Title: Absent lord: ascetics and kings in a Jain ritual culture 
Author: Babb, Lawrence A
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: What does it mean to worship beings that one believes are completely indifferent to, and entirely beyond the reach of, any form of worship whatsoever? How would such a relationship with sacred beings affect the religious life of a community? Using these questions as his point of departure, Lawrence A. Babb explores the ritual culture of image-worshipping Svetambar Jains of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan.Jainism traces its lineages back to the ninth century B.C.E. and is, along with Buddhism, the only surviving example of India's ancient non-Vedic religious traditions. It is known and celebrated for its systematic practice of non-violence and for the intense rigor of the asceticism it promotes. A unique aspect of Babb's study is his linking of the Jain tradition to the social identity of existing Jain communities.Babb concludes by showing that Jain ritual culture can be seen as a variation on pan-Indian ritual patterns. In illuminating this little-known religious tradition, he demonstrates that divine "absence" can be as rich as divine "presence" in its possibilities for informing a religious response to the cosmos.   [brief]
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Title: Appeasement or resistance and other essays on New Testament Judaism 
Author: Daube, David
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: Religion
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Title: Barbarians and politics at the Court of Arcadius 
Author: Cameron, Alan
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Religion | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: The chaotic events of A.D. 395-400 marked a momentous turning point for the Roman Empire and its relationship to the barbarian peoples under and beyond its command. In this masterly study, Alan Cameron proposes a complete rewriting of received wisdom concerning the social and political history of these years. Our knowledge of the period comes to us in part through Synesius of Cyrene, who recorded his view of events in his De regno and De providentia . By redating these works, Cameron offers a vital, new interpretation of the interactions of pagans and Christians, Goths and Romans.In 394/95, during the last four months of his life, the emperor Theodosius I ruled as sole Augustus over a united Roman empire that had been divided between at least two emperors for most of the preceding one hundred years. Not only did the death of Theodosius set off a struggle between Roman officeholders of the two empires, but it also set off renewed efforts by the barbarian Goths to sieze both territory and office. Theodosius had encouraged high-ranking Goths to enter Roman military service; thus well placed, their efforts would lead to Alaric's sack of Rome in 410. Though Cameron's interest is in the particularities of events, the book conveys a wonderful sense of the general time and place. Cameron's rebuttal of modern scholarship, which pervades the narrative, enhances the reader's engagement with the complexities of interpretation. The result is a sophisticated recounting of a period of crucial change in the Roman Empire's relationship to the non-Roman world.   [brief]
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Title: Biblical prose prayer: as a window to the popular religion of ancient Israel 
Author: Greenberg, Moshe
Published: University of California Press,  1983
Subjects: Religion
Publisher's Description: The Psalms are the best known and most widely used prayer texts of the Bible. But the prayers of the Israelite took another form: the prose prayers that we find embedded in biblical narrative. Prose prayer was spoken by persons of all ranks. Male and female, Israelite and foreigner, all enjoyed equal access to God. The pervasiveness and spontaneity of this prayer, independent as it was of the structure and taboos of formal worship, turned it into a criterion for sincerity both in relations with God and in those among human beings.Greenberg finds in this rich life of private prayer a setting for the high religious ideas--and the scathing critique of worship--that characterized the "genius" of the prophets of the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. His compact and masterful study, originally the 1981-1982 Taubman Lectures at Berkeley, suggests an explanation for the unprecedented democratization of worship in post-biblical Judaism.   [brief]
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Title: Countering colonization: Native American women and Great Lakes missions, 1630-1900 
Author: Devens, Carol
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | Native American Studies | American Studies | Native American Ethnicity | Women's Studies | Religion
Publisher's Description: With Countering Colonization , Carol Devens offers a well-documented, revisionary history of Native American women. From the time of early Jesuit missionaries to the late nineteenth century, Devens brings Ojibwa, Cree, and Montagnais-Naskapi women of the Upper Great Lakes region to the fore. Far from being passive observers without regard for status and autonomy, these women were pivotal in their own communities and active in shaping the encounter between Native American and white civilizations.While women's voices have been silenced in most accounts, their actions preserved in missionary letters and reports indicate the vital part women played during centuries of conflict. In contrast to some Indian men who accepted the missionaries' religious and secular teachings as useful tools for dealing with whites, many Indian women felt a strong threat to their ways of life and beliefs. Women endured torture and hardship, and even torched missionaries' homes in an attempt to reassert control over their lives. Devens demonstrates that gender conflicts in Native American communities, which anthropologists considered to be "aboriginal," resulted in large part from women's and men's divergence over the acceptance of missionaries and their message.This book's perspective is unique in its focus on Native American women who acted to preserve their culture. In acknowledging these women as historically significant actors, Devens has written a work for every scholar and student seeking a more inclusive understanding of the North American past.   [brief]
