Search results for ""equinox publishing""

Everybody knows John Altman's music, but not so many people know his name. Yet he is one of the most prolific composers, conductors and arrangers in history and his saxophone playing has been heard live and on record with many great names. In this vivid account of over fifty years in the world of popular music, Altman explains why he is the 'Hidden Man', whose scores include such well-known film sequences as 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' from Life of Brian, which he arranged, conducted and whistled; the tank chase through St. Petersburg in the James Bond movie Goldeneye and the ship sinking in Titanic, with the orchestra playing on deck. In all, he has composed the music for over 50 movies, and won most major film awards in his long and distinguished career. His orchestrations can be heard in film scores by legends like Elmer Bernstein and Jule Styne, and he was musical director for several television series, notably Miss Marple, starring Joan Hickson, as well as Peak Practice. As an arranger/conductor he has worked on hit records for numerous stars, among them Rod Stewart, George Michael, Tina Turner, Barry White, Diana Ross, Bjork, and Alison Moyet. As a saxophonist, flautist and clarinet player he has performed with an equally stellar list of musicians. John Altman has also found time to write, produce and arrange over 4,000 commercials worldwide, including his theme for the 'Sheila's Wheels' advertisement. Such anonymity coupled with universally-known themes is why Monty Python's Terry Gilliam named Altman the 'Hidden Man'. In this entertaining, fast-paced memoir you will discover how Ingrid Bergman smiled at his back; how a Beatle always greeted him by singing one of his musical phrases; how he tried in vain to persuade Nick Drake to continue performing in public; how he reduced Freddy Mercury to helpless laughter; how he got Pierce Brosnan his big movie break; how he sat with Charlie Chaplin watching a movie that hadn't been seen for a quarter of a century (with a running commentary from the great man himself); how he sang over a mobile phone to James Cameron and the cast of Titanic; how he inspired a five-year-old George Michael to become a musician; how he was the Wailers' tour guide around London, and how Tina Turner made him a cup of tea. One of the most poignant parts of the story is how he mentored the young Amy Winehouse.

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This volume explores the interaction between text and image in Indian Buddhist contexts, including not only the complex relationship between verbal stories and visual representations at Indian sites, but also the ways in which visual imagery is used within textual narratives. The chapters are authored by a mixture of textual scholars and art historians, bringing together different disciplinary perspectives in order to seek a richer understanding of how text and art relate, and of the role of narrative imagery in different media and contexts. The book opens with an introduction that explores what narratives and visual narratives are, and why we might want to study narrative images alongside imagery-rich literary narratives. The volume is then divided into three parts. The chapters in Part I: Visual Narratives (Zaghet, Reddy, Zin) explore visual depictions of stories in their own right; those in Part II: Narrative Networks (Mace, Appleton & Clark, Strong) seek to understand the relationship between specific visual and verbal narratives; and those in Part III: Narrative Visions (Gummer, Fiordalis, Walters) primarily investigate how visual imagery and visualisation work in textual narratives. The volume seeks to bridge the divide that traditionally exists between textual scholars and art historians, and to challenge the contributors to think beyond the usual boundaries of our work.

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Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness examines the viability of the epistemology proposed by Bernard Lonergan in his seminal work Insight, particularly with regard to its possible application in the field of interreligious dialogue. This enquiry is prompted by an awareness of the epistemological questions raised by the various dialogues taking place between different religions, and it is in light of this that Lonergan's claim to comprehensiveness in his epistemology is examined. The method adopted is that of a dialectical experiment in which Lonergan's epistemology could be tested. Lonergan claims in Insight that as his epistemology is both based on, and corresponds directly to, the structure of human cognition, it is therefore intrinsic to all instances of thought. Accordingly, he claims, it is ideally placed to mutually relate any combination of differing positions. This work seeks to test this claim by applying Lonergan's epistemological categories to Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith, and Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika. Having critically reconstructed Lonergan's position as articulated in Insight, the book does the same for both of the texts selected and then parses them on the basis of the terms laid out by Lonergan in his epistemological system. It examines whether the thought contained in these two works could be fruitfully related on the basis of Lonergan's epistemology, and what, if any, are the implications for the field of interreligious dialogue. These implications are considered both in terms of the theology of religions, and of the more recently developed comparative theology, typified by the approach taken by thinkers such as Francis X. Clooney and others. The book concludes by considering what, if any, are the possible developments that could result from the result of the attempted dialectic.

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Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness examines the viability of the epistemology proposed by Bernard Lonergan in his seminal work Insight, particularly with regard to its possible application in the field of interreligious dialogue. This enquiry is prompted by an awareness of the epistemological questions raised by the various dialogues taking place between different religions, and it is in light of this that Lonergan's claim to comprehensiveness in his epistemology is examined. The method adopted is that of a dialectical experiment in which Lonergan's epistemology could be tested. Lonergan claims in Insight that as his epistemology is both based on, and corresponds directly to, the structure of human cognition, it is therefore intrinsic to all instances of thought. Accordingly, he claims, it is ideally placed to mutually relate any combination of differing positions. This work seeks to test this claim by applying Lonergan's epistemological categories to Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith, and Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika. Having critically reconstructed Lonergan's position as articulated in Insight, the book does the same for both of the texts selected and then parses them on the basis of the terms laid out by Lonergan in his epistemological system. It examines whether the thought contained in these two works could be fruitfully related on the basis of Lonergan's epistemology, and what, if any, are the implications for the field of interreligious dialogue. These implications are considered both in terms of the theology of religions, and of the more recently developed comparative theology, typified by the approach taken by thinkers such as Francis X. Clooney and others. The book concludes by considering what, if any, are the possible developments that could result from the result of the attempted dialectic.

