Pipes Output http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=goLxp0e93RG3nJY7pgt1Yg Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:16:45 +0000 http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ CompassJournalshttp://feedburner.google.com http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/yQ9p8HLLjG8/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00872.x This essay explores how the early American stage functioned as an incubator for ideas about national identity, artistic expression, and masculinity. Reading four plays from the early years of the Republic – Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, William Dunlap’s André, John Augustus Stone’s Metamora, and Robert Montgomery Bird’s The Gladiator, I demonstrate how early American drama addressed changing concepts of ideal masculinity, republican democracy, and the colonial past. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00872.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/fKqusR_rUHE/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00875.x Since its consolidation as Greater New York City in 1898 (and even much earlier), New York City has served as a setting and subject for a number of literary experiments. These experiments in both fiction and nonfiction challenged expectations about form and content of writing about New York City. The immense variety of texts resulting from literary engagements with New York City has been collected in a host of anthologies and literary histories that have been published throughout the 20th century and in the past decade. Many of these works have offered evidence of how foreign writers have engaged with New York. Foreign literary visitors, especially the British, offered new models for literary transatlanticism through their encounters with New York City which, more often than not, explored aspects of personal and political identity. With all of its attendant anxieties, the theme of identity was at the center of early 20th-century British as well as American writing in which New York plays a significant part such as Henry James’s The American Scene (1907) and Ford Madox Ford’s An English Girl (1907), New York is Not America (1927), When the Wicked Man (1931), some of which I consider here. British and American New York texts serve as meditations on changing notions of ‘Anglo’ identity, in particular, as well as changing notions of transatlantic writing. Only by reading these texts comparatively and historically is this important cross-conversation about ‘Anglo’ identity and transatlantic textual identity revealed. For the British, this type of writing has its roots in works 19th-century travel and social commentary by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and others. Since the early 20th century, however, the models for modern British writers of New York also include those offered by American expatriate writers such as James, who foreground the complex issue of identity in an imperial and post-imperial world in their literary engagements with the city. British New York texts such as Ford’s tend to present the city as a forum for startling and frank fictional and nonfictional discussions about what it means to be ‘Anglo’ in an increasingly transatlantic and cosmopolitan world. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00875.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/LJFH4i78Ge8/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00866.x Although scientific literatures by British American colonists have not traditionally been included in studies of early American literature, recent work has begun to pay closer attention to the literary elements of natural, medical, and cartographic texts produced in the long 18th century. New approaches have expanded Eurocentric and nation-based paradigms by positioning colonial science in an imperial and Atlantic World context that focuses upon transatlantic exchanges between the British Americas and England. These studies have investigated colonists’ efforts to obtain credit for their scientific contributions in England and the strategies with which colonists resisted metropolitan biases regarding their knowledge. Studies of the literature of place show how natural histories, cartographies, and nature writing rendered the New World familiar, even while establishing colonists’ relationship to and possession of the land. Meanwhile, an emerging focus on anxieties regarding mental and physical degeneration, spurred by theories of America’s degrading influences, offers new directions for investigating colonial subjectivity and racial theories of difference. Finally, examining the various roles that Native Americans and New World Africans played in colonial encounters may facilitate new approaches to non-European contributions to colonial science. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00866.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/nJS_jxpgDpk/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00865.x This essay surveys general trends in book-length studies of 18th-century Scottish literature and culture to examine how moving Scotland from the peripheries to the centre of 18th-century studies has transformed our understandings of the field. It describes three categories or phases of scholarship – canon formation, contextualization and comparison, and methodological reflection – and suggests what kind of work remains to be done in each category. It also discusses how new approaches to reading minor literatures, including those informed by postcolonial theory, Atlantic studies, and devolutionary criticism, have shaped and been shaped by scholarship on 18th-century Scottish literature and culture over the past two decades. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00865.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/kImlXg4ykA0/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00876.x Though scholarship abounds on early modern Europeans’ first encounters with India and its people, any scholarship in general, and particularly in the English language, on their contemporary Indians’ first encounter with Europe and Indians’ view of the West is limited. The article discusses three 18th-century Indian travelers’ travel narratives about Britain, Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, 1726-1809 by Joseph Emin; The Wonders of Vilayet: Being the Memoir, originally in Persian of a Visit to France and Britain in 1765 by Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin; and Westward Bound: Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb by Mirza Abu Taleb Khan to show that a two-way flow of communication and representation existed between 18th-century Britain and India. An analysis of these travel accounts reveals that depending on the shifting cultural point of view and geographical location of the Indian travelers, “home,” and the foreign or “vilayet” as it is called in Persian (Farsi), was a shifting perception for the writers. The writers found that Britons living in Britain had a more positive response to them than the condescending attitudes, a result of power and political dynamics, which the British living in India had toward Indians, thus revealing an important heterogeneity in British attitudes toward Indians in the 18th century. The writers’ exploration of gender and sexual relations and religious attitudes in Britain was both an important means of defining “home” and self identity as well as marking differences from Europeans. Identifying gender and religious differences with British culture through comparison provided the writers a means to assess and critique Indian culture. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00876.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/WK8t-Iitci4/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00868.x As well as describing dishonor itself, the Middle English word ‘shame’ can refer either to the emotion resulting from an awareness of dishonor or disgrace, or to the anticipation of dishonor, the potential for disgrace to be experienced. Late-medieval English literature reveals the interrelation between the personal experience of shame and the way it is produced in relation to others, typically through such kinds of exposure as showing and telling. This essay draws attention to the complex ways in which shame is imagined in late-medieval English literature. It begins by considering the two major focal points of late-medieval shame studies so far: chivalric literature and Christian shame. After surveying the approaches that have been taken to date, it suggests new themes that deserve critical attention in these areas. The remainder of this essay points to other literary contexts in which we might investigate shame more closely. While chivalric and devotional texts are significant areas in which shame was imagined, medical, conduct, and advisory texts also engage with the concept of shame in important ways. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00868.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/l8wui7ExsW4/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00873.x Since the earliest performances of Shakespeare’s Richard II, parallels between its tragic protagonist and Elizabeth I have not gone unnoticed – not least by Elizabeth herself. This essay attempts to move beyond that parallel, examining its implications not only for readings of Shakespeare’s play or Elizabethan imaginings of the queen, but also to the relationship of sexuality and historiography in early modern writing. Richard and Elizabeth both embody a transgressive femininity that exposes, rather than contradicts, the gender norms of monarchy; this exposure becomes, in Elizabethan historical writing, inextricable from the crisis of legitimacy at the heart of Tudor dynastic narratives. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00873.