons to Messianic Life should spark a lively and far-reaching debate in both departments of religion and philosophy that might indeed make Paul 'legible' in entirely new ways. -- Brigitte Kahl, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York A provocative sociopolitical analysis of Paul's letters... Recommended. Choice [I] eagerly await a sequel and recommend this book to anyone interested in the contemporary political implications of St. Paul's theology. Journal of Church and State An interesting read that offers food for thought. Journal of Theological StudiesTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1. Neighbor (a) 2. Kairos (b) 3. Awakening (c) 4. Awakening (c') 5. Kairos (b') 6. Neighbor (a') 7. Coda Notes Index
£63.00
Columbia University Press Spreading Buddhas Word in East Asia
Book SynopsisThis volume follows the making of the Chinese Buddhist canon from the fourth century to the digital era. Approaching the subject from a historical perspective, it ties the religious, social, and textual practices of canon formation to the development of East Asian Buddhist culture.Trade ReviewBringing together leading specialists in the Chinese Buddhist canon, Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the textual and the social history of one of the most impressive textual projects in the history of the world. -- John Kieschnick, Stanford UniversityThe Sinitic Buddhist canons rank among the largest bodies of sacred literature ever produced by any religious tradition. The compilation, editing, and publication of these massive collections required a commitment of money and manpower that was the medieval equivalent of the moon landings of the 1960s. This groundbreaking volume gives these canons the sustained attention they have long deserved from the scholarly community and will help to demonstrate that they are among the preeminent cultural achievements of the wider Sinitic world. -- Robert E. Buswell Jr., University of California, Los AngelesOne measure of the maturity of a discipline is its critical awareness of its sources. This collection of nine expert and groundbreaking essays on the Chinese Buddhist canon, augmented by a magisterial preface by a doyen of the field and two eminently useful bibliographical appendices, marks a genuine advance in the study of Chinese Buddhism. Now, with the appearance of this quite essential book, students of Buddhism in China have a reliable map and a guide to what is arguably the largest single collection of authoritative texts of any of the world's great religions. All who study Chinese Buddhism must keep this book handy as they pursue their research into scholarly territory now more clearly mapped. -- Robert M. Gimello, University of Notre DameIntellectually sound, informative and well written... [Spreading Buddha's Word in East Asia] introduce[s] readers to the political, economic, social, and religious complexities involved in the creation and dissemination of one of the world's largest repositories of sacred literature.... Highly recommended. * Choice *A much-needed English-language survey of the dynamic socio-historical forces at play in the creation of the many different editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon. . . . I commend the authors and editors of Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia for this excellent work which opens the study and teaching of Buddhist literature in English to many greater possibilities. * Journal of Chinese History *The editors should be commended for bringing together these essays and shedding light on this important and neglected topic of Buddhist study. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *This volume on the Chinese Buddhist canon is, simply put, essential reading for anyone concerned with the study of East Asian Buddhism. * China Review International *The well-rounded and well-edited collection of essays provides an excellent overview of the historical development of the Buddhist canon in East Asia without sacrificing depth; it will be welcomed by all students and scholars interested in the textual heritage of Buddhism. * Journal of Chinese Religions *A significant contribution.... The volume importantly encourages scholars to continue fusing together multiple disciplines. * H-Buddhism *An outstanding edited volume examining the origins of the Chinese Buddhist canon. -- Steven Heine * Monumenta Serica *A clear and helpful overview for anyone interested in studying Chinese Buddhism, or, indeed, the history of religion and of writing more generally. * Chaleur Bay Review Review of Books *Table of ContentsPreface, by Lewis LancasterAcknowledgmentsConventionsIntroduction, by Jiang Wu and Lucille ChiaPart I: Overview1. The Chinese Buddhist Canon Through the Ages: Essential Categories and Critical Issues in the Study of a Textual Tradition, by Jiang Wu2. From the "Cult of the Book" to the "Cult of the Canon": A Neglected Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, by Jiang WuPart II: The Formative Period3. Notions and Visions of the Canon in Early Chinese Buddhism, by Stefano Zacchetti4. Fei Changfang's Lidai sanbao ji and Its Role in the Formation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, by Tanya StorchPart III: The Advent of Printing5. The Birth of the First Printed Canon: The Kaibao Edition and Its Impact, by Jiang Wu, Lucille Chia, and Chen Zhichao6. The Life and Afterlife of Qisha Canon, by Lucille Chia7. Managing the Dharma Treasure: Collation, Carving, Printing, and Distribution of the Canon in Late Imperial China, by Darui LongPart IV: The Canon Beyond China8. Better Than the Original: The Creation of Goryeo Canon and the Formation of Giyang Pulgyo, by Jiang Wu and Ron Dziwenka9. Taisho Canon: Devotion, Scholarship, and Nationalism in the Creation of the Modern Buddhist Canon in Japan, by Greg WilkinsonAppendix 1. A Brief Survey of the Printed Editions of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, by Li Fuhua and He MeiAppendix 2. The Creation of the CBETA Electronic Tripitaka Collection in Taiwan, by Aming TuBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press The Gathering of Intentions
Book SynopsisThe Gathering of Intentions reads a single Tibetan Buddhist ritual system through the movements of Tibetan history, revealing the social and material dimensions of an ostensibly timeless tradition.Trade ReviewThe Gathering of Intentions makes a valuable contribution to the field of Tibetan and Buddhist studies and will attract nonacademic readers who are interested in learning about the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. The organization of the book is thoughtfully crafted, the content coverage thorough and wide-ranging, the scholarship superb, and the arguments clear and persuasive. -- Bryan J. Cuevas, author of Travels in the Netherworld: Buddhist Popular Narratives of Death and the Afterlife in TibetThe Gathering of Intentions is an essential contribution to the study of Tibetan Buddhism. This learned and lucid book is an important, insightful, and groundbreaking study of a worthy subject that takes a valuable historical approach to interpreting the development of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition over an extended period of time. In so doing, it provides critical perspectives on both the distinctive moments it explores and the long-term impact of a quietly influential scriptural tradition. -- Christian K. Wedemeyer, author of Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian TraditionsThe Gathering of Intentions takes a single tantra and shows how it has been at the center of the religious life of practitioners of the Nyingma tradition of Tibet, from the wandering yogins of the tenth century to the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth and the Tibetan exile communities of the present day. One of the best things about this fascinating book is how Dalton brings together the earliest sources for understanding Tibetan Buddhism with the living, breathing tradition as it exists today in Tibet and across the world. -- Sam van Schaik, author of Tibet: A HistoryAn extremely engaging, perspicacious, and elegantly written book on the history of the production and development of a Tibetan text . . . Dalton’s book provides a fundamental road map and guidance for scholars interested in Anuyoga and the development of the Bka’ ma lineages in Tibet. * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *The Gathering of Intentions is required reading for scholars of Tibetan religious history, particularly those interested in the Nyingma School’s distinctive tantric system. -- Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara * Religious Studies Review *[This book] makes a serious contribution to our understanding of Tibetan religious history by demonstrating the relevance of what was until recently a poorly understood textual tradition and showing the surprising ways it impacted Tibetan history. * Journal of Asian Studies *A valuable, information-packed resource for the study of canon, institution, and ritualism in Tibet. * Reading Religion *Dalton illuminates an important and understudied Buddhist tradition.... A useful case study for those interestd in the history of religions in general as well as a valuable resource for students and scholars of Tibetan religion and history. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Dalton deserves great praise for his scholarship, historical research and crisp writing. * Sumeru *This volume prioritizes Tibetan Buddhism's ritual systems for a richer portrait of the tradition. * Buddhism Now *This book [is] a very valuable contribution to the study of Tibetan Buddhism. * BizIndia *Without a doubt this is a highly recommended book and a very successful exploration of the life and vicissitudes of a single tantra. * H-Buddhism *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Origins: Myth and History2. The Gathering of Intentions in Early Tibetan Tantra3. The Spoken Teachings4. The Rise of the Sutra Initiation5. Dorjé Drak and the Formation of a New Lineage6. The Mindröling Tradition7. Returns to the OriginAppendix: The Four Root Tantras of AnuyogaNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press Black Gods of the Asphalt
Book SynopsisA former streetball player who became an all-star Ivy Leaguer brings the sights and sounds, hopes and dreams of street basketball to life. Through interviews with and observations of urban basketball players, he composes a rare portrait of a passionate, committed, and resilient group of athletes and the transcendent experience of the game.Trade ReviewThis timely and groundbreaking book is about basketball as lived religion in some of America's most dangerous neighborhoods. But more centrally it is about grief expressed and hope conjured as seen through the lens of a stellar young scholar who has been there and through the eyes of young black men who, though weighed down by the forces of death, somehow rise above the asphalt. -- Stephen Prothero, author of Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections) In this season where black male bodies are under attack, Black Gods of the Asphalt offers a profound narrative of survival, self-determination, and the urban swag of Boston's inner-city basketball courts as sites where religion is 'lived' and spiritual transformation occurs on a regular basis. Woodbine brilliantly posits that the 'ritual space of the asphalt' is where memory, hope, and healing converge to fight the systemic oppressive forces beyond the rim. This book is a slam dunk! -- Emmett G. Price III, editor of The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture: Toward Bridging the Generational Divide The stories in Black Gods of the Asphalt are rich and powerful and are woven together skillfully and beautifully. Onaje X. 0. Woodbine switches between his roles as participant and observer, by turns narrating and analyzing with great dexterity. -- Rebecca Alpert, author of Religion and Sports This narrative is more than academic prose; it is a deeply personal and poetic travel through the author's own story of racial struggle and the survival tactics of the players he befriends... In this majestic study of basketball as ritual, religion, and culture, Woodbine plunges into the courts of Boston with an insider's savvy to catalogue the urban sport's pulsating (and potentially transcendent) dialogue. Publishers Weekly (starred review) Woodbine's got game, on the court and on the page, and here he dunks emphatically. From the time we meet Shorty, a street-basketball legend, through a brief history of the game and its link (religion playing a large role) to young African American culture, we learn of basketball, and the many lives it memorializes, as we have in few other books. Booklist In this painful, beautiful nonfiction debut, scholar Onaje X. O. Woodbine uses a seamless mix of memoir, ethnography, and poetry to chronicle Boston's street basketball players seeking physical and spiritual grace through hoops. Boston Magazine In Black Gods of the Asphalt, the worlds of religion and hoops come together... Woodbine shares how the courts can be a place of healing, of ritual, of community, and even transcendence. -- Christie Storm Arkansas Democrat Gazette Black Gods of the Asphalt is likely to change your entire perspective of urban basketball. -- David Crumm Read The Spirit For the young men in Woodbine's book, street basketball disconnects players from daily life in a way that gives them joy... But, at the same time, inner city life literally enshrouds their game, and this tragedy is what Black Gods brings to life in vividly realized accounts of young men and the street ball tournaments they play. -- David Lipset Eephus A powerful and deeply moving work, Black Gods of the Asphalt reveals a world of redemption and hope rarely glimpsed from the outside. -- Diana L. Hayes National Catholic Reporter A thoughtful, passionate, and personal exploration. Boston GlobeTable of ContentsList of Illustrations "Enter the Chamber" Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Memory 1. "Last Ones Left" in the Game: From Black Resistance to Urban Exile 2. Boston's Memorial Games Part II: Hope 3. Jason, Hoops, and Grandma's Hands 4. C.J., Hoops, and the Quest for a Second Life Part III: Healing 5. Ancestor Work in Street Basketball 6. The Dunk and the Signifying Monkey Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
£52.88
Columbia University Press Islamophobia and the Novel
Book SynopsisIslamophobia and the Novel analyzes how recent works of fiction have framed and responded to the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice alongside changing concepts of cultural difference. Peter Morey offers readings of novels that show how their portrayal of difference both reflects and refutes the ideological preoccupations of the post-9/11 West.Trade ReviewWith his characteristic brilliance and integrity, Peter Morey, a noted public intellectual, illustrates the impact of surging Islamophobia on mainstream literature in this masterful study. A man whose career has centered on building bridges between divided cultures, his is a voice to heed in these confusing and troubled times. -- Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American UniversityIn a series of brilliantly astute and subtle readings, Peter Morey shows us how the contemporary novel has the capacity to expose the rifts and contradictions in Islamophobic discourses, thereby unsettling conventional frames for seeing Islam and Muslims. Paving the way for what Morey calls a ‘critical Muslim literary studies’, Islamophobia and the Novel is a work of outstanding scholarship, a vital book for the times we live in. -- Rehana Ahmed, Queen Mary University of LondonIf you’ve ever wondered why Muslim characters always seem so poorly imagined in so much contemporary fiction in English, Peter Morey has the answers for you. Islamophobia and the Novel is not only a lucid account of how Muslim characters get stuck in a spider’s web of representation. It is also a handbook for how to break free. -- Moustafa Bayoumi, Brooklyn CollegeA persuasive, theoretically grounded analysis of the state of literary novels in English dealing with the Muslim world and the West’s responses to (and uses of) Islamophobia. * Choice *Morey builds to that key conclusion with clarity. Understanding where literature stands in relation to Islamophobia is an initial and important step toward diminishing it. * Modern Philology *Strenuously researched and convincing...Islamophobia and the Novel invites us to understand the disquieting truths how Islamophobia is disseminated through discourse of representation, and how contemporary fiction has contributed to it. Morey’s remarkable research and his unbiased literary judgements push us to think afresh. * Wasafiri *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction—Islamophobia: The Word and the World1. Islam, Culture, and Anarchy: Faith, Doubt, and Liberalism in Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and John Updike2. From Multiculturalism to Islamophobia: Identity Politics and Individualism in Hanif Kureishi and Monica Ali3. Muslim Misery Memoirs: The Truth Claims of Exotic Suffering in Azar Nafisi and Khaled Hosseini4. Migrant Cartographies: Islamophobia and the Politics of the City Space in Amy Waldman and H. M. Naqvi5. States of Statelessness: Islamophobia and Border Spaces in the Post-9/11 Thrillers of John Le Carré, Dan Fesperman, and Richard Flanagan6. Islamophobia and the Global Novel: “Worlding” History in Nadeem Aslam and Kamila Shamsie7. Marketing the Muslim: Globalization and the Postsecular in Mohsin Hamid and Leila AboulelaConclusion—Toward a Critical Muslim Literary StudiesNotesBibliographyIndex
£46.75
Columbia University Press The Origins of Neoliberalism
