Title: Tradition in a rootless world: women turn to Orthodox Judaism
Author: Davidman, Lynn 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Religion | Judaism | Jewish Studies | Sociology | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: The past two decades in the United States have seen an immense liberalization and expansion of women's roles in society. Recently, however, some women have turned away from the myriad, complex choices presented by modern life and chosen instead a Jewish orthodox tradition that sets strict and rigid guidelines for women to follow.Lynn Davidman followed the conversion to Orthodoxy of a group of young, secular Jewish women to gain insight into their motives. Living first with a Hasidic community in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then joining an Orthodox synagogue on the upper west side of Manhattan, Davidman pieced together a picture of disparate lives and personal dilemmas. As a participant observer in their religious resocialization and in interviews and conversations with over one hundred women, Davidman also sought a new perspective on the religious institutions that reach out to these women and usher them into the community of Orthodox Judaism.Through vivid and detailed personal portraits, Tradition in a Rootless World explores women's place not only in religious institutions but in contemporary society as a whole. It is a perceptive contribution that unites the study of religion, sociology, and women's studies.   [brief]
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Title: Traditional oral epic: the Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian return song 
Author: Foley, John Miles
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | European Literature | Folklore and Mythology | Religion | Language and Linguistics | Classics | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: John Miles Foley offers an innovative and straightforward approach to the structural analysis of oral and oral-derived traditional texts. Professor Foley argues that to give the vast and complex body of oral "literature" its due, we must first come to terms with the endemic heterogeneity of traditional oral epics, with their individual histories, genres, and documents, as well as both the synchronic and diachronic aspects of their poetics.Until now, the emphasis in studies of oral traditional works has been placed on addressing the correspondences among traditions - shared structures of "formula," "theme," and "story-pattern." Traditional Oral Epic explores the incongruencies among traditions and focuses on the qualities specific to certain oral and oral-derived works. It is certain to inspire further research in this field.   [brief]
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Title: Two churches: England and Italy in the thirteenth century
Author: Brentano, Robert 1926-
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: History | European History | Medieval History | Medieval Studies | Religion
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Title: Visionaries: the Spanish Republic and the reign of Christ 
Author: Christian, William A 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Religion | Christianity | Popular Culture | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: In June 1931, on a hillside in the Spanish Basque country, two children reported seeing the Virgin Mary. Within weeks, hundreds of seers were attracting tens of thousands of onlookers, and the nightly spectacle gave rise to others in dozens of towns across Spain. Visionaries explores the experience and the larger meaning of this wave.Immersing himself in the lives of the visionaries, William Christian retraced their steps and recreated their world. He spoke with hundreds of witnesses, who led him to caches of vision messages, diaries, clandestine publications, and eloquent photographs. He describes two kinds of visionaries and their relation to each other: the seers who had visions of Mary and the saints, and the believers who had a vision for the future, which they hoped Mary and the saints would confirm. Together, these visionaries attempted to convince a skeptical world that heavenly beings were appearing on the Iberian peninsula. By turns intense, poignant, fierce, and funny, this long-hidden history demonstrates the vital role of the extraordinary in giving voice to a society's hope and anguish.   [brief]
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Title: Visions of charity: volunteer workers and moral community
Author: Allahyari, Rebecca Anne 1963-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | Religion | Ethics | Gender Studies
Publisher's Description: In the United States, public talk about charity for the poor is highly moralistic, even in our era of welfare reform. But how do we understand the actual experience of caring for the poor? This study looks at the front lines of volunteer involvement with the poor and homeless to assess what volunteer work means for those who do it. Rebecca Allahyari profiles volunteers at two charities - Loaves & Fishes and The Salvation Army - to show how they think about themselves and their work, providing new ways for discussing charity and morality. Allahyari explores these agencies' differing ideological orientations and the raced, classed, and gendered contexts they provide volunteers for doing charitable work. Drawing on participant observation, intensive interviewing, and content analysis of organizational publications, she looks in particular at the process of self-improvement for these volunteers. The competing visions of charity Allahyari finds at these two organizations reveal the complicated and contradictory politics of caring for the poor in the United States today.   [brief]
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Title: The visual culture of American religions
