Creoleness and the Soviet Union: An Unmapped Region of Intellectual Exchange

Reviewed by: Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World Brian N. Becker Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. David M. Freidenreich and Miriam Goldstein, Jewish Culture and Contexts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2012) 232 pp. In 1969 Fredrik Barth published a collection of articles entitled Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, which initiated nothing less than a new scholarly discussion about ethnicity. The debate [End Page 162] had, in the estimation of Barth and his fellow contributors, focused too heavily on particular attributes defining ethnic groups and had not sufficiently explored the various boundaries separating one of these groups from another. They argue that in studying the purpose and nature of these boundaries, we can learn how ethnic groups interact with each other and also how they view themselves. Since the publication of Barth’s seminal work, scholars from academic disciplines as diverse as history, gender studies, and biblical exegesis have applied the concept of “boundary crossing” to their work with fruitful results. To this group of studies must be added the excellent essays in Beyond Religious Borders, which are the result of research conducted by the participants of the 2006–2007 research group “Jews, Christians, and Muslims Under the Caliphs and Sultans” held at the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. This book is one of the most recent additions to University of Pennsylvania Press’s Jewish Culture and Contexts series and is both an outstanding contribution to the field of Judeo-Arabic studies and also an excellent addition to the book series. The ten essays contained in this collection cover many important aspects of interconfessional relationships in the Mediterranean world during Islam’s first six centuries. The Islamic Middle East is the geographic focus of the volume, but the fact that several of its essays touch upon Christian Europe and pre-Islamic late antiquity increases the book’s appeal to an audience beyond just those interested in Judeo-Islamic relations. The diversity of chronological and geographical topics found in these essays might have proven difficult for lesser editors to group successfully, but David M. Freidenreich and Miriam Goldstein have done a masterful job. The three essays in part I, “Contexts of Interreligious Interaction,” examine the cultural contexts within which several instances of interaction and exchange in various locations under Islamic rule occurred. Haggai Ben-Shammai examines early linguistic interaction between Muslim and Jewish communities, arguing that the beginning of Judeo-Arabic literature and culture must be placed much earlier than previously envisioned because the evidence shows Jews were employing Arabic in the contexts of education, learning, and everyday life before the advent of Islam. Milka Levy-Rubin then turns her attention to the laws governing protected non-Muslim communities, ahl al-dhimma, under Islamic rule. The widely-accepted view that early Islamic rulers only sporadically produced and rarely enforced laws concerning non-Muslim communities is, in the author’s opinion, not tenable considering the evidence. A reevaluation of the usual Islamic sources, as well as the inclusion of an understudied Samaritan chronicle, instead leads her to conclude that “starting in the second century and especially from the third century of Islam onward … Muslim authorities promulgated a crystallized set of rules that, in contrast to the above opinions, was uniformly enforced by various caliphs and rulers” (31). The first part of this volume ends with Sarah Stroumsa’s study on philosophy in al-Andalus. This chapter challenges previously-held scholarly assumptions just as the first two in this section do; the difference with Stroumsa’s contribution is that her challenge is more aimed at the accepted methodological approach to than historical interpretation of her subject. The author’s contention is that scholars of philosophy in al-Andalus have traditionally focused their studies too much on the output of only one religious community [End Page 163] on the peninsula, which is “similar to examining an object with a single eye and is likely to produce a flat, two-dimensional picture” (53). She instead proposes a comprehensive and concurrent analysis of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish philosophical traditions, which...

In the late 1970s, The Asiatic Research Center (ARC) and The Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) launched the Korea-Japan Intellectual Exchange (KJIE). The KJIE aimed to promote genuine reconciliation between Japan and Korea, and emphasized cooperation between the two countries by highlighting security and economic agendas. To fully understand the significance of the KJIE, it is important to note three things: First, the ARC and the JCIE were established under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, respectively, and the KJIE also received significant financial support from these private foundations. Second, the participants of the KJIE were mostly U.S. PhDs and communicated in English papers that applied U.S. social science theories and methodologies. Third, the KJIE was modeled after the U.S.-Japan Intellectual Exchange (“Shimoda conference”). The Shimoda conference was based on the idea that the United States and Japan, who had met as enemies in World War II, would put aside their enmity for the sake of security and economic interests to create a relationship of friendship and goodwill. KJIE applied the idea of the Shimoda conference to the relationship between Korea and Japan. KJIE discussed ways to avoid industrial competition between Korea and Japan and to strengthen Japan’s role against the threat of North Korea. The KJIE was influenced by U.S. interests in strengthening Japan's role in the declining U.S. hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. However, for this initiative to succeed, Japanese self-controls and changes were essential. Some of the Korean intellectuals who participated in the KJIE were distrustful and did not recognize Japan as a model-state to emulate. Intellectual exchange between Japan and Korea was fraught with discord. This article uses materials from the Rockefeller Archive Center to reveal these facts.

