Search results for ""University of Notre Dame Press""

The essays in Living Dangerously, written by some of the leading scholars in the fields of history and literature, examine the lives of those who lived on the margins of medieval and early modern European society. While some essays explore obvious marginalized classes, such as criminals, gypsies, and prostitutes, others challenge traditional understandings of the margin by showing that female mystics, speculators in the Dutch mercantile empire, and writers of satire, for example, could fall into the margins. These essays reveal the symbiotic relationship that exists between the marginalized and the social establishment: the dominant culture needs its margins. This well-written and lively collection covers a wide geographical area, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, making it an ideal resource for a broad range of courses in European history and literature. Contributors: Barbara A. Hanawalt, Richard Firth Green, Vickie Ziegler, Dyan Elliott, Anne J. Cruz, Ian Frederick Moulton, and Mary Lindemann.

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Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the Twentieth Century explores the development of American social science by highlighting the contributions of those scholars who were both students and objects of a segregated society. The book asks how segregation has influenced, and continues to influence, the development of American social thought and social science scholarship. Jonathan Scott Holloway and Ben Keppel present the work of thirty-one black social scientists whose work was published between the rise of the Tuskegee model of higher education and the end of the Black Power Era. Even though they had to fashion their careers outside of their respective fields' mainstream, the intellectuals featured here produced scholarship that helped define the contours of the social sciences as they evolved over the course of the twentieth century. Theirs was the work of pioneers, now for the first time gathered in one anthology. After a comprehensive introduction and survey of the selections to follow, Holloway and Keppel present the founding parents of African American social science, including excerpts from Alexander Crummell, Anna Julia Cooper, and others. They then examine contributions from the first real generation of professionally trained black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois. The interactions between cultural production and social scientific knowledge are examined through the work of various scholars, including Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston. The volume then explores the scholarship produced by the leading progressive social scientists of the day on issues of race and class and examines social scientific scholarship that put African American struggles in an international context. The book concludes by presenting the scholarship of, among others, Hylan Lewis, Joyce Ladner, and William Julius Wilson, which most effectively highlights the complex state of “raced” social science thought during the age of desegregation in academia.

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Unarguably, Jean-Luc Marion is the leading figure in French phenomenology as well as one of the proponents of the so-called “theological turn” in European philosophy. In this volume, Kevin Hart has assembled a stellar group of philosophers and theologians from the United States, Britain, France, and Australia to examine Marion’s work—especially his later work—from a variety of perspectives. The resulting volume is an indispensable resource for scholars working at the intersection of philosophy and theology. Hart characterizes Marion’s work as a profound response to two major philosophical events: the end of metaphysics and the beginning of phenomenology. From the vantage point reached by Marion over the years, Hart argues, that end and that beginning are one and the same. Yet their unity is elusive: in order to discern it, the student of Marion must follow his vigorous and subtle rethinking of the history of modern philosophy and the nature of phenomenology. Only then can the reader begin to perceive many things that metaphysics has occluded, especially the nature of selfhood and our relations with God. The newfound unity of these two events is productive; it allows Marion to revise and extend the philosophy of disclosure that Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger were the first to practice. With Marion as guide, we can also refigure the human subject—the gifted one (l’adonné)—and thus also secure a phenomenological understanding of revelation. Marion challenges theologians to pursue the implications of this move. This is the Marion for whom a revived phenomenology is philosophy today, the Marion deeply concerned to understand, maintain, and, if need be, rework the central insights of Husserl and Heidegger. The volume includes essays that consider The Erotic Phenomenon (2003), a rethinking of human subjectivity in terms of the possibility of loving and being loved. Throughout, the contributors engage key concepts defined by Marion—givenness, the saturated phenomenon, erotic reduction, and counter-experience—and Marion himself concludes with a retrospective essay written in response to criticisms of his work.

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By enabling the spiritual or ineffable to register as visible and palpable, ceremonies perform the essential cultural work of ensuring continuity of belief and practice across generations. In the process, each ceremony becomes a visual drama with highly scripted acts, movements, and rhythms. Unlike anthropologists in the field, scholars of the medieval and early modern world cannot witness ceremonies—the processions, dramas, rituals, and liturgies—and their choreography, or how they engaged with time and space. Denied the possibility of personal observation, how are historians to understand ceremonies such as a Catholic liturgical procession moving through a medieval town or the triumphal entry of a Renaissance ruler into a subjected city? Fortunately, considerable documentary, visual, and material evidence survives from Europe to help scholars frame necessary questions about pre-modern ceremonies. The essayists in this volume identify and recover the excitement and dynamism that characterized ceremonial culture in pre-modern Europe. Each turns to key issues: the relation between public and private space, the development of fully-realized dramas and rituals from earlier forms, and the semiotic code that ceremonies manifested to their audiences. Their subjects include the Adventus procession at Chartres; Epiphany and Palm Sunday rituals in medieval Moscow; the staged entry of the future Emperor Charles V into Bruges in 1515; and ceremonies in Italian Renaissance cities interpreted through the lens of Renaissance optical theory. What emerges from each essay is a deeper understanding that any ceremony is, finally, an attempt to close the divide between abstract and literal, ideal and actual.

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With their dozens of universities and colleges, the Jesuits held a monopoly over higher education in Catholic Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Using rich, previously untapped sources, Marcus Hellyer traces the development of science instruction at these institutions over a period stretching from the Counter-Reformation to the height of the Enlightenment. He argues that the Scientific Revolution was not an all-or-nothing affair; Jesuit professors enthusiastically adopted particular elements, such as experimental natural philosophy, while doggedly rejecting others, such as mechanical theories of matter. Hellyer's examination of the Jesuit colleges over a span of two centuries, from the late sixteenth century to 1773, demonstrates that digesting the New Science was a lengthy process. crucial components of the Scientific Revolution when the Society was suppressed in 1773. Catholic Physics also explores the fascinating interaction between Jesuit natural philosophy and theology, which, though marked by constant tension, was also quite fruitful. For example, the censorship of natural philosophy by the Jesuit hierarchy in Rome was a negotiated process in which Jesuit professors accepted the necessity of censorship, yet constantly sought to circumvent regulations imposed on them by teaching controversial questions such as Copernican cosmology. After the Galileo affair, jesuit physics professors made sure they declared that heliocentrism was wrong, but they also taught their students the advantages it held over the rival cosmology sanctioned by the Catholic Church. By investigating the neglected yet influential Jesuit colleges of early modern Germany, Hellyer brings new sources and insight to the field of history of science. His pioneering book will be welcomed not only by historians but by those engaged in the important and ongoing debate between science and religion.