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/aHRtyP6eMu4/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00869.x This article examines a growing body of work on the psychology of novel reading in the Victorian period by focusing on how three related fields have recently, simultaneously, turned their attention to readers’ minds: the history of reading; studies of psychology and literature; and, more surprisingly, studies of Victorian sociability. Across these fields, critics have found that Victorian readers were not always expected to pay attention: 19th-century psychologists and observers of literary culture thought that many layers and vagaries of the reader’s consciousness and unconscious mind were at work in the reading process. Newly accessible, first-hand accounts of reading experiences have also underscored that Victorian readers used books in unpredictable ways, often as a prompt for their own associations or to turn inward and reflect on social practice. Partly in response to the Foucauldian emphasis on the coerciveness of novel reading that long monopolized literary studies, critics have been redrawing 19th-century reading history to include not reading, or perhaps not only reading, but also the ways novel reading afforded unique forms of self-knowledge amidst the pressures and worries of the modern Victorian world. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00869.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/-gcSB9gxVBU/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00870.x This article discusses the state of ecocritical thinking in Victorian literary scholarship. It proposes a distinctive Victorian ecocriticism, informed by thermodynamics, wherein we may understand the living and non-living, the biological and the physical to be both linguistically and energetically entangled. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00870.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/UlVR-plOirI/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00871.x Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages: 195–213; DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2009.00688.x Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1741-4113.2011.00871.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/v9a6HCIHgTU/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00438.x This article provides an overview of emerging research into the concept of deviant identity by highlighting major new directions in cyber-deviance scholarship. We suggest that the examination of deviance in online settings offers unique new insights into the processes of identity construction and reinforcement, role play, and the social organization of deviant communities. We conclude by considering developments that may advance the literature on deviant identity in real world spaces, as well as expand the conceptual utility of deviance for other subareas of sociology. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00438.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/7hUbfAMsx54/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00444.x Globalization has increased the flow of people across Europe, bringing economic expansion and ethnic diversity. Open political borders have enhanced European integration and interdependence, creating a cosmopolitan European Union full of transnational citizens. Alongside this increased mobility, state coercion has been quietly on the rise. Since 1990, nearly every European democracy has increased incarceration, locking up common criminals and those perceived to be outsiders. Foreign nationals are overrepresented in nearly every European prison, making up over 50 percent of the prison population in Greece, 35 percent in Spain and Italy, for example, or 28 percent in Sweden. At the same time, the intensification of border control – the regulation of both territory and group membership – has subjected a growing number of people to detention and expulsion, as immigration itself has become, in part, criminalized. The controversial expulsion of the Roma, EU citizens, from France in the summer of 2010 and the large scale detention of North African migrants in Lampedusa, Italy during the Arab Spring of 2011, among other events, graphically illustrate the rise of state coercion, directed particularly against those perceived to be foreigners and mobile. This article analyzes the current state of the literature that brings us closer to understanding how and why European democracies resort to the criminal law and penal sanctioning to resolve broader conflicts over globalization, national identity, and economic restructuring by excluding others and by desperately trying to control and contain mobility. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00444.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/5N5vwqYQgtQ/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00439.x The concept of agency is useful for feminist research on women in gender-traditional religions. By focusing on religious women’s agency, scholars understand these women as actors, rather than simply acted upon by male-dominated social institutions. This article reviews the advantages and limitations of feminist scholarship on the agency of women who participate in gender-traditional religions by bringing into dialog four approaches to understanding agency. The resistance agency approach focuses on women who attempt to challenge or change some aspect of their religion. The empowerment agency approach focuses on how women reinterpret religious doctrine or practices in ways that make them feel empowered in their everyday life. The instrumental approach focuses on the non-religious positive outcomes of religious practice, and a compliant approach focuses on the multiple and diverse ways in which women conform to gender-traditional religious teaching. This article concludes by discussing the future direction of scholarship. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00439.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/uHgnit_mDd8/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00447.x This and an accompanying article (Robertson and Monaghan 2012) constitute a developmental ‘think piece’ on embodied heterosexual masculinities, emotions and health. After highlighting the imbrications of heterosexual intimacy, hegemonic masculinity and health – alongside a note on the relevance and limitations of existing literature – our discussion includes: a critical acknowledgement of (different) feminist scholarship and queer theory; reflections on the ‘pure relationship’ and ‘confluent’ or ‘liquid love’; the ‘individualisation thesis’ and the rise of ‘abstract knowledge’; the separation of love from sex as a possible masculine ruse; corporeality, eroticism and the rationalisation of sex. In conclusion, we underscore the need for more research on embodied masculinities, heterosexualities and emotions. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00447.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/3HCiHhQzy-k/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00443.x This paper extends our previous discussion on embodied heterosexual masculinities, men’s emotional lives and health (Monaghan and Robertson 2012). First, we foreground writings on men’s health within and outside of heterosexual relationships given the interrelations between masculinities and other structures (e.g. the political economy). Second, we critically consider writings on masculinities, male bodies and emotions in a relational context. In conclusion, we underscore the need for future research. Such research would foreground men’s corporeal meanings, practices and relations while also critiquing global neoliberalisation, a pernicious process that impacts everyday lives within and beyond heterosexual configurations of body-reflexive practice. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00443.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/W80W9PC4jq8/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00440.x Traditionally, philosophers have had most to say about the ethics of our treatment of non-human animals (hereafter animals); it is only in recent years that social scientists have engaged with issues concerning humans and other animals. However, in the sociological literature and more generally in the emerging field of Human–Animal Studies (HAS), evidence of interest in the animal protection movement is slight. This review of Eliasian theory, Marxist realism, feminism, ecofeminism, and social constructionist theory – along with key activist approaches to animal activism and advocacy – indicates the theoretical richness of the topic that is nonetheless empirically poor. The animal protection movement is referred to here simply as the animal movement or where appropriate, as one of its three strands – animal welfare, animal liberation and animal rights. The article concludes with a discussion of how social movement theory (the ‘why’) and practice (the ‘how’) might be enhanced by social movement scholars working in collaboration with animal activists. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00440.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/NF1YVPRplUQ/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00441.x Sociologists Darcy Leach and Sebastian Haunss coined the term “social movement scene” to refer to people “who share a common identity and a common set of subcultural or countercultural beliefs, values, norms” and the network of physical places they frequent. Leach and Haunss explain the numerous ways in which scenes can benefit social movements (e.g. as pools of mobilization or as places for cultural experimentation) and that scenes are places where resistance happens. I propose that thinking of a scene as a process is more useful than thinking of it as a stable context where political activity happens. Scenes are the products of urban protests, such as squatting; rituals, such as protest and music; and the activities of everyday life. Drawing on research from sociologists, geographers, historians, and cultural studies scholars, I discuss social movement scenes on both the political left and right in terms of their spatial, symbolic, and relational dimensions. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00441.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/HlPw_tv8KJs/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00442.x “Social movement unionism” (SMU) is frequently understood as the antithesis to business unionism. While business unionism, often characterized as bureaucratic and hierarchical, dominated most of the second half of the 20th century, “SMU” showed resurgence in the 1990s. Some scholars argue that SMU should reach beyond the workplace and incorporate the community. Others seem to be proposing a strategy and understand SMU as tactically innovative and mobilizing in alliance with traditional social movements, such as the women’s, environmental, or immigrant rights movement. Some offer propositions about the social processes of a labor union and that SMU must be internally democratic. Finally, some advocate an internationalist component such as a link to global-justice campaigns. In this article, I propose that SMU consists of an array of trends and is inclusive of these varied descriptions, strategies or processes. These trends include (1) rank-and-file mobilization, (2) leadership, (3) community-based organizing, (4) worker centers, (5) corporate campaigns, and (6) transnational components. I draw on social movement and labor literatures to seek a broader understanding of this labor organizing form. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9020.2011.00442.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/IPTW3ssMfCM/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00418.x The intersubjective representation approach to culture focuses on cultural members’ shared knowledge representations about the culture that they are in. Members of the same culture tend to share certain knowledge representations of the central characteristics of the culture. These shared cultural representations are established and perpetuated through dynamic communicative processes. Recent empirical research has provided support for the incremental value of intersubjective cultural representations in research on cultural identity, social cognition, and behaviors. The intersubjective representation approach complements extant research on culture as self and external artifacts. In doing so, it allows for a more comprehensive understanding of culture’s role in social and personality psychological processes. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00418.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/K7iynmOaLBo/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00419.x Are people always motivated to strive for cognitive consistency? Does culture influence a person’s motivation to maintain cognitive consistency between attitudes and actions or between preferences and choices? When and how do people in different cultures experience cognitive dissonance, engage in justification of their behavior, and use self-affirmation? When and how are people with different models of agency motivated to maintain a preference-choice consistency? In this paper, culturally variable self-schemata and models of agency, independent self and agency dominant in North American culture and interdependent self and agency prevalent in Asian culture, are considered as the source of cultural variations in cognitive consistency. These culturally divergent self-systems create variance in situations in which North Americans and Asians are motivated to maintain cognitive consistency. In this paper, related cross-cultural research is reviewed. Some future research agenda are also discussed. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00419.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/qRV05nHN0-M/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00413.x Emotions often are well calibrated to the challenges and opportunities we face. When they are not, we may try to regulate our emotions. Interestingly, there seems to be considerable variation both in the strategies people use to regulate emotions and in the success of these emotion regulation efforts. The Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation framework suggests that variation in the resources required for particular emotion regulation strategies may be a crucial determinant of emotion regulation use and success within individuals across situations, between individuals, and between groups of individuals. In this review, we consider the ways in which two resources for emotion regulation (working memory and social support) might differ among three groups, namely adolescents, older adults, and adults with major depressive disorder. We link these between-group differences in resources to differences in emotion regulation and make suggestions for future research. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00413.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/VxW-fJp3jrs/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00424.x Beyond motivations to achieve particular outcomes, people also have motivations to use particular strategies while pursuing these outcomes. This article integrates research on the latter strategic preferences and discusses the place of such research in the broader investigation of motivated thinking. A review of studies examining the strategic preferences stemming from both motivations for promotion versus prevention (Higgins, 1997) and motivations for locomotion versus assessment (Higgins, Kruglanski, & Pierro, 2003) illustrates that these preferences have unique effects on basic processes of judgment, including the evaluation of alternative hypotheses or counterfactuals, the prioritization of fast versus accurate information processing, and the recall and activation of knowledge from memory. Moreover, this review also demonstrates important interactions between strategic preferences and outcome preferences. Strategic preferences thus appear to make distinct and important contributions to understanding how motivation influences judgment and should feature prominently in general analyses of motivated thinking. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00424.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/hZOvRYv5sFM/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00412.x This paper reviews several psychosocial theories that have been applied to the study of adolescent health behavior. Some of these theories have existed for several decades and, though not originally intended for this purpose, have proven quite useful in predicting and explaining many different types of health-relevant behaviors. During the last 10–15 years, however, there has been a significant increase in the application of social psychological theories to the examination of what is increasingly being seen as a social-psychological phenomenon: health risk behavior among adolescents. This interest has been prompted, in part, by an appreciation of the value of dual-processing principles in explaining these behaviors, and, in particular, a recognition that much adolescent health risk behavior: a) is not always planful or premeditated, and b) involves both heuristic and analytic processing. The paper includes discussion of how dual-processing principles and social-psychological theories can inform intervention efforts. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00412.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/YZRdp6S8Ths/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00416.x Over the last 200 years, where, when and how Americans die has changed dramatically. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, most deaths occurred with little warning, typically due to short-term infectious diseases. In the contemporary United States, death typically happens to older adults following a long-term chronic illness. Most older adults die in institutions rather than at home, and many rely on life-extending medical technologies. For most older Americans, it is more useful and accurate to conceptualize the end of life as an anticipated and protracted process (i.e., dying) rather than a discrete and sudden event (i.e., death). In this article, I summarize historical and epidemiologic patterns of death and dying, and describe the implications of these patterns for two psychological processes: preparations for one’s own end of life; and psychological adjustment to the death of a loved one. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00416.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/zHbFHeyq5yc/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00417.x This report presents cross-cultural comparisons of studies on obedience to authority using the classic Milgram paradigm, which provide answers to the following questions:1. Overall, does the level of obedience found in the United States differ from that found in other countries?2. Is the nature or pattern of sex differences in obedience the same or different in the United States and elsewhere?3. How does Milgram’s “agentic state” conceptualization – that destructive obedience presupposes a shift in responsibility from the perpetrator to the authority – fare cross-culturally? Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00417.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/K4GKKk0JoJQ/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00420.x Self-assessments are often prone to error. Past research has identified cognitive and motivational biases that lead self-assessments astray. In the present paper, we discuss how behavior shaped by social norms leaves the negative information that people require for accurate self-assessments invisible. First, social norms lead people to suppress critical feedback in favor of more positive evaluations. Although people recognize that they prefer to provide positive feedback to others, they fail to consider that they might be the recipient of incomplete feedback. As a result, they are left with overconfident self-impressions. Second, social norms lead people to hide their own negative emotional experiences from others. Again, people are aware that this positivity norm influences their own behavior but do not apply this knowledge to their understanding of others. As a result, people regard their own negative emotions as more socially aberrant than is actually the case. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2011.00420.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/vLPQUa16w4c/10.1002%2Flnc3.317 A central issue in understanding how language links the mental and the real world is the nature of the mental representations entertained during language processing. Are these mental representations closely linked to the perceptual experiences from which they were formed or are they somewhat removed from them? This review addresses this question by examining studies that have investigated motion verbs and sentences using functional magnetic resonance imaging. These studies tested whether language processing elicits modality-specific brain regions responsive to motion perception. Although the results of these studies are not definite due to the different tasks and analysis techniques utilized, they so far suggest that modality-specific brain regions processing visual motion are not automatically or habitually engaged in language processing. The occasional engagement of visual areas in language processing appears to result from tasks requiring integration of visual and linguistic information or attention to motion-specific features such as direction. The evidence reviewed therefore suggests that although perceptual representations may be flexibly engaged as a function of tasks and contexts, language comprehension in the absence of visual contexts habitually engages experience-based representations of motion events that are one-step removed from visual experiences, even in situations in which imagery is encouraged. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Flnc3.317 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/inwaLAOn0Nc/10.1002%2Flnc3.324 This paper is the first in a series of two papers presenting recent developments concerning the interaction between aspectual classes of predicates and the semantics of aspectual for-phrases. Aspectual for-phrases can felicitously modify stative and activity predicates, but not (basic) accomplishment and achievement predicates. Earlier literature proposed that this is because aspectual for-phrases must modify predicates which are homogeneous– meaning that the predicate spreads appropriately to subintervals – and it proposed a notion of homogeneity which is appropriate for stative predicates. We argue in this first paper that neither the earlier literature, nor later proposals have managed to come up with an adequate account of the felicity of aspectual for-phrases with eventive predicates, and that, in particular, accomplishment and achievement predicates with bare arguments and iterative constructions remain challenges that these accounts cannot properly meet. We show that the problem lies in the notion of homogeneity for eventive predicates: the semantic tradition has provided us with static notions of homogeneity – insensitive to the arrow of time – but what is needed is a dynamic notion. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Flnc3.324 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/B6GUNGNvViM/10.1002%2Flnc3.323 This paper is the second in a series of two papers presenting recent developments concerning the interaction between aspectual classes of predicates and the semantics of aspectual for-phrases. Aspectual for-phrases must modify predicates which are homogeneous – meaning that the predicate spreads appropriately to subintervals. For eventive predicates the relevant notion of homogeneity should be a dynamic notion – sensitive to the arrow of time. We present a recently developed semantic framework in which eventive predicates are incrementally homogeneous, meaning that the predicate characteristics are preserved for each event from its onset through all incremental development stages. We show how incremental homogeneity deals with the felicity facts concerning aspectual for-phrases, and discuss complex-activity forming operations which turn heterogeneous predicates into homogeneous ones, in particular, as triggered by bare arguments and by iteration. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Flnc3.323 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/wISAOOVbIlM/10.1002%2Flnc3.320 ‘Syntactic microvariation’ and ‘microcomparative syntax’ are the terms for a fairly new research approach that applies the theoretical concepts and techniques of modern generative theory to dialectal and other small-scale variational data. Traditional studies in dialectology aim at a detailed and fine-grained description of language variants; the ultimate goal being a proper classification of the dialects, their exact areal distribution as well as their historical/diachronic development. For formal generative theory on the other hand, the foremost goal is to model the human language faculty with Universal Grammar as a theory about possible human languages (and how they can be acquired). Microcomparative syntax tries to reconcile these two research traditions by applying the formal theoretical concepts of generative grammar to those ‘minor’, ‘peripheral’, and sometimes kind of ‘squishy’ differences between closely related language variants as they are typically found in dialectal data. Research in microvariation tries to offer new concepts that can account for the range and (limits) of inter- and intra-speaker variation in a principled way while at the same time testing existing formal theories against these microvariational data and thus contributing to the theory of language variation. A profound understanding of microvariation will also open a way to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of language change, given that language change necessarily preconditions variability in the data. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Flnc3.320 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/ERkaNqcXHik/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00479.x Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00479.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/DUprRlnPSG0/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00471.x The performing arts of dance, theatre, music and live art have become established means through which cultural geographers can examine how people experience and make sense of their everyday worlds. Simultaneously, performance theorists and practitioners increasingly seek geographical tools that help elucidate the broader processes or politics that underpin artistic genres of performance. This review article works at this interdisciplinary nexus, exploring the diverse areas of engagement between geography and the performing arts. It provides an overview of three spatialities around which interdisciplinary exchanges take place, and where there are interesting synergies in the conceptual approach to studying geographies of performance, namely: landscapes, places and cities. In so doing, the article outlines some avenues where geography and performance studies academics might further their mutual interests, and argues that geography is central to the constitution, meaning and form that performance works take. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00471.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/5wW9c2d5A4k/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00470.x As human activities increasingly threaten the ecosystems on which they depend, one of the main questions our societies are facing is related to the resilience – seen as a necessary element of sustainability – of social–ecological systems (SESs). SESs are composed of many heterogeneous elements including human actors such as institutions and resource users, and natural components such as land patches, animal species, etc. The numerous relationships between these different entities shape complex, dynamic networks of social–ecological interdependencies. Once described as networks, SESs can be analysed using a variety of network metrics, which may potentially help to better quantify and evaluate the resilience of SESs to external or internal perturbations. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the latest progress in network theory as applied to SESs and discuss how network metrics may be used to assess the sustainability of an SES. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00470.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/DMXTTsypF7Q/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00475.x This paper examines the use of ‘community’ rhetoric in the Transition Town Network (TTN). This is seen in both its external and internal context. Externally, TTN has emerged against the backdrop of an increasing use of ‘community’ rhetoric in environmental governance, for example, in renewable energy projects. Internally, the use of ‘community’ language and ‘community’ ways of operating are crucial for understanding this movement, in how it sees itself and the lineage it builds upon. Particularly, TTN builds upon the polysemic, subjective nature of the word, fused with their unique permaculture inspired meaning. TTN have emerged as an important response to climate change and peak oil (Bailey et al. 2010; Mason and Whitehead 2011). This paper attempts to address their crucial, if neglected, focus on ‘community’. In the wide sweep of writing on ‘community’, what distinctive, if anything, can TTN add to current understandings and practices of ‘community’? Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00475.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/L6Ww61r33ac/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00469.x There has been increasing emphasis on the built urban environment within anti-obesity policy in the UK and elsewhere in the global north as part of a shift away from a model of individual responsibility to focus on so-called ‘obesogenic environments’. While recent policy has called for urban design and planning professionals to eradicate obesity there is, however, significant uncertainty in the science surrounding the relationship between body size, urban design and health and little definitive evidence about what works. In this paper, we therefore outline connections between critical geographies of obesity and urban geographies in order to question the ways in which obesity is framed and politicised in relation to the urban built environment. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8198.2011.00469.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/twLfFhYtK-A/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00470.x This two-part article examines the very limited engagement by philosophers with museums, and proposes analysis under six headings: cultural variety, taxonomy, and epistemology in Part I, and teleology, ethics, and therapeutics and aesthetics in Part II. The article establishes that fundamental categories of museums established in the 19th century – of art, of anthropology, of history, of natural history, of science and technology – still persist. Among them, it distinguishes between hegemonic (predominantly Western) and subaltern (minority or Indigenous) museums worldwide. It argues that relations between hegemonic and subaltern museums are often agonistic, and are compromised by claims of universalism on the part of proponents of the former. The article observes that most discussion of museums focuses exclusively and misleadingly on their public exhibition function, and contends that scholarship – not exhibition – is central to all museums. However, that predominantly taxonomic scholarship, while innovative and central to a dominant epistemology based on the observation of tangible things in the 19th century, was compromised by the epistemic shift to abstraction and experimentation in the 20th, which resulted in a loss of initiative and authority. Although epistemological changes currently in progress favor a renewed attention to tangible things as complex matrices to which museums ought to contribute significantly, the fundamental taxonomy of museums by collection type is a clog on the ability of museum scholars to engage with and themselves produce big ideas. In order to function well as sites of scholarship in the future, museums will have to be far more adaptable and attentive to a wider range of things and ideas (including Indigenous ideas incompatible with Western assumptions) than their existing collection divisions permit. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00470.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/baDXsbQRDKA/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00469.x This two-part article examines the very limited engagement by philosophers with museums, and proposes analysis under six headings: cultural variety, taxonomy, and epistemology in Part I, and teleology, ethics, and therapeutics and aesthetics in Part II. The article establishes that fundamental categories of museums established in the 19th century – of art, of anthropology, of history, of natural history, of science and technology – still persist. Among them, it distinguishes between hegemonic (predominantly Western) and subaltern (minority or Indigenous) museums worldwide. It argues that relations between hegemonic and subaltern museums are often agonistic, and are compromised by claims of universalism on the part of proponents of the former. The article observes that most discussion of museums focuses exclusively and misleadingly on their public exhibition function, and contends that scholarship – not exhibition – is central to all museums. However, that predominantly taxonomic scholarship, while innovative and central to a dominant epistemology based on the observation of tangible things in the 19th century, was compromised by the epistemic shift to abstraction and experimentation in the 20th, which resulted in a loss of initiative and authority. Although epistemological changes currently in progress favor a renewed attention to tangible things as complex matrices to which museums ought to contribute significantly, the fundamental taxonomy of museums by collection type is a clog on the ability of museum scholars to engage with and themselves produce big ideas. In order to function well as sites of scholarship in the future, museums will have to be far more adaptable and attentive to a wider range of things and ideas (including Indigenous ideas incompatible with Western assumptions) than their existing collection divisions permit. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00469.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/VDqPTM6dRYg/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00460.x Over the last several years a number of leading philosophers – including Catherine Elgin, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Duncan Pritchard – have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the contemporary focus on knowledge in epistemology and have attempted to “recover” the notion of understanding. According to some of these philosophers, in fact, understanding deserves not just to be recovered, but to supplant knowledge as the focus of epistemological inquiry. This entry considers some of the main reasons why philosophers have taken understanding to be more valuable than knowledge, focusing on claims that it is more transparent, that it better reflects or mirrors the world, and that it is a greater intellectual achievement. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00460.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/QlTPBLX2SuI/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00465.x Epistemic expressivism is the application of a nexus of ideas, which is prominent in ethical theory (more specifically, metaethics), to parallel issues in epistemological theory (more specifically, metaepistemology). Here, in order to help those new to the debate come to grips with epistemic expressivism and recent discussions of it, I first briefly present this nexus of ideas as it occurs in ethical expressivism. Then, I explain why and how some philosophers have sought to extend it to a version of epistemic expressivism. Finally, I consider a number of objections and replies with the aim of giving the reader the tools needed to begin to evaluate the promise and prospects of epistemic expressivism. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00465.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/9iY-PUu0KS0/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00467.x This article explores some of the philosophical implications of the Bayesian modeling paradigm. In particular, it focuses on the ramifications of the fact that Bayesian models pre-specify an inbuilt hypothesis space. To what extent does this pre-specification correspond to simply ‘‘building the solution in''? I argue that any learner (whether computer or human) must have a built-in hypothesis space in precisely the same sense that Bayesian models have one. This has implications for the nature of learning, Fodor's puzzle of concept acquisition, and the role of modeling in cognitive science. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00467.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/Ak-qXfEcWJA/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00471.x Can there be objects that are ‘thin’ in the sense that very little is required for their existence? A number of philosophers have thought so. For instance, many Fregeans believe it suffices for the existence of directions that there be lines standing in the relation of parallelism; other philosophers believe it suffices for a mathematical theory to have a model that the theory be coherent. This article explains the appeal of thin objects, discusses the three most important strategies for articulating and defending the idea of such objects, and outlines some problems that these strategies face. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00471.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/wlX6gwxfpN0/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00459.x In recent years, experimental philosophers have questioned the reliance of philosophical arguments on intuitions elicited by thought experiments. These challenges seek to undermine the use of this methodology for a particular domain of theorizing, and in some cases to raise doubts about the viability of philosophical work in the domain in question. The topic of semantic reference has been an important area for discussion of these issues, one in which critics of the reliance on intuitions have made particularly strong claims about the prospects for philosophical theories of reference and arguments based on claims about reference. In this article, I review the main lines of argument in this area of experimental philosophy, with particular emphasis on the relevance of empirical data about intuitions to philosophical views. I argue that although traditional philosophical theorizing about reference faces little threat from experimental data about intuitions, there is nevertheless much to be gained from collecting and analyzing such data, which holds the promise of greatly enriching our conception of the mechanisms governing judgments about semantic reference in ways that are highly relevant to philosophers. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1747-9991.2011.00459.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/wBUmOIsyllw/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2012.00830.x Although there has been a surge of interest in South African cinema studies since the end of apartheid, relatively little has been written on documentary film and apartheid era resistance. During the apartheid era, documentary film was used to capture both the atrocities of apartheid and resistance to it. These films not only created a historical record of events in South Africa, but they also became important political tools in mobilizing support against the apartheid regime. In the post-apartheid era, the anti-apartheid movement remains a popular theme in documentary film, serving as a site for reflecting on and reclaiming history. This article provides an overview of apartheid and resistance in documentary films produced both during and after apartheid, and suggests how these films can broaden our understanding of South African history and be used as guideposts for addressing some of the challenges that face South Africa today. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2012.00830.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/bk62gvvI8Ow/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2012.00829.x This article proceeds in three steps. First it draws out some possibilities for a study of emotions and discusses how advice literature can be used as a source, not only for feeling rules, but also for emotion knowledge, which sets the framework for the possible perception and expression of emotions. Second it places advice literature in early twentieth century India in its historical context, looking notably at the different traditions for giving advice, from which authors drew: moral philosophy, the Sufi tradition and legal sources. Third it focuses on two sermons on anger which one of the most prolific Urdu writers, the reformer and Sufi Ashraf Ali Thanawi, addressed to a male and a female audience respectively. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2012.00829.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/1KlC41JeHbQ/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00824.x Accessing and controlling environments underpinned British imperialism. Imperialism gave Britain control over millions of hectares of cropland and access to countless other resources. In the search for efficient ways of using natural resources, British imperialism shifted flora, fauna and commodities around the world. Ecological disruption and radical environmental changes never before experienced in history resulted. Imperialism also contributed to the production of many modern attitudes and disciplines through which we now understand nature. Given the fundamental importance of the use and role of natural resources in British imperialism, this article presents an overview of its environmental historiography, examining issues of agency, scale and exchange. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00824.