Book SynopsisDotan Leshem reveals the role of Christian theology in shaping economic and political thought. Beginning with early Christianity engagement with economic knowledge, he follows the secularization of economics in liberal and neoliberal theory. Only by relocating the origins of modernity in late antiquity, Leshem argues, can we confront neoliberalism.Trade ReviewDotan Leshem's important book makes a very powerful and original contribution to an increasingly significant discussion across different disciplines. Its consistency, erudition, and relevance for contemporary research into the 'theological' genealogy of economy and government is impressive indeed. -- Etienne Balibar, author of Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy In my opinion, this work is the most significant text so far in the field of what has come to be termed 'political theology.' Through his wide-ranging and careful scholarship, Leshem shows the extent to which a theological, biblically based dimension totally altered the operative categories of political virtue. -- John Milbank, author of Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People This dazzling book takes us on an intellectual journey of rare substance. It demonstrates that our current predicament-the dominance of economic 'rationality,' the imperatives of growth-is at once newer and older, narrower and broader, than we have been taught. This is a humbling and teaching book that will change, that must change, the way we conceive of the economic in its relation to the political, the philosophical, and the theological. An economist and a philosopher, Leshem writes with masterful intensity and compellingly calls for an extraordinary transformation, for an 'ethical economy,' for nothing less than a new political philosophy. -- Gil Anidjar, author of Blood: A Critique of Christianity The Origins of Neoliberalism demonstrates that histories of economic thought can no longer ignore pre-modernity and that political economy owes more to theological rationality than its modern exponents are willing to avow. Marx & Philosophy Review of Books This exceptionally learned book will deservedly cause a stir among students of political and economic theology. -- John Plender Times Literary Supplement Dotan Leshem's study is a valuable intervention in the larger project of developing a theological genealogy of the modern concepts of economy and government ... The singular achievement of Leshem's study is the way it extends our understanding of how the principles of incarnation and growth are central to the way the early church develops its unique notion of oikonomia ... The great virtue of Leshem's study is that it reconciles divergent approaches to the theological genealogy of economy and governmentality, and at the same time clarifies how Christianity inaugurates a distinct form of economic life at both micro (subjective) and macro (social) levels. -- Jennifer Rust Syndicate There is very much in Dotan Leshem's book to recommend it ... It is indeed an important study that will form the foundation of many more ... Leshem's book will no doubt continue to help direct me to new and richer fields for a long time to come. -- Mitchell Dean Syndicate Leshem entered largely unchartered waters and demonstrated how Christian thinking of oikonomia is not irrelevant to contemporary philosophical discussions of the trinity of politics, economy, and philosophy, as evinced especially in the work of Foucault, Agamben, and Arendt ... On these and other related questions, Leshem has offered an important and groundbreaking book. -- Aristotle Papanikolaou Syndicate Leshem's text, a brilliant, muscular historical semiotics of the economy, traces not only the category, but the model, of the economy ... For those of us in the social sciences long conditioned to understand the capitalist economy as a profane and carnal domain, as the secret sociological ground of the power of dominant classes and nation-states, let alone our god, Leshem has turned the tables. -- Roger Friedland Syndicate From this point forward, anyone investigating the place of economy in Christian theology will have to engage with Leshem's work. -- Adam Kotsko An und fur sich Leshem has written a detailed account of the thought of late antiquity that will be of interest for anyone who has followed recent debates in politics, economics and theology through Foucault and Agamben as well as those interested in the conceptual origins of neoliberalism. -- David Hancock Political Studies ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Economy Before Christ 1. From Oikos to Ecclesia 2. Modeling the Economy 3. Economy and Philosophy 4. Economy and Politics 5. Economy and the Legal Framework 6. From Ecclesiastical to Market Economy Notes Works Cited Index
£20.90
Columbia University Press Faithful to Secularism The Religious Politics of
Book SynopsisIn Faithful to Secularism, David T. Buckley develops the concept of benevolent secularism to describe institutions that combine a basic division of religion and state with extensive room for participation of religious actors in public life.Trade ReviewThis is a powerfully argued book that makes an original case for a modern understanding of religion and politics and illustrates it brilliantly through the cases of Ireland, Senegal, and the Philippines. I predict that it will become a major work in a fast-growing field and set a new standard for excellence. -- Daniel Philpott, director of the Program on Religion & Reconciliation, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies Buckley's concept of "benevolent secularism" enriches the comparative politics literature on religion and society. A brilliant example of using field research in multiple countries for theory building. -- Alfred Stepan, Columbia University This is going to be an influential work shaping the emergent field of the comparative politics of secularism. The original concepts of "benevolent secularism" and "secular evolution," drawn from the rich historical analysis of Irish, Senegalese, and Filipino secularism, throughout a century and across two religious traditions and three continents, are likely to prove particularly fruitful in many other settings. -- Jose Casanova, Georgetown UniversityTable of ContentsList of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Benevolent Secularism: A Theory of the Religious Politics of Democracy 2. Secular Emergence in Ireland: Home Rule and Rome Rule? 3. Secular Evolution in Ireland: Religion and Post-Catholic Politics 4. Secular Emergence in Senegal: Laicite in Translation 5. Secular Evolution in Senegal: Sopi and Institutional Change 6. Secular Emergence in the Philippines: Beyond the Malolos Stalemate 7. Secular Evolution in the Philippines: People Power and Pluralization Conclusion: The Future of Religion and Secular Democracy Notes Bibliography Index
£46.75
Columbia University Press Mary and the Art of Prayer The Hours of the
Book SynopsisWould you like to learn to pray like a medieval Christian? Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of the medieval practice of praising Mary through the complex of prayers known as the Hours of the Virgin. Mary and the Art of Prayer asks readers to immerse themselves in the experience of believing in and praying to Mary.Trade ReviewA remarkable intellectual exploration fueled by a personal passion. -- Ann Astell, University of Notre Dame One of the most beautiful, well argued, and exciting pieces of Marian scholarship that I have read. -- Sarah Jane Boss, director of the Centre for Marian StudiesTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsNotes to the ReaderInvitatory1. The Hours of the Virgin2. Ave Maria3. Antiphon and Psalm4. Lesson and Response5. PrayerCompline: Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda and the Mystical City of GodAppendix: Handlist of Manuscripts and Printed Editions of Richard of Saint-Laurent’s De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis libri XIINotesBibliographyIndex of Scriptural CitationsIndex of Manuscripts CitedGeneral Index
£91.52
Columbia University Press In Defense of Charisma
Book SynopsisIn Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, and democratic charisma, which prompts us to discover new possibilities.Trade ReviewIn this wonderfully provocative book, Vincent Lloyd explores the theory and practice of charisma in their kaleidoscopically varied forms. Ranging through literary and philosophical and theological texts, through movies and TV and Twitter, through proclamations and arguments and performances, he shows us a big world of ideas. After reading this book I find myself seeing the effects of charisma everywhere. A truly remarkable work of humanistic scholarship, In Defense of Charisma is also a great deal of fun. -- Alan Jacobs, author of The Book of Common Prayer: A BiographyWhat is charisma and can it be used well? In this book, Vincent Lloyd offers creative and important reflections for our networked age. -- Cathleen Kaveny, Libby Professor of Law and Theology, Boston CollegeIn In Defense of Charisma, Vincent Lloyd elucidates a compelling and unique definition of democratic charisma as something overlooked and valuable. It is overlooked partly because it is fleeting, partly because it is overshadowed by the more widely understood and unappealing concept of authoritarian charisma. Democratic charisma gives us an innovative angle on a central concept and could enter the mainstream of discussion in multiple disciplines, perhaps even broader consciousness. -- Mark Roche, University of Notre Dame[A] scholarly but truly readable new book... offer[ing] a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Review *Pulling together insights from history, philosophy, theology, social media, and television, [Lloyd's] examples are real, current, powerful. This compelling and timely work will richly reward readers who wish to understand the allure of charismatic individuals and what makes people want to follow them. Highly recommended. * Choice *For political theory, this book offers a new, normative research program for those interested in understanding how political leadership, charisma, and their many layers of mediation interact, not just to uncover the mechanics of that charismatic matrix, but to investigate it and evaluate it for the sake of the common good. * Contemporary Political Theory *Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. The Uncircumcised Lips of Moses2. The Virtue of Charisma3. Charisma and Goodness4. Charisma and Truth5. Charisma and BeautyConclusion: The Justice of CharismaAfterword: Studying CharismaNotesIndex
£25.20
Columbia University Press A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine
Book SynopsisThis book is a wide-ranging and accessible account of the interplay between Buddhism and medicine over the past two and a half millennia. C. Pierce Salguero traces the intertwining threads linking ideas, practices, and texts from many different times and places.Trade Review…essential reading for scholars in Buddhist Studies and historians of medicine. * International Journal of Asian Studies *This is an excellent overview of the connections between Buddhism and medicine. It will be very useful for scholars and students in Buddhist studies and history of medicine alike, and is likely to become the standard book for teaching this subject. Salguero has dealt well with the challenge of providing a grand overview that is accessible and useful across several disciplines. -- Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, author of ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk RoadsA Global History of Buddhism and Medicine provides an overarching narrative for the burgeoning field of Buddhist medical studies. Salguero successfully synthesizes several millennia of intellectual developments that took place across diverse traditions and cultures into a single coherent narrative. -- William McGrath, Manhattan CollegeSynthetizes a quantity of precious information in light prose within a few pages. * Religion *A key resource and significant teaching device in Buddhist studies for years to come. * Asian Medicine *Of immense use to those seeking an introduction to the field of Buddhism and medicine and would prove invaluable to scholars seeking to teach the subject or compile a university course. Finally, those with a broader interest in religion and medicine have much to gain from this volume. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Practices and Doctrinal Perspectives1. Nikāya Buddhism2. Mahāyāna Buddhism3. Tantric Buddhism4. Common QuestionsPart II: Historical Currents and Transformations5. Circulations6. Translations7. Localizations8. Modernizations9. Contemporary Buddhist MedicineConclusionNotesReferencesIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine
Book SynopsisThis book is a wide-ranging and accessible account of the interplay between Buddhism and medicine over the past two and a half millennia. C. Pierce Salguero traces the intertwining threads linking ideas, practices, and texts from many different times and places.Trade Review…essential reading for scholars in Buddhist Studies and historians of medicine. * International Journal of Asian Studies *This is an excellent overview of the connections between Buddhism and medicine. It will be very useful for scholars and students in Buddhist studies and history of medicine alike, and is likely to become the standard book for teaching this subject. Salguero has dealt well with the challenge of providing a grand overview that is accessible and useful across several disciplines. -- Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, author of ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk RoadsA Global History of Buddhism and Medicine provides an overarching narrative for the burgeoning field of Buddhist medical studies. Salguero successfully synthesizes several millennia of intellectual developments that took place across diverse traditions and cultures into a single coherent narrative. -- William McGrath, Manhattan CollegeSynthetizes a quantity of precious information in light prose within a few pages. * Religion *A key resource and significant teaching device in Buddhist studies for years to come. * Asian Medicine *Of immense use to those seeking an introduction to the field of Buddhism and medicine and would prove invaluable to scholars seeking to teach the subject or compile a university course. Finally, those with a broader interest in religion and medicine have much to gain from this volume. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Practices and Doctrinal Perspectives1. Nikāya Buddhism2. Mahāyāna Buddhism3. Tantric Buddhism4. Common QuestionsPart II: Historical Currents and Transformations5. Circulations6. Translations7. Localizations8. Modernizations9. Contemporary Buddhist MedicineConclusionNotesReferencesIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press Liquid Light
Book SynopsisThe Santo Daime is a syncretic religion whose spiritual practice is based around the sacramental use of ayahuasca. G. William Barnard—an initiate of the religion and a scholar of religious studies—considers the religious practice and transformative inner experiences of the Santo Daime community.Trade ReviewLiquid Light is a monumental achievement, a unique synthesis of psychedelic experience and critical scholarship. Writing as a philosopher, historian, psychologist, and daimista, Barnard takes us deep into the Santo Daime community and its sacramental use ayahuasca. His descriptions of ayahuasca initiation are penetrating, searingly honest, breathtakingly beautiful, and told with self-deprecating humor. Liquid Light is an absolute gem of a book and a milestone in the emerging field of psychedelic philosophy. -- Christopher Bache, author of LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from HeavenLiquid Light is a magical mystery tour of Barnard's immersion into the Santo Daime Church. As a professor of religious studies, his journey is set within the sophisticated context of William James and Henri Bergson. It's a wild ride on many levels and an important contribution to our understanding of what it means to be a modern mystic. -- Rachel Harris, author of Listening to Ayahuasca: New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and AnxietyLiquid Light is a spiritual-intellectual memoir that moves back and forth between two voices or genres: that of the believing (if often struggling to believe) participant in the religion of Santo Daime and that of the more detached scholar of religion. In his doubled spirit, Barnard answers objections to and criticisms of visionary experience, psychedelic revelation, and the often quite striking experience of mediumship. By so doing, he makes a most welcome and original contribution to the growing literature on Santo Daime and its central sacrament, commonly known as ayahuasca. -- Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New RealitiesIn this book, Barnard describes, in a highly personal and vivid manner, some of the experiences he has been having during the over fifteen years that he has been taking Daime (the name given by the Santo Daime tradition to ayahuasca). The result is a rather unusual blend of rigorous academic thought and vivid descriptions of his own personal spiritual experiences, written in a highly readable style that makes the book difficult to put down. -- Edward MacRae, coeditor of Ayahuasca, Ritual, and Religion in BrazilTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. First Encounter with the Daime2. Initial Philosophical Reflections3. Next Steps on the Path4. Céu do Mapiá—Beginnings5. Feitio—the Ritual of Making the Daime6. Early Works in Céu do Mapiá7. Mirações—Visionary/Mystical Experiences in the Santo Daime8. Mediumship in the Santo Daime9. The Holy House in Céu do Mapiá—Rosary Works10. Final Days in Céu do Mapiá11. Ending on a High NoteNotesBibliographyIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press Modern Things on Trial Islams Global and