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Israeli Jews’ response to and appropriation of Greek culture is the subject of the essays in this rich volume. Contributors provide evidence of Greek cultural influence in Judea and Galilee, from before the Maccabean revolt into the rabbinic period. They also probe the limits of that influence, the persistence of Semitic languages and thought patterns, and the exclusiveness of Jewish religion. While Greek thought had a significant impact on Judaism, Jews remained distinct in the Greco-Roman world. Hellenistic Judaism’s relationship to Greek culture was never simply one of assimilation or repudiation. Similarly, the Hebrew and Aramaic-speaking Judaism of the homeland remained distinct from the Hellenistic Judaism of the Diaspora.

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Louis IX, king of France from 1226 to 1270 and twice crusader, was canonized in 1297. He was the last king canonized during the medieval period, and was both one of the most important saints and one of the most important kings of the later Middle Ages. In Blessed Louis, the Most Glorious of Kings: Texts Relating to the Cult of Saint Louis of France, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin presents six previously untranslated texts that informed medieval views of St. Louis IX: two little-known but early and important vitae of Saint Louis; two unedited sermons by the Parisian preacher Jacob of Lausanne (d. 1322); and a liturgical office and proper mass in his honor—the most commonly used liturgical texts composed for Louis’ feast day—which were widely copied, read, and disseminated in the Middle Ages. Gaposchkin’s aim is to present to a diverse readership the Louis as he was known and experienced in the Middle Ages: a saint celebrated by the faithful for his virtue and his deeds. She offers for the first time to English readers a typical hagiographical view of Saint Louis, one in counterbalance to that set forth in Jean of Joinville’s Life of Saint Louis. Although Joinville’s Life has dominated our views of Louis, Joinville’s famous account was virtually unknown beyond the French royal court in the Middle Ages and was not printed until the sixteenth century. His portrayal of Louis as an individual and deeply charismatic personality is remarkable, but it is fundamentally unrepresentative of the medieval understanding of Louis. The texts that Gaposchkin translates give immediate access to the reasons why medieval Christians took Louis to be a saint; the texts, and the image of Saint Louis presented in them, she argues, must be understood within the context of the developing history of sanctity and sainthood at the end of the Middle Ages.

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In The Costs of Justice, Brian K. Grodsky provides qualitative analyses of how transitional justice processes have evolved in diverse ways in postcommunist Poland, Croatia, Serbia, and Uzbekistan, by examining the decision-making processes and goals of those actors who contributed to key transitional justice policy decisions. Grodsky draws on extensive interviews with key political figures, human rights leaders, and representatives of various international, state, and nongovernmental bodies, as well as detailed analysis of international and local news reports, to offer a systematic and qualitatively compelling account of transitional justice from the perspective of activists who, at the end of a previous regime, were suddenly transformed from downtrodden victim to empowered judge. Grodsky challenges the argument that transitional justice in post-repressive states is largely a function of the relative power of new versus old elites. He maintains that a new regime's transitional justice policy is closely linked to its capacity to provide goods and services expected by constituents, not to political power struggles. In introducing this goods variable, so common to broad political analysis but largely overlooked in the transitional justice debate, Grodsky argues that we must revise our understanding of transitional justice. It is not an exceptional issue; it is but one of many political decisions faced by leaders in a transition state.

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Journey with Ernesto Galarza through time, place, and culture in this stunning memoir of Mexican American identity and acculturation. Barrio Boy is the remarkable story of one boy's journey from a Mexican village so small its main street didn't have a name, to the barrio of Sacramento, California, bustling and thriving in the early decades of the twentieth century. With vivid imagery and a rare gift for re-creating a child's sense of time and place, Ernesto Galarza gives an account of the early experiences of his extraordinary life—from revolution in Mexico to segregation in the United States—that will continue to engage readers for generations to come. Since it was first published in 1971, Galarza’s classic work has been assigned in high school and undergraduate classrooms across the country, profoundly affecting thousands of students who read this true story of acculturation into American life. The 40th anniversary edition of this best-selling book includes a new text design and cover, as well an introduction by Ilan Stavans, the distinguished cultural critic and editor of the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, which places Barrio Boy and Ernesto Galarza in historical context.

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During the 1990s, judicial reform swept Latin America. While some of the region's supreme courts have been able to exercise increased power as a result of these reforms, others have not. Why do some instances of judicial reform appear to be leading to the development of a powerful judiciary while others have failed to do so? In this careful analysis, Jodi S. Finkel investigates judicial reform in Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. She suggests that while ruling parties can be induced to initiate judicial reforms by introducing constitutional revisions, they often prove unwilling to implement these constitutional changes by enacting required legislation. To understand the outcomes of judicial reform, as well as to predict where reforms are likely to empower courts, it is necessary to examine the political incentives faced by politicians at the implementation phase. Finkel argues that the implementation of judicial reform may serve the ruling party as an insurance policy, in that a strong judicial branch reduces the risks faced by a ruling party once it loses power and becomes the opposition. Finkel suggests that as the ruling party's probability of reelection declines, the likelihood of the enactment of reforms resulting in an empowered judiciary increases.

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On 31 May 1310, at the Place de Grève in Paris, the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris read out a sentence that declared Marguerite “called Porete,” a beguine from Hainault, to be a relapsed heretic, released her to secular authority for punishment, and ordered that all copies of a book she had written be confiscated. William next consigned Guiard of Cressonessart, an apocalyptic activist in the tradition of Joachim of Fiore and a would-be defender of Marguerite, to perpetual imprisonment. Over several months, William of Paris conducted inquisitorial processes against them, complete with multiple consultations of experts in theology and canon law. Though Guiard recanted at the last moment and thus saved his life, Marguerite went to her execution the day after her sentencing. The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor is an analysis of the inquisitorial trials, their political as well as ecclesiastical context, and their historical significance. Marguerite Porete was the first female Christian mystic burned at the stake after authoring a book, and the survival of her work makes her case absolutely unique. The Mirror of Simple Souls, rediscovered in the twentieth century and reconnected to Marguerite's name only a half-century ago, is now recognized as one of the most daring, vibrant, and original examples of the vernacular theology and beguine mysticism that emerged in late thirteenth-century Christian Europe. Field provides a new and detailed reconstruction of hitherto neglected aspects of Marguerite’s life, particularly of her trial, as well as the first extended consideration of her inquisitor's maneuvers and motivations. Additionally, he gives the first complete English translation of all of the trial documents and relevant contemporary chronicles, as well as the first English translation of Arnau of Vilanova’s intriguing “Letter to Those Wearing the Leather Belt,” directed to Guiard's supporters and urging them to submit to ecclesiastical authority.

