Search results for ""SCHOLASTIC""

Aaron wanted to look just like his daddy so he let his hair get long. Only then, he started to have problems. But when he says to his hair "I hate you", it runs off, and he finds it very hard to get his hair back on his head!

Read more less

This book examines the philosophical premises underlying the language used in liturgical prayers. Scholastic philosophy, the dominant philosophical perspective in the West, is no longer satisfactory for contemporary religious formulation. Phenomenological philosophy appears to be replacing scholastic philosophy in forming and understanding personal and communal religious beliefs. The Collects of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Eucharistic liturgies for Advent and Lent were examined, re-written and "field tested." The focus group, for field testing, was composed of individuals who formally engage in research into spirituality and religious experiences. A Phenomenological Understanding of Certain Liturgical Texts encourages further investigation into the growing use of phenomenology in liturgical understanding based on a discernible trend in this direction.

Read more less

Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism provides a careful historical account of the scholastic polemic against the "new" Catholic philosophies and theologies that arose in Europe throughout the 19th century. This read begins with an examination of Ontologism, Traditionalism, and the theologies of Hermes, Gunther, and the Tubingen School - the adversaries against whom the scholastics directed their fire - and then transitions to review the philosophies and theologies of Liberatore and Kleutgen, the scholastic theoreticians who orchestrated the polemic. From the account of its polemic with rival theologians, a vivid picture of nineteenth-century scholasticism's vision of itself as the one philosophy capable of structuring a Catholic theology, its adversary relationship to other theologies, and its confidence in its own ability to integrate Catholic culture and solve contemporary social problems emerges.

Read more less

This book looks at the inter-ethnic relations, racial prejudice, gender equality, the development of ethnic identity; bilingualism; the practice of home religion; and scholastic achievement and adjustment. Its aim it to provide an up-to-date picture of the situation of South Asian and Chinese adolescents living in the UK today.

Read more less

In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period's meditations and theories of cognition. Karnes here understands imagination in its technical, philosophical sense, taking her cue from Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian and philosopher who provided the first sustained account of how the philosophical imagination could be transformed into a devotional one. Karnes examines Bonaventure's meditational works, the Meditationes vitae Christi, the Stimulis amoris, Piers Plowman, and Nicholas Love's Myrrour, among others, and argues that the cognitive importance that imagination enjoyed in scholastic philosophy informed its importance in medieval meditations on the life of Christ. Emphasizing the cognitive significance of both imagination and the meditations that relied on it, she revises a long-standing association of imagination with the Middle Ages. In her account, imagination was not simply an object of suspicion but also a crucial intellectual, spiritual, and literary resource that exercised considerable authority.

Read more less

An up-close look at what life is like the morning after a terrible hurricane for anteater Abi in this photo-packed series exploring the stories and science behind animal sanctuaries. Abi takes readers behind the scenes of an anteater sanctuary in Belize in this nonfiction chapter book for elementary-aged readers. Includes full-colour photos, graphics, and maps. AGES: 7 to 10 AUTHOR: Kama Einhorn is Brooklyn-based writer and editor of children's media. She has master's degree in literacy education from U.C. Berkeley has been an editor at Scholastic, before becoming a content creator at Sesame Street. She's written more than 40 books for kids, published by Scholastic, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins and also authored magazine articles, outreach materials, and web content for Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, The New York Times Learning Network, Best Friends Animal Society, and The Humane Society of the United States.

Read more less

"Lavin's study of the Pierro della Francesca "Flagellation" at Urbino, as befits this exquisite masterpiece, is a model of lucid and precise exposition as well as being an exciting exercise of scholarship. Informed with the intellectual rigour of Scholastic exegesis, it deserves to be placed with the classic readings of fifteenth and sixteenth century works by Erwin Panofsky and Edgar Wind."—Spectator "[Lavin] leaves the picture more wondrous than before, a simultaneous triumph of the theological and biographical, as well as pictorial, imagination."—Rackstraw Downes, New York Times Book Review

Read more less

This text explores the invention of sodomy in medieval Christendom, examining its conceptual foundations in theology and gauging its impact on Christian sexual ethics both then and now. It traces the historical genealogy of this enduring cultural construct through many of the idiosyncratic worldviews of the Middle Ages - worldviews at war with themselves in their attitudes toward sex, love and eroticism. Moving from poetic conceit through medieval treatise to confessor's manual and scholastic summa, the text demonstrates that the medieval notion of sodomy was fashioned out of conceptual instabilities and tensions.

