Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

The European aristocratic imaginary and the Eastern paradise: Europe, Islam andChina 1100-1780. Batchelor. Robert Kinnaird, Jr. Ph.D. University of California, LosAngeles, 1999.218~A~d.v isers: John Brewer and David Sabean.The disseaion investigates changes in the social imaginary of the European aristocracy,which centered on the garden as a space of social and cultural production, to argue that firstIslam and later China played an integral role in the formation of conceptions of both aristocraticsociety and later the nation in Europe. The nineteenth century institution ofOrientalism as a scholarly and literary form of writing about the East cannot be understoodwithout an historical understanding of its basis in earlier aristocratic attempts to define andmaintain their class status in emerging nation states by drawing upon cultural models perceivedas external and superior to Europe. An interest in the unique combination of sensualityand emtic love with formal geometry and a strict ordering of nature in the Islamic gardendrove this process during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, while in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, especially in England, the “irregular” nature of the Chinese gardenwith its “management of contrasts” and “concealment of the bounds’’ captivated the attentionof a “patriotic” and nationally oriented aristocracy and gentry. These exchanges cameout of, and were in turn shaped by, a formal commerce in writings and images that developedfirst locally in the Meditemean and then globally between Europe and China.Bayazid Bistami an analysis of early Persian mysticism (ninth century, Islam). Tehmi,Diane. Ph.D. Cofwnbia University, 1999. 147pp. Adviser: Hamid Dabashi.This study is an analysis of the development of early Persian mysticism with specific referenceto the ninth century Islamic mystic Bayazid Bistami. The study contains historical,political, social, religious, and literary background of Bayazid in Islamic thought. A completetranslation of the sayings of Bayazid, certain metaphors employed by him for the clarificationof his doctrine, and an alphabetized list of names of the persons and places mentionedin the text are also brought into consideration. This study also contains backgroundof his life. contemporaries, and contribution to Sufism. as well as terminology, symbolicmetaphors, and annotation of expressions and technical terms in his work.Terrorism in the name of religion: perceptions and attitudes of religious leaders fromJudaism, Christianity, and Islam in the United States. Al-Khattar, Aref M. Ph.D.Idiana University of Pennsylvania, 1998. 365pp. Adviser: W. Timothy Austin.This dissertation analyzes the way in which spiritual leaders representing Judaism,Christianity, and Islam perceive terrorism. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conductedto explore how Rabbis, Priests, and Imams/Sheiks from three monotheistic religionsdefine and justify terrorism in the name of religion. Also addressed are what functions, ifany, religious leaders can or should play in fostering better understanding of terrorism in theU.S.A. or elsewhere. A stratified, purposive sample of 24 participants was drawn from anavailable population of religious leaders (representing their major sects) from the Northeastregion of the United States. Following traditions appropriate to qualitative research, datawas collected, sorted and analyzed. Findings of this study confiied the difficulty of definingterrorism. All participants agree that terrorism cannot be justified in their religions.Nevertheless, many of them gave some justifications of certain terrorist acts without specificallyconsidering these acts as terrorism. It was concluded that violence, but not terrorism, ...