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Part memoir, part handbook, part survey of the contemporary literary scene, Joan Frank’s Because You Have To: A Writing Life is a collection of essays that, taken together, provide a walking tour of the writing life. Frank’s aim is to form a coherent vision, one that may provide some communion about realities of the writer's vocation that have struck her as rarely revealed. Frank offers what she has learned as a writer not only to other writers, but to those to whom good writing matters. Her insights about "thinking on paper" are never dogmatic or pontifical; rather, they are cordial and intellectually welcoming. Original, witty, and practical, Frank ably steers us through the journey of her own life as a writer, as well as through the careers and work of other writers. Her subjects range widely, from the “boot camp” conditioning of marketing work to squaring off with rejection and envy; from sustaining belief in art’s necessity to the baffling subjectivity of literary perception and the magical books that nourish writers. Frank’s personal journey is wonderfully told, so that what in these essays is particular becomes useful and universal.

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Margot E. Fassler’s richly documented history—winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America—demonstrates how the Augustinians of St. Victor, Paris, used an art of memory to build sonic models of the church. This musical art developed over time, inspired by the religious ideals of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor and their understandings of image and the spiritual journey. Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris demonstrates the centrality of sequences to western medieval Christian liturgical and artistic experience, and to our understanding of change and continuity in medieval culture. Fassler examines the figure of Adam of St. Victor and the possible layers within the repertories created at various churches in Paris, probes the ways the Victorine sequences worked musically and exegetically, and situates this repertory within the intellectual and spiritual ideals of the Augustinian canons regular, especially those of the Abbey of St. Victor. Originally published in hardover in 1993, this paperback edition includes a new introduction by Fassler, in which she reviews the state of scholarship on late sequences since the original publication of Gothic Song. Her notes to the introduction provide the bibliography necessary for situating the Victorine sequences, and the late sequences in general, in contemporary thought.

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Experiencing Dominion contributes to ongoing debates on hegemony, power, and identity in contemporary historical and anthropological literature through an examination of the imperial encounter between the British and the Greeks of the Ionian Islands during the nineteenth century. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the imperial encounter, with topics including identity construction, the contestation over civil society, gender and the manipulation of public space, hegemony and accommodation, the role of law and of the institutions of criminal justice, and religion and imperial dominion. Thomas Gallant—widely recognized as one of the leading scholars in historical anthropology— argues that a great deal can be learned about colonialism in general through an analysis of the Ionian Islands, precisely because that colonial encounter was so atypical. For example, Gallant demonstrates that because the Ionian Greeks were racially white, Christian, and descendents of Europe’s classical forebears, the process of colonial identity formation was more ambiguous and complex than elsewhere in the Empire where physical and cultural distinctions were more obvious. Colonial officers finally decided the Ionian Greeks were “Mediterranean Irish” who should be treated like European savages. Experiencing Dominion pushes contemporary literature on historical anthropology in a new direction by moving the discussion away from an emphasis on a simple polarity between hegemony and resistance, and instead focusing on the shared interactions between colonizers and colonized, rulers and ruled, foreigners and locals. In this important study, Gallant emphasizes contingency and historical agency, examines intentionality, and explores the processes of accommodation and, when warranted, resistance. In so doing, he reconstructs the world Britons and Greeks made together on the Ionian Islands during the nineteenth century through their shared experience of dominion.

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In this engaging and innovative new book, French scholar Jacques Proust analyzes the image Europe presented to Japan, deliberately or otherwise, from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. Appearing for the first time in an American translation, Europe through the Prism of Japan relies on a large quantity of underexplored documents from which Proust has tried to reconstruct, like a puzzle, Japanese-European relations during the age of European exploration. This fascinating book describes in careful detail developments in Japanese culture and civilization during three hundred years of interaction between Japanese and Europeans, including Dutch merchants, Spanish Catholic missionaries, and German and Portuguese Jesuits. Proust examines not only Europeans’ influence on Japan but also the unique Japanese interpretation of European culture. This fresh perspective offers a prism through which Europe may be viewed and frequently sheds light on facets of European civilization of which not even the Europeans, at the time, were aware. Proust’s lively study is especially valuable because of its interdisciplinary nature. Covering topics as wide ranging as art history, theology, philosophy, political and social history, and even the history of medicine, Proust interweaves these fields to present a unified historical and intellectual fabric. This round-trip journey between Japan and the West, which in the sixteenth century took about four years and can be done today in twenty-four hours, has the advantage of imposing on comparative studies a unique geographical and historical framework. Proust broadens our understanding of two very different cultures by providing new insight into both European and Japanese history.

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This collection of twenty-two research papers explores the creative interaction between evolutionary and molecular biology, philosophy, and theology. It is the result of the third of five international research conferences co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley. The over arching goal of these conferences is to support the engagement of constructive theology with the natural sciences and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences. This series of conferences builds on the initial 1987 Vatican Observatory conference and its resulting publication, Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (1988), and on the previous Jointly-sponsored conferences and their publications, Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature (1993) and Chaos and Complexity (1995). Future conferences will focus on scientific topics including the neuroscience's, quantum physics, and quantum field theory.

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The Psalms generated more biblical commentary from early Christians than any other book of the Hebrew and Christian canon. While advances have been made in our understanding of the early Christian preoccupation with this book and the traditions employed to interpret it, no study on the Psalms traditions exists that can serve as a solid academic point of entry into the field. This collection of essays by distinguished patristic and biblical scholars fills this lacuna. It not only introduces readers to the main primary sources but also addresses the unavoidable interpretive issues present in the secondary literature. The essays in The Harp of Prophecy represent some of the very best scholarly approaches to the study of early Christian exegesis, bringing new interpretations to bear on the work of influential early Christian authorities such as Athanasius, Augustine, and Basil of Caesarea. Subjects that receive detailed study include the dynamics of early Christian political power, gender expressions, and the ancient conversation between Christian, Jewish, and Greek philosophical traditions. The essays and bibliographic materials enable readers to locate and read the early Christian sources for themselves and also serve to introduce the various interdisciplinary methods and perspectives that are currently brought to bear on early Christian psalm exegesis. Students and scholars of theology and biblical studies will be led in new directions of thought and interpretation by these innovative studies.