Read more less

A survey of the use of the refrain in thirteenth and fourteenth-century French music and poetry, showing how it was skilfully deployed to assert the validity of the vernacular. The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain, a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies, from motets, trouvère song, plays, romance, vernacular translations, and proverb collections, to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she argues that their appropriation of scholastic, Latinate writing techniques workedto authorize Old French music and poetry as media suitable for the transmission of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the quasi-scholastic usage of refrains in anonymous and less familiar clerical contexts, the book goeson to articulate a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music, the cleric-trouvères Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut. It shows how, by blending their craftwith the writing practices of the universities, composers could use refrain quotation to assert their status as authors with a new self-consciousness, and to position works in the vernacular as worthy of study and interpretation. Jennifer Saltzstein is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma.

Read more less

Through an in-depth study of four key figures – Pierre Rousselot, Joseph Marechal, Jacques Maritain, and Etienne Gilson – From Unity to Pluralism traces the evolution of Thomism in the first half of the twentieth century. Through their work, Thomisism encountered contemporary thought and rediscovered its authentic roots, and the ideal of a univocal, unitary doctrine of Scholastic truth embodied in the unambiguous teachings of Thomas Aquinas, which had inspired the Thomist revival at the end of the nineteenth century, gradually gave way. The result is the emergence of pluralism within the system itself and the independent development of the theologies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan.

Read more less

Framing Borders addresses a fundamental disjuncture between scholastic portrayals of settler colonialism and what actually takes place in Akwesasne Territory, the largest Indigenous cross-border community in Canada. Whereas most existing portrayals of Indigenous nationalism emphasize border crossing as a site of conflict between officers and Indigenous nationalists, in this book Ian Kalman observes a much more diverse range of interactions, from conflict to banality to joking and camaraderie. Framing Borders explores how border crossing represents a conversation where different actors "frame" themselves, the law, and the space that they occupy in diverse ways. Written in accessible, lively prose, Kalman addresses what goes on when border officers and Akwesasne residents meet, and what these exchanges tell us about the relationship between Indigenous actors and public servants in Canada. This book provides an ethnographic examination of the experiences of the border by Mohawk community members, the history of local border enforcement, and the paradoxes, self-contradictions, and confusions that underlie the border and its enforcement.

Read more less

A HISTORY OF OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE A History of Old English Literature has been significantly revised to provide an unequivocal response to the renewed historicism in medieval studies. Focusing on the production and reception of Old English texts and on their relation to Anglo-Saxon history and culture, this new edition covers an exceptionally broad array of genres. These range from riddles and cryptograms to allegory, liturgical texts, and romance, as well as lyric poetry and heroic legend. The authors also integrate discussions of Anglo-Latin texts, crucial to understanding the development of Old English literature. This second edition incorporates extensive reference to scholarship that has evolved over the past decade, with new chapters on both Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and on incidental and marginal texts. There is expanded treatment throughout, including increased coverage of legal texts and scientific and scholastic texts. The book concludes with a retrospective outline of the reception of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture in subsequent periods.

Read more less

Frankie is EXCITED! A new home? A new bed? A new ball? But wait. Nico is already here. Nico's home. Nico's bed. Nico's ball. Sharing is hard . . . Will Frankie find a place here too? The latest book from the Geisel Honor–winning author-illustrator Mary Sullivan features not one but two adorable pups with big personalites as they struggle to get along and find their places in the pack. At turns humorous and heartfelt, it appears that man isn't dog's only best friend when there is another dog to play with . . . AUTHOR: In her formative years, Mary Sullivan spent a great deal of time drawing. Though she received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, she considers herself a self-trained illustrator. Ms. Sullivan has shown her work at galleries and coffees shops in Dallas and Austin. She channels her considerable creative energy into projects for Highlights for Children, Scholastic, Innovative Kids, School Zone, Oxford Press U.K., Pearson and many more. Her first picture book for HMH, Ball, was a 2014 Geisel Honor Book. Visit her website at www.marysullivan.com.