Book SynopsisLeor Halevi tells the story of the Islamic trials of technological and commercial innovations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shedding light on culture, commerce, and consumption in Cairo and other colonial cities, Modern Things on Trial is a groundbreaking account of Islam’s material transformation in a globalizing era.Trade ReviewLeor Halevi's original study offers important perspectives on turn of the twentieth-century Islamic reformist thought in the context of changing relations between law and material history. He matches up instructive readings in legal opinions delivered in Cairo by Rashid Rida with innovative background research on the new products and technologies that prompted questions to him from around the Muslim world. -- Brinkley Messick, author of Sharīʿa Scripts: A Historical AnthropologyThis nuanced, meticulously researched, yet accessible study illuminates how significant early-twentieth-century debates on Islamic law often revolved around some surprisingly ordinary objects and how local anxieties and input shaped a reformist Islam with transregional appeal. Halevi's focus on the material dimensions of modern Islamic thought adds a very welcome and promising dimension to the scholarship in this field. -- Muhammad Qasim Zaman, author of Islam in Pakistan: A HistoryBy tracing the evolution of 'laissez-faire Salafism' in response to consumer concerns about the religious status of new commodities and technologies, Halevi positions Islam's modern reformation as driven more by materialist than ideational forces. This is a highly original rethinking of the old question of religion and modernity by looking at the material transformations—the 'modern things'—that Muslims acquired from the industrializing West. -- Nile Green, Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History, University of California, Los AngelesThis is a remarkable intervention by a pioneering scholar of Islamic law and material culture. Focusing on Rashid Rida, a leading light of modern Islamic reform, it highlights the material entanglements that catalyzed his legal rulings on novel commodities, technologies, and financial instruments. In place of dogmatism and idealism, what emerges is a riveting narrative of pragmatic and materialist accommodations in a period marked by the impact of capitalism, consumerism, and colonialism. This is revisionist history in the best sense. -- Finbarr Barry Flood, director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories, New York UniversityAn outstanding work that sets a new standard for the writing of modern Islamic intellectual history...this book will prove of enduring interest to researchers in Islamic law and modern Islamic thought, historians of the late imperial and early nation-state Muslim worlds, and students of the processes of globalization more generally. * American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences *Halevi sheds light on Islam’s relationship with modernity by offering an account of how Islamic revivalists first responded to modern transformations through religious and legal rulings. * Middle East Journal *This excellent book is paradigm shifting. . . Essential. * Choice *Halevi’s work contributes to the larger understanding of how Islamic reform in this period was often driven through thehistorical narrative of Riḍā as a reformer, illustrating a bottom-up process. * Arab Studies Quarterly *A fresh, lively, and materialist intervention against reductive readings of modern Islam. * Jadaliyya *By rejecting abstractions like “Westernization” and turning instead to how tangible things were weighed on the moral scale of sharia, Leor Halevi presents a bold and lucid new analysis of the making of modern Islam. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Halevi’s book charts the way for other scholars of law and history to write history grounded in an eclectic mix of materials in several languages from various archives around the world. * Law and Social Inquiry *Halevi’s compelling monograph is relevant to a large audience and should interest global historians and historians of empire as much as scholars of modern Islam. * American Historical Review *He not only weaves intellectual and economic history together but comes forth with a contribution that is as ground breaking and original regarding the development of a consumer culture as it is concerning legal reform. * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies *The writing is clear, engaging, and accessible. In addition to classes on Islam, the arguments advanced heremay be pertinent to courses on theory in religious studies. * International Journal of Middle East Studies *It is a new way of looking at the issue of religion and modernity. Among other things, this book would be an excellent focus for graduates reading law and change in the modern Muslim world. * Technology and Culture *Table of ContentsList of Maps and FiguresAcknowledgmentsPrologue: The Parable of the Montgolfière and the Translation of Haleby’s CorpseIntroduction: Good Things Made Lawful: Euro-Muslim Objects and Laissez-Faire Fatwas1. The Toilet Paper Fatwa: Hygienic Innovation and the Sacred Law in the Late Imperial Era2. Fatwas for the Partners’ Club: A Global Mufti’s Enterprise3. In a Material World: European Expansion from Tripoli to Cairo4. Paper Money and Consummate Men: Capitalism and the Rise of Laissez-Faire Salafism5. The Qurʾan in the Gramophone: Sounds of Islamic Modernity from Cairo to Kazan6. Telegraphs, Photographs, Railways, Law Codes: Tools of Empire, Tools of Islam7. Arabian Slippers: The Turn to Nationalistic Consumption8. Lottery Tickets, Luxury Hotels, and Christian Experts: Economic Liberalism Versus Islamic Exclusivism in a Territorial FrameworkConclusionsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press Mind Beyond Brain
Book SynopsisNeuroscientist David E. Presti, with the assistance of other researchers, explores how evidence for anomalous phenomena—such as near-death experiences, apparent memories of past lives, apparitions, and other so-called psi or paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition—can influence the Buddhism-science conversation.Trade ReviewBeginning with the unsettling title and continuing through chapters that take an empirical approach to exploring near-death experiences, reincarnation, mediums, and apparitions, Mind Beyond Brain asks the reader to set aside preconceptions and deeply-held assumptions in order to understand the depths of human consciousness. An engaging read, sure to give a healthy intellectual prod to even the most committed physical materialist. -- Rich Ivry, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of California, BerkeleyMind Beyond Brain embraces and celebrates the natural sciences and their materialist frameworks but also suggests that our understanding of the natural almost certainly needs to be expanded, greatly, and that the physicalist frameworks may not be the final answer to our deepest and most difficult questions about subjectivity, mind, or consciousness. Presti is a perfect narrator, host, and guide here. He strikes a wonderful balance between embracing and celebrating the advances of the sciences and wanting them to go further still. -- Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice UniversityThis book could open important doors for any thinking person today. It courageously provides important philosophical critiques of the dominant physical materialist worldview along with a great deal of well-documented, challenging counter-evidence drawn from all-too-neglected fields of psychological research. It is a compelling read for anyone who realizes that the acknowledgement of the active role of 'mind' (whatever it is, we all have one, and we need to get to know it better!) in nature is indispensable for the revolutionary paradigm shift that science requires to break through its current deadlock, presiding over the great extinction facing our planet and our sentient selves. -- Robert Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia UniversityMind Beyond Brain explores the implications of empirical evidence challenging the prevailing view that the mind is simply a function of the brain. This timely book places the issue within the ongoing dialogue between science and Buddhism and reinstates the spirit of open-minded, radical empiricism that has always characterized science and Buddhism at their best. With their discussions of compelling evidence, examined with rigorous logic, the eminently qualified authors of this book point the way forward to catalyzing the first true revolution in the mind sciences. -- B. Alan Wallace, President, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness StudiesAcademics, both in and outside the fields of neuroscience and Buddhism, who are interested in psi phenomena will find this publication accessible and reader-friendly, though not reductionistic in content. * Reading Religion *This fine book should be widely read and debated as we try to formulate a radical new perspective where mind is a central part of nature rather than an epiphenomenon of neural processes. This will lead to a new and constructive relationship between science and spirituality. * Paradigm Explorer *Serve[s] a useful purpose on two fronts (academic and lay-oriented), and it deserves attention from readers on both sides. * Journal of the Society for Psychical Research *This is a fascinating. . . book that treads the boundaries between science and mysticism in an enlightening way. * Magonia Review of Books *Readers who are interested in science, mind, and psi phenomena will find Mind Beyond Brain to be both fascinating and accessible. -- Renee L. Ford, Rice University * Nova Religio *Table of ContentsForeword, by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal RinpochePrologue: Deepening the Dialogue, by David E. Presti and Edward F. Kelly1. Scientific Revolution and the Mind–Matter Relation, by David E. Presti2. Near-Death Experiences, by Bruce Greyson3. Reports of Past-Life Memories, by Jim B. Tucker4. Mediums, Apparitions, and Deathbed Experiences, by Emily Williams Kelly5. Paranormal Phenomena, the Siddhis, and an Emerging Path Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, by Edward F. Kelly6. An Expanded Conception of Mind, by David E. PrestiNotesBibliographyAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex
£18.00
Columbia University Press Becoming Guanyin
Book SynopsisYuhang Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion, arguing that women used their own bodies to echo that of Guanyin. She combines empirical research with theoretical insights from both art history and Buddhist studies.Trade Review[A] lavishly-illustrated, impeccably-researched, ground-breaking book. * Asian Review of Books *A refreshing and much needed foray into the lives and experiences of everyday women within the social context Li investigates. -- Elizabeth Miller * Religious Studies Review *Virtually every page of Becoming Guanyin demonstrates Li’s impressively wide-ranging erudition and her keen powers of observation and analysis....a major contribution to scholarship. * Nan nü *Li has expertly demonstrated a wholly new way of studying the religious expression of women in imperial China. Those with an interest in Chinese religion, particularly Buddhism, as well as those interested in gender studies and religion, and the anthropology of religion, would find this volume invaluable. -- Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna * Religious Studies Review *Richly illustrated and described in great detail, Li’s book provides a vivid picture of lay Buddhist women’s devotion to Guanyin. * Journal of Chinese Religions *Scholars of Buddhism or Chinese history of the late imperial era will certainly find inspiration and useful information for their own research in the broad scope of this book’s textual and visual primary sources, while all readers can enjoy its accessible style, photos and depictions of stunning artifacts and ancient tombs, quirky anecdotes and creative imaginations from vernacular stories, as well as the other ‘skilful means’ Li employs to discover the repressed and hidden agency of female Buddhists in late imperial China. * Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies *Yuhang Li is, by training, an art historian. However, her take on Guanyin goes beyond the realms of art history. Li analyzes the female portrayal of Guanyin through paintings, material culture of embroidery, theatrical display of dance, archaeological objects, scripture, and literature. This is truly an interdisciplinary work. -- Chün-fang Yü, author of Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of AvalokitesvaraWhat distinguishes Becoming Guanyin from other excellent work on women and religion in late imperial China is its careful attention to the material culture of religious practice, from objects women made to objects of worship. The book should appeal to scholars and students in a variety of disciplines—history, art history, religion, literature, and gender studies. -- Ann Waltner, coauthor of Family: A World HistoryBecoming Guanyin is a truly innovative and interdisciplinary book that explores how lay women expressed religious devotion in late imperial China. Through a critical examination of women’s hairpins, embroidery made from women’s hair, and courtesan dance performances, Yuhang Li responds with intelligence to current scholarship on visual and material culture, women’s history, and religious studies. Highly recommended! -- Shih-shan Susan Huang, author of Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional ChinaIn a word, the book is rich—in illustrations, narratives, descriptions, and details, some public and some private and even intimate. * Reading Religion *Provides a new perspective to look at Chinese women’s religious experience through her study of material objects produced by women. This book is definitely a very positive contribution to the study of gender and religion in practice. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *One of the book's most significant contributions is to break down the boundaries between the study of art history, religious history, and gender history. -- Yan Liang * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsList of FiguresIntroduction: Gendered Materialization of Guanyin1. Dancing Guanyin: The Transformative Body and Buddhist Courtesans2. Painting Guanyin with Brush and Ink: Negotiating Confucianism and Buddhism3. Embroidering Guanyin with Hair: Efficacious Pain and Skill4. Mimicking Guanyin with Hairpins: Jewelry as a Means of TranscendenceConclusion: From Home to Temple and Court: Restaging Women’s Devotional ObjectsNotesBibliographyIndex
£29.75
Columbia University Press Stating the Sacred Religion China and the
Book SynopsisStating the Sacred offers a novel approach to nation-state formation, arguing that its most critical element is how the state sacralizes the nation. Focusing primarily on China, Michael J. Walsh argues that the foundational role of the sacred makes all nation-states religious states.Trade ReviewAs an anatomy of sacralization, territorialization, and violence, Stating the Sacred illuminates state formation in China through brilliant exposition, dwelling in vivid details, historical depths, and current controversies, but also through uncovering brutal truths of state formation in the modern world. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of how the sacred works in the modern and how the modern works the sacred. -- David Chidester, author of Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative ReligionIn Stating the Sacred, Michael J. Walsh parses what China's postcoloniality and South African apartheid have in common: the sacredness of violence. Drawing upon a wealth of theoretical insight from Schmidt on political theology, Bataille on sacrifice, to Agamban on profanation, and Barthes on myth, Walsh is especially insightful on how the Chinese avowedly atheist party-state adroitly rules through its stringent and energetic containment of religion, channeling those energies into policies on territorial sovereignty and citizenship itself. These tactics range beyond patriotic Christian organizations and registering all the clergy everywhere, to policing reincarnation among the Tibetan Buddhist and reeducation of Uyghur Muslims in camps. For Walsh, this sense of 'religion,' shared by China with many other places, becomes the modern repository of violence and mythos that he finds fundamental to any nation-state formation. -- Angela Zito, coeditor of DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent FilmRecommended. * Choice *[A] brilliant analysis of contemporary China. * Reading Religion *This is an innovative study that gives particular consideration to the role of the sacred in the formation of the PRC state, and to nation-states more generally. * Journal of Church and the State *Table of ContentsPreface1. Territory2. Constitution3. Religion4. Reincarnation5. Contact6. NativityGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex
£22.50
Columbia University Press Archives of Conjure Stories of the Dead in
Book SynopsisSolimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race.Trade ReviewArchives of Conjure makes important contributions to the study of religion in the Caribbean and Latin America by challenging scholarly understandings of the archive, centering the connection between Afrolatinx communities and non-human agents, as well as the attention it pays to the nuances of religious belief and practice for women and LGBTQ+ spiritual practitioners. -- Sierra L. Lawson * Reading Religion *Solimar Otero's timely work unites an array of Afrolatinx religious perspectives with fresh ethnographic and folkloristic interventions. Archives of Conjure confidently and sensitively furthers our understanding of enmeshed interactions of spirits, deities, and persons - and reconceptualizes the types of work that help unite rather than separate the realms of the living and the dead. -- Mastin Tsang * Journal of Folklore Research Reviews *The value of this book is in pointing out what lies at the margins, out of the official transcripts, … what is only alluded to, what is not classifiable, what is only gleaned or available through gossip, or dreams…what sits outside the norm of scholarship with its claims to knowledge. * New West Indian Guide *Archives of Conjure is a poetic, fluid, and compelling book. By producing an 'archive of conjure' pieced together through interwoven elements of ethnography, literature, archival notations, bolero music, poetry, and other Afrolatinx inspirations, Solimar Otero provides humanities scholarship with a new, transdisciplinary technique and approach. This is a powerful intervention and must read! -- Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, author of Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational ReligionGoing beyond academic analysis and theorizing, Archives of Conjure highlights the power of ethnography that is an act of resistance and empowerment as well as sustenance for the researcher and the community. Otero’s own life experiences along with the experiences of those she works with—both in the spirit world and in the physical world—become part of the archival research that elucidates the role of vernacular religion in contemporary world. This book is a gift of magic. -- Norma E. Cantú, coeditor of meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity ConstructionIn Archives of Conjure, Solimar Otero calls forth a profound new vista on how the dead make life matter. Led by her teachers among the living and the dead in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, Otero vitalizes history and quotidian materials to bring us closer to the scintillating poetry of African-inspired creativity in the Black Atlantic. At once a work of ingenious scholarship and skillful piece of writing, Archives of Conjure is an invitation to worlds where what is most important—kin, dreams, memories and views into the future—is made and unmade by the surging potentials of the dead. -- Todd Ramón Ochoa, author of A Party for Lazarus: Six Generations of Ancestral Devotion in a Cuban TownArchives of Conjure is at times a hypnotic séance conjuring such ancestors as Reinaldo Arenas, Lydia Cabrera, Edouard Glissant, Ruth Landes, and Fernando Ortiz and at times a siren call to attune our scholarship to the feminist, queer, subaltern spiritual 'work' of performance and its archival traces, hidden in plain sight. Through the generative metaphors produced by narratives of 'the two waters,' personified in the orichas Yemayá and Ochún, Otero explores critical engagements between circum-Caribbean scholarship and religious practice. I recommend Otero’s brilliant book as required reading for folklorists, anthropologists, literary scholars, and all who would better understand 'redoubled' global-Caribbean histories that manifest in and through vernacular Afrolatinx spiritual perspectives. -- Kristina Wirtz, author of Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and HistoryThis book is particularly useful as a model of a collaborative approach to ethnographic research.. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Archives of Conjure1. Residual Transcriptions2. Crossings3. Flows4. SirensConclusion: Espuma del Mar, Sea- FoamNotesReferencesIndex