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Experiencing Dominion contributes to ongoing debates on hegemony, power, and identity in contemporary historical and anthropological literature through an examination of the imperial encounter between the British and the Greeks of the Ionian Islands during the nineteenth century. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the imperial encounter, with topics including identity construction, the contestation over civil society, gender and the manipulation of public space, hegemony and accommodation, the role of law and of the institutions of criminal justice, and religion and imperial dominion. Thomas Gallant—widely recognized as one of the leading scholars in historical anthropology— argues that a great deal can be learned about colonialism in general through an analysis of the Ionian Islands, precisely because that colonial encounter was so atypical. For example, Gallant demonstrates that because the Ionian Greeks were racially white, Christian, and descendents of Europe’s classical forebears, the process of colonial identity formation was more ambiguous and complex than elsewhere in the Empire where physical and cultural distinctions were more obvious. Colonial officers finally decided the Ionian Greeks were “Mediterranean Irish” who should be treated like European savages. Experiencing Dominion pushes contemporary literature on historical anthropology in a new direction by moving the discussion away from an emphasis on a simple polarity between hegemony and resistance, and instead focusing on the shared interactions between colonizers and colonized, rulers and ruled, foreigners and locals. In this important study, Gallant emphasizes contingency and historical agency, examines intentionality, and explores the processes of accommodation and, when warranted, resistance. In so doing, he reconstructs the world Britons and Greeks made together on the Ionian Islands during the nineteenth century through their shared experience of dominion.

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When Puerto Ricans and Cubans arrived in the United States both groups presented to American Catholics the paradox of cultures pervaded by Catholic symbols, attitudes, and traditions, but out of touch with the values and priorities of the institutional Church. Furthermore, both Cubans and Puerto Ricans tend to perceive themselves as being in the U.S. provisionally and therefore insist on holding on to their language and culture, while striving to build communities of their own where these values will be preserved. In this seminal volume Jaime R. Vidal and Lisandro Pérez present for the first time an in-depth historical analysis of the Puerto Rican and Cuban-American Catholic experience, beginning with their roots in the history of their homelands up to the closing of Vatican II. In the first section of Puerto Ricans, Vidal discusses the American Church’s attempt to assimilate them into its structure and style, which was at cross purposes with the Puerto Rican “revolving door” migration trends that have constantly reinforced their identity. Focusing on the Puerto Rican community in New York City, Vidal demonstrates that the policies of the institutional Church have made it difficult for them to find their place within the U.S. Catholic structure. This has led to a certain amount of marginalization of the Church within the Puerto Rican Community. Lisandro Pérez then discusses the Cuban-American Catholic experience, especially the first waves of Cuban migration during the 1960s. Since the first political exiles were from the upper and middle classes of Cuban society, this led to expectations that the Cubans would quickly blend into the white, middle-class American community at both the religious and the social levels. Pérez analyzes the response of the Miami diocese to support the exiles and concludes that the Cubans have not been fully assimilated into the American Catholic Church because they view themselves as an exiled society that hopes eventually to return to Cuba.

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Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Roots of Brazil is one of the iconic books on Brazilian history, society, and culture. Originally published in 1936, it appears here for the first time in an English language translation with a foreword, "Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?" by Pedro Meira Monteiro, one of the world's leading experts on Buarque de Holanda. Roots of Brazil focuses on the multiple cultural influences that forged twentieth-century Brazil, especially those of the Portuguese, the Spanish, other European colonists, Native Americans, and Africans. Buarque de Holanda argues that all of these originary influences were transformed into a unique Brazilian culture and society—a "transition zone." The book presents an understanding of why and how European culture flourished in a large, tropical environment that was totally foreign to its traditions, and the manner and consequences of this development. Buarque de Holanda uses Max Weber’s typological criteria to establish pairs of "ideal types" as a means of stressing particular characteristics of Brazilians, while also trying to understand and explain the local historical process. Along with other early twentieth-century works such as The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil by Caio Prado Júnior, Roots of Brazil set the parameters of Brazilian historiography for a generation and continues to offer keys to understanding the complex history of Brazil. Roots of Brazil has been published in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German, and French. This long-awaited English translation will interest students and scholars of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Latin American history, culture, literature, and postcolonial studies.

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Pastoral Quechua explores the story of how the Spanish priests and missionaries of the Catholic church in post-conquest Peru systematically attempted to “incarnate” Christianity in Quechua, a large family of languages and dialects spoken by the dense Andes populations once united under the Inca empire. By codifying (and imposing) a single written standard, based on a variety of Quechua spoken in the former Inca capital of Cuzco, and through their translations of devotional, catechetical, and liturgical texts for everyday use in parishes, the missionary translators were on the front lines of Spanish colonialism in the Andes. The Christian pastoral texts in Quechua are important witnesses to colonial interactions and power relations. Durston examines the broad historical contexts of Christian writing in Quechua; the role that Andean religious images and motifs were given by the Spanish translators in creating a syncretic Christian-Andean iconography of God, Christ, and Mary; the colonial linguistic ideologies and policies in play; and the mechanisms of control of the subjugated population that can be found in the performance practices of Christian liturgy, the organization of the texts, and even in certain aspects of grammar.

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The Writings of Charles De Koninck, volumes 1 and 2, present the first English editions of collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck (1906–1965). Ralph McInerny (1929–2010) was the project editor and prepared the excellent translations. Volume 1 contains writings ranging from De Koninck’s 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book The Cosmos. The short essay “Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?” demonstrates for the first time De Koninck’s distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. Volume 1 also includes a comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlining the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy, and a biographical essay by De Koninck’s son, Thomas.

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In Whores of Babylon, Frances E. Dolan offers a perceptive study of the central role that Catholics and Catholicism played in early modern English law, literature, and politics. She contends that despite sharing the same blood, origins, and history as their Protestant antagonists, Catholics provoked more prolific and intemperate visual and verbal representation, and more elaborate and sustained legal regulation, than any other marginal group in seventeenth-century England. This careful and thorough study examines legal and literary representations of the "Catholic menace" during three crises in Protestant/Catholic relations, from the Gunpowder Plot (1605) to the Popish Plot and Meal Tub Plot (1678-80). It also offers the first sustained analysis of the extent to which gender issues informed both Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in the early modern period. Available for the first time in paperback, this book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern England, Catholic history, and gender studies.

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Margaret Stieg Dalton offers a comprehensive study of the German Catholic cultural movement that lasted from the late nineteenth century until 1933. Rapidly advancing industrialization, higher literacy rates, rising real income, and increased leisure time created a demand for intellectually accessible entertainment. Technological developments not only gave rise to new forms of entertainment, but also to the means by which they were marketed and disseminated. At the same time, the effects of modernism were being felt in all areas of high culture. Dalton’s book examines the encounter of clergy and lay Catholics with both high culture and popular culture in Germany. German Catholic culture was more than the product of an individual who happened to be Catholic; it was intellectual and artistic activity with a specifically Catholic stamp, a unique blend that offered distinctive variants of art, literature, and music. In response to the predominant Protestant, nationalistic culture, German Catholics attempted to create an alternative cultural universe that would insulate them from a world that seemed to threaten their faith. Dalton’s book provides detailed insight into the manner in which Catholics and other Germans tried to determine to what extent the new world could be accepted while still holding on to traditional values. Catholicism, Popular Culture, and the Arts in Germany, 1880-1933 will be welcomed by anyone interested in European intellectual and cultural history.

