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: All in sync: how music and art are revitalizing American religion
Author: Wuthnow, Robert
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | American Studies | Art | Music | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Robert Wuthnow shows how music and art are revitalizing churches and religious life across the nation in this first-ever consideration of the relationship between religion and the arts. All in Sync draws on more than four hundred in-depth interviews with church members, clergy, and directors of leading arts organizations and a new national survey to document a strong positive relationship between participation in the arts and interest in spiritual growth. Wuthnow argues that contemporary spirituality is increasingly encouraged by the arts because of its emphasis on transcendent experience and personal reflection. This kind of spirituality, contrary to what many observers have imagined, is compatible with active involvement in churches and serious devotion to Christian practices. The absorbing narrative relates the story of a woman who overcame a severe personal crisis and went on to head a spiritual direction center where participants use the arts to gain clarity about their own spiritual journeys. Readers visit contemporary worship services in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston and listen to leaders and participants explain how music and art have contributed to the success of these services. All in Sync also illustrates how music and art are integral parts of some Episcopal, African American, and Orthodox worship services, and how people of faith are using their artistic talents to serve others. Besides examining the role of the arts in personal spirituality and in congregational life, Wuthnow discusses how clergy and lay leaders are rethinking the role of the imagination, especially in connection with traditional theological virtues. He also shows how churches and arts organizations sometimes find themselves at odds over controversial moral questions and competing claims about spirituality. Accessible, relevant, and innovative, this book is essential for anyone searching for a better understanding of the dynamic relationships among religion, spirituality, and American culture.   [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: Survivors: an oral history of the Armenian genocide
Author: Miller, Donald E. (Donald Earl) 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Religion
Publisher's Description: Between 1915 and 1923, over one million Armenians died, victims of a genocidal campaign that is still denied by the Turkish government. Thousands of other Armenians suffered torture, brutality, deportation. Yet their story has received scant attention. Through interviews with a hundred elderly Armenians, Donald and Lorna Miller give the "forgotten genocide" the hearing it deserves. Survivors raise important issues about genocide and about how people cope with traumatic experience. Much here is wrenchingly painful, yet it also speaks to the strength of the human spirit.   [brief]
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Title: The challenge of fundamentalism: political Islam and the new world disorder
Author: Tibi, Bassam
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History | Islam
Publisher's Description: Long before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Islamic fundamentalism was exerting a significant influence in nearly every corner of the world. Bassam Tibi, a widely recognized expert on Islam and Arab culture, offers an important and disquieting analysis of this particular synthesis of religion and politics. A Muslim and descendant of a famous Damascene Islamic scholar family, Tibi sees Islamic fundamentalism as the result of Islam's confrontation with modernity and not only--as it is widely believed--economic adversity. The movement is unprecedented in Islamic history and parallels the inability of Islamic nation-states to integrate into the new world secular order. For this updated edition, Tibi has written a new preface and lengthy introduction addressing Islamic fundamentalism in light of and since September 11.   [brief]
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Title: Petrarch's genius: pentimento and prophecy 
Author: Boyle, Marjorie O'Rourke 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | European History | Religion
Publisher's Description: Marjorie Boyle is the first theologian to write about Petrarch the poet as theologian. With her extraordinarily broad and deep knowledge of the theological, historical, and literary contexts of her subject, she presents an entirely original and revisionary account of Petrarch's literary career.Petrarch, she argues, has been misunderstood by the division of his literary enterprise into two sides - Petrarch the poet, Petrarch the humanist reformer - studied by literary critics and historians respectively. Boyle demonstrates that the division is artificial, that the two sides are part of the same prophetic mission. Petrarch's Genius is an important book that deserves to be read by all Petrarch scholars - theologians as well as literary critics and historians.   [brief]
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Title: Encountering Kali ; in the margins, at the center, in the West
Author: McDermott, Rachel Fell
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | Hinduism | South Asia | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: Encountering Kal¾ explores one of the most remarkable divinities the world has seen - the Hindu goddess Kal¾. She is simultaneously understood as a blood-thirsty warrior, a goddess of ritual possession, a Tantric sexual partner, and an all-loving, compassionate Mother. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the West in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon, this volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kal¾ in both her indigenous South Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnations. Using scriptural history, temple architecture, political violence, feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, autobiographical reflection, and the goddess's recent guises on the Internet, the contributors pose questions relevant to our understanding of Kal¾, as they illuminate the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross-cultural interpretation.   [brief]
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Title: The frontiers of Catholicism: the politics of ideology in a liberal world
Author: Burns, Gene 1958-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Sociology | Religion | Social Theory | Gender Studies | Christianity | Politics
Publisher's Description: Gene Burns examines the origins of contemporary diversity and conflict in the Catholic Church, illuminating as well the processes of ideological change.