£22.50
Columbia University Press A Buddhist Sensibility
Book SynopsisFounded in 1676, Mindröling monastery became a key site for Buddhist education and a Tibetan civilizational center. Dominique Townsend investigates the ritual, artistic, and cultural practices inculcated at Mindröling to demonstrate how early modern Tibetans integrated Buddhist and worldly activities through training in aesthetics.Trade ReviewThis book focuses upon a remarkable monastic institution in the early modern period and shows how it shaped the cosmopolitanism of the Tibetan capital and its aristocracy. Townsend provides fascinating case studies of letter-writing, monastic curricula, and belles-lettres, developing a special understanding of literature and aesthetics as ethically significant and religiously coded. The book serves to adjust our understanding of just what the category of “Buddhism,” or even “Buddhist institution”—or even “monastery”—could and should denote, and troubles forever more any strict boundary between religion and secular life in Tibetan Buddhist society. -- Janet Gyatso, author of Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern TibetTownsend has achieved something rare, drawing on a wide array of genres and weaving them into a remarkably rich whole. Her translations are beautifully done, and her analyses demonstrate her expertise as a close reader, as she patiently dwells on key elements to bring her sources to life. The result is sure to inspire others in her field to take more seriously the role of aesthetics in Tibetan writing. -- Jacob P. Dalton, Khyentse Foundation Distinguished University Professor in Tibetan Buddhism, University of California, BerkeleyA Buddhist Sensibility is a work of great and persuasive originality. Mindröling was not only a religious institution. It also offered what may be called a humanistic education, next to a religious one, and was remarkable for the place women occupied. Townsend has written a book that is at once scholarly and hugely readable. Her writing testifies to her fine control over the Tibetan sources she has used. This is an outstanding contribution not only to the field of Tibetan studies in general but also to anyone interested in the sociology of monastic life. -- Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp, Harvard UniversityWhat are the boundaries of the religious and the secular? And how does the realm of aesthetics become folded into the political? In this elegant study of Mindröling monastery, Townsend dislodges our immanent frame through a combination of historical rigor and literary acuity, providing a new model to understanding the pervasive place of institutions in the Tibetan Buddhist world. -- Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947This brilliantly innovative exploration of Buddhist aesthetics at Mindröling monastery, one of the foremost centers of Tibetan intellectual and artistic production, is also the history of an extraordinary family and the remarkable institution they developed during a pivotal time in Tibetan history. Townsend’s elegant work transforms our perspective on the relationship between materiality, renunciation, and social and political power. -- Annabella Pitkin, Lehigh UniversityA Buddhist Sensibility breaks new ground in considering a prominent Tibetan monastery not only for its philosophical and contemplative expertise, or even its political significance, but also for its aesthetics and cosmopolitanism. Townsend’s exploration of how these elements connected “court and cave,” or in other words Buddhist and worldly authority (lugs gnyis), is both artful and compelling. -- Sarah H. Jacoby, author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera KhandroTownsend’s focus on aesthetics illuminates intimate connections between the aristocratic circles surrounding the Dalai Lama’s court and the visionary, ritual, and curricular innovations of Mindröling Monastery, transforming our understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and society far beyond Tibet. -- Benjamin Bogin, author of The Illuminated Life of the Great YolmowaDominique Townsend’s masterful study presents, for the first time, an authoritative and sustained consideration of Buddhist aesthetics in early modern Tibet. A Buddhist Sensibility reveals how aesthetic concerns influenced new approaches to religious education, prompted new forms of cultural production, and supported the rise of new Buddhist institutions and their charismatic leaders. It likewise documents Mindröling Monastery’s position as an exemplar of Buddhist excellence in the fields of philosophy, literature, art, ritual, and the highest aspirations of Tibetan literati culture. -- Andrew Quintman, Wesleyan UniversityDominique Townsend brings to her translations not only a careful reading of Classical Tibetan but also the insight and talents of a poet. She rightly situates Mindroling as the preeminent academy for scores of religious teachers and aristocratic officials, including the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, in seventeenth-century Tibet. -- Pema Bhum, Director of The Latse ProjectFor anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhism, the institutional history of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, women’s role in Tibetan history, or Tibetan history at the turn of the eighteenth century, A Buddhist Sensibility is a must-read. * H-Buddhism *A Buddhist Sensibility contributes significantly to our understanding of a consequential monastic institution and its role in Tibetan history...[and] should be of interest to scholars of Tibetan, Himalayan, Central Asian, and Buddhist studies for its fine study of a monastic institution and its integration with lay society, as well as for its stimulating forays into aesthetics, poetics, and educational models. -- Nancy G. Lin, Institute of Buddhist Studies * Journal of Buddhist Ethics *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsA Note on Translations and TransliterationsIntroduction: Buddhist Aesthetics, the Cultivation of the Senses, and Beauty’s Efficacy1. Historical Background: Laying the Foundation for Mindröling2. A Pleasure Grove for the Buddhist Senses: Mindröling Takes Root3. Plucking the Strings: On Style, Letter Writing, and Relationships4. Training the Senses: Aesthetic Education for Monastics5. Taming the Aristocrats: Cultivating Early Modern Tibetan Literati and BureaucratsEpilogue: Destruction and Revival: The Next GenerationAbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex
£80.00
Columbia University Press Lineages of the Literary
Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes. Nicole Willock reveals how they negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era.Trade ReviewAn illuminating study of the lives and writings of three highly influential Buddhist figures in modern Tibet: Tseten Zhabdrung, Muge Samten, and Dungkar Lozang Trinle. In Lineages of the Literary, Nicole Willock masterfully demonstrates how their embodiment of the Geluk scholarly ideal allowed these polymaths to play a prominent role in Sino-Tibetan relations and create a pivotal generational transmission of Tibetan history, language, and culture in secular terms within China’s minzu (ethnic minority) universities. -- Holly Gayley, author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern TibetThis book details the careers of three outstanding Tibetan figures during the Cultural Revolution who creatively drew on Buddhist and other traditional resources as forces for good in a troubled society. It also aims to illustrate how such appropriation can be effective in the modern context more generally. Insightful and capacious, the book studies how friendship in particular can serve the negotiation of conflicting pressures. An excellent analysis of Tibetan culture and religion during most challenging times. -- Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard Divinity SchoolIt is often assumed that when the Dalai Lama fled from Tibet to India in 1959, Tibetan Buddhism followed him into exile. In Lineages of the Literary, a work that is at once highly original and deeply inspiring, Nicole Willock demonstrates that this was emphatically not the case. -- Donald Lopez, Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of MichiganLineages of the Literary is one of the most important contributions to the history of Sino-Tibetan relations in the second half of the twentieth century to date. Nicole Willock’s exploration of the lives and writings of Tséten Zhabdrung, Mugé Samten, and Dungkar Rinpoché provides a missing link in our understanding of a contested and polarized era of modern Sino-Tibetan history. -- Gray Tuttle, coeditor of The Tibetan History ReaderTable of ContentsNotes on Transcription, Transliteration, and Naming PracticesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Three Polymaths: Past and Present2. “Telling What Happened”: Buddhist Recollections of the 1950s3. Mellifluous Words on the Human Condition: The Maoist Years4. Dungkar Rinpoché on the Contested Ground of Tibetan History5. Diverging LineagesNotesBibliographyIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press Lineages of the Literary
Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes. Nicole Willock reveals how they negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era.Trade ReviewAn illuminating study of the lives and writings of three highly influential Buddhist figures in modern Tibet: Tseten Zhabdrung, Muge Samten, and Dungkar Lozang Trinle. In Lineages of the Literary, Nicole Willock masterfully demonstrates how their embodiment of the Geluk scholarly ideal allowed these polymaths to play a prominent role in Sino-Tibetan relations and create a pivotal generational transmission of Tibetan history, language, and culture in secular terms within China’s minzu (ethnic minority) universities. -- Holly Gayley, author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern TibetThis book details the careers of three outstanding Tibetan figures during the Cultural Revolution who creatively drew on Buddhist and other traditional resources as forces for good in a troubled society. It also aims to illustrate how such appropriation can be effective in the modern context more generally. Insightful and capacious, the book studies how friendship in particular can serve the negotiation of conflicting pressures. An excellent analysis of Tibetan culture and religion during most challenging times. -- Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard Divinity SchoolIt is often assumed that when the Dalai Lama fled from Tibet to India in 1959, Tibetan Buddhism followed him into exile. In Lineages of the Literary, a work that is at once highly original and deeply inspiring, Nicole Willock demonstrates that this was emphatically not the case. -- Donald Lopez, Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of MichiganLineages of the Literary is one of the most important contributions to the history of Sino-Tibetan relations in the second half of the twentieth century to date. Nicole Willock’s exploration of the lives and writings of Tséten Zhabdrung, Mugé Samten, and Dungkar Rinpoché provides a missing link in our understanding of a contested and polarized era of modern Sino-Tibetan history. -- Gray Tuttle, coeditor of The Tibetan History ReaderTable of ContentsNotes on Transcription, Transliteration, and Naming PracticesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Three Polymaths: Past and Present2. “Telling What Happened”: Buddhist Recollections of the 1950s3. Mellifluous Words on the Human Condition: The Maoist Years4. Dungkar Rinpoché on the Contested Ground of Tibetan History5. Diverging LineagesNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press The Space of Religion
Book SynopsisBased on three decades of ethnographic research, The Space of Religion takes readers inside the Nanputuo Temple in order to explore the practice of Buddhism in modern China and the complex relationship between Buddhism and the Chinese state.Trade ReviewBased on extraordinarily rich ethnography, deep historical research, and a subtle theoretical framework, The Space of Religion shows how one of China’s most important temples reemerged, changed, and caused transformations of its political and cultural contexts over the past several decades. It makes a major advance toward understanding the surprising and consequential rise of a dynamic space for religion in China. -- Richard Madsen, coeditor of The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and BelowThe Space of Religion provides a detailed description through extended fieldwork of the functioning of an important Buddhist monastery in China and how the temple 'space' became recomposed on three levels—physical, institutional, and semiotic—after the Cultural Revolution. In doing so, Ashiwa and Wank produce an analysis of the transformation of state policies and related public perception of religion in China. -- Ji Zhe, coeditor of Making Saints in Modern ChinaThe Space of Religion is far more than just a very valuable account of institutional change in a Buddhist context. It also outlines a fresh and important critical analysis, grounded in historical detail and exemplary ethnography, of how the concepts ‘religion,’ ‘superstition,’ and ‘culture’ emerged and were enacted (and contested) between the state, clerics, and the people over the last hundred years of Chinese history. -- David N. Gellner, coauthor of Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century NepalAshiwa and Wank have written a superb account, both historical and ethnographic, of Nanputuo, one of the most important Buddhist temples in southern China. Based on decades of intensive study, this immensely readable book offers insights into the developments that have shaped the political environment in which the temple's clerics operate. It also gives a theoretically astute interpretation of the semiotics of space in the temple that allows the reader to get a feeling for the ways in which the teachings of the Buddha take material and ritual shape in the temple's space. For anyone interested in Buddhism or contemporary Chinese society this book is invaluable and a must-read. -- Peter van der Veer, author of The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and IndiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsConventionsGlossary of Temple Names in Xiamen CityIntroductionPart I: Concept, Spaces, History1. Themes and Concepts of the Study2. Physical and Semiotic Spaces of Nanputuo Temple3. Institutional Space and Nanputuo Temple’s Historical CapitalPart II: Recovery and Development of Nanputuo Temple4. Revival of Buddhist Practice and Education, 1982–19895. Expansion and Conflict in the Space of Religion, 1989–19956. Aligning with the Central State, 1996–2004Part III: Nanputuo Temple and Local Buddhist Communities7. Dynamism of Local Temples8. Devotees and Lay Nuns9. The Guanyin Festival: Being Buddhist the Chinese WayConclusionAppendix 1: Leaders of Nanputuo Temple, 1684–Appendix 2: Nanputuo Temple, a Millennium of Construction and RenewalAppendix 3: Buddhist College of Minnan Curriculum, 1989Appendix 4: Ordination Ceremony Schedule, October 13–29, 1989, Guanghua TempleNotesReferencesIndex
£105.30
Columbia University Press The Sound of Salvation Voice Gender and the Sufi
Book SynopsisThe Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order in northwest China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation.Trade ReviewA stunning piece of work. The study of Islam in China has been crying out for works that do justice to the specificities of local traditions while maintaining a productive conversation with the wider field of Islamic studies. This book bridges that divide in a way that few pieces of scholarship have been able to up until now. It is an immensely valuable ethnography in its own right, but also one that is theoretically provocative and that offers scholars outside the immediate field of Islam in China a vantage point from which to rethink their views of Sufi practices and related forms of ritual. -- David Brophy, author of Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China FrontierThis beautifully written book takes us into the unknown sonic world of China’s contemporary Sufi Muslims. Guangtian Ha's deep understanding of these people and their very possibly doomed tradition comes over on every page. This is a marvelous ethnography, rendered with subtlety, sophistication, and panache. -- Caroline Humphrey, coauthor of A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian BuddhismThis is a substantial, unpretentious, and compelling ethnographic study focused on Jahriyya liturgical recitation in northwest China. Marked by expository clarity and absence of jargon, it is a wide-ranging and thoughtful, even wise, book that evidences the author’s impressive linguistic, historical, ethnographic, and theoretical sophistication. Whether exploring technical issues of multilanguage terminology, gender discrimination, or musicality and textual content of recitation, Ha always keeps larger questions about methodology and historical context, as well as the Jahriyya tradition (and its severely threatened survival), admirably in focus. -- William A. Graham, author of Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of ReligionSensitive and illuminating work. * Inner Asia *Offers new perspectives on the importance of sound to religious practice, the role of gender in Chinese Islam, and the links connecting Chinese Muslims to the broader Islamic world. * Reading Religion *This volume undeniably offers a rare and fascinating insight into Sufism in China. * Religious Studies Review *A nuanced, sophisticated and provocative work that is a welcome contribution to the field of Chinese Islamic Studies. * Journal of Religious History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Archaeology of Sound2. The Sacred Circle3. Tempo of Time4. His Master’s Voice5. Labor of FaithEpilogue: Ethnography and the Future of the Jahriyya SoundNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press The Renewal of Buddhism in China