Conferences of professional societies generally involve considerable intellectual exchange. When such intellectual exchange is encouraged, unfettered and free-flowing, it can be both stimulating and contributive to the general good of the profession. Sometimes those presenting ideas, concepts or techniques, in their zeal to put their ideas forward in a favorable light, become counter-productive. Examples are: (1) monopolizing the time, when a series of papers are scheduled, (2) presenting a thinly disguised sales pitch for one's book or technique, or simply: (1) holding oneself out as the purveyor of the only wisdom on the subject. The above, in the generally productive atmosphere of management science, tends to turn people off. In order to emphasize the above examples which I have seen on many occasions, I shall describe a typical situation. The one described is fictional but incorporates situations I have seen.

Catharine Coleborne, Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. xv + 220, £80.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-230-57807-4. - Volume 55 Issue 3

The arrival of Buddhism in Japan, catalyzed by the transmission of Buddhist artifacts from India, symbolizes the deep historical ties between the two civilizations. The initial acceptance of Buddhism by the Soga clan of Japan contrasted with the resistance from adherents of Shinto reflects the dynamics of cultural diffusion and preservation within Japan. Moving forward to the 19th century, the re-establishment of direct contacts between India and Japan marks a significant phase in bilateral relations. Figures such as P.C. Mozoomdar, Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore played pivotal roles in fostering mutual understanding and intellectual exchange during this period. Their travels and interactions not only enriched Japan's cultural landscape but also facilitated a broader dialogue on spirituality, philosophy, and the quest for independence. The involvement of individuals like Rash Behari Bose and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose further deepened the bond, aligning India and Japan in shared struggles for national liberation. These connections underscore a history of solidarity and collaboration that transcended geographical boundaries. In generally, the relationship between Japan and India is an outstanding example of the sustainable legacy of mutual cooperation, intellectual exchange, and cultural exchange. The shared ideals, respect for one another, and dedication to creating a better future together have always been the defining characteristics of the relationship between the two nations, from the spread of Buddhism to the current era of diplomatic relations. India and Japan are well-positioned to strengthen their alliance and advance world peace, prosperity, and advancement as they negotiate the challenges of the twenty-first century.

In 1914, before the outbreak of the World War One, H. B. Higgins travelled at the invitation of ‘industrial counsellor’ Robert Valentine to the United States, where he found an intellectual community of a kind that no political cause or group of people offered at home. There he joined a network of public-spirited experts who moved easily between universities, business, labour reform groups and journalism. Higgins' intellectual exchanges with jurists including Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter and Learned Hand and labour reformers such as Josephine Goldmark and members of the American Association for Labor Legislation formed the distinctive American context that shaped his iconic ‘Australian’ essay on ‘A New Province for Law and Order’ and a larger transnational Progressivism.

Writers, Editors, and Intellectual Exchange Between the Antebellum North and South Jonathan Daniel Wells (bio) In september 1993, as ann arbor, michigan’s ample treescape began to reveal leaves of yellow, orange, and fiery red, I met for the first time my mentor at the University of Michigan. J. Mills Thornton III was kind and welcoming, but the competitive graduate student environment of which I was already aware made me anxious about impressing my new professor. Fortunately, as we talked about mutual interests, Mills and I hit upon a common bond: for both of us, William R. Taylor’s 1961 classic study of antebellum literature and politics, Cavalier and Yankee, was a favorite read. We appreciated Taylor’s examination of famous antebellum literati like James Fenimore Cooper, William Gilmore Simms, and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as more obscure authors like James Kirke Paulding, William Alexander Caruthers, Evert Duyckinck, and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker. Still today I marvel at Taylor’s ability to join novels, periodical literature, and political writings to reveal how Americans in both North and South viewed their pasts. Taylor’s openness to examining southern authors ran counter to the wisdom prevailing for much of the early twentieth century about the quality of writers and thinkers in the slave states. Scholars often dismissed the intellectual culture of the South as irrelevant and undeveloped, remarking, as W. J. Cash once wrote, that the South really had no mind, merely a temperament. In one of the more famous passages of The Mind of the South (1941), Cash argued that “leaving Mr. Jefferson aside, the whole South produced, not only no original philosopher but no derivative one to set beside Emerson [End Page 113] and Thoreau; no novelist but poor Simms to measure against the Northern galaxy headed by Hawthorne and Melville and Cooper… no poet deserving the name save Poe – only half a Southerner.”1 Rejecting Cash’s characterization of southern intellectual life, historians such as Michael O’Brien have shown that southerners were attuned to literary developments emanating from the North and Europe, and that these men and women participated actively in a transatlantic and interregional intellectual culture.2 No longer could apologists for proslavery ideology claim that white southerners were somehow detached or isolated from western intellectual and literary trends. White southerners knew well the European and northern criticisms of slavery; southerners simply chose to swim against the powerful antislavery currents created by authors like Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickens.3 Strangely, even as white southerners maintained a strict silence on the questioning of slavery, and violently denounced northern and European writers who veered into antislavery commentary, white southern thinkers were often willing to lay aside their differences with northern intellectuals over bondage. In fact, the intellectual ties that northern and southern writers and editors created in the antebellum period were important to the development of literary and print culture in both regions. For much of the antebellum era, northern and southern writers placed their professional and personal relationships with each other above the national divide over slavery. As Taylor understood, analyzing the personal and intellectual connections between northern and southern authors can help us appreciate the nuanced ways that antebellum Americans themselves understood sectionalism and the coming of the Civil War. [End Page 114] Despite hailing from different regions and adhering to conflicting ideas about the justice of bondage, shared experiences in print culture united northern and southern intellectuals. Writers in both sections, for example, believed that they were engaged in a common endeavor to convince a fickle reading public that American authors and themes were worth celebrating. Both Cooper and Simms set their novels in American towns and farms populated with American characters. Resenting the haughty superiority maintained by British observers, northern and southern authors united in a common endeavor to bring their nation’s past into fiction. Intellectuals in both regions also complained bitterly about publishers who failed to honor contracts, and about being unappreciated by critics and readers alike. These common experiences were the foundation of close personal as well as professional relationships that proved remarkably strong over the antebellum decades. While not all such relationships between northern and southern authors remained unscathed by...