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Archaeology at Home takes a deep dive into the entanglements between humans and their things. It explores the notion that things themselves “remember” when left by “their” people and illustrates how the integration of humans and things involves connections running all the way from the present into deep time. Combining methods from contemporary and deep-time archaeology and balancing scholarly archaeology with personal narrative, Hein Bjerck presents three case studies of homes all intimately known to him — the home of his father after his abrupt passing, the home of his uncle that was lost in a fire, and a Stone Age home he excavated many years ago. This evocative approach to archaeologies of memory will be appreciated by professional archaeologists, and by general readers who are drawn to the study of the past and the things that connect us with it.

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This collection of 21 papers were written by leading and emerging critical scholar/practitioners who represent three generations of survivors of imperial invasions and genocidal massacres across the globe. They are from the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific and the Caribbean Islands who are renowned for the depth and urgency of their analyses and their principled ethical and political positions against empire and militarization. The contributors interrogate the oppressive ideologies and mechanisms of the modern empire and its allies and exemplify in particular how militarization has affected various peoples, lands, seas, and skies across the globe. They expose the desecration of lives and the earth by the modern empire and its local allies through various means, ranging from psychological warfare to brute force of advanced technological warfare, leaving an intergenerational impact. The authors have embraced people's cries against mass killings, starvation, rape, militarized prostitution, torture, forced disappearances, land grab, and the destruction of nature caused by modern warfare, as well as people's inherent collective aspiration for liberation of their lives and lands. They help evoke and sharpen the alternate consciousness amongst peoples in furthering resistance, and in envisioning and building a non-imperialist future for us, for our children, and for the planet earth. The authors foreground a breadth of modes of resistance and the places where they have been implemented, sharing with the reader their hard-earned knowledge and stories of truth and liberation, with a prophetic urgency.

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In his bio-bibliographical essay, J. Z. Smith wrote that he was fond of the expression “when the chips are down” in the sense of all being said and done. With his passing in December 2017, the phrase has gained an additional layer of sad finality—the chips are really down. Scholarship is not poker, however, which means that these chips not only can but in fact should be picked up and circulated. Thinking with J. Z. Smith brings together the contributions of scholars who do exactly that by considering theoretical and methodological issues central to J. Z. Smith’s oeuvre in the context of their own research. Through analyses of Smith’s own work as well as applications of his concerns to new situations, historic periods, and regions, the contributors to this volume test the adequacy and applicability of Smith’s ideas and provide an indirect assessment of his influence and legacy in the field of religious studies.

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The Religious Body Imaginedexamines the ways in which the human body has been imagined, imaged, and discursively produced in particular places, times, and religious traditions.

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It is said that Pagan traditions are the fastest-growing religious group in America. Numbers are tricky to come by, but we know that contemporary Pagans report themselves as living in every American state, and in countries around the world. This volume reviews the shifting landscape of current Pagan spirituality, the unique culture and needs which must be understood in order to engage with contemporary Pagans, and the implications for future leadership, including organizational models, training and educational needs. The author has interviewed Pagan leaders about their own experiences and looks at data from the Pagan Engagement and Spiritual Support survey of 2016 to answer questions such as What does "ministry" mean for Pagans? Who do Pagans turn to for spiritual support? Who ought to be providing that support? Do Pagans want leaders who are trained for ministry? What kind of training do they need, and how do they get it? If you are a Pagan who wishes to support others in these ways, you will find here a framework for your own work, including stories and examples. If you are an interfaith minister, a chaplain, or a spiritual leader who finds that Pagans are intersecting with your work, you will become acquainted with the culture of this old-but-new spirituality. If you are an educator, may you find Constellated Ministry useful in teaching seminarians and students of religious studies.

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Shaped by the processes of migration, diasporization and cosmopolitanization, musical performance conditions and contexts constantly change, while new musical forms emerge and evolve. The development of Turkish folk music is well-documented and provides rich material for study in the motherland and in the diaspora. This book explores, describes, interprets and links musical, contextual and functional aspects of Turkish folk music in contemporary Turkey and the Turkish diaspora in the Belgian city of Ghent. The Turkish presence in Ghent is particularly interesting in its size (approximately ten per cent of the population) and constitution (mostly originating in the West Anatolian town of Emirdağ). Anchored in detailed ethnographic reality, this book expands our views on what Turkish folk music signifies in the early twenty-first century, and adds to the understanding and appreciation of this multifaceted, topical musical phenomenon. This book’s multi-sited, transnational and comparative outlook is unique, with an added dimension generated by the inclusion of rural and small-town contexts that complement the urban perspective. It makes new contributions to scholarship in this area by including the transcription and analysis of performance styles, the evaluation of Turkish Radio and Television discourses and practices, and the exploration of understudied research contexts of Ghent and Emirdağ.