Book SynopsisFirst published in 1981, Chün-fang Yü’s The Renewal of Buddhism in China challenged the conventional view that Buddhism had reached its height under the Tang dynasty (618–907) and steadily declined afterward. This fortieth anniversary edition features an updated introduction by the author speaking to the ongoing relevance of this classic work.Trade ReviewThe Renewal of Buddhism in China changed my understanding of Chinese Buddhism when it was first published forty years ago. It revealed, as it still does, that Buddhism is not just an idea but a social movement that has been shaped by real people working in the real world. A classic that is still a classic. -- Timothy Brook, author of Great State: China and the WorldIn demonstrating how domesticity assumed central place in the theology and practice of monk Zhuhong's syncretic Buddhism, Chün-fang Yü has shifted the ground of historical analysis once and for all. Although the word "gender" did not appear in these pages because it had yet to appear in common language, this germinal book is a classic in the history of women and gender of China. -- Dorothy Ko, author of Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century ChinaWithout a doubt, this new edition of The Renewal of Buddhism in China is much needed. In 1981, the original book set a new standard in the field, and there still remains no single monograph on the figure of Zhuhong aside from this one. Chün-fang Yü’s work is still groundbreaking after forty years. -- Stephen F. Teiser, coeditor of Readings of the Platform SūtraForty years after its publication, Chün-fang Yü’s book on Chinese monk Zhuhong, presented here with a new introduction, has stood the test of time and become a classic in the field. Its lucid style, balanced coverage, and reasoned analysis not only serve a broad audience but also provide a model for studying any religious figure whose life and thought are as complicated and profound as Zhuhong’s. -- Jiang Wu, coeditor of Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist CanonThe Renewal of Buddhism in China remains a crucial touchstone for all scholarship on post-Tang Buddhism. * Reading Religion *This volume is as relevant today as it was in 1981. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsForeword by Daniel B. StevensonPreface to the Fortieth Anniversary EditionPreface to the Original EditionOn the Illustrations1. Introduction2. Zhuhong’s Life and Major Works3. Zhuhong and the Joint Practice of Pure Land and Chan4. Zhuhong and the Late Ming Lay Buddhist Movement5. Syncretism in Action: Morality Books and The Record of Self-knowledge6. The Condition of the Monastic Order in the Late Ming7. Internal Causes of Monastic Decline in the Ming Dynasty8. Zhuhong’s Monastic Reform: The Yunqi Monastery9. ConclusionAppendix 1. A Translation of The Record of Self-knowledgeAppendix 2. Personnel at Yunqi and Their DutiesAppendix 3. Regulations Regarding Good Deeds and Punishments at YunqiNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
£76.00
Columbia University Press Confucianism and Sacred Space
Book SynopsisThis book brings together studies from Chin-shing Huang’s decades-long research into Confucius temples that individually and collectively consider Confucianism as religion. It offers keen insights into Confucius temples and their significance in the intertwined intellectual, political, social, and religious histories of imperial China.Trade ReviewChin-shin Huang’s book is a masterpiece of careful and diligent scholarship. -- John Butler * Asian Review of Books *This is a valuable translation of Chin-shing Huang's decades-long and learned study of Confucianism as a comprehensive historical tradition. Among his many insights, a most significant one is that, notwithstanding later denials, Confucianism cannot be understood unless seen in its religious dimension—albeit an elite and statist one. -- Prasenjit Duara, author of The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable FutureCutting through centuries of misguided theological and political debate, one of the world’s most eminent historians of China charts the changing cultural, political, and institutional forces at work in Confucianism as a vibrant ritual system. -- Stephen F. Teiser, coeditor of Readings of the Platform SūtraChin-shing Huang is one of the most distinguished and discerning scholars in Confucian studies today. His extensive account of Confucian temples as a ritual system in imperial and modern China is a magnificent contribution to the field. Its vast temporal range and its keen analysis of specific historical episodes illuminate the crucial elements that make Confucian temples essential to Chinese religious, cultural, and political life. -- Anna Sun, author of Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary RealitiesConfucianism and Sacred Space brings to light the legacy of Chin-shing Huang, a leading scholar of Confucianism and Confucian temples, whose work has not received the attention it deserves in Western scholarship. -- James Flath, author of Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of ConfuciusHuang knows the history and culture of Confucius temples best and makes a case for regarding Confucianism as a religion, instead of just a philosophy. Underscoring that Confucianism was a state religion for ruling male elites, he counters a rising trend to portray it as a popular religion among the masses. -- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, coauthor of Cultural Authority and Political Culture in China: Exploring Issues with the Zhongyong and the Daotong During the Song, Jin, and Yuan DynastiesThe book is an informative and authoritative account of how Confucian temples served as the main carriers of Confucian religion in imperial China. I’d also recommend Huang’s book as the authoritative source on how and why Confucianism declined as a religion in the late Qing and early Republic -- Daniel A. Bell * China Review *Exploring issues from the Han times up until the present, Huang demonstrates great depth of scholarship in these histories of the Confucian temple . . . This collection contains a wealth of thoroughly documented research that is not otherwise available in English-language scholarship. It presents multiple points of conversation for exploring the many things that are signified by the term ‘Confucian.’ -- Deborah Sommer * China Review International *This volume makes [Huang’s arguments] accessible to students and interested laymen through fluent, even conversational translations. -- Julia K. Murray * Monumenta Serica *Heartily recommended to scholars and all those interested in Chinese Confucianism, religion, and history. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction. The Confucius Temple as a Ritual System: Manifestations of Power, Belief, and Legitimacy in Traditional China1. Expanding the Symbolic Meaning and Function of the Rites: The Evolution of Confucius Temples in Imperial China2. Confucianism as a Religion: A Comparative Study of Traditional Chinese Religions3. Sages and Saints: A Comparative Study of Canonization in Confucianism and Christianity4. The Cultural Politics of Autocracy: The Confucius Temple and Ming Despotism, 1368–15305. Xunzi: The Confucius Temple’s Absentee6. The Disenchantment with Confucianism in Modern China7. The Lonely Confucius Temples Across the Taiwan Straits: The Difficult Transformation of Modern China’s Traditional CultureConclusion: Reflections on My Study of Confucianism as a ReligionNotesBibliographyIndex
£90.00
Columbia University Press Confucianism and Sacred Space
Book SynopsisThis book brings together studies from Chin-shing Huang’s decades-long research into Confucius temples that individually and collectively consider Confucianism as religion. It offers keen insights into Confucius temples and their significance in the intertwined intellectual, political, social, and religious histories of imperial China.Trade ReviewChin-shin Huang’s book is a masterpiece of careful and diligent scholarship. -- John Butler * Asian Review of Books *This is a valuable translation of Chin-shing Huang's decades-long and learned study of Confucianism as a comprehensive historical tradition. Among his many insights, a most significant one is that, notwithstanding later denials, Confucianism cannot be understood unless seen in its religious dimension—albeit an elite and statist one. -- Prasenjit Duara, author of The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable FutureCutting through centuries of misguided theological and political debate, one of the world’s most eminent historians of China charts the changing cultural, political, and institutional forces at work in Confucianism as a vibrant ritual system. -- Stephen F. Teiser, coeditor of Readings of the Platform SūtraChin-shing Huang is one of the most distinguished and discerning scholars in Confucian studies today. His extensive account of Confucian temples as a ritual system in imperial and modern China is a magnificent contribution to the field. Its vast temporal range and its keen analysis of specific historical episodes illuminate the crucial elements that make Confucian temples essential to Chinese religious, cultural, and political life. -- Anna Sun, author of Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary RealitiesConfucianism and Sacred Space brings to light the legacy of Chin-shing Huang, a leading scholar of Confucianism and Confucian temples, whose work has not received the attention it deserves in Western scholarship. -- James Flath, author of Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of ConfuciusHuang knows the history and culture of Confucius temples best and makes a case for regarding Confucianism as a religion, instead of just a philosophy. Underscoring that Confucianism was a state religion for ruling male elites, he counters a rising trend to portray it as a popular religion among the masses. -- Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, coauthor of Cultural Authority and Political Culture in China: Exploring Issues with the Zhongyong and the Daotong During the Song, Jin, and Yuan DynastiesThe book is an informative and authoritative account of how Confucian temples served as the main carriers of Confucian religion in imperial China. I’d also recommend Huang’s book as the authoritative source on how and why Confucianism declined as a religion in the late Qing and early Republic -- Daniel A. Bell * China Review *Exploring issues from the Han times up until the present, Huang demonstrates great depth of scholarship in these histories of the Confucian temple . . . This collection contains a wealth of thoroughly documented research that is not otherwise available in English-language scholarship. It presents multiple points of conversation for exploring the many things that are signified by the term ‘Confucian.’ -- Deborah Sommer * China Review International *This volume makes [Huang’s arguments] accessible to students and interested laymen through fluent, even conversational translations. -- Julia K. Murray * Monumenta Serica *Heartily recommended to scholars and all those interested in Chinese Confucianism, religion, and history. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction. The Confucius Temple as a Ritual System: Manifestations of Power, Belief, and Legitimacy in Traditional China1. Expanding the Symbolic Meaning and Function of the Rites: The Evolution of Confucius Temples in Imperial China2. Confucianism as a Religion: A Comparative Study of Traditional Chinese Religions3. Sages and Saints: A Comparative Study of Canonization in Confucianism and Christianity4. The Cultural Politics of Autocracy: The Confucius Temple and Ming Despotism, 1368–15305. Xunzi: The Confucius Temple’s Absentee6. The Disenchantment with Confucianism in Modern China7. The Lonely Confucius Temples Across the Taiwan Straits: The Difficult Transformation of Modern China’s Traditional CultureConclusion: Reflections on My Study of Confucianism as a ReligionNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press At Home and Abroad The Politics of American
Book SynopsisAt Home and Abroad bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse authors to explore ties across conceptual and political boundaries. They examine the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies.Trade ReviewThis profound and inspiring volume turns American religion inside out, revealing the often surprising transnational and imperial connections that make it up. By setting all the categories dancing—religion and not-religion, domestic and foreign, theology and law—it illuminates how religious and national identities are mutually constituted. An exciting contribution to reflections on secular modernity. -- Cassie Adcock, author of The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of Religious FreedomIn fascinating case studies on topics as wide-ranging as yoga and Muhammad Ali, homemaking in Palestine and civic religion in Japan, At Home and Abroad brings its subject compellingly into view: an inside/outside dynamic in the workings of American religion as an object of export and a vaunted model to the world. The volume explores a tension between religious practice in the United States and the varieties of religion the United States imposes, encourages, or recognizes abroad. The tension inheres in the notion that religion is uniquely perfected at home and has yet to be perfected abroad, an ameliorative project to which the United States is central and from which it is at the same time exempt. In this way, religion operates as an engine of American exceptionalism at home and abroad even when it is in either context 'hard to see.' This stellar collection makes plain that American history is global history and that the operative borderlessness of American religion, whether manifested as freedom, empire, violence, charity, coercion, missions, or claims to self-evident truth, is a driver of both. -- Tracy Fessenden, author of Religion Around Billie HolidayEngaging with history, biography, and theory, the essays in this collection open new horizons for the study of American religion. Together, they demonstrate that the categories of 'at home' and 'abroad' are enormously generative—both through the distinction and through its failures. Taking us from Puerto Rico to South Africa, from Hawaii to the Philippines, these thoughtful essays are each fascinating in themselves; collectively, they show how the asymmetries between religion 'at home' and 'abroad' illuminate the working of power that always accompanies religious talk and practice. -- Vincent W. Lloyd, author of In Defense of CharismaAt Home and Abroad is a stimulating collection of essays that makes a major contribution in advancing understanding of how foreign and domestic policies have operated together with respect to religion. Certain to be well received. -- Amanda Porterfield, author of Corporate Spirit: Religion and the Rise of the Modern CorporationEach of the essays breaks new ground...This book is a welcome contribution for scholars of race, religion, political science, and history. * Nova Religio *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Religion, Law, and Politics, American Style, by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers SullivanPart I: Making Religion American1. A Home, Made Abroad: American Religion from Colonies Through the Civil War, by Evan Haefeli2. “A Perfect, Irrevocable Gift”: Recognizing the Proprietary Church in Puerto Rico 1898–1908, by David Maldonado Rivera3. Home Rule: Equitable Justice in Progressive Chicago and the Philippines, by Nancy Buenger4. America Is Hard to See, by Courtney BenderPart II: Making Ourselves5. Homemaking in Palestine: Jessie Sampter, Religion, and Relation, by Sarah Imhoff6. On the Abroad of a Different Home: Muhammad Ali in Micro-Scope, by M. Cooper Harriss7. Domestic Bones, Foreign Land, and the Kingdom Come: Jurisdictions of Religion in Contemporary Hawaii, by Greg Johnson8. “Legacy,” by Matthew SchererPart III: Inside/Outside9. The Rule of Law, by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan10. Double Standards in a Tripartite World, by Jolyon Baraka Thomas11. The Cultural Politics of Yoga in India and the United States, by Sunila S. Kale and Christian Lee Novetzke12. Border Religion, by Elizabeth Shakman HurdPart IV: Abroad13. Established Authorities: Theology, the State, and the Apartheid Struggle, by Melani McAlister14. In Search of Normcore? Religion at Home and Abroad in Norway, by Helge Årsheim15. When Home Becomes Abroad, and Abroad Becomes Home: Thinking American Empire Through a New Sudan, by Noah SalomonAfterword: Double Vision, Double Cross: American Exceptionalism, Borders, and the Study of Religion, by Pamela E. KlassenBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press At Home and Abroad The Politics of American
Book SynopsisAt Home and Abroad bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse authors to explore ties across conceptual and political boundaries. They examine the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies.Trade ReviewThis profound and inspiring volume turns American religion inside out, revealing the often surprising transnational and imperial connections that make it up. By setting all the categories dancing—religion and not-religion, domestic and foreign, theology and law—it illuminates how religious and national identities are mutually constituted. An exciting contribution to reflections on secular modernity. -- Cassie Adcock, author of The Limits of Tolerance: Indian Secularism and the Politics of Religious FreedomIn fascinating case studies on topics as wide-ranging as yoga and Muhammad Ali, homemaking in Palestine and civic religion in Japan, At Home and Abroad brings its subject compellingly into view: an inside/outside dynamic in the workings of American religion as an object of export and a vaunted model to the world. The volume explores a tension between religious practice in the United States and the varieties of religion the United States imposes, encourages, or recognizes abroad. The tension inheres in the notion that religion is uniquely perfected at home and has yet to be perfected abroad, an ameliorative project to which the United States is central and from which it is at the same time exempt. In this way, religion operates as an engine of American exceptionalism at home and abroad even when it is in either context 'hard to see.' This stellar collection makes plain that American history is global history and that the operative borderlessness of American religion, whether manifested as freedom, empire, violence, charity, coercion, missions, or claims to self-evident truth, is a driver of both. -- Tracy Fessenden, author of Religion Around Billie HolidayEngaging with history, biography, and theory, the essays in this collection open new horizons for the study of American religion. Together, they demonstrate that the categories of 'at home' and 'abroad' are enormously generative—both through the distinction and through its failures. Taking us from Puerto Rico to South Africa, from Hawaii to the Philippines, these thoughtful essays are each fascinating in themselves; collectively, they show how the asymmetries between religion 'at home' and 'abroad' illuminate the working of power that always accompanies religious talk and practice. -- Vincent W. Lloyd, author of In Defense of CharismaAt Home and Abroad is a stimulating collection of essays that makes a major contribution in advancing understanding of how foreign and domestic policies have operated together with respect to religion. Certain to be well received. -- Amanda Porterfield, author of Corporate Spirit: Religion and the Rise of the Modern CorporationEach of the essays breaks new ground...This book is a welcome contribution for scholars of race, religion, political science, and history. * Nova Religio *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Religion, Law, and Politics, American Style, by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers SullivanPart I: Making Religion American1. A Home, Made Abroad: American Religion from Colonies Through the Civil War, by Evan Haefeli2. “A Perfect, Irrevocable Gift”: Recognizing the Proprietary Church in Puerto Rico 1898–1908, by David Maldonado Rivera3. Home Rule: Equitable Justice in Progressive Chicago and the Philippines, by Nancy Buenger4. America Is Hard to See, by Courtney BenderPart II: Making Ourselves5. Homemaking in Palestine: Jessie Sampter, Religion, and Relation, by Sarah Imhoff6. On the Abroad of a Different Home: Muhammad Ali in Micro-Scope, by M. Cooper Harriss7. Domestic Bones, Foreign Land, and the Kingdom Come: Jurisdictions of Religion in Contemporary Hawaii, by Greg Johnson8. “Legacy,” by Matthew SchererPart III: Inside/Outside9. The Rule of Law, by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan10. Double Standards in a Tripartite World, by Jolyon Baraka Thomas11. The Cultural Politics of Yoga in India and the United States, by Sunila S. Kale and Christian Lee Novetzke12. Border Religion, by Elizabeth Shakman HurdPart IV: Abroad13. Established Authorities: Theology, the State, and the Apartheid Struggle, by Melani McAlister14. In Search of Normcore? Religion at Home and Abroad in Norway, by Helge Årsheim15. When Home Becomes Abroad, and Abroad Becomes Home: Thinking American Empire Through a New Sudan, by Noah SalomonAfterword: Double Vision, Double Cross: American Exceptionalism, Borders, and the Study of Religion, by Pamela E. KlassenBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press The Arab and Jewish Questions