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Title: Cultural encounters: the impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World 
Author: Perry, Mary Elizabeth 1937-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | Anthropology | European History | Religion | Renaissance History
Publisher's Description: More than just an expression of religious authority or an instrument of social control, the Inquisition was an arena where cultures met and clashed on both shores of the Atlantic. This pioneering volume examines how cultural identities were maintained despite oppression.Persecuted groups were able to survive the Inquisition by means of diverse strategies - whether Christianized Jews in Spain preserving their experiences in literature, or native American folk healers practicing medical care. These investigations of social resistance and cultural persistence will reinforce the cultural significance of the Inquisition.   [brief]
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Title: Daggers of faith: thirteenth-century Christian missionizing and Jewish response 
Author: Chazan, Robert
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Religion
Publisher's Description: Our understanding of both Jewish history and the history of Western civilization is deepened by this finely balanced account of Christian missionizing among the Jews. Arguing that until the thirteenth century Western Christendom showed little serious commitment to converting the Jews, Robert Chazan proceeds to detail the special circumstances of that critical century in European history. The Roman Catholic Church, characterized at that time by a remarkable combination of vitality and confidence on the one hand and deep-seated insecurities on the other, embarked on its first vigorous campaign to convert the Jews in significant numbers.Chazan examines the new missionizing endeavor in its formative stages, roughly from 1240 to 1280, and analyzes Christian efforts to convince Jews of the truth of Christianity and, at the same time, of the nullity of the Jewish religious tradition. At least as interesting is his investigation of the Jewish lines of response. These ranged from the postures adopted in public debate to the reassurances penned by Jewish leaders for the eyes and ears of their followers only. Although few Jews were converted by the first wave of this new missionizing thrust, it ranked high among the developments that eventually sapped the strength of late medieval European Jewry.   [brief]
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Title: The dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: culture, politics, and the formation of a modern diaspora 
Author: Beinin, Joel 1948-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Religion | Judaism | Middle Eastern Studies | Jewish Studies
Publisher's Description: In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of marginal identities.   [brief]
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Title: The fractious nation?: unity and division in contemporary American life 
Author: Rieder, Jonathan
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: American Studies | Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | Politics | Religion | Sociology | Immigration
Publisher's Description: What are we to make of the speed with which the new climate of national solidarity emerged after September 11? Does it not look strange against a backdrop of the much-touted divisiveness of American life? In truth, The Fractious Nation? makes clear, the contrast of the time of divisiveness before and the time of unity that followed is much too stark, indeed. Less than a year before two planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the 2000 presidential election produced not just the starkly blue and red electoral map but also the two tribal Americas those totemic colors emblazoned. And from the cultural wars to immigration restriction, from the Christian right to political correctness, recent decades have witnessed much hand-wringing on the left and the right about the fragmentation of American life. The Fractious Nation? enlists the critical intelligence of fourteen distinguished contributors who illuminate the schisms in American life and the often volatile debates they have inspired in the realms of culture, ethnic and racial pluralism, and political life. The collective wisdom of The Fractious Nation? suggests a counterview to all the overheated rhetoric. The authors warn against fixating on flamboyant incidents of racial conflict when black-and-white values overlap considerably. On a range of cultural issues, the gap between our citizens has closed as well. And even as the rivalry between liberalism and conservatism transmutes into new forms, the political center remains vital and democratic. We are tied together not just by shared values but by institutions - the Constitution, the culture of consumption, the etiquette of ethnic respect. In private life and public affairs, our nation has expanded the meaning of democratic citizenship. Still, there's no room for self-congratulations here. Tendencies toward preoccupation with private life encourage indifference to the suffering of the less privileged. This is also one of the main failings of the narrative of fragmentation: In its focus on matters of shared values, it too distracts from issues of poverty and inequality that also fragment the human spirit.   [brief]
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Title: Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and reform 
Author: Gleason, Elisabeth G
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Religion | Renaissance History | European History | Christianity
Publisher's Description: Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) was a major protagonist in the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. A worldly Venetian patrician, he later became an ascetic advocate of Church reform and, as a Catholic cardinal, was sent to the important Colloquy of Regensburg. He failed in his mission to bring about an agreement between Lutherans and Catholics; nevertheless, his life and thought, as well as his friendships with the most vocal proponents of concord, peace, and toleration, make him an impressive and significant historical figure.In the first biography of Contarini since 1885, Elisabeth Gleason greatly broadens our understanding of the man and his times. As a result, scholars and students will come to see Cardinal Gasparo Contarini as a reminder of alternative concepts of authority and liberty in both church and state.   [brief]