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/3sPAnrYwuAo/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00828.x Popular newspapers have not, in general, featured prominently in histories of modern Britain. In recent years, however, a number of scholars, many inspired by the ‘cultural turn’ and the increased scholarly focus on language, meaning and identity, have reassessed the value of the popular press as a historical source. Newspapers provide one of the most effective ways of exploring the representations and narratives that circulated throughout British society. The ‘spectacular heterogeneity’ of their contents, moreover, ensures that newspapers are a potentially rich source of information on a wide range of subjects. This growing interest in the popular press as a historical source has been dramatically reinforced in the last decade by the digitisation of a vast number of newspapers and periodicals from the seventeenth to the 21st centuries. Millions of pages of content, rapidly searchable by keyword, are now available, at least for those fortunate enough to have individual or institutional subscriptions. The revolution in the accessibility and usability of newspaper archives has transformed scholars’ enthusiasm for them. This article assesses how these developments have affected the writing of modern British history, and suggests likely future directions for the field. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00828.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/FCNc8pwYwIo/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00822.x Our understanding and perceptions of the conquest period in Latin American history have been profoundly altered by the scholarship of the past twenty years. The traditional triumphalist narrative of the Spanish Conquest focused heavily on the conquistadors in Mexico and Peru, and emphasized the inevitability and rapidity of military victory, religious conversion (the Spiritual Conquest), and colonization. The revisionist New Conquest History – which emerged in part from a renewed emphasis on archival and paleographic work and in part from the New Philology, a school of scholarship based on the analysis of colonial-period primary sources in Mesoamerican languages – complicates that narrative by emphasizing multiple protagonists and accounts, new source materials, the roles and interpretations of indigenous and black men and women, and the examination of understudied regions of the Americas. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00822.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/rqLWKPNbV20/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00823.x Since the early 1980s, historians have increasingly turned their attention toward the topics of sodomy and “homosexuality” in colonial Latin America. Contemporaries referred to such crimes – prosecuted by criminal courts or the Holy Office of the Inquisition, depending on locale and jurisdiction – as either the pecado nefando (the nefarious sin), the pecado contra natura (sin against nature), or sodomía (sodomy). This, however, has not dissuaded historians from applying the terms “lesbian,”“gay,”“homosexual,” and “queer” to historical subjects. This paper highlights some of the major trends and debates that have shaped the historiography of sodomy in colonial Latin America, focusing on disagreements over which partner (“active” or “passive”) was punished more harshly, whether sodomy was seen as a form of heresy, and how to best identify and characterize historical subjects in the past. The essay concludes by offering some suggestions for the future development of the field, and advocates for historians to focus on the category of the “unnatural” (contra natura) rather than limit themselves to same-sex sexuality. A focus on the unnatural essentially allows historians to speak of autoeroticism, erotic religious visions, same-sex solicitation, sodomy, and bestiality in conjunction with one another, thus offering a more nuanced view of the intersections of gender, sexuality, desire, and colonialism between the late 16th and early 19th centuries. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00823.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/MT4JgGysgzc/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00833.x International migration is changing the face of Europe, and the rapidly growing presence of the Chinese diaspora in Italy illustrates how longstanding migratory patterns are subject to global socioeconomic changes. Both Italy and China are traditionally points of emigration, but today, there is a unique juncture in the historical experience whereupon one community, the Italians, has become host to the other, the Chinese. Italy, with its promise of new or underdeveloped economic niches and relatively lax immigration policies, has served as a particular draw for Chinese migrants over the last two decades. The following article seeks to present a clearer picture of 20th century Chinese migration to Italy. First, I will establish the present state of immigration in Italy followed by an overview of contemporary Chinese migration to Italy. Second, I will consider the Zhejiangese migration to Europe, including Italy, and the motivations behind these global movements. Third, I will examine the traces of historical influence on the livelihoods of the Chinese residing in Italy today. The development of the Chinese community in Italy touches upon the need to learn from the past as Italy, and Europe, determines how to administer to and integrate the newest members of its society. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00833.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/o8TNPLkS1Yo/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00821.x In recent decades, research has pointed to an early modern period, in which great transformation took place. By focusing on local studies, scholars have recognized that Jews and Christians residing in Europe interacted with one another, sharing daily experiences as well as important cultural developments. The Jews living in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries experienced many changes, first and foremost among them demographic migrations. Developments such as the Renaissance, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, and the invention of moveable type altered life for Jews and Christians of Europe alike. Further research in this field should include social history, as well as the transregional connections between Jews living in different regions. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00821.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/lJNLJFlaWdU/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00825.x Approaches to scholarship on the early 20th century black press has marginalized gender and sexuality in the historiography of black newspapers. Historians of black newspapers published between 1910 and 1945, the peak of black newspapers’ popularity, emphasize the political role of the black press. This image has continued to predominate in African American historiography. Scholars have made very little effort to integrate an analysis of gender and sexuality into the work on black newspapers. Consequently, the persistent focus on the political role of the black press has narrowed the definition of “political” in African American historiography and grossly overlooked the value of understanding the black press through its coverage of gender and sexuality. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1478-0542.2011.00825.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/AN1jn0P77ac/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00336.x Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00336.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/0L0J0FXYc18/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00315.x This article traces the development of queer theology from its roots in liberation theology and poststructuralist gender theory. Starting with the challenges of terminology in the face of a rapidly changing social context, the authors outline the recent, interrelated histories of LGBT liberation theologies that focus on historically oppressed identity groups and of queer theologies that attempt to think theologically beyond essentialist categories of identity. Finally, they speculate on emergent challenges to queer and LGBT liberationist studies in religion. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00315.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/DXWsF7vXHVc/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00330.x This essay describes the emerging field of religion and media and outlines key issues at play in the field. The field focuses both on the media and their content and on the reception of media among various publics as ways to examine the location of religion, the nature of religious practice and the complexity of religious identity and authority. On the one hand, studies reveal how religious institutions and leaders use traditional and new media, and command of emerging media grants some institutions and leaders increased voice and authority. On the other, we find evidence that in the emerging media culture, authority shifts from traditional locations such as sacred writings, traditions and religious authorities to the individual internal authority of religious consumers involved in religious self-construction. Those in the field typically argue that religion has always been mediated and that studying the mediation of religion is necessary to the understanding of religion. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00330.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/cDncgzGchAo/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00328.x Chinese people in diasporas, though far from their homeland, still refer to the concept of centrality as defining their own Chineseness. The meaning of “centrality” has its religious, metaphysical, psychological and political layers. This paper offers a comprehensive survey of the development of understanding of the meaning of this concept from Tang Junyi (1909–1978) to today’s leading Chinese intellectuals and attempts to update Tang’s model of Self-replanting of Spiritual Root (lingen zizhi 靈根自植) to the model of Altruistic Extension for Harmony (hexie waitui 和諧外推) by way of mutual strangification. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00328.