Book SynopsisThis book brings together leading scholars to consider how the “Jewish Question” and the “Arab Question” are entangled historically and in the present day. It offers critical analyses of Arab engagements with the question of Jewish rights alongside Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish considerations of Palestinian identity and political rights.Trade ReviewThese thoughtful essays help us to understand how the destruction of ways of life (and of life itself) by pan-Arabism and Zionism—each claiming to assist the rebirth of a victimized people—and how the self-definition of a “new Europe” after the Holocaust, by repressing the memory of its murderous colonial history, has helped to shape our menacing present. The Arab and Jewish Questions is essential reading for all who wish to think productively about a human future beyond the nation-state, the modern collectivity whose ability to generate hatred toward “enemies” is not unique but whose power to bring about catastrophe is. -- Talal Asad, author of Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative ReasonDrawing on philosophy, politics, poetry, psychoanalysis, and history, and extending from North Africa and the Mediterranean to Europe and North America, this powerful book poses the Arab and Jewish questions as inextricable, intimate, and hybrid forces that shape our desires and our unimagined futures. -- Sherene Seikaly, author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate PalestineOriginal and thoughtfully articulated, this volume will become the first port of call to illuminate the relationship between the Jewish and Arab questions. A must-read for scholars of Palestine, Israel, Jewish and Palestinian studies, Zionism, and the modern European history of racism. -- Alon Confino, author of A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to GenocideBreaking through both disciplinary and political barriers, this bold volume takes the discussion of “Jews and Arabs” in new directions. Its unique group of contributors brings together history, politics, religion, and literature, challenging us to think differently about how and why Jews and Arabs have mattered for the West, for the Middle East, and most of all, for each other. An indispensable reference point for insights into the past and future of two intertwined issues, which jointly constitute one of the major questions of our times. -- Lital Levy, author of Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/PalestineThe invention of Arab and Jewish 'questions' in Europe and their importation to late Ottoman societies ruptured mutually constitutive relationships that defined a distinctive civilizational pattern of coexistence. In interrogating the national(ist) identities that lie at the broken heart of todays' political imaginaries, this timely book points to a future beyond their separatist terms. -- A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of TransgressionReaching beyond the siloed debates that often mark studies of Jews and Arabs in European and Middle Eastern contexts, this path-breaking volume opens unexpected conversations across several fields and geographic sites from the nineteenth century to contemporary Israel/Palestine. With a commitment to understanding the consolidation and unraveling of contingent identities and collective national projects—as well as the intimate connections between disparate struggles for self-determination—the contributors to The Arab and Jewish Questions guide us with new ways of thinking through the history and political evolution of Zionism, the Palestinian question, and Jewish-Arab relations. -- Seth Anziska, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to OsloSpecialists in Israel and Palestine studies in particular willfind rich material with which to grapple. * Arab Studies Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Three Questions That Make One, by Bashir Bashir and Leila FarsakhPart I. Interrogating Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Colonialism1. Jackals and Arabs: Once More on the German-Jewish Dialogue, by Gil Anidjar2. An Emblematic Embrace: New Europe, the Jewish State, and the Palestinian Question, by Brian Klug3. Palestine in Algeria: The Emergence of an Arab-Islamic Question in the Interwar Period, by Amal GhazalPart II. Beyond the Binary Division Between “Jews” and “Arabs”: Revisiting National Constructs4. On Orientalist Genealogies: The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited, by Ella Shohat5. Returning to the Question of Europe: From the Standpoint of the Defeated, by Hakem Al-Rustom6. Between Shared Homeland to National Home: The Balfour Declaration from a Native Sephardic Perspective, by Yuval Evri and Hillel Cohen7. Toward a Field of Israel/Palestine Studies, by Derek PenslarPart III. Stubborn Realities and Alternative Visions for Palestine/Israel8. Apocalypse/Emnity/Dialogue: Negotiating the Depths, by Jacqueline Rose9. Competing Marxisms, Cessation of (Settler) Colonialism, and the One-State Solution in Israel-Palestine, by Moshe Behar10. Dialectic of the National Identities in Palestinian Society and Israeli Society: Nationalism and Binationalism, by Maram MasarwiBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex
£83.60
Columbia University Press A Partial Enlightenment
Book SynopsisAvram Alpert combines personal experience and readings of modern novels to offer another way to understand modern Buddhism. He argues that it represents a rich resource not for attaining perfection but rather for finding meaning and purpose in a chaotic world.Trade ReviewBuddhist students and literature lovers will find much to ponder in Alpert’s close textual readings. * Publishers Weekly *The stories about the Buddha, with their promise of awakening and liberation, are among the richest and most inspiring tales ever told. By focusing on the creation and complexities of a new, twentieth-century Buddhism, and the novels it has produced, Avram Alpert's A Partial Enlightenment delivers a brilliant work of literary history less concerned with the mythology of absolute perfection than the embedded, political, and existential realities that make modern Buddhism—an authentic way to 'fail better'—relevant for our lives today. -- Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, winner of the National Book AwardA groundbreaking contribution to Buddhist literary studies, A Partial Enlightenment provides a new lens through which to examine the influence of modern Buddhist themes in twentieth-century world literature. In his role of scholar-seeker, or contemplative critic, Avi Alpert performs a complex, inclusive, and personal practice of literary exegesis, one that will enlighten academic and lay readers alike. -- Ruth Ozeki, New York Times best-selling author of A Tale for the Time Being: A NovelIn this stunningly sincere and groundbreaking work, Alpert takes the reader on a strange journey, often personal and always provocative, through a forest of literature to see how Buddhist thought and practice is embedded and intertwined with modern fiction. He shows the reader through novels as diverse as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, Severo Sarduy's Cobra, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility, among many others, that literature doesn't neatly present Buddhist truths, but complicates the very way Buddhism is received and taught. It is a story of disenchantment and tentative re-enchantment with Buddhist ideas and meditation practices with a healthy dose of Beckett's robust existential despair. It is a story of intellectual struggle and imperfect readings that enlightens, as well as forces the reader to simply lift her head, breathe deeply, and dive back in. No study of the modern encounter with Buddhism is complete without reading this truly refreshing and wonderful book. -- Justin Thomas McDaniel, author of The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern ThailandAvi Alpert's timely book makes a significant contribution to re-evaluating Buddhism's role in engaging with the struggles and complexities of the postcolonial world. The book is at once a personal chronicle of disenchantment and discovery and a literary history that charts global Buddhism and the aesthetics of human fragmentation and connectivity. Alpert's compelling readings of modern novels uncover a simple truth of Buddhist ethics at their core: we may be limited in our understanding of the universe, but we have the power to act kindly towards living beings. An ethics of social relationality emerges as the book's most profound insight, making its innovative readings indispensable for students and scholars of religion and literature. -- Gauri Viswanathan, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and BeliefTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Enlightenment2. Reincarnation3. Liberation4. AuthenticityCodaNotesBibliographyIndex
£90.00
Columbia University Press A Partial Enlightenment What Modern Literature
Book SynopsisAvram Alpert combines personal experience and readings of modern novels to offer another way to understand modern Buddhism. He argues that it represents a rich resource not for attaining perfection but rather for finding meaning and purpose in a chaotic world.Trade ReviewBuddhist students and literature lovers will find much to ponder in Alpert’s close textual readings. * Publishers Weekly *The stories about the Buddha, with their promise of awakening and liberation, are among the richest and most inspiring tales ever told. By focusing on the creation and complexities of a new, twentieth-century Buddhism, and the novels it has produced, Avram Alpert's A Partial Enlightenment delivers a brilliant work of literary history less concerned with the mythology of absolute perfection than the embedded, political, and existential realities that make modern Buddhism—an authentic way to 'fail better'—relevant for our lives today. -- Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, winner of the National Book AwardA groundbreaking contribution to Buddhist literary studies, A Partial Enlightenment provides a new lens through which to examine the influence of modern Buddhist themes in twentieth-century world literature. In his role of scholar-seeker, or contemplative critic, Avi Alpert performs a complex, inclusive, and personal practice of literary exegesis, one that will enlighten academic and lay readers alike. -- Ruth Ozeki, New York Times best-selling author of A Tale for the Time Being: A NovelIn this stunningly sincere and groundbreaking work, Alpert takes the reader on a strange journey, often personal and always provocative, through a forest of literature to see how Buddhist thought and practice is embedded and intertwined with modern fiction. He shows the reader through novels as diverse as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, Severo Sarduy's Cobra, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility, among many others, that literature doesn't neatly present Buddhist truths, but complicates the very way Buddhism is received and taught. It is a story of disenchantment and tentative re-enchantment with Buddhist ideas and meditation practices with a healthy dose of Beckett's robust existential despair. It is a story of intellectual struggle and imperfect readings that enlightens, as well as forces the reader to simply lift her head, breathe deeply, and dive back in. No study of the modern encounter with Buddhism is complete without reading this truly refreshing and wonderful book. -- Justin Thomas McDaniel, author of The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern ThailandAvi Alpert's timely book makes a significant contribution to re-evaluating Buddhism's role in engaging with the struggles and complexities of the postcolonial world. The book is at once a personal chronicle of disenchantment and discovery and a literary history that charts global Buddhism and the aesthetics of human fragmentation and connectivity. Alpert's compelling readings of modern novels uncover a simple truth of Buddhist ethics at their core: we may be limited in our understanding of the universe, but we have the power to act kindly towards living beings. An ethics of social relationality emerges as the book's most profound insight, making its innovative readings indispensable for students and scholars of religion and literature. -- Gauri Viswanathan, author of Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and BeliefTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Enlightenment2. Reincarnation3. Liberation4. AuthenticityCodaNotesBibliographyIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press A Cultural History of the Soul
Book SynopsisThis book uncovers the history of the concept of the soul in twentieth-century Europe and North America. Beginning in fin de siècle Germany, Kocku von Stuckrad examines an astonishingly wide range of figures and movements.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrologue: The Crisis of the Soul in the Twentieth CenturyPart I: The Soul in Its Cultural Setting Between 1870 and 19301. Nature Research, Psychology, and Occultism in the Nineteenth Century2. Fascination with the Soul in Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Science3. The Mobilization of the Soul in Political and Nationalistic Settings4. Carl Gustav Jung: Psychology as a Comprehensive Empirical Science of the Soul5. Occultism, the Natural Sciences, and Spirituality Before 1930Part II: From Europe to America and Back: The Soul Goes Mainstream6. Transpersonal Psychology: The Soul’s Cosmic Potential7. The Renaissance of Naturphilosophie: Quantum Mysticism, Cosmic Con-sciousness, and the Planetary Soul8. The Soul as the Lodestar of New Spiritual Practices9. The Soul as a Central Motif in Literature and Film10. Ecological Movements, Scientific Aesthetics, and the Sacralization of the EarthEpilogue: A Cultural Studies Soul RetrievalNotesBibliographyIndex
£90.00
Columbia University Press A Cultural History of the Soul
Book SynopsisThis book uncovers the history of the concept of the soul in twentieth-century Europe and North America. Beginning in fin de siècle Germany, Kocku von Stuckrad examines an astonishingly wide range of figures and movements.Trade ReviewAn essential historical work in religious studies, philosophy, and the environmental humanities. * Reading Religion *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrologue: The Crisis of the Soul in the Twentieth CenturyPart I: The Soul in Its Cultural Setting Between 1870 and 19301. Nature Research, Psychology, and Occultism in the Nineteenth Century2. Fascination with the Soul in Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Science3. The Mobilization of the Soul in Political and Nationalistic Settings4. Carl Gustav Jung: Psychology as a Comprehensive Empirical Science of the Soul5. Occultism, the Natural Sciences, and Spirituality Before 1930Part II: From Europe to America and Back: The Soul Goes Mainstream6. Transpersonal Psychology: The Soul’s Cosmic Potential7. The Renaissance of Naturphilosophie: Quantum Mysticism, Cosmic Con-sciousness, and the Planetary Soul8. The Soul as the Lodestar of New Spiritual Practices9. The Soul as a Central Motif in Literature and Film10. Ecological Movements, Scientific Aesthetics, and the Sacralization of the EarthEpilogue: A Cultural Studies Soul RetrievalNotesBibliographyIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in