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Myth Theorized provides a survey of some key figures and topics in the modern study of myth. The first part of the book discusses the psychoanalysis of myth including a chapter on the extraordinary changes that psychoanalytic theory has undergone, and one on Otto Rank and his break with Freud which helped transform the focus of psychoanalysis, including myth, from the Oedipal stage to the pre-Oedipal one. This section finishes with a chapter which argues that Freud and Jung are more akin than opposed. The next section looks at hero myths including a detailed history of the study of hero myths, and surveys approaches to hero myths by Otto Rank, Joseph Campbell and Lord Raglan. The author then applies Rank and Raglan to the life of the first king of Israel, Saul, showing how their theories transform the figure to whom they are applied. The following part of the book considers the relationship of myth to natural science including a discussion of the range of views that have arisen over the past 150 years - those of EB Tylor, JG Frazer, Claude Levi-Strauss and Karl Popper. The next section covers myth and politics with an assessment of Bruce Lincoln's Theorizing Myth and Robert Ellwood's The Politics of Myth. The final chapter in this section argues that the theories of Frazer, Rene Girard and Walter Burkert all make violence in religion natural rather than unnatural. The final part of the book discusses the Jungian concept of synchronicity, uses DW Winnicott's idea of make-believe to support the argument that Hollywood stars and their treatment as gods can be said to being divinity back to the world, and asks whether James Lovelock has brought myth back to the world through the Gaia theory.

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The Geography of Urbanism in Roman Asia Minor investigates how Roman urbanism manifested itself in Asia Minor during the first three centuries CE, particularly with regards to its spatial patterning over the landscape and the administrative, economic and cultural functions cities fulfilled, and how cities developed in terms of size and monumentality. It also addresses to what extent this was a result of political and socio-cultural and economic context and to what extent 'structural determinants', such as the physical topography, agricultural potential and climate (including the shifts/changes therein) influenced the observed patterns. As Asia Minor was already dotted by cities long before the Romans got a hold on this area during the second century BCE, this work compares urbanism of the first three centuries CE with the patterns of cities during the first millennium BCE (Classical and Hellenistic period particularly) and the Byzantine and Ottoman patterns, creating a long term perspective. The book contains an appendix with the information for the 500 cities and 1000 villages in Asia Minor.

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Writing Better Essays, now in its second edition, is an authoritative but accessible guide to writing successful argumentative essays that combines classical approaches with practical advice tailored to contemporary students. Designed to be effective either in the classroom or for independent learning, the book will appeal students at all levels, ranging from advanced placement to post-graduate, its detailed explanations of key steps of the writing and editing process from conception through planning and execution ensuring that students will be able to create a coherent argumentative essay that features the classical circular and reiterative structure. The conversational style and tone of the book serves to give students much-needed confidence as they approach their writing, as does its extended explanation of the key skill of paragraphing and its commonsense advice on punctuation. Students should find that its extensive use of exercises, its well-chosen examples of good practice, and its emphasis on imitation makes it an ideal primary or secondary textbook for courses. Teachers of writing should appreciate the instructor’s guide at the beginning of the book as well as the consistent emphasis throughout on the need for students to commit themselves to practice and revision if they want to write effective argumentative essays.

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Religions of a Single God is like no other introductory textbook on the Western monotheistic religions. As expected, it teaches both the basics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, presenting the trajectories of their development over time, their main theological debates and claims, sacred writings, and their common practices and holy days. But rather than claiming to show the “essence” of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, Religions of a Single God shows the diversity within Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experience, theological dispute, and practice. Rather than relying solely on the traditional theorists of religion, this book also introduces the approaches of contemporary critical thinkers to questions of defining, classifying, and studying religion. Rather than presenting Mormonism and the Baha’i Religion as “New Religious Movements”, this book treats them as part of the continuing history of religion, growing out of and within Christianity and Islam respectively. Religion, in other words, is not a thing of the past. It’s happening right now, all around us.

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This book offers the first ethnographically informed, in-depth historical study of the Cameroonian popular music genre bikutsi. The thriving dance music in Cameroon’s day-to-day life has its foundation in the specific historical processes of the 1970s and 1980s, which led to the recognition of bikutsi as a distinct genre of Cameroonian dance music. Examining these processes in detail, this book analyses the various factors involved in the rise of a popular music genre within a national music scene. The book begins by tracing the roots of bikutsi in the musical traditions of the ethnic groups of the Beti who live in and around Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, as well as in the manifold popular dance music practices fashionable in mid-twentieth-century Cameroon. The volume then considers the musical work of successful groups and musicians, framing their musical practices and success within the socio-political circumstances, musical environment, and ambitions of individuals. Offering an explanation for the changes in Cameroon’s musical life, these analyses illustrate the interplay between the innovative ambitions of individual musicians, a specific political situation within the power structure of the post-colonial state, dedicated individuals in media and the music market, and technological changes in recording and disseminating music.

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Uprising in Tahrir Square is designed as an engaging contemporary resource for advanced Arabic learners. It immerses language students in the monumental events that unfolded in Cairo, Egypt during the mass youth uprisings of January 2011. Before toppling President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule in February 2011, the Egyptian youth movement had captivated the world and transmitted its message of anger, hope, and change to a global audience. The world watched as more than a million protestors gathered to press for reform, democracy and regime change. Uprising in Tahrir Square places students of Arabic at the epicenter of these real-life events through a simulated journal project and writing exchange. Students build and strengthen essential skills in reading, writing and comprehension by using the Arabic language in a vital, real-life context. They become authors in their own right as they invent personas and speak through the voices of diverse characters who all reside in the vicinity of Cairo's Tahrir Square. Writing in first-person narrative, students' journal entries bear witness to the early days of the nascent uprising, through its surprisingly rapid conclusion with Mubarak's resignation, and the uncertainty of what Egypt's future may bring. Not only do the invented characters grapple with the uprising's tragedies and triumphs through their own perspectives, but they also interact with a cast of invented neighbors, using contemporary technology tools such as Wikispaces and blogs. The book's units trace the actual sequence of the Cairo uprising and intersperse fictional scenarios - providing both historical background and interpretive content. The structure of Uprising in Tahrir Square supports learning on multiple levels. Students deepen their understanding of the cultural, political and social contexts for Egypt and other Arab youth's historic uprisings, while improving essential Arabic skills. The book's scaffolded activities and array of resources are carefully designed to promote listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary development, critical thinking and interpretation, research, peer collaboration, creative writing, and oral language fluency.