Read more less

After moving to the tiny village of Biskopskulla, middle school student Clara Hutchins discovers that her family has a history in the region: one hundred forty years ago, one of her ancestors was hanged as a witch from the white oak tree on the edge of town. When Clara finds a mildewed diary in the basement, she’ s even able to read the rambling thoughts of her long-dead relative. But when the book’ s predictions about Clara’ s own life start coming true, she wonders if those 19th-century villagers had a point: maybe her great-great-great grandmother really did have unearthly abilities. Now, a break-in at the tomb of the town’ s founder means a great evil has returned to Biskopskulla. Clara and her newest friends— two of the weirdest boys in school— must join forces to decipher the messages of a murdered witch and stop an unnatural catastrophe. But as they quest through historic cemeteries, backcountry libraries, and high-octane scholastic bowl tournaments, something sinister is lurking, watching, and waiting…

Read more less

Of Minimal Things is an exploration and reassessment of the philosophical notion of relation. In contrast to the scholastic, ontological conception of relation as a thing of diminished being, this book views relation as the minimal and elemental theme and structure of philosophy. Drawing radical conclusions from the classical understanding of relation as a being-toward-another, it argues that rethinking relation engages the very possibility and limits of philosophical discourse. In the author's studies of Nietzsche and Benjamin, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Blanchot, relation is shown to be central to their thought and to undergo elaborations that escape the ontological, categorial, and formalist ways in which the concept has traditionally been interpreted. Comprehending relation in terms of determination, foundation, mediatization, translation, or communication, these authors are shown to draw out and refine a host of structural implications of the notion that unseat its formalist and categorial conception. Studying the writings of Mallarmé and Kafka, the author argues that rethought from, and in light of the other to which a relation tends, philosophy necessarily opens up to and is implicated in its others, one such possible other being literature.

Read more less

This is the first extensive treatment from a modern Austrian perspective of the history of economic thought up to Adam Smith and as such takes into account the profound influence of religious, social and political thought upon economics. In Economic Thought before Adam Smith, Murray Rothbard contends that laissez-faire liberalism and economic thought itself began with the Catholic scholastics and early Roman and canon law, rather than with Adam Smith. The scholastics, he argues, established and developed the subjective utility and scarcity theory of value, as well as the theory that prices, or the value of money, depend on its supply and demand. This continental, or 'pre-Austrian' tradition, was destroyed, rather than developed, by Adam Smith whose strong Calvinist tendencies towards glorifying labour, toil and thrift is contrasted with the emphasis in Scholastic economic thought towards labour in the service of consumption.Tracing economic thought from the Greeks to the Scottish Enlightenment, this book is notable for its inclusion of all the important figures in each school of thought with their theories assessed in historical context. Classical Economics, the second volume of Professor Rothbard's history of economic thought from an Austrian perspective, is also available.

Read more less

Working with Latino Youth offers counselors, teachers, social workers, therapists, and other professionals-no matter what their level of experience or cultural background-an accessible and practical guide for working effectively with Latino children and adolescents. This vital resource, which integrates development, culture, and psychological intervention, helps meet the challenge of addressing an array of culturally specific problems such as assimilation, discrimination, scholastic failure, pregnancy, substance abuse, and delinquency. The authors, Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Luis A. Vargas, present a dynamic new model for working with Latino youth that considers the individual within the context of their families, their communities, and their culture. "At a time when America and its professionals increasingly need to be responsive to the diversity of cultures, Koss-Chioino and Vargas have authored a comprehensive overview of Latino youth, who are rich in their own diversity. This highly readable book provides a wealth of information and examples about a 'new ethnic majority' to assist practitioners in their approaches not only with Latino children and families, but also with applicability to a variety of cultures through the contextual model these authors describe."—Michael C. Roberts, professor and director, Clinical Child Psychology Program, University of Kansas

Read more less

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade adventure story about a rescue dog, Brave, who befriends a troubled boy in the heart of Texas. Brave is a dog without a home. After surviving a hurricane in San Antonio, Texas, stray dog Brave is hungry and afraid. When twelve-year-old Dylan finds Brave, he's feeling lost himself. Dylan can't help but think they were brought together for a reason. But Dylan knows it'll take hard work and training in order to convince his parents that he can keep this skittish pup. As Dylan and Brave's friendship grows, they learn to rescue each other in more ways than one. Can Dylan give Brave a forever home? AGES: 8 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn.

Read more less

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade adventure story about a rescue dog, Brave, who befriends a troubled boy in the heart of Texas. Brave is a dog without a home. After surviving a hurricane in San Antonio, Texas, stray dog Brave is hungry and afraid. When twelve-year-old Dylan finds Brave, he's feeling lost himself. Dylan can't help but think they were brought together for a reason. But Dylan knows it'll take hard work and training in order to convince his parents that he can keep this skittish pup. As Dylan and Brave's friendship grows, they learn to rescue each other in more ways than one. Can Dylan give Brave a forever home? AGES: 8 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn.