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Title: Gender and salvation: Jaina debates on the spiritual liberation of women 
Author: Jaini, Padmanabh S
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | South Asia | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: Is a total renunciation of clothing a prerequisite to attaining salvation? In Gender and Salvation , P. S. Jaini brings to light heretofore untranslated texts centering on a centuries-old debate between the two principal Jaina sects, the Digambaras and the Svetambaras. At the core of the debate is the question: should gender-based differences of biology and life experience condition or limit an individual's ability to accomplish the ultimate religious goal?For the Digambaras, the example of total nudity set by Mahavira (599-527 B.C.), the central spiritual figure of Jainism, mandates an identical practice for all who aspire to the highest levels of religious attainment. For the Svetambaras, the renunciation necessary occurs purely on an internal level and is neither affected nor confirmed by the absence of clothes. Both sects agree, however, that nudity is not permitted for women under any circumstances. The Digambaras, therefore, believe that a woman cannot attain salvation, while the Svetambaras believe they can. Through their analysis of this dilemma, the Jaina thinkers whose texts are translated here demonstrate a level of insight into the material and spiritual constraints on women that transcends the particular question of salvation and relates directly to current debates on the effects of gender in our own society.   [brief]
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Title: Grateful prey: Rock Cree human-animal relationships 
Author: Brightman, Robert Alain 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Anthropology | Anthropology | United States History | Religion
Publisher's Description: The interaction between religious beliefs and hunting practices among the Asiniskawidiniwak or Rock Crees of northern Manitoba is the focus of Robert Brightman's detailed study. This foraging society, he says, bases aspects of its hunting and trapping largely on what we call "religious" conceptions.Seeking an ideology, however, that incorporates Cree beliefs about human-animal differences and the relationships that should exist between them as hunter and prey, Brightman finds these beliefs to be disordered and unstable rather than systematic. Animals are represented as simultaneously more and less powerful than humans. The hunter-prey relationship is talked about as both collaborative and adversarial. Exploring the influence of these religious representations on technical aspects of subsistence historically, Brightman finds that Crees' attitudes and actions toward animals were, and are, relatively arbitrary with respect to biological and environmental forces. Anthropologists will see in his well-researched discussion a challenge to prevailing ecological and Marxist approaches to foraging societies.   [brief]
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Title: History and human existence: from Marx to Merleau-Ponty 
Author: Miller, Jim 1947-
Published: University of California Press,  1982
Subjects: Philosophy | Religion | Intellectual History
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Title: The human difference: animals, computers, and the necessity of social science 
Author: Wolfe, Alan 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Sociology | Social Theory | Political Theory | Postcolonial Studies | Religion | Christianity
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Title: La lucha for Cuba: religion and politics on the streets of Miami 
Author: De La Torre, Miguel A
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | Latino Studies | Politics | Christianity
Publisher's Description: For many in Miami's Cuban exile community, hating Fidel Castro is as natural as loving one's children. This hatred, Miguel De La Torre suggests, has in fact taken on religious significance. In La Lucha for Cuba, De La Torre shows how Exilic Cubans, a once marginalized group, have risen to power and privilege - distinguishing themselves from other Hispanic communities in the United States - and how religion has figured in their ascension. Through the lens of religion and culture, his work also unmasks and explores intra-Hispanic structures of oppression operating among Cubans in Miami. Miami Cubans use a religious expression, la lucha, or "the struggle," to justify the power and privilege they have achieved. Within the context of la lucha, De La Torre explores the religious dichotomy created between the "children of light" (Exilic Cubans) and the "children of darkness" (Resident Cubans). Examining the recent saga of the Elián González custody battle, he shows how the cultural construction of la lucha has become a distinctly Miami-style spirituality that makes el exilio (exile) the basis for religious reflection, understanding, and practice - and that conflates political mobilization with spiritual meaning in an ongoing confrontation with evil.   [brief]
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Title: The life of a text: performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas 
Author: Lutgendorf, Philip
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Religion | Hinduism | South Asia | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text - the epic Ramcaritmanas - and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture.The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.   [brief]
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Title: Made in God's image?: Eve and Adam in the Genesis mosaics at San Marco, Venice 
Author: Jolly, Penny Howell
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Art | Art History | Medieval Studies | Women's Studies | Religion