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What are the consequences of different paths toward democracy? How can religion support democratic diversity? And what ongoing dilemmas do democratic governments face in reining in the armed forces that once ruled? The original essays in Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies investigate these and other questions, which Alfred Stepan addressed in his pioneering work as one of the most prominent comparative political scientists of the past four decades. The contributors, who came together at a conference in Stepan's honor at Columbia University in 2007, pay tribute to his work and illuminate some of the debates he launched, while advancing understanding of problems facing democracies around the world. The essays in Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies demonstrate the substantive, geographic, and methodological range of Stepan's work by building on many of his major scholarly contributions. Principal themes include authoritarianism, the breakdown of democratic regimes, transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, democratic consolidation, the role of the military in politics, and ways—including the varieties of federalism—to manage conflict democratically in societies that are divided by religious, ethnic, and national cleavages. The contributions range from Latin America to the post-Soviet regions, Iran, China, Turkey, Israel, Spain and Portugal, and the United States. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of political science, sociology, and international studies, particularly Latin American and Middle Eastern studies. Contributors: Scott Mainwaring, Douglas Chalmers, J. Samuel Fitch, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mark Ungar, László Bruszt, Robert M. Fishman, Mirjam Künkler, Ryan E. Carlin, Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Ashley Esarey, Edward L. Gibson, Shamil Midkhatovich Yenikeyeff, Brian H. Smith, Murat Akan, Hanna Lerner

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On December 25, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI published Deus caritas est ("God Is Love"), the first encyclical of his papacy. In Part I, Benedict XVI analyzes human and divine love in terms of eros and agape; presenting love as a fundamental force, Benedict argues that in the Christian, biblical understanding, love is a single reality with many dimensions. He declares to the world that "the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others" also carries cultural, political, and legal implications, arising from the fact that "love of God and love of neighbor" are "inseparable" and form a single commandment. Caritas, the "practice" of love of neighbor, is the theme of the second part of the encyclical. As Cardinal Cordes explains, "the encyclical represents the Magna carta of our work: to orient and to inspire the charitable work of the Catholic Church." In this volume, Cardinal Cordes offers his own studies and other reflections that investigate the meaning of Christian help, comment on the theological, spiritual, and canonical guidelines of Deus caritas est, and illustrate concrete ways to help the needy and, in doing so, experience the goodness of God.

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Mark McIntosh’s examination of the unique christological thought of twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar provides a valuable example of how christology and spirituality can come together to offer a more humanistic idea of Christ.

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The twentieth-century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) left behind an impressive canon of philosophical works and has continued to influence a scholarly community in Europe and North America, which has extended, critiqued, and applied his thought in many academic fields. Jonathan Chaplin introduces Dooyeweerd for the first time to many English readers by critically expounding Dooyeweerd’s social and political thought and by exhibiting its pertinence to contemporary civil society debates. Chaplin begins by contextualizing Dooyeweerd’s thought, first in relation to present-day debates and then in relation to the work of the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). Chaplin outlines the distinctive theory of historical and cultural development that serves as an essential backdrop to Dooyeweerd’s substantive social philosophy; examines Dooyeweerd’s notion of societal structural principles; and sets forth his complex classification of particular types of social structure and their various interrelationships. Chaplin provides a detailed examination of Dooyeweerd’s theory of the state, its definitive nature, and its proper role vis-à-vis other elements of society. Dooyeweerd’s contributions, Chaplin concludes, assist us in mapping the ways in which state and civil society should be related to achieve justice and the public good.

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The University of Notre Dame’s connection with Ireland has been entrenched in Notre Dame’s heritage and identity since the founding of the university in 1842. The university is also closely associated with Ireland through its renowned football team, the Fighting Irish. When some thirty-five thousand Americans descended on Dublin, Ireland, for the Emerald Isle Classic football game between Notre Dame and Navy (played on September 1, 2012) at Aviva Stadium, the relationship between Notre Dame and the land and its people was celebrated throughout Dublin and the rest of Ireland. Now the allure of both Ireland and the Emerald Isle Classic football game are brought together in Notre Dame’s Happy Returns: Dublin, the Experience, the Game. Senior University Photographer Matt Cashore took thousands of photographs for this book, and has selected nearly two hundred of his favorite shots for this large-format collection, capturing the sights, historic places, and cultural riches that make Ireland special for fans of the Fighting Irish. Woven together with brief cultural and historical captions by Brian Ó Conchubhair and Susan Mullen Guibert, Notre Dame’s Happy Returns contains dozens of full-page photographs of Ireland’s capital city. Ranging from art and architecture to spectacular views of Dublin Castle, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Trinity College, Casino Marino, Saint Stephen’s Green, shops, pubs, and other notable landmarks, the photographs capture the mythical attraction of one of Europe’s most vibrant cities and offer readers a glimpse of its rich history. The photographs and text also highlight the university’s commitment to scholarship through the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Notre Dame’s Catholic tradition of service in Ireland, and the extraordinary beauty of the countryside beyond Dublin. In addition, the book explores the introduction of American football in Ireland and Notre Dame’s role in elevating the sport there, and contains a special section on the 2012 Notre Dame–Navy game in Dublin. As travel guide, sports book, and lush photographic essay all in one, Notre Dame’s Happy Returns is a must have for those who attended the Notre Dame–Navy game in Aviva Stadium as well as for all Notre Dame football fans. It will also be of interest to graduates, subway alumni, members of the Notre Dame family, and university supporters for whom Ireland is a spiritual and ancestral home.

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Since it was first published in 1991, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics has received praise from a wide range of commentators, both Catholic and Protestant. This second edition includes discussion of works that have appeared since the early 1990s, especially the first papal document to address fundamental questions of moral theology, Veritatis Splendor. Those who already have adopted the book for classroom use will welcome this new edition, while those who have just been introduced to it will find an authoritative account of the status that virtue-centered theological ethics enjoys today. Following a new preface, the text of the six chapters from the original edition remains unchanged. However, Romanus Cessario has substantially updated his notes to account for recent literature on the subject, and a new chapter that accommodates his original study to current developments in moral theology. This second edition will inspire a new generation of students and teachers.