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Sounds Irish, Acts Global critically examines both the history of Ireland's popular music industry as well as the current music scene in the country. By placing recent industry developments in the context of that history, the authors present a new way of examining any nation state's music industry - to understand the industry, the local scene must be examined. This approach highlights the multiple and changing ways by which the local scene prepares artists for both domestic and international success. In Ireland's case the scene, with its supportive network of friends, families and fans, has developed the artists who then sign with the major transnational music firms. This book is of interest to business students as well as popular music scholars in addition to non-academic readers.

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Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text’s expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern. How and Why Books Matter will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in books, reading, literacy, scriptures, e-books, publishing, and the future of the book. It also addresses scholarship in religion, cultural studies, literacy studies, biblical studies, book history, anthropology, literary studies, and intellectual history.

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It is often assumed that a revelation must be new and innovative, and indeed, that the point of a new sacred text must be to revitalize the heritage. Yet in the Tibetan Nyingma Treasure Revelatory tradition, the ongoing vitality of textual production often has more to do with the fresh blessings, rather than altogether novel content. This book for the first time analyses precise continuities and changes in comparing the new and the old, considering examples of the creation and development of tantric revelations, including further re-workings in subsequent generations. In doing so, the focus enlarges to encompass materials from the broader religious heritage, as well as from specific lineages of related visionary lamas. By identifying such exact linkages and departures, it is possible to answer questions both of how and why developments may occur, not limiting the purview merely to the individual stories of the virtuoso lamas producing the books, but looking also to the tantric communities they are part of. The case studies in the book stem from the prolific writings of the famous 20th century scholar-lama, Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, who contributed to numerous revelatory traditions of the past, as well as producing his own revelations. They concern a single tantric deity, Vajrakilaya, the most popular Nyingma deity, whose tantras and ritual practices stem from the earliest formulations of Tibetan tantric Buddhism, and who is closely connected with the culture heros and founding fathers of the Nyingmapa. This particular focus gives us the opportunity to discover patterns in the creation of new tantric texts which have significance beyond the specific examples.

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Questions of authority are perennial. Authority has been and still is a key topic in many studies of history, society, literature, and religion, just as it is a key issue in contemporary societies. In spite of the scholarly attention, authority continues to have an elusive quality. Reframing Authority provides new perspectives by focusing on the role of materiality and media for questions of authority, as well as on the changing roles of authority historically and cross-culturally. The volume argues that forms of mediation and materiality are crucial in any constitution, contestation, or transformation of authority. New understanding of authority can be gained by focusing on materiality and media in situations where authority is created, contested, or transformed in different historical eras and cultures. As the in-depth historical case studies show, authority is dependent upon a range of media and materiality forms - objects, paraphernalia, spaces and spatial practices, visual culture, literary forms, technologies, and bodies. Thus, authority is vulnerable and in need of continual maintenance, as struggles against, negotiations of, and transformations within authority constellations demonstrate. Reframing Authority demonstrates the fundamental relational nature of authority, makes a contribution to broader debates in the human sciences and offers a long historical perspective, ranging from ancient Rome and Christianity, to medieval literature, the early modern, modern, and contemporary eras in Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe, Mexico and the US.

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"Religion" in Theory and Practice follows on from McCutcheon's 2014 Equinox book Entanglements: Marking Place in the Field of Religion by offering both an overview of the current state of theory in the academic study of religion as well as examining a variety of practical sites where critical scholarship is implemented but also challenged. Although addressed to early career scholars--taking one reviewer of Entanglements seriously by adding to the meager genre of books directed toward these important readers--the volume should also be of interest to anyone curious about why many in the study of religion continue to assume that their object of study needs special attention. The first section outlines McCutcheon's broader and more recent thoughts on the current state of the field (such as the claims, by some, that the field is now "post-theory") while the second section applies the first at a variety of discrete sites within the profession. These include how we approach teaching the introductory course, the work carried out in professional associations and conferences, the ongoing problem of contingent labor and what faculty might be able to do about it, the challenge of talking about what a theoretically-engaged scholar of religion actually does, and the varied audiences and readers who we can now try to reach with our work. Drawing on previously published, but revised, material for four of the ten chapters, the volume invites readers to step back from their own individual, specialized work so as to consider some of the wider structures in which the wider field exists and where all of our work is carried out.

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The North of England is regarded as a region economically and culturally lagging behind the South of England. However, this situation does not refer to popular music in which the North has had an influence which is comparable to that of London. Many bands and performers coming from the North, including the Beatles, the Animals, Herman’s Hermit, the Smiths, the Happy Mondays, the Fall, Joy Division, New Order, Pulp and Oasis belong to most popular and influential pop-rock musicians in the world. The North has also been the home to some particular dance scenes including Northern Soul, the `Madchester’ acid house, rave scenes and hip hop and grime scenes. This collection presents some of the less well known facets of popular music in the North of England, examining how popular music reflected on various aspects of the North, such as its economy and architecture and how it impacted on self- and external perception of the North. It assumes that understandings of the English North vary and its geography has more to do with imagined rather than empirical communities. The North can be seen as being defined against an England epitomised by London and as an area reflecting the most salient features of England as a whole. Specific chapters discuss topics such as the music scenes in Manchester, Liverpool, Hull and Sheffield, music festivals and careers of some musicians connected with the North such as MC Tunes and Bugzy Malone. Written in a jargon-free language, it should be of interest to everybody interested in music of the North.