“Thinking With” When Peer Reviewing: Introduction to the <i>PoLAR Online</i> Emergent Conversation on Peer Review

Journal Article W. Boyd Rayward, editor. Information beyond Borders: International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Époque Get access W. Boyd Rayward, editor. Information beyond Borders: International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Époque.Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2014. Pp. xvi, 318. $119.95. The American Historical Review, Volume 119, Issue 4, October 2014, Page 1408, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/119.4.1408a Published: 03 October 2014

This article offers an interpretation of the friendship between Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt, two of the leading thinkers of the interwar Conservative Revolution and major influences on the European New Right. Previous accounts of their relationship have usually foregrounded their intellectual exchange — including important disagreements — and focused on their growing estrangement after World War II. This article, by contrasts, reads their relationship first and foremost as a friendship, in which such disagreements were secondary to other values, including the pleasure each found in the other’s company, mutual support for their independent intellectual projects, and their common vision of a good life. I reference ideas about friendship in the works of Aristotle, Siegfried Kracauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche (among others) in order to draw out the essential grounds for the friendship between Jünger and Schmitt — grounds which continued despite complications in their friendship after 1945, and which account for the friendship’s longevity, lasting from 1930 until Schmitt’s death in 1985. I argue that their friendship was in important ways typical of the sociability of self-professed elitists and ‘outsiders’ who disdain modern liberal society, a style of friendship common among political radicals on the left and right, including among German conservative revolutionaries and their latter-day heirs in the New Right.

Dialogues, encounters and interactions through which particular ways of knowing, understanding and thinking about the world are forged lie at the centre of anthropology. Such ‘intellectual exchange’ is also central to anthropologists’ own professional practice: from their interactions with research participants and modes of pedagogy to their engagements with each other and scholars from adjacent disciplines. This collection of essays explores how such processes might best be studied cross-culturally. Foregrounding the diverse interactions, ethical reasoning, and intellectual lives of people from across the continent of Asia, the volume develops an anthropology of intellectual exchange itself.