Author: Morgan, David 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Religion | Art | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Contemporary artists have often clashed with conservative American evangelicals in recent years, giving the impression that art and religion are fundamentally at odds. Yet historically, artistic images have played a profound role in American religious life. This superb collection of essays, with its unique assembly of images, challenges the apparent tension between religion and the arts by illustrating and investigating their long-standing and intriguing relationship from the early nineteenth century to the present day. The essays explore such varied topics as Sioux Sun Dance artifacts and paintings, American Jewish New Year postcards, the New Mexican santos tradition, roadside shrines, images of journey in African American pictorial traditions, the public display of religion, and the religious use of nineteenth-century technologies of mass reproduction.   [brief]
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Title: Visual piety: a history and theory of popular religious images
Author: Morgan, David 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Religion | Art
Publisher's Description: This fascinating study of devotional images traces their historical links to important strains of American culture. David Morgan demonstrates how popular visual images - from Warner Sallman's "Head of Christ" to velvet renditions of DaVinci's "Last Supper" to illustrations on prayer cards - have assumed central roles in contemporary American lives and communities.Morgan's history of popular religious images ranges from the late Middle Ages to the present day and analyzes what he calls "visual piety," or the belief that images convey. Rather than isolating popular icons from their social contexts or regarding them as merely illustrative of theological ideas, Morgan situates both Protestant and Catholic art within the domain of devotional practice, ritual, personal narrative, and the sacred space of the home. In addition, he examines how popular icons have been rooted in social concerns ranging from control of human passions to notions of gender, creedal orthodoxy, and friendship. Also discussed is the coupling of images with texts in the attempt to control meanings and to establish markers for one's community and belief. Drawing from the fields of music, sociology, theology, philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics, Visual Piety is the first book to bring to specialist and lay reader alike an understanding of religious imagery's place in the social formation and maintenance of everyday American life.   [brief]
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Title: Voice of the living light: Hildegard of Bingen and her world
Author: Newman, Barbara 1953-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Christianity | Women's Studies | Medieval Studies | Medieval History
Publisher's Description: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) would have been an extraordinary person in any age. But for a woman of the twelfth century her achievements were so exceptional that posterity has found it hard to take her measure. Barbara Newman, a premier Hildegard authority, brings major scholars together to present an accurate portrait of the Benedictine nun and her many contributions to twelfth-century religious, cultural, and intellectual life. Written by specialists in fields ranging from medieval theology to medicine to music, these essays offer an understanding of how one woman could transform so many of the traditions of the world in which she lived.Hildegard of Bingen was the only woman of her age accepted as an authoritative voice on Christian doctrine as well as the first woman permitted by the pope to write theological books. She was the author of the first known morality play; an artist of unusual talents; the most prolific chant composer of her era; and the first woman to write extensively on natural science and medicine, including sexuality as seen from a female perspective. She was the only woman of her time to preach openly to mixed audiences of clergy and laity, and the first saint whose biography includes a first-person memoir.Adding to the significance of this volume is the fact that Hildegard's oeuvre reflects the entire sweep of twelfth-century culture and society. Scholars and lay readers alike will find this collection a rich introduction to a remarkable figure and to her tumultuous world. With the commemoration of the 900th anniversary of Hildegard's birth in September 1998, the publication of Voice of the Living Light is especially welcome.   [brief]
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Title: Wandering, begging monks: spiritual authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity
Author: Caner, Daniel
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Classics | Religion | Classical Religions | Christianity | Classical History | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse testimony from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere - including the Pseudo-Clementine Letters to Virgins, Augustine's On the Work of Monks, John Chrysostom's homilies, legal codes - to reveal gospel-inspired patterns of ascetic dependency and teaching from the third to the fifth centuries. Throughout, his point of departure is social and cultural history, especially the urban social history of the late Roman empire. He also introduces many charismatic individuals whose struggle to persist against church suppression of their chosen way of imitating Christ was fought with defiant conviction, and the book includes the first annotated English translation of the biography of Alexander Akoimetos (Alexander the Sleepless). Wandering, Begging Monks allows us to understand these fascinating figures of early Christianity in the full context of late Roman society.   [brief]
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Title: Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia
Author: Prebish, Charles S
