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Derived from the Latin abiectus, literally meaning "thrown or cast down," "abjection" names the condition of being servile, wretched, or contemptible. In Western religious tradition, to be abject is to submit to bodily suffering or psychological mortification for the good of the soul. In Cast Down: Abjection in America, 1700-1850, Mark J. Miller argues that transatlantic Protestant discourses of abjection engaged with, and furthered the development of, concepts of race and sexuality in the creation of public subjects and public spheres.Miller traces the connection between sentiment, suffering, and publication and the role it played in the movement away from church-based social reform and toward nonsectarian radical rhetoric in the public sphere. He focuses on two periods of rapid transformation: first, the 1730s and 1740s, when new models of publication and transportation enabled transatlantic Protestant religious populism, and, second, the 1830s and 1840s, when liberal reform movements emerged from nonsectarian religious organizations. Analyzing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conversion narratives, personal narratives, sectarian magazines, poems, and novels, Miller shows how church and social reformers used sensational accounts of abjection in their attempts to make the public sphere sacred as a vehicle for political change, especially the abolition of slavery.

This essay uses the work of Jonathan Edwards to trace intellectual, historical, and theoretical connections between eighteenth-century religious conversion in England and New England and later accounts of masochism's Enlightenment philosophical basis. Expanding feminist readings of revival abjection to include racial abjection, I focus on Edwards's account of religious sentiment in a "Personal Narrative" (ca. 1739), A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Works of God (1736–37), and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742). Situating these texts in their philosophical and political contexts, I then use A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746) to show how Edwards's evolving response to revivalist disruptions of hierarchy led him to describe a sentimental structure of desire similar to masochism as a defense against a modern subjectivity that would allow for masochism.

The author shares some brief thoughts on 30 years of involvement in the area of career counseling and vocational behavior.

This study investigated the level of congruency between scores on the Self‐Directed Search–Form R (J. L. Holland, 1994) and scores from an online instrument, both of which measure Holland types (J. L. Holland, 1985, 1997). A reasonably high level of congruence was found. Implications for career counselors are briefly delineated.

This comparative study examined the degree of congruency between the results of the Self‐Directed Search Form E (J. L. Holland, 1990) and an online self‐assessment career planning exercise. A relatively high level of congruence was found between the 2 measures. Implications for career counselors and for future research studies are briefly discussed.