Intellectual exchange is a fundamental pillar of communication between different cultures. It aims to understand the other, exchange ideas, and reduce misunderstandings. This concept is reflected in our research on the art of scholarly exchange between Shiite and Al-Azhar scholars. It aims to promote Islamic unity and resolve doctrinal and jurisprudential differences between them, finding solutions to all differences through meaningful dialogue. On the other hand, the twentieth century witnessed significant intellectual, political, and social transformations at the Islamic and global levels. These transformations significantly impacted the relationship between Islamic sects, particularly between Shiite and Sunni sects. Despite their differences, which extended over various periods, this century witnessed significant intellectual and activism efforts to unite the two sects through dialogue and exchange of views to achieve Islamic unity and enhance rapprochement and understanding between them. In addition to what has been mentioned, there were significant efforts to overcome the differences between the two parties and unify efforts to confront external threats that pose a danger to all Muslims, regardless of sectarianism. The most prominent challenges are colonialism and internal conflicts, which posed a real challenge to the Islamic nation. There were many manifestations of rapprochement between the two sides, the most prominent of which was the House of Rapprochement between Islamic Schools of Thought, which played a role in stimulating intellectual dialogue between Shiite and Sunni scholars and strengthening the bonds of brotherhood between them. Within the framework of our topic (The Intellectual Convergence between Sunni and Shiite Sects), we have clarified the most critical points of convergence between the two sects throughout history, the points of convergence between Shiite and Sunni thought, the rejection of all aspects of their differences, the encouragement of Islamic unity, and the rejection of sedition and intellectual extremism between the two sects. Through our research, we can see the efforts of scholars and leaders to bring the two sects closer together and strive for Islamic unity. These efforts were not limited to the clergy but extended to the efforts of some rulers, starting with Nader Shah's efforts to initiate unity between the two sects, refrain from insulting the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and lead prayers in Mecca under Imam Ja'fari. This is in addition to other attempts by scholars, including Zanjani, Sheikh Salim al-Bishri, and Sheikh al-Shaltut. From the Shiite side, Hibat al-Din al-Shahristani, Muhammad Husayn Kashif al-Ghita', al-Hurr al-'Amili, and many others sought to bring the two sects closer together, explore their differences, and address critical legal issues for the sake of Islamic unity and to resolve their differences. The research covers an introduction to the history of intellectual rapprochement between Shiite and Sunni thought, the most important figures who sought rapprochement between the two sects, and the differences between them, as well as the most important religious figures who sought rapprochement between Sunni and Shiite, thought. The research aims to shed light on these efforts, review the most important figures and institutions that led the rapprochement movement, and study the impact of this rapprochement on Islamic societies in the twentieth century and the lessons that can be learned from it.

African Americans have an extensive history and continuing presence in Europe. This reflects the artistic, cultural, and intellectual exchanges between the peoples of Europe and the peoples of Africa since antiquity. With the advent of the transatlantic slave trade and founding of the United States, these exchanges with Europe took on a distinct character as African Americans negotiated the racial and imperial complexities of the United States and modern Europe. Over the span of close to two and a half centuries, African Americans engaged Europe culturally, intellectually, and politically in advancing multiple projects for cultural flourishing, political advancement, and establishing new modes of planetary possibility. African Americans saw Europe as both refuge from the vicissitudes of the racialist and racist protocols of the United States and a haven for the exploration of the full depth and possibility of modern humanity. In Europe, African Americans encountered Africans from the continent and from across the African diaspora and forged new cultural, political, and intellectual links that gave rise to new movements and fresh expressions of human possibility and solidarity. African Americans also forged alliances with Europeans in giving rise to a distinctive African American–inflected “Afro-pean” culture. Europe’s response to African American people, culture, and ideas contained a mix of admiration, appreciation, and respect tinged by racial essentialism, racial exoticism, and racial supremacy. African American responses to European people, culture, and ideas ranged from acceptance of dominant European frameworks and categories to position African Americans as human, modern, and civilized to creative creolization of Europe in forging fresh perspectives of African American culture, identity, and history. For African Americans, Europe was not only a geographic place across the Atlantic; it also served as a powerful symbol of a space where the play of ideas and identities offered possibilities not available within the cultural, geopolitical, and intellectual confines of the United States. African Americans used Europe to define and redefine themselves as well as to fashion new dreams and myths of being and belonging in the world. In other words, the Old World of Europe served as a new world of possibility for African Americans who sought to navigate its refined cultures and stately traditions in forging new paths for African American art, culture, and expression. The history and continuing presence of African Americans in Europe represents a significant element in the ongoing exchanges between the diverse peoples and cultures of Africa and Europe for millennia.

From the beginning of the twentieth century, scientific and social scientific research has been characterised by intellectual exchange between Europe and the US. The establishment of the Third Reich ensured that, from the German speaking world, at least, this became a one-way traffic. In this book Christian Fleck explores the invention of empirical social research, which by 1950 had become the binding norm of international scholarship, and he analyses the contribution of German refugee social scientists to its establishment. The major names are here, from Adorno and Horkheimer to Hirshman and Lazarsfeld, but at the heart of the book is a unique collective biography based on original data from more than 800 German-speaking social scientists. Published in German in 2008 to great acclaim, Fleck's important study of the transatlantic enrichment of the social sciences is now available in a revised English-language edition.

While the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century saw Portuguese and Brazilian writers and intellectuals reaffirm transatlantic cultural and literary ties, critics have tended to disassociate Portuguese and Brazilian modernist movements. This essay questions this cultural rupture of the literary ties and tries to show that while the nature of Luso-Brazilian cultural relations has evolved, literary and intellectual exchanges have been continuous, influencing conceptions in both countries of national and cultural identities. The Orpheu group and other important intellectual and literary figures of the period, both Portuguese and Brazilian, were not averse to a Luso-Brazilian intellectual endeavor, but conceived their modernist and avant-garde projects as joint efforts with platforms and aesthetic goals that would have a transatlantic impact. This paper reevaluates the links between Portuguese and Brazilian early modernist movements, using some productive juxtapositions to rethink Luso-Brazilian cultural exchanges at the beginning of the century.