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: The first authoritative volume on the totality of Buddhism in the West, Westward Dharma establishes a comparative and theoretical perspective for considering the amazing variety of Buddhist traditions, schools, centers, and teachers that have developed outside of Asia. Leading scholars from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia explore the plurality and heterogeneity of traditions and practices that are characteristic of Buddhism in the West. This recent, dramatic growth in Western Buddhism is accompanied by an expansion of topics and issues of Buddhist concern. The contributors to this volume treat such topics as the broadening spirit of egalitarianism; the increasing emphasis on the psychological, as opposed to the purely religious, nature of practice; scandals within Buddhist movements; the erosion of the distinction between professional and lay Buddhists; Buddhist settlement in Israel; the history of Buddhism in internment camps; repackaging Zen for the West; and women's dharma in the West. The interconnections of historical and theoretical approaches in the volume make it a rich, multi-layered resource.   [brief]
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Title: Why Waco?: cults and the battle for religious freedom in America
Author: Tabor, James D 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Religion | United States History | Sociology
Publisher's Description: The 1993 government assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, resulted in the deaths of four federal agents and eighty Branch Davidians, including seventeen children. Whether these tragic deaths could have been avoided is still debatable, but what seems clear is that the events in Texas have broad implications for religious freedom in America.James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's bold examination of the Waco story offers the first balanced account of the siege. They try to understand what really happened in Waco: What brought the Branch Davidians to Mount Carmel? Why did the government attack? How did the media affect events? The authors address the accusations of illegal weapons possession, strange sexual practices, and child abuse that were made against David Koresh and his followers. Without attempting to excuse such actions, they point out that the public has not heard the complete story and that many media reports were distorted.The authors have carefully studied the Davidian movement, analyzing the theology and biblical interpretation that were so central to the group's functioning. They also consider how two decades of intense activity against so-called cults have influenced public perceptions of unorthodox religions.In exploring our fear of unconventional religious groups and how such fear curtails our ability to tolerate religious differences, Why Waco? is an unsettling wake-up call. Using the events at Mount Carmel as a cautionary tale, the authors challenge all Americans, including government officials and media representatives, to closely examine our national commitment to religious freedom.   [brief]
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Title: Windows on the house of Islam: Muslim sources on spirituality and religious life
Author: Renard, John 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Middle Eastern Studies | History | Islam
Publisher's Description: Over the centuries and across the globe, Muslim authors and artists have given moving testimony to their experience of being members of the Islamic community. Their many vantage points come together in this collection, one that represents major Islamic groups from the past through the present and covers a range of themes essential to understanding Islamic spirituality and religious life. More than thirty leading Islam scholars present translations originating from a dozen languages, including Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Indonesian. Texts include samples of virtually every major literary form of significance to the Muslim faith: the Qur'an, hadith, scriptural commentary, letters, treatises, lyric and didactic poetry, hagiography, historical chronicle, aphorism, endowment deeds, and personal diary entries. In addition, over five dozen illustrations thematically document a full range of artistic forms and historical periods, from ritual objects and architecture to manuscripts of religious texts. This volume and its companion, John Renard's 1996 book, Seven Doors to Islam , are the only books available that integrate such a wide range of Islamic literary and visual forms. Together they offer a superb introduction to the primary religious sources as well as a general understanding of Islamic spirituality and culture.   [brief]
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Title: Women preachers and prophets through two millennia of Christianity
Author: Kienzle, Beverly Mayne
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Women's Studies | Christianity | Classical Religions | History | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: For nearly two millennia, despite repeated prohibitions, Christian women have preached. Some have preached in official settings; others have found alternative routes for expression. Prophecy, teaching, writing, and song have all filled a broad definition of preaching. This anthology, with essays by an international group of scholars from several disciplines, investigates the diverse voices of Christian women who claimed the authority to preach and prophesy. The contributors examine the centuries of arguments, grounded in Pauline injunctions, against women's public speech and the different ways women from the early years of the church through the twentieth century have nonetheless exercised religious leadership in their communities. Some of them based their authority solely on divine inspiration; others were authorized by independent-minded communities; a few were even recognized by the church hierarchy. With its lively accounts of women preachers and prophets in the Christian tradition, this exceptionally well-documented collection will interest scholars and general readers alike.   [brief]
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