Read more less

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade story about a misunderstood rescue dog, Poppy, who finds kinship with an outcast girl on the coast of Northern California. Poppy is a dog with a problem. She has too much energy, and her elderly owner can keep her only if she can be trained. When twelve-year-old Hannah moves to the coast of Northern California, she thinks she can help turn this rambunctious puppy into the good dog she knows Poppy is. But Hannah realises Poppy's reputation as a pit bull means she has to work even harder to prove that Poppy and dogs like her deserve a second chance. Will Hannah train Poppy into the perfect dog before it's too late? AGES: 8 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn.

Read more less

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade story about a misunderstood rescue dog, Poppy, who finds kinship with an outcast girl on the coast of Northern California. Poppy is a dog with a problem. She has too much energy, and her elderly owner can keep her only if she can be trained. When twelve-year-old Hannah moves to the coast of Northern California, she thinks she can help turn this rambunctious puppy into the good dog she knows Poppy is. But Hannah realises Poppy's reputation as a pit bull means she has to work even harder to prove that Poppy and dogs like her deserve a second chance. Will Hannah train Poppy into the perfect dog before it's too late? AGES: 8 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn.

Read more less

The Middle Ages saw a flourishing of mysticism that was astonishing for its richness and distinctiveness. The medieval period was unlike any other period of Christianity in producing people who frequently claimed visions of Christ and Mary, uttered prophecies, gave voice to ecstatic experiences, recited poems and songs said to emanate directly from God and changed their ways of life as a result of these special revelations. Many recipients of these alleged divine gifts were women. Yet the female contribution to western Europe's intellectual and religious development is still not well understood. Popular or lay religion has been overshadowed by academic theology, which was predominantly the theology of men. This timely book rectifies the neglect by examining a number of women whose lives exemplify traditions which were central to medieval theology but whose contributions have tended to be dismissed as 'merely spiritual' by today's scholars. In their different ways, visionaries like Richeldis de Faverches (founder of the Holy House at Walsingham, or 'England's Nazareth'), the learned Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch of Brabant (exemplary voice of the Beguine tradition of love mysticism), charismatic traveller and pilgrim Margery Kempe and anchoress Julian of Norwich all challenged traditional male scholastic theology. Designed for the use of undergraduate student and general reader alike, this attractive survey provides an introduction to thirteen remarkable women and sets their ideas in context.

Read more less

In the early fifteenth century, two Tibetan monks debated how to transform the body ritually into a celestial palace inhabited by buddhas. The discussion between Ngorchen Künga Zangpo and Khédrupjé Gélek Pelzangpo concerned the mechanics of this tantric ritual practice, known as body mandala, as well as the most reliable sources to follow in performing it. As representatives of the Sakya and emerging Geluk traditions respectively, these authors spoke for communities of Buddhist practitioners vying for patronage and prestige in an evolving Tibetan scholastic culture. Their debate witnessed clashes between imagination and deception, continuity and rupture, and tradition and innovation.Searching for the Body demonstrates the significance of the body mandala debate for understandings of Tibetan Buddhism as well as conversations on representation and embodiment occurring across the disciplines today. Rae Erin Dachille explores how Ngorchen and Khédrup used citational practice as a tool for making meaning, arguing that their texts reveal a deep connection between ritual mechanics and interpretive practice. She contends that this debate addresses strikingly contemporary issues surrounding interpretation, intertextuality, creativity, essentialism, and naturalness. Buddhist ideas about the construction of meaning and the body offer new ways of understanding representation, which Dachille illuminates in an epilogue that considers Glenn Ligon’s engagement with Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. By placing Buddhist thought in dialogue with contemporary artistic practice and cultural critique, Searching for the Body offers vital new perspectives on the transformative potential of representations in defining and transcending the human.