Book SynopsisThe preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy. He investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty.Trade ReviewYü’s book is a tour de force of interpretive and analytical scholarship using Western theory to illuminate the Chinese past. -- Gilbert Z. Chen * China Review International *[I] recommend the book for an upper-division undergraduate course in disciplines such as sociology and the history of religion, Chinese history, Asian studies, and comparative religion . . . There are clearly directions of research that scholars may pursue along the path paved by Yü. -- Bin Song * H-Buddhism *An undertaking only a scholar of the tallest order could have accomplished because the work is not one of “deliberate research,” but one that is built on the knowledge of a lifetime of reading, browsing, and thinking. The weight of this book and the sway of its argument lie heavily on the formidable scholarship of Ying-shih Yü. -- Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern ChinaThis English translation makes available a seminal text about the norms that sustained the rise of indigenous capitalism in late imperial China. Deeply grounded, compellingly argued, deftly framed in Weberian terms, and expertly edited, this work is a must-read for all who seek orientation in a big-picture understanding of Chinese capitalism over the past five centuries. -- Wen-hsin Yeh, author of Shanghai Splendor: Economic Ethics in the Making of Modern ChinaA welcome translation of Yü’s masterly analysis of early modern economic/commercial principles and practice in light of the reorientation of Chinese thought inward. This is intellectual history deeply grounded in real life through primary sources that at once engages Weberian concepts while elucidating the very different context of early modern Chinese society. -- Joanna Waley-Cohen, author of The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military Under the Qing DynastyYü’s book is the most original Chinese challenge to Max Weber’s theory of the roots of modern capitalism in the Protestant ethic. This English translation will stimulate discussion that is often hampered by either a lack of understanding of what Weber actually said or insufficient knowledge of Chinese inner-worldly asceticism. -- Hans van Ess, president, Max Weber FoundationEven though this book was written over thirty years ago, the questions it raises and the sources and arguments it provides are still quite relevant today, in fact even more so. Yü’s book was a classic when it appeared, and in translation, it will become a very timely intervention. -- Peter Perdue, author of China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central EurasiaThe English translation of Yü Ying-shih’s book, which is a welcome contribution to Western Chinese studies, should be a stimulation for intensifying investigation into the relationship between Chinese religiosity with its inner-worldly asceticism and mercantile spirit (or generally speaking economy) in China not only for Sinologists but also for researchers in religious studies, economic history and social sciences. -- Zbigniew Wesołowski * Monumenta Serica *This volume will prove invaluable to all those interested in Chinese religion as well as the theory of religion. Indeed, with the death of Yü just last year on the 1st of August, this volume is a fitting homage to his legacy. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsEditorial NoteEditor’s IntroductionAuthor’s IntroductionPart I: The Inner-Worldly Reorientation of Chinese Religions1. New Chan (Japanese pronunciation, Zen) Buddhism2. New Religious DaoismPart II: New Developments in the Confucian Ethic3. The Rise of New Confucianism and the Influence of Chan Buddhism4. Establishing the “World of Heaven’s Principles”: The “Other World” of New Confucianism5. “Seriousness Pervading Activity and Tranquility”: The Spiritual Temper of Inner-Worldly Engagement6. “Regarding the World as One’s Responsibility”: The Inner-Worldly Asceticism of New Confucianism7. Similarities and Differences Between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan: The Social Significance of the Division in New ConfucianismPart III: The Spiritual Configuration of Chinese Merchants8. Ming and Qing Confucians’ View of “Securing a Livelihood”9. A New Theory of the Four Categories of People: Changes in the Relationship Between Scholars and Merchants10. Merchants and Confucian Learning11. The Mercantile Ethic12. “The Way of Business”ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£96.80
Columbia University Press The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in
Book SynopsisThe preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy. He investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty.Trade ReviewYü’s book is a tour de force of interpretive and analytical scholarship using Western theory to illuminate the Chinese past. -- Gilbert Z. Chen * China Review International *[I] recommend the book for an upper-division undergraduate course in disciplines such as sociology and the history of religion, Chinese history, Asian studies, and comparative religion . . . There are clearly directions of research that scholars may pursue along the path paved by Yü. -- Bin Song * H-Buddhism *An undertaking only a scholar of the tallest order could have accomplished because the work is not one of “deliberate research,” but one that is built on the knowledge of a lifetime of reading, browsing, and thinking. The weight of this book and the sway of its argument lie heavily on the formidable scholarship of Ying-shih Yü. -- Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern ChinaThis English translation makes available a seminal text about the norms that sustained the rise of indigenous capitalism in late imperial China. Deeply grounded, compellingly argued, deftly framed in Weberian terms, and expertly edited, this work is a must-read for all who seek orientation in a big-picture understanding of Chinese capitalism over the past five centuries. -- Wen-hsin Yeh, author of Shanghai Splendor: Economic Ethics in the Making of Modern ChinaA welcome translation of Yü’s masterly analysis of early modern economic/commercial principles and practice in light of the reorientation of Chinese thought inward. This is intellectual history deeply grounded in real life through primary sources that at once engages Weberian concepts while elucidating the very different context of early modern Chinese society. -- Joanna Waley-Cohen, author of The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military Under the Qing DynastyYü’s book is the most original Chinese challenge to Max Weber’s theory of the roots of modern capitalism in the Protestant ethic. This English translation will stimulate discussion that is often hampered by either a lack of understanding of what Weber actually said or insufficient knowledge of Chinese inner-worldly asceticism. -- Hans van Ess, president, Max Weber FoundationEven though this book was written over thirty years ago, the questions it raises and the sources and arguments it provides are still quite relevant today, in fact even more so. Yü’s book was a classic when it appeared, and in translation, it will become a very timely intervention. -- Peter Perdue, author of China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central EurasiaThe English translation of Yü Ying-shih’s book, which is a welcome contribution to Western Chinese studies, should be a stimulation for intensifying investigation into the relationship between Chinese religiosity with its inner-worldly asceticism and mercantile spirit (or generally speaking economy) in China not only for Sinologists but also for researchers in religious studies, economic history and social sciences. -- Zbigniew Wesołowski * Monumenta Serica *This volume will prove invaluable to all those interested in Chinese religion as well as the theory of religion. Indeed, with the death of Yü just last year on the 1st of August, this volume is a fitting homage to his legacy. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsEditorial NoteEditor’s IntroductionAuthor’s IntroductionPart I: The Inner-Worldly Reorientation of Chinese Religions1. New Chan (Japanese pronunciation, Zen) Buddhism2. New Religious DaoismPart II: New Developments in the Confucian Ethic3. The Rise of New Confucianism and the Influence of Chan Buddhism4. Establishing the “World of Heaven’s Principles”: The “Other World” of New Confucianism5. “Seriousness Pervading Activity and Tranquility”: The Spiritual Temper of Inner-Worldly Engagement6. “Regarding the World as One’s Responsibility”: The Inner-Worldly Asceticism of New Confucianism7. Similarities and Differences Between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan: The Social Significance of the Division in New ConfucianismPart III: The Spiritual Configuration of Chinese Merchants8. Ming and Qing Confucians’ View of “Securing a Livelihood”9. A New Theory of the Four Categories of People: Changes in the Relationship Between Scholars and Merchants10. Merchants and Confucian Learning11. The Mercantile Ethic12. “The Way of Business”ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press Esoteric Buddhism in China
Book Synopsis
£27.00
Columbia University Press Religion Attire and Adornment in North America
Book SynopsisThis book convenes leading scholars to explore the roles of attire and adornment in the creation and communication of religious meaning, identity, and community. Contributors investigate aspects of religious dress in North America in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.Trade ReviewThis book is a glorious romp through the wardrobe of American religions, unraveling the ways in which the clothing and adornment are not mere sidenotes to the study of religious beliefs and practices but integral to understanding the diverse religious communities of North America. -- Rachel B. Gross, John and Marcia Goldman Chair in American Jewish Studies, San Francisco State UniversityIn lucid prose, the editors of this handsome volume usher readers into the worlds of religion, attire, and adornment. Beautifully curated, the collection shows us how bodily presentation matters. Contributors explain what the language of sacred garb tells us about how religion is worn; what these vestments mean for those who wear, touch, view, or simply imagine them. This is a book that speaks to glamour and plainness, sartorial splendor and fashionable modesty in so many of its North American guises. This is a book you will want to teach! -- Laura Levitt, author of The Objects that RemainReligion, Attire, and Adornment in North America addresses the relationship between religion and dress in America and the ways that religious practitioners make meaning through their sartorial choices. Its chapters are accessibly written and their breadth is impressive; scholars of American religions, new religious movements, gender studies, and material culture will appreciate this volume. -- Nora L. Rubel, author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American ImaginationTable of ContentsIntroduction: Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America, by Benjamin E. Zeller and Marie W. DallamPart I. Theological Adornment1. Seventh-day Adventist Dress: “An Index to the Heart,” by Emily J. Bailey2. Clothing Spiritual Reality: The Sartorial Styles of Mary Baker Eddy, byJeremy Rapport3. Faith, Fashion, and Film in the Jazz Age: Catholic Vestments Encounter the Roaring 1920s, Adrienne Nock Ambrose4. Power Before Thrones of God and Man: Women, Adornment, and Public Life in White American Pentecostalism, by Andrea Shan Johnson and Leah PaynePart II. Identity Adornment5. Holy Dashikis! Black Sartorial Nationalism and Black Israelite Religion, by André E. Brooks-Key6. Refined Bodies: Clothing as a Visual Signifier of Piety for Mormon Women in America, by Kate Davis7. The Christian Tattoo: Much More than Skin-Deep, by Jerome R. Koch and Kevin D. Dougherty8. “Queens of the Earth”: The MGT Uniform as a Form of Identity Creation and Nation Building, by Kayla Renée WheelerPart III. Negotiated Adornment9. “Ye Shall Be Naked in Your Rites”: Ritual Attire and Ritual Nudity (Skyclad) in North American Wicca, by Michelle Mueller10. Amish Vogue: Performing Fashion in the Plain World, by Nao Nomura11. “Your Religion Is Showing”: Negotiation and Personal Experience in Mormon Garments, by Jessica Finnigan and Nancy RossPart IV. Activist Adornment12. Dressed for Glory: White Uniforms in African American Church Traditions as Visual Political Theology, by Elaina Smith13. “The Hare Krishna Look”: ISKCON Adornment as Religious Activism, by Benjamin E. Zeller14. Religious Dress, the Church of Body Modification, and the First Amendment, by Marie W. DallamDiscussion QuestionsSuggested Reading ListList of ContributorsIndex
£105.30
Columbia University Press Religion Attire and Adornment in North America
Book SynopsisThis book convenes leading scholars to explore the roles of attire and adornment in the creation and communication of religious meaning, identity, and community. Contributors investigate aspects of religious dress in North America in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.Trade ReviewThis book is a glorious romp through the wardrobe of American religions, unraveling the ways in which the clothing and adornment are not mere sidenotes to the study of religious beliefs and practices but integral to understanding the diverse religious communities of North America. -- Rachel B. Gross, John and Marcia Goldman Chair in American Jewish Studies, San Francisco State UniversityIn lucid prose, the editors of this handsome volume usher readers into the worlds of religion, attire, and adornment. Beautifully curated, the collection shows us how bodily presentation matters. Contributors explain what the language of sacred garb tells us about how religion is worn; what these vestments mean for those who wear, touch, view, or simply imagine them. This is a book that speaks to glamour and plainness, sartorial splendor and fashionable modesty in so many of its North American guises. This is a book you will want to teach! -- Laura Levitt, author of The Objects that RemainReligion, Attire, and Adornment in North America addresses the relationship between religion and dress in America and the ways that religious practitioners make meaning through their sartorial choices. Its chapters are accessibly written and their breadth is impressive; scholars of American religions, new religious movements, gender studies, and material culture will appreciate this volume. -- Nora L. Rubel, author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American ImaginationTable of ContentsIntroduction: Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America, by Benjamin E. Zeller and Marie W. DallamPart I. Theological Adornment1. Seventh-day Adventist Dress: “An Index to the Heart,” by Emily J. Bailey2. Clothing Spiritual Reality: The Sartorial Styles of Mary Baker Eddy, byJeremy Rapport3. Faith, Fashion, and Film in the Jazz Age: Catholic Vestments Encounter the Roaring 1920s, Adrienne Nock Ambrose4. Power Before Thrones of God and Man: Women, Adornment, and Public Life in White American Pentecostalism, by Andrea Shan Johnson and Leah PaynePart II. Identity Adornment5. Holy Dashikis! Black Sartorial Nationalism and Black Israelite Religion, by André E. Brooks-Key6. Refined Bodies: Clothing as a Visual Signifier of Piety for Mormon Women in America, by Kate Davis7. The Christian Tattoo: Much More than Skin-Deep, by Jerome R. Koch and Kevin D. Dougherty8. “Queens of the Earth”: The MGT Uniform as a Form of Identity Creation and Nation Building, by Kayla Renée WheelerPart III. Negotiated Adornment9. “Ye Shall Be Naked in Your Rites”: Ritual Attire and Ritual Nudity (Skyclad) in North American Wicca, by Michelle Mueller10. Amish Vogue: Performing Fashion in the Plain World, by Nao Nomura11. “Your Religion Is Showing”: Negotiation and Personal Experience in Mormon Garments, by Jessica Finnigan and Nancy RossPart IV. Activist Adornment12. Dressed for Glory: White Uniforms in African American Church Traditions as Visual Political Theology, by Elaina Smith13. “The Hare Krishna Look”: ISKCON Adornment as Religious Activism, by Benjamin E. Zeller14. Religious Dress, the Church of Body Modification, and the First Amendment, by Marie W. DallamDiscussion QuestionsSuggested Reading ListList of ContributorsIndex
£28.50
Columbia University Press The Politics of Arab Authenticity
Book SynopsisAhmad Agbaria tells the story of a generation of postcolonial thinkers and activists who came to question their modernist commitments. He analyzes the heated cultural and intellectual debates that overtook the Arab world in the 1970s, uncovering why major figures turned to tradition in search of solutions to postcolonial predicaments.Trade ReviewAn extraordinary accomplishment, illuminating and thought-provoking. In The Politics of Arab Authenticity, Agbaria characterizes the postrevolutionary and postcolonial era as a new age of Arab thought, shaped by intellectuals' intensive search for Arab authenticity. By reclaiming and negotiating Arab cultural heritage, this creative intellectual community not only thought to imbue the present with some sense of the past, but, more importantly, also found the past’s heritage meaningful and useful for the present and future. This book provides one of the most insightful maps of contemporary Arab intellectual thinking. -- Israel Gershoni, author of Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and RepulsionAgbaria's argument is that Jabiri's and Tarabishi's differentiated but monumental projects captured the dynamism of Arab intellectual landscapes and encapsulated not only the intracultural war over the meaning of history and cultural time but also this meaning's relevance to Arab futures. A lucid, analytically profound, and brilliantly cast narrative, an essential read for all those interested in the modern Arab world. -- Wael Hallaq, author of Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman TahaIn this well-researched book, Agbaria analyzes one of the most central debates in contemporary Arab thought: the debate around heritage. He argues against viewing the debate as a secularist-religious opposition, instead telling a much more complex and interesting story. The Politics of Arab Authenticity is necessary reading for anyone interested in contemporary Arab intellectual debates. -- Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative PerspectiveAhmad Agbaria challenges conventional narratives of Arab intellectual history through a bold reinterpretation of postcolonial thought in the Middle East and North Africa. Packed with fresh insights about far-reaching debates across the Arabic-speaking world around modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, and revolution and reform, The Politics of Arab Authenticity is essential reading. -- Max Weiss, coeditor of Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the PresentTable of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Voicing the PastI: Foundations1. The Emergence of a New Field2. The Great Cultural War: The Social and Connected CriticsII: Curators3. Jabiri as a Thinker of (Internal) Decolonization4. Restating Turath in the Postcolonial AgeIII: Backlash5. The Making of a Social Critic: Jurj Tarabishi6. A Crack in the Edifice of the Social Critic: From Thawra to NahdaConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press The Politics of Arab Authenticity