Publisher's Description: The stunning mosaics that illustrate the story of Creation in the church of San Marco in Venice are the focus of Penny Howell Jolly's compelling and provocative book. Scholars of medieval art have long been interested in the Genesis mosaics because they copy a nearly destroyed fifth-century illuminated Greek manuscript known as the Cotton Genesis. But instead of seeing the mosaics as a vehicle for reconstructing a lost cycle of paintings, Jolly presents them as a social document revealing the essential misogyny that existed in thirteenth-century Venice. Jolly analyzes more than twenty scenes, one by one in narrative order, and her perceptive reading goes well beyond what the Genesis Vulgate text says about Eve and Adam. The mosaics establish Eve as the culpable character from the very moment of her Creation, says Jolly, and depict her as dangerous and unrepentant at the end. Incorporating both feminist religious and narratological studies, Jolly poses important questions on the nature of visual language as opposed to verbal language. The very ability of visual forms to recall a rich variety of references is one source of their power, and propaganda must have enough breadth of reference to be read by diverse groups. The San Marco cupola, Jolly maintains, is dealing in powerful propaganda, and her pictorial observations offer an articulate and refreshing new view of this well-known work.   [brief]
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Title: The making of a heretic: gender, authority, and the Priscillianist controversy 
Author: Burrus, Virginia
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Religion | Religion | Christianity | Classical Religions
Publisher's Description: Silenced for 1,600 years, the "heretics" speak for themselves in this account of the Priscillianist controversy that began in fourth-century Spain. In a close examination of rediscovered texts, Virginia Burrus provides an unusual opportunity to explore heresy from the point of view of the followers of Priscillian and to reevaluate the reliability of the historical record. Her analysis takes into account the concepts of gender, authority, and public and private space that informed established religion's response to this early Christian movement.Priscillian, who began his career as a lay teacher with particular influence among women, faced charges of heresy along with accusations of sorcery and sexual immorality following his ordination to the episcopacy. He was executed along with several of his followers circa 386. His purportedly "gnostic" doctrines produced controversy and division within the churches of Spain, dissension that continued into the early decades of the fifth century.Burrus's thorough and wide-ranging study enlarges upon previous scholarship, particularly in bringing a feminist perspective to bear on the gendered constructions of religious orthodoxies, making a valuable contribution to the recent commentary that explores new ways of looking at early Christian controversies.   [brief]
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Title: Many Rāmāyaṇas: the diversity of a narrative tradition in South Asia 
Author: Richman, Paula
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Religion | Hinduism | Cultural Anthropology | South Asia
Publisher's Description: Throughout Indian history, many authors and performers have produced, and many patrons have supported, diverse tellings of the story of the exiled prince Rama, who rescues his abducted wife by battling the demon king who has imprisoned her. The contributors to this volume focus on these "many" Ramayanas .While most scholars continue to rely on Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana as the authoritative version of the tale, the contributors to this volume do not. Their essays demonstrate the multivocal nature of the Ramayana by highlighting its variations according to historical period, political context, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, intended audience, and genre. Socially marginal groups in Indian society - Telugu women, for example, or Untouchables from Madhya Pradesh - have recast the Rama story to reflect their own views of the world, while in other hands the epic has become the basis for teachings about spiritual liberation or the demand for political separatism. Historians of religion, scholars of South Asia, folklorists, cultural anthropologists - all will find here refreshing perspectives on this tale.   [brief]
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Title: A marriage made in heaven: the sexual politics of Hebrew and Yiddish 
Author: Seidman, Naomi
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Jewish Studies | Gender Studies | Religion | Language and Linguistics
Publisher's Description: With remarkably original formulations, Naomi Seidman examines the ways that Hebrew, the Holy Tongue, and Yiddish, the vernacular language of Ashkenazic Jews, came to represent the masculine and feminine faces, respectively, of Ashkenazic Jewish culture. Her sophisticated history is the first book-length exploration of the sexual politics underlying the "marriage" of Hebrew and Yiddish, and it has profound implications for understanding the centrality of language choices and ideologies in the construction of modern Jewish identity.Seidman particularly examines this sexual-linguistic system as it shaped the work of two bilingual authors, S.Y. Abramovitsh, the "grand-father" of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature; and Dvora Baron, the first modern woman writer in Hebrew (and a writer in Yiddish as well). She also provides an analysis of the roles that Hebrew "masculinity" and Yiddish "femininity" played in the Hebrew-Yiddish language wars, the divorce that ultimately ended the marriage between the languages.Theorists have long debated the role of mother and father in the child's relationship to language. Seidman presents the Ashkenazic case as an illuminating example of a society in which "mother tongue" and "father tongue" are clearly differentiated. Her work speaks to important issues in contemporary scholarship, including the psychoanalysis of language acquisition, the feminist critique of Zionism, and the nexus of women's studies and Yiddish literary history.   [brief]
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