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This volume examines the intellectual trajectories of remarkable individuals who interacted with religious discourses, doctrines or practices in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Inspired by S. Subrahmanyam and S. Gruzinski’s historiographical model of “connected histories”, this book introduces the approach of “connected religion” and invites the study of cross-cultural and “translocal” encounters by bringing together documents that represent diverse aspects of the story and reconstructing a narrative from diverse standpoints, with analytical potential. Testing this approach through specific cases of interactions between Asia and Europe, the volume explores the little-known stories of actors such as migrants or expatriates interacting with religious discourses, and of religious leaders producing and propagating beliefs and practices. The cases pose questions that can be applied to further contexts, such as: the significance of improved travels and communications for the diffusion of religious content across national, cultural and institutional boundaries; the impact of specific individuals, charismatic or not, well-established or subaltern in the reconfiguration of institutional forms of religion; and the role of the South Asian referent in legitimating the propagation of specific religious views. Offering both an innovative methodological framework and original cases based on new research, the book will be of interest to scholars of religion, to specialists of South Asia in late modernity and to the broader public.

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This volume explores technology and communication of the early settlements of Northern Europe. The articles will discuss case studies and present overviews from the early and middle Mesolithic of Northern Europe. Special emphasis will be put on the spatial and temporal transmission of knowledge and culture. This subject addresses themes such as the transmission of specialised knowledge, the generative transmission of knowledge, the understanding of technology as somatic or incorporated culture in human society and the role of pedagogies and teaching in cultural sustainment and transformation. Other papers will discuss the relation between demography and technological developments, as well as the natural and cultural context for the transmission of culture. The understanding of the transmission of technology is, again, closely interrelated to the nature and efficiency of social networks of contact and their social and physical framework. Ultimately these question addresses one of the fundamental issues of our time - how to understand and cope with radical changes. This book provides new and different answers to this great problem of our time.

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Based partly on a series of posts coming out of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, this volume includes greatly expanded essays by Ruth Mas, Sarah Imhoff and James Crossley as well as new pieces by Devin Stewart, Carlos Segovia, Alexandre Caeiro and Emmanuelle Stefanidis, Russell McCutcheon and Salman Sayyid. This volume, thus, brings together a variety of scholars both inside and outside of Islamic Studies in order to grapple with such questions as: what, if anything, is unique about Islamic Studies? How should Islamic studies as religious studies engage with postcolonial critique? What is the role of identity politics in such endeavors? What are the lines between descriptive (hermeneutic) work and theoretical explanations of Islamic texts? What can scholars in related areas, such as the study of Judaism and early Christianity, offer to this conversation by way of analogy? Can ethical, political, or theological concerns function critically to help theorize Islam? The volume is divided into four sections: Theory and Identity Politics in the Study of Islam, which looks at the role of identity, knowledge production, and political commitments among scholars of Islam; Critique and Identity in Qur'anic Studies, which deals with challenges in applying critical-historical methods to the study of the Qur'an and how these methods relate to some of the issues raised Omid Safi and Aaron Hughes; Comparative Views from Outside Islamic Studies, which provides a comparative view of how scholars have dealt with similar concerns in the study of Judaism and Christianity; and A Critical Appraisal, which offers a direct challenge to Safi and Hughes.

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The Qur'an's biblical foregrounds have long formed a controversial concern within Qur'anic Studies, with field-leading scholars debating the Muslim scripture's complex relationship and response to the Judeo-Christian canon. This contentious subject has largely overshadowed, however, a reciprocal, yet no less rich, question which motivates the present study. Rather than read the Muslim scripture in light of its biblical antecedents, The Qur'an & Kerygma adopts the inverse approach, situating the Qur'an as itself the formative foreground to Western literary innovation and biblical exegesis, stretching from late antiquity in the 9th century to postmodernity in the 20th. The book argues, in particular, that Qur'anic readings and renditions have provoked and paralleled key developments in the Christian canon and its critique, catalyzing pivotal acts of authorship and interpretation which have creatively contoured the language and legacy of biblical kerygma. Structured chronologically, the study's span of more than a millennium is sustained by its specific concentration on four case studies selected from representative areas and eras, exploring innovative translations and interpretations of the Qur'an authored by Christian literati from 9th-century Andalucia to 20th-century North America. Mirroring its subject matter, the book engages a literary critical approach, offering close-readings of targeted texts frequently neglected and never before synthesized in a single study, highlighting the stylistic, as well as spiritual, influence on Western authors exercised by Islamic writ.

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This volume addresses issues of authority and authenticity related to contemporary interpretations of Islam in a minority setting. Salafism is a contemporary multifaceted and global phenomenon that represents a fundamentalist interpretative stance which appears to be growing among minority Muslims. This book studies a Salafi group in Sweden that is puritan in the sense of avoiding political participation and rejecting jihadism. They strive to imitate the lives of the first generations of Muslims and the prophet Muhammad within their own minority setting, surrounded by a society which in their view is characterized by immorality and capitalism. The group recommends segregation, or even emigration, as a strategy in order to enable people to live proper Muslim lives, in preparation for the Hereafter.