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/gqq3Syfu4Bs/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00273.x The Mu‘tazila was a current of thought that flourished in Iraq in the third/ninth century, but whose creative influences continued at least into the twelfth century. It had a fundamental role in Islamic history and thought, particularly in the early period when it became the state theology under the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun. The Mu‘tazila developed a type of rationalism, partly influenced by Greek philosophy, based around three fundamental principles: the oneness and justice of God, human freedom of action and the creation of the Qur’an. During the history of Islamic thought, these ideas were challenged and then abandoned in the name of an orthodoxy that found expression particularly in Ash‘arism. Despite this crisis, the Mu‘tazila survived in Islamic thought, most importantly in relation to Shi‘ite theology. In modern times it has seen a revival, at a moment when the evolution of Islamic history has been obliged to confront the modern world. Many contemporary Islamic thinkers have looked to the rationalism of the Mu‘tazila and its principles in an attempt to give new life to Islamic thought, seeking to equip it to face the challenges of history. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00273.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/X4iiwwPcLG4/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00334.x Modern Jewish thought is that area of Jewish thought that emerges in response to the Jewish encounter with modernity. It spans the earliest contributions of modern Jewish philosophers and religious reformers in 19th-century Europe to contemporary thinkers from Jewish communities around the world today. Jewish feminist thought also stands out as a vital stream within modern Jewish thought. Although most histories and anthologies of modern Jewish thought do not normatively include Jewish feminist thinkers as significant contributors to this intellectual history, selected Jewish feminist thinkers like Judith Plaskow and Rachel Adler should be integrated into modern Jewish thought’s disciplinary narrative. The following discussion of current scholarship in modern Jewish thought, modern Jewish philosophy and Jewish feminism places Jewish feminist thought firmly within the history, methods and subject of modern Jewish thought. Taking seriously the inherent inclusiveness of the term modern Jewish thought and redrawing its boundaries to explicitly include Jewish feminist thinkers exposes the shared concern of each discipline. Doing so foregrounds common themes and questions occasioned by modern Jewish life such as Israel, Jewish identity, tradition and halakha, the status and authority of sacred texts and revelation and the constitution and diversity of Jewish communities. Such a comparative approach also draws attention to dissonance–particularly around questions of gender and sexuality in Judaism that are raised around transgender, gay and lesbian Jewish life and gender and halakah. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00334.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/7CIzbBN5bCo/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00331.x In the first of three parts the reader is introduced to René Girard’s interdisciplinary theory of religion as he developed it throughout his academic career. From his initial formulation of “mimetic desire” in his work on the Europen novel (Deceit, Desire, and the Novel 1961/1965), over his equation of violence with the sacred in his study of comparative anthropology (Violence and the Sacred, 1972/1977) to the claim in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978/1987) that the Gospels reveal the “scapegoat mechanism” on which archaic religion is based, the main concepts of Girardian theory will be discussed. The second part is devoted to the implications of Girard’s theory on political religion, as discussed by Emilio Gentile and Roger Griffin. In a final step, the discussion’s insights will be exemplified through a reading of Peace’s novel GB84, portraying the British Miners’ Strike of 1984/1985. True to the Girardian interdisciplinary spirit, it will be argued that a novelistic account of the Miners’ Strike can reveal the hidden history of conflictive mimesis and the quasi-religious structure of the “two tribes” involved in the Strike. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00331.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/TGMk-1ebXM0/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00325.x Since the 1980s, prosperity gospel Christianity has exploded in its size and influence, with global television ministries like Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Daystar Television Network, and The Word Network expanding the reach of the American-born religion to every nation. Most popularly called the Faith movement many may recognize this form of Christianity by a variety of other labels, such as the Gospel of Wealth and Health, Word of Faith, Prosperity Theology, Name it and Claim it, Seed-Faith, Abundant Life, or the more derisive Blab it and Grab it. Most observers associate the Faith movement with two teachings: first, God grants all his faithful followers physical health and financial prosperity; second, believers claim their divine right to wealth and health through positive confession, financial offerings, and the persistent faith that God must fulfill his promises. Promises of total transformation, concern over exploitation, and controversies over Biblical interpretation have made the prosperity gospel a topic of scholarly and popular interest. This article explores the history of the prosperity gospel, with particular emphasis on understanding the largest and most visible of these traditions, the Faith movement. Throughout, I will highlight scholarly literature critical for understanding the contemporary and historic development of the prosperity gospel and ministries that have coalesced around its optimistic message. As I explore relevant works on New Thought, African American religions, and the Faith movement, I hope to provide insight into central questions, possible pitfalls, and under-investigated dimensions of the American prosperity gospel, and finally to gesture towards fruitful avenues for future inquiry. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00325.x http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CompassJournals/~3/ElGYZtrTD30/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00327.x This guide accompanies the following article: Ellie G. Bagley, Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship, Religion Compass 5/7 (2011) pp. 300–313, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00286.xAuthor’s IntroductionThe 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (KJB) has drawn increased attention to the study of the English Bible, from its earliest versions to more recent translations and formats. In addition to the host of new publications on the subject, colleges and universities are offering a broader range of courses on the history and impact of the English Bible, both for undergraduates and graduate students. This guide is offered as an aid for instructors developing (or re-designing) courses on the English Bible, and for those interested in adding a few days or a few weeks to existing syllabi in religion, history, or literature. Engagement with primary resources is especially encouraged, and instructors may wish to supplement facsimile-reprinted and online editions with materials available at institutional libraries or in traveling exhibitions.Author Recommends1  Norton, David. (2011). The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today. New York: Cambridge University Press.Of the many one-volume introductions to the history of the English Bible, Norton’s stands out as both readable and containing helpful notes and bibliographies that synthesize recently published work in the field.2 Campbell, Gordon. (2010). Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611–2011. New York: Oxford University Press.This is a well-written and engaging account, with especially good coverage of the reception history and American contexts of the KJB.3 Lori Ann Ferrell. (2008). The Bible and the People. New Haven: Yale University Press.This book examines the broader cultural importance of the Bible in western culture throughout the past millennium. Sixteenth-century Bibles receive due attention, as does the subject of the Bible in America and missions and print culture in the nineteenth century.4 Daniell, David. (2003). The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press.This is generally recognized as the most thorough narrative in recent years and is well worth having students read from selectively.5 Norton, David. (2005). A Textual History of the King James Bible. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge UP.This authoritative account of developments in the text of the KJB has helped to offset popular notions of the “classic,” unchanging quality of the KJB’s text, which changed significantly in editions from the eighteenth century onwards.6 Hamlin, Hannibal and Jones, Norman (eds.) (2010). The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences. New York: Cambridge University Press.An excellent collection of essays exhibiting recent work on the literary impact and cultural significance of the KJB.7 Helen Moore and Reid, Julian (eds.) (2011). Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible. Bodleian Library Publishing.Contributions from Diarmaid MacCulloch, Peter McCullough, Judity Maltby and others introduce readers to the traveling library exhibition first featured at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, April 22 through Sept. 4, 2011. For exhibition schedule, see: http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/index.php/see-the-exhibition/.8 Nicolson, Adam. (2003). God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: HarperCollins. Published in Great Britain in 2003 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. as Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible.A lively and informative account of the cultural context and personalities of the scholars who translated and published the KJB, 1604–1611.9 Lemon, Rebecca, Mason, Emma, Roberts, Jonathan and Rowland, Christopher (eds.) (2009). The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature. Chichester, United Kingdom, and Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell.A useful guide to the scores of books and articles on the literary influence of the KJB and other English versions of the Bible.10 Thuesen, Peter J. (1999). In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press.A fascinating and well-researched study of the King James Only movement in twentieth-century America, centered on resistance to the Revised Standard Version of 1952 with good background on nineteenth-century contexts.Online Materials1 http://www.kingjamesbibletrust.org/This site provides a full list of Anniversary events, links to the “YouTube Bible” project, and a link to a digitized version of the 1611 KJB.2 http://books.google.com/books?id=-WwKAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=english+hexapla&hl=en&ei=z19ETpD3JqT00gGxm9n7Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falseThe English Hexapla, exhibiting the six important English translations of the new testament scriptures (London: Bagster and Sons, 1841).3 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k53352s/f3.imageDigital version of the Catholic Rheims New Testament, 1582, translated from the Latin Vulgate. This version and other early English translations (such as the Geneva Bible) are also available, upon institutional subscription, through the Early English Books Online resource.4 http://books.google.com/books?id=2ipVAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=pollard+records&hl=en&ei=a2BETo-fF6ra0QGwj9XeCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falsePollard, Alfred W. (1911). Records of the English Bible: The Documents Relating to the Translation and Publication of the Bible in English, 1525–1611. London: Oxford University Press.5http://www.biblegateway.com/This site provides searchable text for 25 early and contemporary English versions as well as in biblical languages and modern translations.6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu9uOfDX_TwThis is the ‘video abstract’ for my article.Sample SyllabusThis syllabus includes readings appropriate both to general-level courses (indicated by A) and advanced or seminar courses (B).Week 1. The King James Bible at 400: its Legacy and InfluenceA Bagley, Ellie G. (2011). Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship, Religion Compass.B Prickett, Stephen. (2010). Language within Language: The King James Steamroller; and Robert Alter, The Glories and Glitches of the KJB. In: H. Hamlin and N. Jones (eds.), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences.Week 1. Before the King James BibleA Norton, David. The King James Bible: A Short History (2011), chapter 1, “Predecessors”; Christopher de Hamel, The Book: A History of the Bible (2001), chapter 9, “Bibles of the Protestant Reformation.”B Gritsch, Eric W. Luther as Bible Translator and Baker, Oswald, Luther as an interpreter of Holy Scripture in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther (Cambridge, 2003); Alexandra Walsham, Unclasping the Book? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Vernacular Bible, Journal of British Studies (2003).Week 2. Translating, Interpreting, and Reading Early English BiblesA Anne Ferrell, Lori. The Bible and the People, chapter 3, “The Politics of Translation: The Bible in English, c. 1500–1700”; David Wright, The Study and Use of the Bible: The Reformation to 1700, History of the Bible, 192–217.B Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapters 1–8, in the Geneva Bible (1560) and the Rheims New Testament (1582) available online (see above).Week 2. The Making of the King James BibleA Norton, David. The KJB: A Short History, chapter 2, “Drafting the King James Bible,” and chapter 4, “Working on the King James Bible”.B Nicolson, Adam. (2003). God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. Harper; Tadmor, Naomi. (2010). The Social Universe of the English Bible: Scripture, Society, and Culture in Early Modern England. Cambridge.Week 3. The 1611 Edition and Early Print HistoryA Norton, David. The KJB: A Short History, chapter 5, “1611: the first edition”; Christopher de Hamel, The Book. A History of the Bible, chapter 10, “The English and American Bible Industry”.B Norton, David. The Textual History of the KJB, chapter 4, “The King’s Printer at Work, 1612–1617,” and chapter 5, “Correcting and Corrupting the text, 1629–1760”; selected pages from the 1611 edition and the English Hexapla, both available online.Week 3. The KJB’s Reception to 1800A Norton, David. The KJB: A Short History, chapter 6, “Printing, editing, and the development of a standard text”; Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version (Oxford, 2010), chapter 6, “The Seventeenth Century,” and chapter 7, “The Eighteenth Century”.B Norton, David. (2004). A History of the English Bible as Literature, chapter 5, “The Struggle for Acceptance”; Scott Mandelbrote, Writing the History of the English Bible in the Early Eighteenth Century, In: R. N. Swanson (ed.), The Church and the Book, Studies in Church History, no. 38, pp. 268–78. Boydell Press.Week 4. The Bible in English LiteratureA Daniell, David. (2001). The Bible in English, chapter 15, An English Plain Style, and Bible Reading; David Jasper, The Bible in Literature. In: J. Rogerson (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible. Oxford.B Fisch, Harold. (1999). The Biblical Presence in Shakespeare, Milton, and Blake: A Comparative Study. Clarendon Press; Hamlin, Hannibal. (2010). Bunyan’s Biblical Progresses. In: H. Hamlin and N. Jones (eds.), The King James Bible after 400 years. Cambridge.Week 4. The Bible in AmericaA Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version, chapter 10, “The Bible in America”; David Daniell, The Bible in English, chapter 31, “The Bible in America to 1776.”B Gutjahr, Paul. An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880, chapter 1, An Overview of Bible Production in the United States, (1999); by the same author, From Monarchy to Democracy: The Dethroning of the KJB in the United States, and Katherine Clay Bassard, The KJB and African American Literature, both in H. Hamlin and N. Jones (eds.), The King James Bible after 400 Years.Week 5. Missions, Colonialism, and the BibleA de Hamel, Christopher. The Book. A History of the Bible, chapter 11, “Missionary Bibles.”B Sugirtharajah, R. S. Postcolonial notes on the KJB. In: H. Hamlin and N. Jones (eds.), The KJB after 400 years; R. H. Martin, Anglicans and Baptists in Conflict: The Bible Society, Bengal and the Baptizo Controversy, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1998); selections from William Canton, The Story of the Bible Society (London, 1904), also on Google Books.Week 5. The Revised VersionA Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the KJV, chapter 11, “The Revised Version.”B Daniell, The Bible in English, chapter 37, “The English Revised Version, 1870–1885”; Peter Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures, chapter 2, “Coronation of ‘King Truth’: Bible Revision and the Late-Nineteenth-Century Imagination” (Oxford, 1999).Week 6. Twentieth-Century VersionsA Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the KJV, chapter 12, “The Early Twentieth Century”; Stanley Porter, “Modern Translations,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible.B Thuesen, Peter. In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Tranlsating the Bible, chapter 4, “The Great RSV Controversy”; F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English (OUP, 1978), chapter 15, “Recent Roman Catholic Versions”; Daniell, chapter 39, “Bible Translation into English in the Twentieth Century.”Week 6. The King James Bible Since 1952A Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the KJV, chapter 13, “The KJV in the Modern World”; Peter Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures, chapter 5, “The Virgin Text: Evangelicals and Liberals in the Quest for an Undefiled Book.”B Anne Ferrell, Lori. The Bible and the People, chapter 8, Old Wine in New Wineskins: the Bible in the Twentieth Century; Norman Jones, The KJB as Ghost in Absalom, Absalom! and Beloved. In H. Hamlin and N. Jones (eds.), The KJB after 400 years.Focus Questions1 Why did the King James Bible become such a popular version? Discuss literary, social, and political reasons.2 What aspects of text, translation, and interpretation make Catholic English Bibles (especially the Rheims NT of 1582) distinctive from Protestant ones?3 David Norton asserts, “The KJB, as it became the only Bible in England, assumed a unique place not just in religious consciousness but in linguistic and literary consciousness…It was a part of home and loved (or occasionally reacted against) like home.”The King James Bible: A Short History, 189. How might Christianity in England and America have developed differently without one translation of the Bible becoming so prominent?4 What are the theological and political stakes of the “KJB-Only” movement today? What other English versions attract particular attention, and why? At what other times in religious history, and with what effects, have religious groups preferred older versions or translations of a sacred text, compared with contemporary translations?5 Compare modern English translations of the Bible in a variety of layouts, in printed and online formats, and with accompanying commentaries directed at specific audiences. What is gained and lost with so many reading choices and frameworks of interpretation available to contemporary readers of the Bible?Seminar ActivityDivide the seminar class into four groups, distributing facsimile copies of Romans 1–3 as follows. Group 1: the Geneva Bible (1560); Group 2: the Rheims NT (1582); Group 3: the King James Bible (1611); and Group 4: the English Hexapla. Ask Groups 1–3 to discuss the merits of the versions they have been assigned: is the translation clear and easy to understand? Is the layout “user-friendly”? To what extent is the theology of the translators evident in the text, annotations, and layout? When does translation itself become interpretation? Ask Group 4 to compare the three translations in parallel columns. Where does the KJB borrow extensively from previous versions? Where is it unique and with what stylistic and/or theological effects? Which translation would you have preferred as an early modern reader and why? A similar seminar activity on 20th-century English versions could be introduced later in the term. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000 ]]> http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-8171.2011.00327.x