Read more less

Paris in 1200 was a city in transition. The great cathedral of Notre Dame was halfway through its construction and walls were being built to enclose the new, larger limits of the city. Pope Innocent III ordered all French churches closed to punish King Philip Augustus for his remarriage; the king himself negotiated an unprecedented truce with the English; and the students of Paris threatened a general strike, punctuated with incidents of violence, to protest infringements of their rights. John W. Baldwin brilliantly resurrects this key moment in Parisian history using documents only from 1190 to 1210—a narrow focus made possible by the availability of collections of the Capetian monarchy and the medieval scholastic thinkers. This unique approach results in a vivid snapshot of the city at the turn of the thirteenth century. Paris, 1200 introduces the reader to the city itself and its inhabitants. Three "faces" exemplify these inhabitants: that of the celebrated scholar Pierre the Chanter, of King Philip Augustus, and of the more deeply hidden visages of women. The book examines the city's primary institutions: the royal government, the Church, and its celebrated schools that evolved into the university at Paris. Finally, it offers an account of the delights and pleasures, as well as the fears and sorrows, of Parisian life in this period.

Read more less

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade adventure story about a rescue dog, Star, who befriends a shy boy as they hunt for lost treasure near Lake Michigan. Star is a dog that everyone passes by. She'd never been outside before ending up in a Michigan animal shelter, and finds it hard to fit in with other dogs as the only one with a hearing impairment. When twelve-year-old Julian meets Star while volunteering at the shelter, Julian recognises the feeling of being an outsider but wanting to make friends. Julian's sure that Star is a diamond in the rough, just like him. He thinks they can prove that to everyone else by finding lost treasure near Lake Michigan. Will Julian and Star's friendship be the key to solving the mystery of Lake Michigan? AGES: 10 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn

Read more less

Using over 100 multiple-choice questions that gauge each partner's personality and his or her typical responses to everyday dilemmas, relationship expert Mary Carty tackles the issues that plague every marriage and provides insightful wisdom and advice on how to successfully navigate tricky situations. While society provides training programs, degree majors, and a variety of standardised tests, like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the Graduation Record Exam (GRE), and the Medical College Admission test (MCAT), to prepare people for their career paths, there are no degree programs, internships, or required training for marriage. PMAT: The Perfect Marriage Aptitude Test contains two hundred multiple-choice questions, designed to prepare brides, grooms, and civil-union couples in their quest to building healthy marriages and partnerships. Part communication tool kit and part reference book, PMAT has everything you need to test your aptitude for a compatible relationship. Delving into everything from common pet peeves, like leaving clothes on the floor, to weightier issues, like money management, The Perfect Marriage Aptitude Test is a self-guided counselling course designed to get every couple past the small stuff to the truly enriching life of happily-ever after. The two sections of the book provide first, tests and answer sheets on subjects that range from home to fitness to finance; and the second section, 'Making Sense of Your Answers' offers analysis and means for every couple to productively collaborate to work out any issues of concern or conflict and enhance the areas in which they are already in harmony.

Read more less

In Islamic education, the development of teaching and learning for the physical and spiritual training of humanity places equal importance on revealed and acquired knowledge. This book provides a greater understanding of Islamic pedagogy from a spiritual perspective, which requires empathy with the Islamic premise of the inseparable nature of knowledge and the sacred. The book is intended to provide a particular insight into the relationship between Islamic pedagogy and embodied learning and associated common features that are seen in Madrasahs, and related educational institutions. The first part of the book traces key moments in madrasah history and their formation; diversity of Islamic institutions, and the notion of the scholastic community. It identifies the rise of the Islamic education institutions and the diversity within their formation. Despite the partial disappearance of the spiritual in many Islamic education institutions, the authors argue that the spiritual construct is still deeply implicated in the reification of Islamic pedagogy and in the process of embodiment. The second part of the book draws on unravelling knowledge and the sacred that considers the philosophy of Islam and knowledge, spiritual understanding of Islamic education, and knowledge and the sacred as an educational compass. Finally, the book explores the implications of Islamic pedagogy and embodied learning, the universal nature of Islamic pedagogy, and reflections for the future. By bringing to bear a variety of Islamic and educational studies research, relative to Islamic pedagogy, this book opens up new avenues for research into Islamic education. The book will be of particular interest to scholars investigating Islamic education, Islamic pedagogy, and embodied learning.

Read more less

Winner of the Albert Hourani Book AwardSufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world.In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi “Hidden Caliphate,” as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China.By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the “Great Game,” Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.