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Vernacular knowledge is a realm of discourses and beliefs that challenge institutional authorities and official truths, defying regulation and eluding monovocal expressions of the status quo. Unlike monolithic ‘truths’, religious or secular, vernacular knowledge tends to be dynamic, fluid, ambivalent, controversial, appearing in multiple forms and open to alternatives. Ranging through culturally, religiously, geographically, politically, and socially varied contexts, Vernacular Knowledge examines heteroglot expressions of knowledge revealed in various genres: traditional tales and personal experience narratives, rumours and jokes, alternative histories and material culture, placelore and ritual. Transmitted through multiple communication strategies (face to face, social media, online forums, publications, etc.) vernacular knowledge is shared and shaped communally but individually articulated and actualised. Covering various realms of the supernatural, such as ghosts, saints, spirits, magic, energy lines, and divination, vernacular knowledge also underpins beliefs and assertions such as those expressed in conspiracy theories, challenges to politically and ideologically determined creeds, and other socially compelling ideas that undermine prevailing wisdom. Vernacular religion operates in creative tension not only in relation to institutional forms of religion but also to secularism, state sponsored atheism and scientific rationalism. Both vernacular knowledge and vernacular religion consistently (though often invisibly) challenge the homogeneity of dominant discourses and the hegemony of institutionalised authorities in myriad contexts. This volume is dedicated to Leonard Norman Primiano (1957–2021).

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The body is a site bearing multiple signs of cultural inscriptions. People's postures, use of space, dress codes, speech particularities, facial expressions, tone qualities, gaze, and gestures are codes that send messages to observers. These messages differ across cultures and times. Some of these non-verbal messages are taken to be conscious or subconscious projection of a sense of personal or collective identity. The various forms of "body talk" may flag personal distinction, style, uniqueness or politics, in which case, the body and its presentations become stances of the self. Different from this, body talk may exhibit a society's or culture's standardized norms of valuation with respect to what conforms or deviates from expectations.The subject of this anthology is non-verbal communication signals with contributing studies from societies and cultures of Africa and African Diaspora. The goals are to document popular gestures, explore their meanings, and understand how they frame interactions and colour perception.The anthology is also aimed at offering interdisciplinary perspectives on the problematics of non-verbal communication by making sense of the various ways that different cultures speak without "voice", and to examine how people and groups make their presence felt as social, cultural and political actors. Some of the contributions include case studies, descriptive codification, theoretical analyses and performative studies. The issues highlighted range from film and literature studies, gender studies, history, religion, popular cultural, and extends to the virtual space. Other studies provide a linguistic treatment of non-verbal communication and use it as means of explicating perception and stereotyping.

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Fabricating Origins builds on a series of posts that originally appeared, in earlier forms, at the blog for Culture on the Edge. In these posts each member of the group focused on the problem of origins, examining how we repeatedly conjure up an authorized past that suits the needs of the continually changing present. Fabricating Origins presses these short studies further by inviting ten early career scholars to each work with Culture on the Edge by applying, extending, even critiquing the group, to further illustrate for readers how talk of origins in the present is so much more interesting that being preoccupied with long past origins themselves. The volume, like all books in the Working with Culture on the Edge series, is introduced and concluded by original, theoretically challenging but engaging essays. It provides a selection of ten main articles which draw on a variety of examples to make the case, followed by original commentaries on each, all of which are pithy but substantive.Although not a textbook, and while challenging for any reader unaccustomed to making the switch from origins to the discourse on origins, Fabricating Origins is especially aimed at the early career reader. The volume therefore includes an annotated set of suggested readings on how to rethink origins as the product of contemporary and always tactically useful talk and action.

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The war in Sri Lanka was violent and costly in human and material terms. This was one of the longest wars in modern South Asia. Often referred to as an 'ethnic' conflict between the majority Sinhalas and the minority Tamils, the war had a profound religious dimension. The majority of Sinhala Buddhist monks (the Sangha) not only opposed any meaningful powersharing but latterly advocated an all-out military solution. Such a nexus between Buddhism and violence is paradoxical; nevertheless it has a historical continuity. In 2009 when the war ended amid serious questions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, monks defended the military and its Buddhist leadership. Taking the lives of three key Sangha activists as the modern framework of a Sinhala Buddhist worldview, this book examines the limitations of Western theories of peacebuilding and such solutions as federalism and multinationalism. It analyzes Sinhala Buddhist ethnoreligious nationalism and argues for the urgent need to engage Buddhist politics - in Lanka and elsewhere - with approaches and mechanisms that accommodate the Sangha as key actors in political reform.Sinhala Buddhism is often studied from a sociological or anthropological standpoint. This book fills a gap by examining the faith and practice of the Sinhala Sangha and their followers from a political science perspective.

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Focusing on the academic study of religion, Claiming Identity in the Study of Religion is the first in a series that grapples with the historicity of identity and the social and rhetorical techniques that make claims to identity possible. In this volume, six previously published essays by scholar of religion Russell T. McCutcheon are each coupled with a new substantive commentary by North American contributors. McCutcheon's essays highlight different identifying claims within the work of a number of leading scholars of religion. The companion contributions analyze the strategies of identification employed by the scholars whom McCutcheon discusses. Monica R. Miller provides an introduction to the volume and there is a concluding essay by Steven Ramey. The strategies of identification highlighted and exposed in this text are further explored in the second volume in the series, The Problem of Nostalgia in the Study of Identity through a set of detailed ethnographic/historical studies that press novel ways of studying identity as an always active and ongoing process of signification.