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In seventeenth-century France, southwest of Paris, the Port-Royal convent became the center of the Jansenist movement and of its adherents’ resistance to church and throne. Three abbesses from the Arnauld family spearheaded this resistance: Mère Angélique Arnauld (1591-1661), Mère Agnès Arnauld (1593-1671), and Mère Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d'Andilly (1624-1684). Although many books have been written about the tragic lives of the Port-Royal nuns, John J. Conley provides the first study of the radical Augustinian philosophy developed by these remarkable abbesses during decades of persecution by Louis XIV and his ecclesiastical allies. Openly declaring themselves “disciples of Saint Augustine,” the Arnauld abbesses forged a philosophy notable for its original treatment of the attributes that stressed divine otherness; a moral philosophy of virtue rooted in grace; and a politics that supported the right of women to resist abuses of religious and civil authority. Although their philosophy was clearly influenced by their male Jansenist mentors, the nuns’ radical Augustinianism maintains its own gendered originality: their philosophy of virtue is closely tied to practices valued in a contemplative convent setting; their defense of freedom of conscience is linked to their defense of women’s right to exercise religious authority; and their negative theology, focused on divine incomprehensibility, depicts a God beyond sexual difference. A fascinating account that includes translations ranging from abbatial conferences to private letters, Adoration and Annihilation is an important chronicle of the doctrinal battles of early modern Catholicism.

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Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico examines the challenges Mexico faces in reforming the administration of its justice system, which Cornelius sees as critical for the consolidation of democracy, the well-being of Mexican citizens, and successful U.S.-Mexican relations. . . . In addition, the book presents sources of empirical data, case studies evaluating state and local level challenges, and analyses of best practices. Contributors: David A. Shirk, Alejandra Ríos Cázares, Robert Buffington, Pablo Piccato, Elena Azaola, Marcelo Bergman, Benjamin Nelson Reames, Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, Sigrid Arzt, Carlos Silva, Sara Schatz, Hugo Concha, Ana Laura Magaloni Kerpel, Elisa Speckman Guerra, Héctor Fix-Fierro, Jeffrey K. Staton, Robert M. Kossick, Jr., Rubén Minutti Z., Pablo Parás, Kathleen Staudt, Irasema Coronado, Rosalva Aída Hernández, Héctor Ortiz Elizondo, Robert O. Varenik, Mario Arroyo Juárez, Allison Rowland, Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, John J. Bailey, and Wayne A. Cornelius.

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"For years, I've wondered in amazement how Walt McDonald does what he does, poem after poem, book after book. He sings like no one else. In Climbing the Divide, McDonald has made his strongest collection of poems yet." —David Citino, author of The News and Other Poems "Climbing the Divide must have been written with a pen Walt McDonald dipped into his heart. Crisscrossing generations, poems detail watching a grandfather with knuckles the size of walnuts carve a grizzly bear out of oak, taking car keys away from a father 'who drove tanks for Patton' and thinking about nights in the jungle of Vietnam while pushing a granddaughter in a swing because her father is training overseas for Desert Storm. Binding us to his Texas world in sensual detail about men with big-boned fists who inhabit a land where the moon pockmarks the sky, Walt McDonald refuses to let moments of communion be swallowed by 'war on every channel.' His poems stay lodged in the heart to remind us why we need to celebrate, even in a world that threatens to drown out song." —Vivian Shipley, author of When There Is No Shore "I spent one whole amazing fall morning engrossed in this book. What impresses me most is the love and music and startling intelligence with which, for all of us, Walt McDonald charts the territory beyond mid-life." —Jeanne Murray Walker The poems in Climbing the Divide celebrate with praise and amazement the wonders and risks of wilderness and family, of friends before and after the war. The boy in these poems grows up during World War II, feisty in spite of losses and the harsh, hardscrabble land where he lives. Surrounded by heroes, he learns ranching and faith from parents, extended family, and neighbors. In pilot training and war and back home with friends and memories of friends missing in action, he finds delight with his wife, who makes "magical hammocks at bedtime" for their children. Despite heartache and rage, they discover more hope and joy than they thought possible while growing older—jogging at 65 in winter, hiking grizzly country with bells, and "climbing the divide," knowing they're nearer each day to "the dark, hollow halo of space."

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In recent years, historians have rediscovered the religious dimensions of the Enlightenment. This volume offers a thorough reappraisal of the so-called “Catholic Enlightenment” as a transnational Enlightenment movement. This Catholic Enlightenment was at once ultramontane and conciliarist, sometimes moderate but often surprisingly radical, with participants active throughout Europe in universities, seminaries, salons, and the periodical press. In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, the contributors, primarily European scholars, provide intellectual biographies of twenty Catholic Enlightenment figures across eighteenth-century Europe, many of them little known in English-language scholarship on the Enlightenment and pre-revolutionary eras. These figures represent not only familiar French intellectuals of the Catholic Enlightenment but also Iberian, Italian, English, Polish, and German thinkers. The essays focus on the intellectual and cultural factors influencing the lives and works of their subjects, revealing the often global networks of intellectual sociability and reading that united them both to the Catholic Enlightenment and to eighteenth-century policies and projects. The volume, whose purpose is to advance the understanding of a transnational "Catholic Enlightenment," will be a reliable reference for historians, theologians, and scholars working in religious studies.

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In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siècle British archipelago and explores its impact on the work of James Joyce, a towering figure of literary modernism. Based largely on archival research, the first three chapters trace the legal, social, and economic forces that fueled an upsurge in sex scandal over the course of the Irish Home Rule debates during James Joyce’s childhood. The remaining chapters examine Joyce’s use of scandal in his work throughout his career, beginning with his earliest known poem, “Et Tu, Healy,” written when he was nine years old to express outrage over the politically disastrous Parnell scandal. Backus’s readings of Joyce’s essays in a Trieste newspaper, the Dubliners short stories, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses show Joyce’s increasingly intricate employment of scandal conventions, ingeniously twisted so as to disable scandal’s reifying effects. Scandal Work pursues a sequence of politically motivated sex scandals, which it derives from Joyce's work. It situates Joyce within an alternative history of the New Journalism’s emergence in response to the Irish Land Wars and the Home Rule debates, from the Phoenix Park murders and the first Dublin Castle scandal to “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” and the Oscar Wilde scandal. Her voluminous scholarship encompasses historical materials on Victorian and early twentieth-century sex scandals, Irish politics, and newspaper evolution as well as providing significant new readings of Joyce’s texts.

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In his latest collection of literary fiction, Mark Brazaitis evokes with sympathy, insight, and humor the lives of characters in a small Ohio town. The ten short stories of The Incurables limn the mental landscape of people facing conditions they believe are insolvable, from the oppressive horrors of mental illness to the beguiling and baffling complexities of romantic and familial love. In the book’s opening story, “The Bridge,” a new sheriff must confront a suicide epidemic as well as his own deteriorating mental health. In “Classmates,” a man sets off to visit the wife of a classmate who has killed himself. Is he hoping to write a story about his classmate or to observe the aftermath of what his own suicide attempt, if successful, would have been like? In the title story, a down-on-his-luck porn actor returns to his hometown and winds up in the mental health ward of the local hospital, where he meets a captivating woman. Other stories in the collection include “A Map of the Forbidden,” about a straight-laced man who is tempted to cheat on his wife after his adulterous father dies, and “The Boy behind the Tree,” about a problematic father-son relationship made more so by the arrival on the scene of a young man the son’s age. In “I Return,” a father narrates a story from the afterlife, discovering as he does so that he is not as indispensable to his family as he had believed.