Book SynopsisAhmad Agbaria tells the story of a generation of postcolonial thinkers and activists who came to question their modernist commitments. He analyzes the heated cultural and intellectual debates that overtook the Arab world in the 1970s, uncovering why major figures turned to tradition in search of solutions to postcolonial predicaments.Trade ReviewAn extraordinary accomplishment, illuminating and thought-provoking. In The Politics of Arab Authenticity, Agbaria characterizes the postrevolutionary and postcolonial era as a new age of Arab thought, shaped by intellectuals' intensive search for Arab authenticity. By reclaiming and negotiating Arab cultural heritage, this creative intellectual community not only thought to imbue the present with some sense of the past, but, more importantly, also found the past’s heritage meaningful and useful for the present and future. This book provides one of the most insightful maps of contemporary Arab intellectual thinking. -- Israel Gershoni, author of Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and RepulsionAgbaria's argument is that Jabiri's and Tarabishi's differentiated but monumental projects captured the dynamism of Arab intellectual landscapes and encapsulated not only the intracultural war over the meaning of history and cultural time but also this meaning's relevance to Arab futures. A lucid, analytically profound, and brilliantly cast narrative, an essential read for all those interested in the modern Arab world. -- Wael Hallaq, author of Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman TahaIn this well-researched book, Agbaria analyzes one of the most central debates in contemporary Arab thought: the debate around heritage. He argues against viewing the debate as a secularist-religious opposition, instead telling a much more complex and interesting story. The Politics of Arab Authenticity is necessary reading for anyone interested in contemporary Arab intellectual debates. -- Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative PerspectiveAhmad Agbaria challenges conventional narratives of Arab intellectual history through a bold reinterpretation of postcolonial thought in the Middle East and North Africa. Packed with fresh insights about far-reaching debates across the Arabic-speaking world around modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, and revolution and reform, The Politics of Arab Authenticity is essential reading. -- Max Weiss, coeditor of Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the PresentTable of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Voicing the PastI: Foundations1. The Emergence of a New Field2. The Great Cultural War: The Social and Connected CriticsII: Curators3. Jabiri as a Thinker of (Internal) Decolonization4. Restating Turath in the Postcolonial AgeIII: Backlash5. The Making of a Social Critic: Jurj Tarabishi6. A Crack in the Edifice of the Social Critic: From Thawra to NahdaConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
Columbia University Press Buddhist Historiography in China The Sheng Yen
Book SynopsisJohn Kieschnick provides an innovative, expansive account of how Chinese Buddhists have sought to understand their history through a Buddhist lens. Exploring a series of themes in mainstream Buddhist historiographical works from the fifth to the twentieth century, he looks for what they tell us about their compilers’ understanding of history.Trade ReviewThis book tells us a great deal about a genre of Buddhist writing that we have not understood well so far because of its massive and chronological nature. The patterns of Chinese Buddhist histories are hard to see unless one has read all of them. Buddhist Historiography in China is an excellent critical orientation to this material, written in a lively and engaging way that makes it really enjoyable and informative to read. -- James A. Benn, author of Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural HistorySomewhat surprisingly, Buddhist historiography has not received much sustained attention before, at least in the West, despite voluminous studies of Chinese historical writing. Kieschnick introduces this subject, delineates its major contours, and argues for its significance. This book will change the way that future studies of Chinese historiography will be written. -- Grant Hardy, author of Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian's Conquest of HistoryKieschnick presents us with new perspectives to consider in the study of Chinese history and religion. * International Journal of Asian Studies *Demonstrates why careful consideration of historiography is necessary and important, and he doesso in a lively and thought-provoking way. * History of Religions *For the general history-interested reader, the volume can serve as a splendid introduction to Chinese Buddhism. * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction1. India2. Sources3. Karma4. Prophecy5. Genealogy6. ModernityConclusionAcknowledgmentsAppendix 1. Chronological List of Major WorksAppendix 2. Lineage ChartsNotesBibliographyIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press Going Low
Book SynopsisGoing Low examines how the offensive style of contemporary politics challenges liberal democratic institutions. Considering the rise of illiberal politics and debates about the limits of free speech, Finbarr Curtis draws on the insights of religious studies to rethink provocation and transgression.Trade ReviewThis is a timely explanation of current political realities in the U.S. -- Halie Kerns * Library Journal *Going Low’s compellingly written and skillfully argued insights into the relationship between illiberal secularism and discourses of offense offer scholars essential tools to make sense of the US political landscape, challenging us to rethink relationships between religion and politics in the US. * American Religion *This marvelous and surprising book offers the first satisfying account of why offense is an essential idiom of secular politics. Political scientists, pundits, and scholars of religion alike will learn from what Curtis discovers when he digs with gusto into the significant power of profanation. -- Kathryn Lofton, author of Consuming ReligionGoing Low is a wide-ranging exploration of today's political culture deploying conceptual tools from religious studies scholarship. There's something distinctive about how political discourse works in the Trump era—from right, left, and center—and this book limns this new landscape. -- Vincent W. Lloyd, author of In Defense of CharismaFinbarr Curtis's book is bold, analytically curious, and it makes a pressing argument about the mechanics and fragility of the contemporary American order. Going Low is a book that punches you in the gut with its argument about the secular age gone bad and getting worse. Curtis's account of the Trump phenomenon is the one that makes the most sense of a volatile moment that remains resistant to pedestrian hot-takes or 'serious' analyses of political economy. -- John Lardas Modern, author of Secularism in Antebellum AmericaTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Reality of Donald J. Trump2. Steve Bannon and the Clash of Civilizations3. Cartoons and Guns4. Christian Values and the White Evangelical5. Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Art of Religious Freedom6. NFL Protests and the Profane Rites of Something7. Fear and Safety on CampusConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£82.80
Columbia University Press Going Low
Book SynopsisGoing Low examines how the offensive style of contemporary politics challenges liberal democratic institutions. Considering the rise of illiberal politics and debates about the limits of free speech, Finbarr Curtis draws on the insights of religious studies to rethink provocation and transgression.Trade ReviewThis is a timely explanation of current political realities in the U.S. -- Halie Kerns * Library Journal *Going Low’s compellingly written and skillfully argued insights into the relationship between illiberal secularism and discourses of offense offer scholars essential tools to make sense of the US political landscape, challenging us to rethink relationships between religion and politics in the US. * American Religion *This marvelous and surprising book offers the first satisfying account of why offense is an essential idiom of secular politics. Political scientists, pundits, and scholars of religion alike will learn from what Curtis discovers when he digs with gusto into the significant power of profanation. -- Kathryn Lofton, author of Consuming ReligionGoing Low is a wide-ranging exploration of today's political culture deploying conceptual tools from religious studies scholarship. There's something distinctive about how political discourse works in the Trump era—from right, left, and center—and this book limns this new landscape. -- Vincent W. Lloyd, author of In Defense of CharismaFinbarr Curtis's book is bold, analytically curious, and it makes a pressing argument about the mechanics and fragility of the contemporary American order. Going Low is a book that punches you in the gut with its argument about the secular age gone bad and getting worse. Curtis's account of the Trump phenomenon is the one that makes the most sense of a volatile moment that remains resistant to pedestrian hot-takes or 'serious' analyses of political economy. -- John Lardas Modern, author of Secularism in Antebellum AmericaTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Reality of Donald J. Trump2. Steve Bannon and the Clash of Civilizations3. Cartoons and Guns4. Christian Values and the White Evangelical5. Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Art of Religious Freedom6. NFL Protests and the Profane Rites of Something7. Fear and Safety on CampusConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£20.90
Columbia University Press Searching for the Body
Book SynopsisIn the early fifteenth century, two Tibetan monks debated how to transform the body ritually into a celestial palace inhabited by buddhas. Searching for the Body demonstrates the significance of this debate for understandings of Tibetan Buddhism as well as conversations on representation and embodiment occurring across the disciplines today.Trade ReviewSearching for the Body uses a famous fifteenth-century Tibetan debate about a tantric ritual practice called body mandala to explore historical and literary questions that show the relevance of that debate to the broader field of the humanities. Dachille’s knowledge of the Tibetan texts is superb, and her analysis of the body mandala debate is a major contribution to the field. -- José Ignacio Cabezón, author of Sexuality in Classical South Asian BuddhismRae Dachille makes exemplary use of exegetical practices drawn from trans, queer, Black, and disability studies to enable a posthumanist, and more-than-human, interpretative stance within Buddhism. She critically reframes the ways Buddhist authors can understand how reference, citation, and representation work in Buddhist texts and traditions, expanding our understanding of the ever-shifting boundaries between self, others, and world. This is a smart, beautiful, and timely work. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor, TSQ: Transgender Studies QuarterlyThis insightful, well-researched, and original book will ideally appeal to readers who have at least a background in Tibetan Buddhism and care about contemporary social matters. * Religious Studies Review *A clear and comprehensive contribution to the field. * Religion *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Technical NoteIntroduction1. Imagining the Body Mandala2. Constructing the Body Mandala Debate3. “Cutting the Ground”: Citations Revealing Mandala Iconography in the Making4. Ngorchen’s Armor of Citations: Defending and Delineating the Hevajra Corpus5. “Aligning the Dependently Arisen Connections”: The Exegete Rearticulates Body and TextConclusionEpilogueAppendixesNotesBibliographyIndex
£90.00
Columbia University Press Searching for the Body
Book SynopsisIn the early fifteenth century, two Tibetan monks debated how to transform the body ritually into a celestial palace inhabited by buddhas. Searching for the Body demonstrates the significance of this debate for understandings of Tibetan Buddhism as well as conversations on representation and embodiment occurring across the disciplines today.Trade ReviewSearching for the Body uses a famous fifteenth-century Tibetan debate about a tantric ritual practice called body mandala to explore historical and literary questions that show the relevance of that debate to the broader field of the humanities. Dachille’s knowledge of the Tibetan texts is superb, and her analysis of the body mandala debate is a major contribution to the field. -- José Ignacio Cabezón, author of Sexuality in Classical South Asian BuddhismRae Dachille makes exemplary use of exegetical practices drawn from trans, queer, Black, and disability studies to enable a posthumanist, and more-than-human, interpretative stance within Buddhism. She critically reframes the ways Buddhist authors can understand how reference, citation, and representation work in Buddhist texts and traditions, expanding our understanding of the ever-shifting boundaries between self, others, and world. This is a smart, beautiful, and timely work. -- Susan Stryker, executive editor, TSQ: Transgender Studies QuarterlyThis insightful, well-researched, and original book will ideally appeal to readers who have at least a background in Tibetan Buddhism and care about contemporary social matters. * Religious Studies Review *A clear and comprehensive contribution to the field. * Religion *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Technical NoteIntroduction1. Imagining the Body Mandala2. Constructing the Body Mandala Debate3. “Cutting the Ground”: Citations Revealing Mandala Iconography in the Making4. Ngorchen’s Armor of Citations: Defending and Delineating the Hevajra Corpus5. “Aligning the Dependently Arisen Connections”: The Exegete Rearticulates Body and TextConclusionEpilogueAppendixesNotesBibliographyIndex
£23.75
Columbia University Press Wives and Work Islamic Law and Ethics Before
Book SynopsisIt is widely held today that classical Islamic law denies that wives have any obligation to do housework. Marion Holmes Katz offers a new account of debates on wives’ domestic labor that recasts the historical relationship between Islamic law and ethics.Trade ReviewWritten by one of the best Islamic studies scholars working today, this is a clear, well-organized, amply documented, and nuanced account of how Muslim jurists dealt with the question of wives' domestic responsibilities, illustrating brilliantly that jurisprudence was only one among many authoritative 'religious' discourses. -- Kecia Ali, author of Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamThis groundbreaking book makes a significant contribution to the already-rich field of medieval Islamic ethics and law; moreover, Katz's nuanced approach to the many valences of domestic labor has important implications for our understanding of medieval Islamic piety, particularly how pious norms are shaped by class, gender, and social status. -- Karen Bauer, author of Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern ResponsesWhy should a wife do housework for free? In this illuminating book, Marion Katz analyzes in depth medieval Muslim intellectuals' nuanced answers to this fundamental question. She demonstrates how they distinguished ethical duties from legal obligations and ultimately reimagined the meaning of marriage and the value of service. An exciting contribution to scholarship on Islamic law and gendered labor. -- Leor Halevi, author of Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935By providing intensive and wide coverage of this issue, the book provides a major investigative tool into the interaction between law and economic realities. It portrays the legal content less as a theoretical framework, and more as a realistic approach to the dichotomy that economics and law were confronting together when change occurred. * Reading Religion *A valuable, frequently surprising book that will attract scholars of law and ethics broadly define as much as specialists in premodern Islamic legal history and philosophy. Highly Recommended. * Choice *The entire work makes for excellent reading for graduate-level syllabi. Here too, due to the breadth, depth, and richly intersecting bodies of literature that Katz explores, the text will likely invite conversations. * Journal of Islamic Ethics *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Domestic Labor in the Literature of Zuhd (Renunciation) and in Early Mālikī Texts2. Falsafa and Fiqh in the Writings of al-Māwardī3. Legal and Ethical Obligation in the Mabsūṭ of al-Sarakhsī4. Marriage Reimagined: The Work of Ibn Qudāma and Ibn TaymīyaConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£93.60
Columbia University Press Wives and Work
Book SynopsisIt is widely held today that classical Islamic law denies that wives have any obligation to do housework. Marion Holmes Katz offers a new account of debates on wives’ domestic labor that recasts the historical relationship between Islamic law and ethics.Trade ReviewWritten by one of the best Islamic studies scholars working today, this is a clear, well-organized, amply documented, and nuanced account of how Muslim jurists dealt with the question of wives' domestic responsibilities, illustrating brilliantly that jurisprudence was only one among many authoritative 'religious' discourses. -- Kecia Ali, author of Marriage and Slavery in Early IslamThis groundbreaking book makes a significant contribution to the already-rich field of medieval Islamic ethics and law; moreover, Katz's nuanced approach to the many valences of domestic labor has important implications for our understanding of medieval Islamic piety, particularly how pious norms are shaped by class, gender, and social status. -- Karen Bauer, author of Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern ResponsesWhy should a wife do housework for free? In this illuminating book, Marion Katz analyzes in depth medieval Muslim intellectuals' nuanced answers to this fundamental question. She demonstrates how they distinguished ethical duties from legal obligations and ultimately reimagined the meaning of marriage and the value of service. An exciting contribution to scholarship on Islamic law and gendered labor. -- Leor Halevi, author of Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935By providing intensive and wide coverage of this issue, the book provides a major investigative tool into the interaction between law and economic realities. It portrays the legal content less as a theoretical framework, and more as a realistic approach to the dichotomy that economics and law were confronting together when change occurred. * Reading Religion *A valuable, frequently surprising book that will attract scholars of law and ethics broadly define as much as specialists in premodern Islamic legal history and philosophy. Highly Recommended. * Choice *The entire work makes for excellent reading for graduate-level syllabi. Here too, due to the breadth, depth, and richly intersecting bodies of literature that Katz explores, the text will likely invite conversations. * Journal of Islamic Ethics *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Domestic Labor in the Literature of Zuhd (Renunciation) and in Early Mālikī Texts2. Falsafa and Fiqh in the Writings of al-Māwardī3. Legal and Ethical Obligation in the Mabsūṭ of al-Sarakhsī4. Marriage Reimagined: The Work of Ibn Qudāma and Ibn TaymīyaConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£27.00