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Title: Being human: ethics, environment, and our place in the world
Author: Peterson, Anna Lisa 1963-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Religion | Folklore and Mythology | Environmental Studies | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: Being Human examines the complex connections among conceptions of human nature, attitudes toward non-human nature, and ethics. Anna Peterson proposes an "ethical anthropology" that examines how ideas of nature and humanity are bound together in ways that shape the very foundations of cultures. Peterson discusses mainstream Western understandings of what it means to be human, as well as alternatives to these perspectives, and suggests that the construction of a compelling, coherent environmental ethics will revise our ideas not only about nature but also about what it means to be human.   [brief]
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Title: Business of the heart: religion and emotion in the nineteenth century
Author: Corrigan, John 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Religion | American Studies | United States History | Christianity
Publisher's Description: The "Businessmen's Revival" was a religious revival that unfolded in the wake of the 1857 market crash among white, middle-class Protestants. Delving into the religious history of Boston in the 1850s, John Corrigan gives an imaginative and wide-ranging interpretive study of the revival's significance. He uses it as a focal point for addressing a spectacular range of phenomena in American culture: the ecclesiastical and business history of Boston; gender roles and family life; the history of the theater and public spectacle; education; boyculture; and, especially, ideas about emotion during this period. This vividly written narrative recovers the emotional experiences of individuals from a wide array of little-used sources including diaries, correspondence, public records, and other materials. From these sources, Corrigan discovers that for these Protestants, the expression of emotion was a matter of transactions. They saw emotion as a commodity, and conceptualized relations between people, and between individuals and God, as transactions of emotion governed by contract. Religion became a business relation with God, with prayer as its legal tender. Entering this relationship, they were conducting the "business of the heart." This innovative study shows that the revival--with its commodification of emotional experience--became an occasion for white Protestants to underscore differences between themselves and others. The display of emotion was a primary indicator of membership in the Protestant majority, as much as language, skin color, or dress style. As Corrigan unravels the significance of these culturally constructed standards for emotional life, his book makes an important contribution to recent efforts to explore the links between religion and emotion, and is an important new chapter in the history of religion.   [brief]
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Title: Leveling crowds: ethnonationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia
Author: Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja 1929-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | South Asia | Politics | Asian History | Religion
Publisher's Description: Ethno-nationalist conflicts are rampant today, causing immense human loss. Stanley J. Tambiah is concerned with the nature of the ethno-nationalist explosions that have disfigured so many regions of the world in recent years. He focuses primarily on collective violence in the form of civilian "riots" in South Asia, using selected instances in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India. He situates these riots in the larger political, economic, and religious contexts in which they took place and also examines the strategic actions and motivations of their principal agents. In applying a wide range of social theory to the problems of ethnic and religious violence, Tambiah pays close attention to the history and culture of the region.On one level this provocative book is a scrupulously detailed anthropological and historical study, but on another it is an attempt to understand the social and political changes needed for a more humane order, not just in South Asia, but throughout the world.   [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: Nuns as artists: the visual culture of a medieval convent
Author: Hamburger, Jeffrey F 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Art | Religion | Gender Studies | Art History | Medieval History