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The Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in New Orleans in 1842, were the first African American Catholics to serve as missionaries. This story of their little-known missionary efforts in Belize from 1898 to 2008 builds upon their already distinguished work, through the Archdiocese of New Orleans, of teaching slaves and free people of color, caring for orphans and the elderly, and tending to the poor and needy. Utilizing previously unpublished archival documents along with extensive personal correspondence and interviews, Edward T. Brett has produced a fascinating account of the 110-year mission of the Sisters of the Holy Family to the Garifuna people of Belize. Brett discusses the foundation and growth of the struggling order in New Orleans up to the sisters' decision in 1898 to accept a teaching commitment in the Stann Creek District of what was then British Honduras. The early history of the British Honduras mission concentrates especially on Mother Austin Jones, the superior responsible for expanding the order's work into the mission field. In examining the Belizean mission from the eve of the Second Vatican Council through the post–Vatican II years, Brett sensitively chronicles the sisters' efforts to conform to the spirit of the council and describes the creative innovations that the Holy Family community introduced into the Belizean educational system. In the final chapter he looks at the congregation's efforts to sustain its missionary work in the face of the shortage of new religious vocations. Brett’s study is more than just a chronicle of the Holy Family Sisters' accomplishments in Belize. He treats the issues of racism and gender discrimination that the African American congregation encountered both within the church and in society, demonstrating how the sisters survived and even thrived by learning how to skillfully negotiate with the white, dominant power structure.

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Galileo's trial in 1633 before the Roman Inquisition is one of the most frequently mentioned topics in the history of science. Galileo's encounter with the Catholic Church was not only a major turning point in the history of western culture; it is the paradigm case of the clash between the institutional authority of religion and the authority of scientific reason, a clash that has helped to define the modern era. Blackwell's new contribution to "the Galileo affair" concerns the official theological position against Galileo. The centerpiece of his project is the treatise entitled Tractatus syllepticus, written by Melchior Inchofer, S.J., whose judgment of the orthodoxy of Galileo's Dialogue had been requested earlier by the Holy Office and was then incorporated into the proceedings of the trial. At the time, Inchofer's judgment against Galileo's book was both detailed and harsh. That judgment formed the basis for Inchofer's subsequent Tractatus, the first English translation of which is included in this volume. Inchofer's text provides a new and fascinating way of looking at the defense of the guilty verdict. Blackwell's analysis of this material greatly enriches our knowledge of Galileo and his trial. Both legal and theological behind-the-scenes aspects of Galileo's trial are discussed. Because of a weak legal case, a plea bargain was arranged, extrajudicially, then sabotaged in the Holy Office before the final decision of the case. Through his close scrutiny of the specifics of the trial, Blackwell renders a picture that is more complex, and ominous, than the usual portrayal of the trial.

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Since the beginnings of Italian vernacular literature, the nature of the relationship between Francesco Petrarch and his predecessor Dante Alighieri has remained an open and endlessly fascinating question of both literary and cultural history. In this volume nine leading scholars of Italian medieval literature and culture address this question involving the two foundational figures of Italian literature. The authors examine Petrarch’s contentious and dismissive attitude toward the literary authority of his illustrious predecessor; the dramatic shift in theological and philosophical context that occurs from Dante to Petrarch; and their respective contributions as initiators of modern literary traditions in the vernacular. Petrarch’s substantive ideological dissent from Dante clearly emerges, a dissent that casts in high relief the poets’ radically divergent views of the relation between the human and the divine and of humans’ capacity to bridge that gap. Contributors: Albert Russell Ascoli, Zygmunt G. Baranski, Teodolinda Barolini, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., Ronald L. Martinez, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Christian Moevs, Justin Steinberg, and Sara Sturm-Maddox.

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Confronting the past has become an established norm for countries undergoing transitions from violence to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, or both. This book draws from two bodies of literature—peace building and transitional justice—to examine whether truth-telling mechanisms can contribute to sustainable peace and, if so, how and under what conditions. The authors approach these questions by examining whether truth telling contributes to the following elements, all of which are deemed to be constitutive of sustainable peace: reconciliation, human rights, gender equity, restorative justice, the rule of law, the mitigation of violence, and the healing of trauma. While the transitional-justice literature appears to have grasped the importance of truth telling for securing sustainable peace, few studies have undertaken empirical analysis and evaluations of the long-term impact of such mechanisms. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume—from the fields of political science, law, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology—accomplish that by closely examining how societies emerging from violence must in some way examine, acknowledge, and account for violence committed in the past in order to move forward.

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In Beyond Reformation? An Essay on William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the End of Constantinian Christianity, David Aers presents a sustained and profound close reading of the final version of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the most searching Christian poem of the Middle Ages in English. His reading, most unusually, seeks to explore the relations of Langland's poem to both medieval and early modern reformations together with the ending of Constantinian Christianity. Aers concentrates on Langland’s extraordinarily rich ecclesiastic politics and on his account of Christian virtues and the struggles of Conscience to discern how to go on in his often baffling culture. The poem’s complex allegory engages with most institutions and forms of life. In doing so, it explores moral languages and their relations to current practices and social tendencies. Langland’s vision conveys a strange sense that in his historical moment some moral concepts were being transformed and some traditions the author cherished were becoming unintelligible. Beyond Reformation? seeks to show how Langland grasped subtle shifts that were difficult to discern in the fourteenth century but were to become forces with a powerful future in shaping Western Christianity. The essay form that Aers has chosen for his book contributes to the effectiveness of the argument he develops in tandem with the structure of Langland’s poem: he sustains and tests his argument in a series of steps or “passus,” a Langlandian mode of proceeding. His essay unfolds an argument about medieval and early modern forms of Constantinian Christianity and reformation, and the way in which Langland's own vision of a secularizing, de-Christianizing late medieval church draws him toward the idea of a church of “fools,” beyond papacy, priesthood, hierarchy, and institutions. For Aers, Langland opens up serious diachronic issues concerning Christianity and culture. His essay includes a brief summary of the poem and modern translations alongside the original medieval English. It will challenge specialists on Langland's poem and supply valuable resources of thought for anyone who continues to struggle with the church of today.

