Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes

Chad M. Bauman — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:04:24 PDT

While Hindu-Muslim violence in India has received a great deal of scholarly attention, Hindu-Christian violence has not. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of Hindu-Christian violence, and to elucidate the curious alliance, in that violence, of largely upper-caste, anti-minority Hindu nationalists with lower-status groups, by analyzing both with reference to the varied processes of globalization. The article begins with a short review of the history of anti-Christian rhetoric in India, and then discusses and critiques a number of inadequately unicausal explanations of communal violence before arguing, with reference to the work of Mark Taylor, that only theories linking local and even individual social behaviors to larger, global processes like globalization can adequately honor the truly “webby” nature of the social world.

Trials of the urban ecologist

Rebecca W. Dolan — Sun, 05 May 2013 13:53:59 PDT

A group of scientists describe some of the obstacles encountered and insights gained while carrying out ecological research in and around the city of Indianapolis.

Christianity and Hinduism: An Annotated Bibliography

Chad M. Bauman et al. — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:37:55 PDT

No abstract available

Review of "What’s Wrong with Sin? Sin in Individual and Social Perspective from Schleiermacher to Theologies of Liberation"

Brent A. R. Hege — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:18:47 PDT

A review of "What’s Wrong with Sin? Sin in Individual and Social Perspective from Schleiermacher to Theologies of Liberation" by Derek R. Nelson.

Review of "An Introduction to Christian Theology"

Brent A. R. Hege — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:18:45 PDT

A review of "An Introduction to Christian Theology" by Richard J. Plantinga, Thomas R. Thompson, and Matthew D. Lundberg.

Review of "Thinking with the Church: Essays in Historical Theology"

Brent A. R. Hege — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:18:43 PDT

A review of "Thinking with the Church: Essays in Historical Theology" by B. A. Gerrish.

Review of "The Church Event: Call and Challenge of a Church Protestant"

Brent A. R. Hege — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:00:41 PDT

A review of "The Church Event: Call and Challenge of a Church Protestant" by Vitor Westhelle.

Review of "Take My Hand: A Theological Memoir"

Brent A. R. Hege — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:41:05 PDT

A review of "Take My Hand: A Theological Memoir" by Andrew Taylor-Troutman.

The Narrative Premise of the Dual Ending to Galdós's La Fontana de Oro

Linda M. Willem — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:25:53 PST

THE readers of the 1871 edition of Galdós's La Fontana de Oro are greeted with not onlyy two alternative conclusions to the novel, but also with an invitation by the narrator to freely choose a preferred ending after considering them both. The situation is further complicated by the narrative pretense that the tragic vision is the true account of the facts while the happy one is an artistic rendering. By presenting his reading public with this dilemma over a century ago, Galdós raised questions about the nature of narrative conventions which are similar to those issues being addressed by narratologists today.

Review of Religious Division and Social Conflict

Chad M. Bauman — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:53:35 PST

A review of Peggy Froerer, Religious Division and Social Conflict: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India. New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2007.

Review of Missionaries and their Medicine

Chad M. Bauman — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:09:48 PST

A review of Missionaries And Their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India, by David Hardiman, Manchester University Press, 2008.

Man of Steel

Bryan M. Furuness — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:48:20 PST

No abstract available.

Luis Goytisolo's Teoría del Conocimiento As Postmodern Autobiography

Terri Carney — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:52:03 PST

Teoría del conocimiento es la última novela de la famosa tetralogía de Goytisolo, Antagonía. En este estudio trato la obra como autobiografía postmoderna. Repleto de referencias autobiográficas a la vida de Goytisolo y estructurada como bildungsroman, queda como exploración de autoría, subjetividad, y la posibilidad de agencia en una realidad post-totalitaria y postmoderna. Goytisolo cuidadosamente crea la ilusión de una autobiografía convencional solo para luego socavar la premisa de un sujeto plenario y la transparencia del lenguaje, dejando a los lectores con una versión alternative del ser y autor, encarnado en el personaje peculiar de El Viejo.