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Entanglements attempts to argue against those who claim that scholarship on the category religion is only of secondary interest, in that it fails to do primary research on real religions. The volume collects eighteen responses, written across twenty years, that each exemplify the inevitably situated, give-and-take nature of all academic debate. These essays call into question the often used distinction between primary and secondary sources, between description and analysis. Published here in their original form, each contribution is accompanied by new, substantive introduction describing the context of each response and explaining how each shows something still at stake in the academic study of religion--whether its the rhetoric used to authorize competing scholarly claims or the difficulty involved in suspending our commonsense view of the world long enough to study the means by which we have come to see it that way. An ethnography of scholarly practice written mainly for earlier career readers--whether undergraduate or graduate students or even tenure-track faculty--Entanglements tackles the notion that some scholarship is more pristine, and thus more valuable, than others, thereby modeling for scholars earlier in their careers some of the obstacles and arguments that may face them should their research interests be judged unorthodox.

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Entanglements attempts to argue against those who claim that scholarship on the category religion is only of secondary interest, in that it fails to do primary research on real religions. The volume collects eighteen responses, written across twenty years, that each exemplify the inevitably situated, give-and-take nature of all academic debate. These essays call into question the often used distinction between primary and secondary sources, between description and analysis. Published here in their original form, each contribution is accompanied by new, substantive introduction describing the context of each response and explaining how each shows something still at stake in the academic study of religion--whether its the rhetoric used to authorize competing scholarly claims or the difficulty involved in suspending our commonsense view of the world long enough to study the means by which we have come to see it that way. An ethnography of scholarly practice written mainly for earlier career readers--whether undergraduate or graduate students or even tenure-track faculty--Entanglements tackles the notion that some scholarship is more pristine, and thus more valuable, than others, thereby modeling for scholars earlier in their careers some of the obstacles and arguments that may face them should their research interests be judged unorthodox.

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Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity is a multi-authored work that tackles the problem of how to examine the historicity of identity. Six scholars of religion, all members of the Culture on the Edge group, engage in a constructive dialogue mediating and critically cross-examining issues of identity formation, suggesting ways of achieving greater theoretical clarity in the study of identity-or better, identity claims-as it takes shape over time and space. The volume is divided into three sites, or what we might call three situations, each of which is representative of a specific act, such as for example, the strategic acts of classification, appropriation, and comparison. Each site then consists of a main chapter, a response from another scholar (who presses further the point of the main chapter while inviting its author to reflect upon their initial argument) and a reply from the author of the main chapter. Additionally, the volume includes an appendix with a series of posts that originally appeared at the blog for Culture on the Edge. These theoretically challenging posts, also investigating the volume's three main areas, further exemplify and model a different way of approach in the study of identity. Although Strategic Acts in the Study of Identity is not a textbook, and while challenging for any reader, it can serve as a great pedagogical tool for professors who wish to use the book in their classes not only within religious studies but in any class that touches on issues of identity.

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Everyday Humanism seeks to move the discussion of humanism's positive contributions to life away from the macro-level to focus on the everyday, or micro-dimensions of our individual and collective existence. How might humanist principles impact parenting? How might these principles inform our take on aging, on health, on friendship? These are just a few of the issues around everyday life that needed interpretation from a humanist perspective. Through attention to key issues, the volume seeks to promote the value of humanism at the level of the ordinary, typical occurrences and conditions of our existence.

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The land of Bambuk was an important source of gold for trans-Saharan trade and the imperial polities of Ghana and Mali, yet the non-centralized societies of this region remain largely peripheral in the historiography of West Africa. Drawing on recent archaeological research at the site of Diouboye in eastern Senegal, this book explores social life in medieval Bambuk from the standpoint of a village occupied over several centuries (1000-1400 CE). Material and spatial data from excavations, together with those from survey of the middle Falemme River basin, enable a critical look at how interactions across multiple scales-among neighboring houses, between cultural and craft traditions, and within a much broader political economy-created both possibilities for and challenges to the ongoing production of a local community at Diouboye. By moving back and forth across these scales centered on a single village, Assembling the Village in Medieval Bambuk outlines a relational archaeology of community applicable to the study of seemingly peripheral societies and processes of pre-modern globalization across Africa and beyond.

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Earth, Empire and Sacred Text examines the Muslim-Christian theology of creation and humanity, aiming to construct a dialogue to enable both faiths to work together to preserve our planet, to bring justice to its most needy inhabitants, and to contribute to peace-building. Earth, Empire and Sacred Text opens with an analysis of the influential shift from the Cartesian view of the autonomous, disembodied self to a self defined in discourse, community and culture. The "career" of Q. 2:30 (Adam's God-mandated trusteeship) is then traced, from Islamic commentaries of the classical period to writings of Muslim scholars in the modern and postmodern periods. This is examined alongside the concept of human trusteeship under God in Christian and Jewish writers. The book concludes by highlighting the essential elements for a Muslim-Christian theology of human trusteeship.

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Local Experiences of Connectivity and Mobility in the Ancient West-Central Mediterranean brings together a series of papers that explore theoretical and material approaches to connectivity and mobility in the ancient Central and Western Mediterranean.

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he twelve chapters collected in the volume criticise, analyse, and discuss the issue of peace in Arab literature, philosophical and theological thought, and both institutional and grassroots practices of intercultural and interreligious mediation.