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In The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, Muhsin J. al-Musawi offers a groundbreaking study of literary heritage in the medieval and premodern Islamic period. Al-Musawi challenges the paradigm that considers the period from the fall of Baghdad in 1258 to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 as an "Age of Decay" followed by an "Awakening" (al-nahdah). His sweeping synthesis debunks this view by carefully documenting a "republic of letters" in the Islamic Near East and South Asia that was vibrant and dynamic, one varying considerably from the generally accepted image of a centuries-long period of intellectual and literary stagnation. Al-Musawi argues that the massive cultural production of the period was not a random enterprise: instead, it arose due to an emerging and growing body of readers across Islamic lands who needed compendiums, lexicons, and commentaries to engage with scholars and writers. Scholars, too, developed their own networks to respond to each other and to their readers. Rather than addressing only the elite, this culture industry supported a common readership that enlarged the creative space and audience for prose and poetry in standard and colloquial Arabic. Works by craftsmen, artisans, and women appeared side by side with those by distinguished scholars and poets. Through careful exploration of these networks, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters makes use of relevant theoretical frameworks to situate this culture in the ongoing discussion of non-Islamic and European efforts. Thorough, theoretically rigorous, and nuanced, al-Musawi's book is an original contribution to a range of fields in Arabic and Islamic cultural history of the twelfth to eighteenth centuries.

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In this extraordinary contribution to Nietzsche studies, Robert Alejandro offers an original interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy viewed as a complete whole. Alejandro painstakingly traces the different ways in which Nietzsche reconfigured and shifted his analyses of morality and of the human condition, until he was content with the final result: nothing was dispensable; everything was necessary. This is a philosophy of reconciliation—hardly nihilism—and it is a perspective that is not adequately addressed elsewhere in the literature on Nietzsche. Alejandro traces the evolution of Nietzsche's thought by identifying the different layers of his philosophy, expressed in a complex array of stories and historical narratives. Alejandro analyzes the different stories of Nietzsche, places those stories within a tradition of genealogical theorizing, and interprets both the stories and the genealogy in terms of one of Nietzsche's unique features, his use of "historiobiography." According to Alejandro, historiobiography blends the idea of an attunement with all history and one's awareness of this attunement. As a mode of philosophizing, historiobiography allows Nietzsche to view all human history as if it runs through his own life and thoughts. Alejandro argues that Nietzsche deployed three strategies to find relief from his sense of the meaninglessness of life: his magnified concept of what he himself represented in human history, his doctrine of the eternal recurrence, and his philosophy of reconciliation.

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Once thought to be the task of metaphysics, the synthesis of knowledge has been discounted by many philosophers today. Benedict Ashley, a leading Thomistic scholar, argues that it remains a valid and intellectually fruitful pursuit by situating metaphysics as an endeavor that must cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Working from a realist Thomistic epistemology, Ashley asserts that we must begin our search for wisdom in the natural sciences; only then, he believes, can we ensure that our claims about immaterial and invisible things are rooted in reliable experience of the material. Any attempt to share wisdom, he insists, must derive from a context that is both interdisciplinary and intercultural. Ashley offers an ambitious analysis and synthesis of major historical contributions to the unification of knowledge, including non-Western traditions. Beginning with the question "Metaphysics: Nonsense or Wisdom?" Ashley moves from a critical examination of the foundations of modern science to quantum physics and the Big Bang; from Aristotle's theory of being and change, through Aquinas's five ways, to a critical analysis of modern and postmodern thought. Ashley is able to interweave the approaches of the great philosophers by demonstrating their contributions to philosophical thought in a concrete, specific manner. In the process, he accounts for a contemporary culture overwhelmed by the fragmentation of data and thirsting for an utterly transcendent yet personal God. The capstone of a remarkable career, The Way Toward Wisdom will be welcomed by students in philosophy and theology.

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The essays in Rediscovering Abundance provide a complex and interdisciplinary analysis of the question of wealth creation and distribution in light of the moral and spiritual insights of the Catholic social tradition. In this volume, theologians, economists, philosophers, management theorists, and CEOs engage in conversation. Contributors cover the dimensions of today's global system of wealth creation and outline challenges to make it more just and humane. This book questions both neoliberal and neoconservative views of the creation, distribution, and use of wealth. The volume seeks a middle ground, avoiding both conservative bias toward market mechanisms and liberal bias against business. It also provides practical suggestions for distributing wealth more justly, as understood within the Catholic social tradition. Rediscovering Abundance is an important new work that will be useful in business ethics courses, as well as to ethicists, pastors, practitioners in the business community, and anyone interested in the question of how a capitalist economy can create and distribute wealth in a way that benefits the common good.

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The Church of the Holy Spirit, written by Russian priest and scholar Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966), is one of the most important works of twentieth-century Orthodox theology. Afanasiev was a member of the “Paris School” of émigré intellectuals who gathered in Paris after the Russian revolution, where he became a member of the faculty of St. Sergius Orthodox Seminary. The Church of the Holy Spirit, which offers a rediscovery of the eucharistic and communal nature of the church in the first several centuries, was written over a number of years beginning in the 1940s and continuously revised until its posthumous publication in French in 1971. Vitaly Permiakov's lucid translation and Michael Plekon's careful editing and substantive introduction make this important work available for the first time to an English-speaking audience.

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This useful book is the compilation of bibliographical information accumulated over eleven years (1986–1996) in the annual publication of the New Chaucer Society, Studies in the Age of Chaucer. Features of this comprehensive work include an extensive subject index and a descriptive annotation for each entry that identifies the nature of the study and clarifies its utility or argument. These annotations are the work of a large number of scholars and have been carefully updated, corrected, and supplemented. An important component of the Annotated Chaucer Bibliography is its single-codex format, which enables users to peruse eleven years of Chaucer bibliography comprehensively. This is especially valuable for recognizing patterns or trends in individual works or topics. The majority of the entries and their annotations are also available in the electronic format of the Chaucer Online Bibliography, making possible title, author, and keyword searches of the data included in this volume.

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Sheba, or Saba, is a region of high mountains and vast deserts situated in the southwest of the Arabian peninsula, in what is known today as Yemen. The mysteries and riches of Sheba and its people enticed the likes of Alexander the Great, the Emperor Augustus, and the kings of Ethiopia and Byzantium. From the 8th century to the 1st century BC, the kingdom of Sheba dominated other realms in Southern Arabia, imposing its language, institutions and artistic forms throughout the region. This book provides a detailed synthesis of this remote civilization, the uniqueness of the region's geography and climate, and the major events that shaped its history. It offers valuable insights into the Sabeans' daily life, their customs and religion, their relations with neighbouring civilizations, and their modes of commerce.

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