King Alfonso XI in Lope’s Amor, pleito y desafío: A Practical and Just Model of Kingship in a Time of Moral Ambiguity

Terri Carney — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:52:00 PST

It is an axiom that the king is a pillar of Spanish Golden Age drama. Indeed, whether fictional or historic, on the stage or in the audience, the figure of the king is prevalent in the world of the comedia as a site of cultural anxiety surrounding the role of the monarchy in the newly urbanized and litigious seventeenth-century Spanish society. Scholars such as Melveena McKendrick (Playing the King) and Frank Casa (“The Duality of the King in Golden Age Drama”) have explored the personage of the king in a variety of these plays. Neither of these studies makes mention of Lope’s Amor, pleito y desafío, even though the king plays a prominent role in the drama. Here I propose to examine this particular play and the role of the king in determining justice in an increasingly hazy moral universe. Written in 1621, the year of the transfer of power from King Felipe III to King Felipe IV, Amor, pleito y desafío presents us with a monarch who stands in stark contrast to the remoteness, pageantry, and spectacle of Felipe IV’s court. Indeed, Lope’s King Alfonso is accessible, a good listener, and respectful of the opposing codes of conduct that hold sway over his populace, including chivalry, courtly love, and the proliferating, nascent legal system. Simply put, he is an unusually sensitive, humane, and just king for the cultural context of Lope’s Spain.

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing and Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy

Terri Carney et al. — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:38:13 PST

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional area studies and the field of history. The authors argue that progress toward diverse curricula can be made when colleagues work collaboratively and apply innovative pedagogical models to the classroom. Although specific to one university, these challenges to and strategies for transformation have broader application to all faculty seeking to diversify curricula and institutions.

From the Streets to the Screen: The Music of Madrid in Saura's Deprisa, deprisa

Linda M. Willem — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:52:28 PST

With a distinguished career as a director of over thirty-five feature films, Carlos Saura has been a prominent figure within the international film community for nearly fifty years. One of his most critically-acclaimed works, Deprisa, deprisa [Hurry, Hurry], is a documentary-like portrayal of a group of friends - Pablo, Angela, Meca, and Sebas - engaged in ever-escalating acts of crime and violence in Madrid in the early 1980's. This is Saura's second film to deal with the topic of alienated urban youth. In 1959 his very first feature film, Los golfos [The Hooligans], focused on a young gang of thieves in one of Madrid's poorest neighborhoods. These were the children of Spaniards who emigrated to the city from rural communities in search of an economic prosperity that was never realized for them. Los golfos was thematically and stylistically similar to the Italian neorealist cinema that Saura had been exposed to during a week-long screening of films by De Sica, Visconti, Germi, Fellini and Antonioni at the Italian Institute of Culture in 1954. But Saura's all too realistic portrayal of the bleak social conditions in the Spanish capital during the Franco regime caused censorship problems which resulted in a three year delay for the release of the film and sixteen minutes being cut from its length. Censorship had been abolished by 1980 when Saura returned to the urban genre with Deprisa, deprisa, so he was able to achieve a degree of realistic detail that would have been unthinkable during the dictatorship.

Places in the Mind: Evocative Walks Through Galdós' Madrid

Linda M. Willem — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:52:26 PST

Reality or imagination, fact or fiction, truth or illusion, life or art - these competing claims of referentiality and textuality have long been the concern of writers and scholars of realist literature. In her recent book, All is True, Lilian R. Furst bemoans the tendency of literary critics to view these conepts as an either/or option that privileges one at the expense of the other. Rather than being mutually exclusive, referentiality and textuality are seen by Furst as complementary and interdependent. She proposes a mode of analysis that recognizes the dialogic relationship between them and focuses on the porous boundary separating the external world of verifiable reality and the internal world of fictive illusion. As Furst explains, the tension between these two worlds arises from the attempt by realist writers - especially those of the nineteenth century - to conceal this relationship from the reader. They declare their fiction to be a faithful replica of reality, but the text's rootedness in language exposes their endeavor to be an act of creation rather than representation.

Review of The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios

James F. McGrath — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:06:12 PST

Article reviews The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios by J.A. Waddell (Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies, 10; London-New York, T&T Clark, 2011)

Political Theology in a Postsecularist Key

Brent A. R. Hege — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:41:02 PDT

A review of Clayton Crockett, Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics after Liberalism. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. $50.00 216 pp. ISBN: 9780231149822

The U.S. No Longer Makes the Grade: Economic Inequality Put an End to the 'American Century'

David S. Mason — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:12:09 PDT

In his State of the Union address last January, U.S. President Barack Obama said that "anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about." Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, when in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, warned that unless Americans changed directions, they would see the "end of the American century by 2015." As bright and capable as both of these politicians are, they are both whistling in the wind. The American century - the post-World War II era of U.S. global leadership and dominance - ended a decade ago, and it is not coming back. While that does not mean the cessation of American wealth and might, it does mark a significant transformation in U.S. society and economics, and the country's place in the world. To cope with this transformation, Americans needs to recognize the nation's relative decline.