Read more less

In Teaching Bodies, leading scholar of Christian thought Mark D. Jordan offers an original reading of the Summa of Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Reading backward, Jordan interprets the main parts of the Summa, starting from the conclusion, to reveal how Thomas teaches morals by directing attention to the way God teaches morals, namely through embodied scenes: the incarnation, the gospels, and the sacraments. It is Thomas’s confidence in bodily scenes of instruction that explains the often overlooked structure of the middle part of the Summa, which begins and ends with Christian revisions of classical exhortations of the human body as a pathway to the best human life. Among other things, Jordan argues, this explains Thomas’s interest in the stages of law and the limits of virtue as the engine of human life. Rather than offer a synthesis of Thomistic ethics, Jordan insists that we read Thomas as theology to discover the unification of Christian wisdom in a pattern of ongoing moral formation. Jordan supplements his close readings of the Summa with reflections on Thomas’s place in the history of Christian moral teaching—and thus his relevance for teaching and writing in the present. What remains a puzzle is why Thomas chose to stage this incarnational moral teaching within the then-new genres of university disputation—the genres we think of as “Scholastic.” Yet here again the structure of the Summa provides an answer. In Jordan’s deft analysis, Thomas’s minimalist refusal to tell a new story except by juxtaposing selections from inherited philosophical and theological traditions is his way of opening room for God’s continuing narration in the development of the human soul. The task of writing theology, as Thomas understands it, is to open a path through the inherited languages of classical thought so that divine pedagogy can have its effect on the reader. As such, the task of the Summa, in Mark Jordan’s hands, is a crucial and powerful way to articulate Christian morals today.

Read more less

The Venerable Bede composed On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum) and On Times (De temporibus) at the outset of his career, about AD 703. Bede fashioned himself as a teacher to his people and his age, and these two short works show him selecting, editing, and clarifying a mass of difficult and sometimes dangerous material. He insisted that his reader understand the mathematical and physical basis of time, and though he was dependent on his textual sources, he also included observations of his own. But Bede was also a Christian exegete who thought deeply and earnestly about how salvation-history connected to natural history and the history of the peoples of the earth. To comprehend his religious mentality, we have to take on board his views on “science” —— and vice versa. On the Nature of Things is a survey of cosmology. Starting with Creation and the universe as a whole, Bede reads the cosmos downwards from the heavens, through the atmosphere, to the oceans and rivers of earth. This order (recapitulating the four elements or fire, air, water and earth) was derived from his main source, Isidore of Seville’s On the Nature of Things. However, Bede separated out Isidore’s chapters on time, and dealt with them in On Times. On Times, like its “second, revised and enlarged edition” The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), works upwards from the smallest units of time, through the day and night, the week, month and year, to the world-ages. Bede’s innovation is to introduce a practical manual of Easter reckoning, or computus, into this survey. Hidden beneath the matter-of-fact surface of the work is an intense polemic about the correct principles for determining the date of Easter —— principles which in Bede’s view are bound up with both the integrity of nature as God’s creation, and the theological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. In these works Bede re-united cosmology and time-reckoning to form a unified science of computus that would become the framework for Carolingian and Scholastic basic scientific education.

Read more less

The Venerable Bede composed On the Nature of Things (De natura rerum) and On Times (De temporibus) at the outset of his career, about AD 703. Bede fashioned himself as a teacher to his people and his age, and these two short works show him selecting, editing, and clarifying a mass of difficult and sometimes dangerous material. He insisted that his reader understand the mathematical and physical basis of time, and though he was dependent on his textual sources, he also included observations of his own. But Bede was also a Christian exegete who thought deeply and earnestly about how salvation-history connected to natural history and the history of the peoples of the earth. To comprehend his religious mentality, we have to take on board his views on “science” —— and vice versa. On the Nature of Things is a survey of cosmology. Starting with Creation and the universe as a whole, Bede reads the cosmos downwards from the heavens, through the atmosphere, to the oceans and rivers of earth. This order (recapitulating the four elements or fire, air, water and earth) was derived from his main source, Isidore of Seville’s On the Nature of Things. However, Bede separated out Isidore’s chapters on time, and dealt with them in On Times. On Times, like its “second, revised and enlarged edition” The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), works upwards from the smallest units of time, through the day and night, the week, month and year, to the world-ages. Bede’s innovation is to introduce a practical manual of Easter reckoning, or computus, into this survey. Hidden beneath the matter-of-fact surface of the work is an intense polemic about the correct principles for determining the date of Easter —— principles which in Bede’s view are bound up with both the integrity of nature as God’s creation, and the theological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. In these works Bede re-united cosmology and time-reckoning to form a unified science of computus that would become the framework for Carolingian and Scholastic basic scientific education.

Read more less