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Sasson's new book is a retelling of the story of the women's request for ordination. Inspired in particular by the Therigatha and building on years of research and experience in the field, Sasson follows Vimala, Patachara, Bhadda Kundalakesa, and many others as they walk through the forest to request full access to the tradition. The Buddha's response to this request is famously complicated and multi-faceted; he eventually accepts women into the Order, but attaches specific and controversial conditions (garudhammas). Sasson invites us to think about who these first Buddhist women might have been, what they hoped to achieve, and what these conditions might have meant to them thereafter. By shaping her research into a story, Sasson invites readers to imagine a world that continues to inspire and complicate Buddhist narrative to this day.

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Thinking in Asana is an exploration of three popular lineages of modern postural yoga - Viniyoga, Iyengar Yoga, and Ashtanga Yoga. The book describes in detail the different styles of yoga practice advocated within the three lineages, and traces the influence of this practice on the corresponding yoga philosophies. While Viniyoga, Iyengar Yoga, and Ashtanga Yoga name the yoga of Patanjali as the source of their teachings, the interpretations of Patanjali's system differ significantly between the three lineages. A careful examination suggests that these differences can be accounted for by referring to the differences in the kinds of movement experienced during yoga practice. Linguistic theories of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson provide methodological groundwork for such examination. By deconstructing the experience of movement specific to modern postural yoga practice, and by juxtaposing it to a linguistic analysis of a textual corpus, Thinking in Asana argues that there is a systematic relation between how yoga is practiced and how yoga philosophy is understood. In doing so, the book not only gives a detailed, insightful look at modern postural yoga in practice and theory, but it also emphasises the role of movement in human meaning-making activity.

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Ever since Herodotus, it has been observed that Egypt – that is, ancient Egyptian civilisation – was a gift of the Nile. However, only recently have Egyptologists come to appreciate that Egypt was as much a gift of the desert as a gift of the water, at least as regards its very beginnings. To understand the civilisation that originally settled along the Nile Valley and in the Delta, we must study not only the remains of ancient monuments, excavated artefacts and reconstructed texts, but take proper account of the landscape, conditions and environment that shaped Egypt’s culture, religion and ideology. This volume addresses various aspects of how the world was perceived in the minds of Egyptians, and how Egyptians subsequently reshaped their surrounding landscape in harmony with their view of geography and cosmological ideas. Profane landscape and sacred space thus blend into one multi-faceted concept.

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What does it mean to "do theory" in the study of religion today? The terms "method and theory" are now found in course titles, curricula/degree requirements, area/comprehensive exams, and frequently listed as competencies on the CVs of scholars from across a wide array of subfields. Are we really that theoretically and methodologically sophisticated? While a variety of groups at annual scholarly conferences now regularly itemize theorizing among the topics that they examine and carry out, it seems that few of the many examples of doing theory today involve either meta-reflection on the practical conditions of the field or rigorously explanatory studies of religion's cause(s) or function(s). So, despite the appearance of tremendous advances in the field over the past 30 years, it can be argued that little has changed. Indeed, the term theory is today so widely understood as to make it coterminous with virtually all forms of scholarship on religion. This volume seeks to re-examine just what we ought to consider theory to signify. The book consists of distinct chapters penned by leading theorists in the field.The core of the book consists of statements written by an anthropologist of religion, a literary theorist, a specialist in cognitive science of religion, and a philosopher of religion. Each statement is then followed by shorter response papers, and concludes with a response by the theorist.

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Early issues of The Eastern Buddhist contain short translations from various Buddhist texts, some of them quite important and all of considerable interest. Since they are set unobtrusively between modern statements and arguments about the nature of Buddhism, and in any case are difficult to locate, they have often gone unnoticed by students. Assembled here is a selection of those texts which have stood the test of time. Derived from Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese originals, they illustrate the importance of lay spirituality for Japanese Buddhists, both in the nenbutsu tradition and in the wider context of Mahayana Buddhism. Drawing them together into one volume brings out the fact that these varied Buddhist traditions are intricately related to each other. The result is an unusual and fascinating reader which would grace many a course in Buddhist studies.

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This book provides an anthology of sources highlighting Manichaeism, a gnostic religion which flourished largely clandestinely in the Near East, Central Asia, and China until the beginning of the seventeenth century. It translates and discusses the importance of a number of Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew testimonies for a proper understanding of the cultural importance of what most scholars consider to be the first 'world religion.' Many of these sources are translated here into English for the first time.

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The German Ocean examines archaeological and historical evidence for the development of economies and societies around the North Sea from the beginning of the twelfth century until the mid sixteenth century. It draws in material from Scandinavia to Normandy and from Scotland to the Thames estuary. While largely concerned with the North Sea littoral, when necessary it takes account of adjacent areas such as the Baltic or inland hinterlands. The North Sea is often perceived as a great divide, divorcing the British Isles from continental Europe. In cultural terms, however, it has always acted more as a lake, supporting communities around its fringes which have frequently had much in common. This is especially true of the medieval period when trade links, fostered in the two centuries prior to 1100, expanded in the 12th and 13th centuries to ensure the development of maritime societies whose material culture was often more remarkable for its similarity across distance than for its diversity. Geography, access to raw materials and political expediency could nevertheless combine to provide distinctive regional variations.Economies developed more rapidly in some areas than others; local solutions to problems produced urban and rural environments of different aspect; the growth, and sometimes decline, of towns and ports was often dictated by local as much as wider factors. This book explores evidence for this 'diverse commonality' through the historic environment of the North Sea region with the intention that it will be of interest not only to historians and archaeologists but to those who live and work within the historic environment. This environment is a common European resource with much to contribute to a sustainable future - the book provides an archaeological contribution to the understanding of that resource.

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