Publisher's Description: Jeffrey F. Hamburger's groundbreaking study of the art of female monasticism explores the place of images and image-making in the spirituality of medieval nuns during the later Middle Ages. Working from a previously unknown group of late-fifteenth-century devotional drawings made by a Benedictine nun for her cloistered companions, Hamburger discusses the distinctive visual culture of female communities. The drawings discovered by Hamburger and the genre to which they belong have never been given serious consideration by art historians, yet they serve as icons of the nuns' religious vocation in all its complexity. Setting the drawings and related imagery - manuscript illumination, prints, textiles, and metalwork - within the context of religious life and reform in late medieval Germany, Hamburger reconstructs the artistic, literary, and institutional traditions that shaped the lives of cloistered women.Hamburger convincingly demonstrates the overwhelming importance of "seeing" in devotional practice, challenging traditional assumptions about the primacy of text over image in monastic piety. His presentation of the "visual culture of the convent" makes a fundamental contribution to the history of medieval art and, more generally, of late medieval monasticism and spirituality.   [brief]
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Title: Symeon the holy fool: Leontius's Life and the late antique city 
Author: Krueger, Derek
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Religion | Literature | Christianity | Classics | Classical Religions
Publisher's Description: This first English translation of Leontius of Neapolis's Life of Symeon the Fool brings to life one of the most colorful of early Christian saints. In this study of a major hagiographer at work, Krueger fleshes out a broad picture of the religious, intellectual, and social environment in which the Life was created and opens a window onto the Christian religious imagination at the end of Late Antiquity. He explores the concept of holy folly by relating Symeon's life to the gospels, to earlier hagiography, and to anecdotes about Diogenes the Cynic.The Life is one of the strangest works of the Late Antique hagiography. Symeon seemed a bizarre choice for sanctification, since it was through very peculiar antics that he converted heretics and reformed sinners. Symeon acted like a fool, walked about naked, ate enormous quantities of beans, and defecated in the streets. When he arrived in Emesa, Symeon tied a dead dog he found on a dunghill to his belt and entered the city gate, dragging the dog behind him. Krueger presents a provocative interpretation of how these bizarre antics came to be instructive examples to everyday Christians.   [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: Dao de jing: the book of the way
Author: Roberts, Moss 1937-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Religion | China | Asian History | Asian Literature | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: Dao De Jing is one of the richest, most suggestive, and most popular works of philosophy and literature. Composed in China between the late sixth and the late fourth centuries b.c., its enigmatic verses have inspired artists, philosophers, poets, religious thinkers, and general readers down to our own times. This new translation, both revelatory and authentic, captures much of the beauty and nuance of the original work. In an extensive and accessible commentary to his translation, Moss Roberts reveals new depths of Dao De Jing. This edition is distinguished by the literary quality of the translation, its new renderings for a number of the stanzas, and by Roberts's knowledgeable contextualizations. Utilizing recently discovered manuscripts and Chinese scholarship based on them, he is able to shed new light on the work's historical and philosophical contexts. This translation shows that Dao De Jing is far more than a work of personal inspiration; it is also a work of universal scope that makes penetrating comments on politics, statecraft, cosmology, aesthetics, and ethics. Roberts brings these themes to our attention, shows how they are integrated into the work as a whole, and demonstrates the relevance of these topics for our own times.   [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: 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: 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: The sound of two hands clapping: the education of a Tibetan Buddhist monk
Author: Dreyfus, Georges B. J
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | Tibet | Autobiographies and Biographies | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: A unique insider's account of day-to-day life inside a Tibetan monastery, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping reveals to Western audiences the fascinating details of monastic education. Georges B. J. Dreyfus, the first Westerner to complete the famous Ge-luk curriculum and achieve the distinguished titl . . . [more]
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