Suchergebnisse

On a February night in 1897, the general store in Walford, Iowa, burned down. The next morning, townspeople discovered a charred corpse in the ashes. Everyone knew that the store's owner, Frank Novak, had been sleeping in the store as a safeguard against burglars. Now all that remained were a few of his personal items scattered under the body.At first, it seemed to be a tragic accident mitigated just a bit by Novak's foresight in buying generous life insurance policies to provide for his family. But soon an investigation by the ambitious new county attorney, M. J. Tobin, turned up evidence sug

In Augustine's Leaders, Peter Iver Kaufman works from the premise that appropriations of Augustine endorsing contemporary liberal efforts to mix piety and politics are mistaken--that Augustine was skeptical about the prospects for involving Christianity in meaningful political change. His skepticism raises several questions for historians. What roles did one of the most influential Christian theologians set for religious and political leaders? What expectations did he have for emperors, statesmen, bishops, and pastors? What obstacles did he presume they would face? And what pastoral, polemical, and political challenges shaped Augustine's expectations--and frustrations? Augustine's Leaders answers those questions and underscores the leadership its subject provided as he continued to commend humility and compassion in religious and political cultures that seemed to him to reward, above all, celebrity and self-interest. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1246/thumbnail.jpg

On November 11 and 12, 2011, a symposium held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill honored John M. Headley, Emeritus Professor of History. The organizers, Professor Melissa Bullard—Headley's colleague in the department of history at that university—along with Professors Paul Grendler (University of Toronto) and James Weiss (Boston College), as well as Nancy Gray Schoonmaker, coordinator of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies—assembled presenters, respondents, and dozens of other participants from Western Europe and North America to celebrate the career of their prolific, versatile, and influential colleague whose publications challenged and often changed the ways scholars think about Martin Luther, Thomas More, the Habsburg empire, early modern Catholicism, globalization, and multiculturalism. This special issue contains the major papers delivered at the symposium, revised to take account of colleagues' suggestions at the conference and thereafter. John O'Malley studies the censorship of sacred art with special reference to Michelangelo's famed "Last Judgment" and the Council of Trent. John Martin sifts Montaigne's skepticism about contemporaneous strategies for self-disclosure and self-discipline. Stressing the significance of grammar, Constantin Fasolt helps us recapture the Renaissance's and the early modern religious reformations' disagreements with antiquity. Ronald Witt's reappraisal of humanist historiography probes Petrarch's perspectives on ancient Rome. John McManamon includes tales of theft and market manipulation in his study of the early modern collection and circulation of books and manuscripts, the commodification of study. To "nuance" John Headley's conclusions about "the Europeanization of the world," Jerry Bentley repossesses the influence of other than European societies on several European theorists of human rights. Kate Lowe's remarks on the reconstruction of race in the Renaissance explores the effects of a critical mistranslation on what being black was taken to mean by Europeans. David Gilmartin introduces readers to the shape of democracy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India, as well as to the understandings of popular sovereignty that affected elections, suggesting strides that scholars might take "toward a worldwide history of voting". The remarkable range of these contributions comes close to reflecting the range of Professor Headley's interests and achievements, which James M. Weiss maps in his tribute, identifying "unifying themes" in Headley's work. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1287/thumbnail.jpg

This article builds on the concept of "writing as thinking" by describing an in-class, cumulative, peer-writing exercise that helps foster reflexivity. Reflexivity is understood as a process of seeing and a process of being. To be reflexive means that we are fully conscious of the lenses through which we view the world. It suggests that we understand both our situationality and our positionality. In this sense, reflexivity is an essential component of the sociological imagination. Three themes of reflexivity commonly arise from this exercise: developing reflexivity, reinforcing reflexivity, and resisting reflexivity. These themes are discussed and illustrated with full-length excerpts of students' work.

Athletes today are often criticized for their aberrant and deviant behavior; however, when activist athletes act with integrity and sincerity by promoting social and political justice, they often face a hate-filled backlash of scorn and contempt. In this paper I explore the negative consequences of being an activist athlete. Using in-depth interview data and secondary accounts, I examine reactions to athletes who engaged in social or political protest. I focus specifically on athletes who have protested against war, sweatshop labor, and racism. The study of activist athletes is important to sociologists for a number of reasons: It highlights the significance of analyzing sport sociologically, it makes explicit the connection between sport and politics, it identifies some of the personal consequences to activists as a result of their protests, and it has the potential to reshape our understanding of sport as a vehicle for progressive social change.

For nearly five centuries readers of history have been treated to a one sided view of the late medieval English Church, and that narrow, negative vision has been permitted to stand for the whole. Most of the misconceptions about the clerical contribution to the tutor dynasty's formative years stem from criticisms of clerical worldliness composed by More, Erasmus, Colet, and others. The Polytyque Churche is Kaufman's attempt to restore the reputation of the late medieval English church and its position in political culture. At the core of the book, Kaufman analyzes these deceptive accusations against the church. He prefaces his discussion with an illuminating chronicle of the continuing deception--a history of the history of earliest Tutor political culture. Kaufman's fresh perspectives on the religious dimensions of public service and on the political character and consequences of ecclesiastical administration are fully crystallized in his presentation of scenes from clerical life that illustrate his central theme--the interpretation of religion and political culture. Kaufman maps that interpretation by examining four points of contact: allegedly "secular" pageants, ecclesiastical measures against late medieval crime, the church's immunities, and parish life. From this analysis emerges a partial recovery of the "the polytyque churche" in a presentation that coaxes students, scholars, and other readers to reconsider the whole issue of the relationships between church and state, religion and politics. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1273/thumbnail.jpg

"Peter Iver Kaufman shows that, although Giorgio Agamben represents Augustine as an admired pioneer of an alternative form of life, he also considers Augustine an obstacle keeping readers from discovering their potential. Kaufman develops a compelling, radical alternative to progressive politics by continuing the line of thought he introduced in On Agamben, Arendt, Christianity, and the Dark Arts of Civilization. Kaufman starts with a comparison of Agamben and Augustine's projects, both of which challenge reigning concepts of citizenship. He argues that Agamben, troubled by Augustine's opposition to Donatists and Pelagians, failed to forge links between his own redefinitions of authenticity and "the coming community" and the bishop's understandings of grace, community, and compassion. On Agamben, Donatism, Pelagianism, and the Missing Links sheds new light on Augustine's "political theology," introducing ways it can be used as a resource for alternative polities while supplementing Agamben's scholarship and scholarship on Agamben"--