Diverse Texts Research Articles

The empire of the self: self-command and political speech in Seneca and Petronius

In Empire of the Self, Christopher Star studies the question of how political reality affects the concepts of body, soul, and self. Star argues that during the early Roman Empire the establishment of autocracy and the development of a universal ideal of individual autonomy were mutually enhancing phenomena. The Stoic ideal of individual empire or complete self-command is a major theme of Seneca's philosophical works. The problematic consequences of this ideal are explored in Seneca's dramatic and satirical works, as well as in the novel of his contemporary, Petronius. Star examines the rhetorical links between these diverse texts. He also demonstrates a significant point of contact between two writers generally thought to be antagonists - the idea that imperial speech structures reveal the self.

Contact, Mediation, and Myth in Early Latin American Literatures

Contact, Mediation, and Myth in Early Latin American Literatures Joanne van der Woude (bio) Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Rolena Adorno. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 148 pp. Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico. Mónica Díaz. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2010. 229 pp. On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru. Sabine MacCormack. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 320 pp. The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca. Yanna Yannakakis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 290 pp. Michel de Certeau wrote: "By an art of being in-between, he draws unexpected results from his situation"—an intriguing expression that opens Yanna Yannakakis's book. In her work, the citation applies to Native intermediaries, but it seems just as pertinent to scholars and teachers who (seek to) work comparatively. They, too, must distance themselves from their monolingual training and expertise in order to tackle new fields in the hope of "unexpected," or even enlightening, "results." This is true not only for those who work across languages but also for anyone who cultivates [End Page 201] a transatlantic, transcultural, or transhistorical perspective on early America—and so, suddenly, nearly everyone can be called a comparativist, in some sense of the word. I make this point in order to argue for the importance of Latin American scholarship to North American studies. The flourishing field of Latin American literature and history should be taken into account not just out of a sense of duty but because it offers real methodological and theoretical advantages. For those who still wonder why they should care, this review begins by pointing out specific genres and themes that are shared across the colonial Americas, and that would benefit from comparative consideration in criticism as well as in the classroom. Teaching, to be honest, is still complicated: there are few, good, affordable editions and translations of Latin American sources that can be assigned to undergraduate classes and professors harbor an understandable reluctance to assign many texts in translation or are simply hesitant to change time-tested syllabi. Rather than add another voice to the extensive debate about whether early American culture is best taught transatlantically, hemispherically, or both—let alone try to convince or castigate anyone about the need to assign more diverse texts—this overview begins by delineating productive pairings of Spanish writings with more canonical (and therefore usually English) texts. The idea behind this arrangement, which is followed by brief summaries and reviews of the four listed books, is to spark interest instead of inducing guilt, stressing the relevance of Latin American texts to current perspectives on North American literature and history. Fictional dialogues are a popular genre across the American colonies. John Eliot's Indian Dialogues (1671) comes most immediately to mind, as well as its scholarly readings by Kristina Bross, David Murray, and Thomas Scanlan. Although this tract was purportedly written to aid future missionaries, Eliot uses the opportunity to stage wishful exchanges that speedily convert Native leaders while also assuaging the fears of "a colonial audience concerned about the outbreaks of violence with coastal Algonquians" (Bross 119). (For the sake of realism, this piece is perhaps best read alongside another less fictional Eliot tract, though its obvious fakery also, arguably, constitutes its charm.) Christoph Saur's A Dialogue between a Newcomer and a Settler in Pennsylvania (1751), translated from the German by Patrick Erben for Carla Mulford's Oxford anthology (735-44), is a promotional piece for the Middle Colonies, which contains a wealth of information [End Page 202] on colonial Pennsylvania as well as on eighteenth-century Europe. It includes a spirited defense of Pietism, alongside such endearingly honest questions as: "If it would happen to me as it has happened to many people in this country [Germany], and I could not pay everything in cash and had to go into debt, would that be a big issue?" (Mulford 739). Helpful additions to this pair might be Manuel da Nóbrega's Dialogue for the Conversion of the Indians (Castillo and Schweitzer 1556-57) and the dialogue written by Fray Bernardino de...

TEKNOLOGI, MODERNITAS, DAN ZAMAN ‘PANTJAROBA’: REPRESENTASI RADIO DALAM DUA ROMAN INDONESIA DI AKHIR ZAMAN KOLONIAL

The reception and perception of the Indonesian society on radio technology in the early period of the appearance of this technology in the former Netherlands East Indies can of course be traced in its diverse culture texts, including the literary texts. Even though such technological invention as radio is an element that is quite apparent and give colour in many modern Indonesian literary texts, this element has not seemed to attract the attention of scholars of Indonesian literary studies. This paper looks at the images of radio technology in modern Indonesian literary texts by examining how this technology is represented as a matter of course in early modern Indonesian literary works. Two works which will be investigated in this article are Muhammad Dimyati’s Dibalik Tabir Gelombang Radio (1940) and A. Damhoeri’s Zender Nirom (1940). In this paper, I discuss them in terms of the explicit presence of radio as an urban icon and symbol of modernity.

Multimedia: A Technique in Teaching Process in the Classrooms

One of the techniques to improving the students’ meets the academic needs and helps them developing English language skills is providing multimedia during the process of teaching and learning in the classroom. Multimedia classroom provide the students chances for interacting with diverse texts that give them a solid background in the tasks and content of mainstream college courses. The writing aims to find out some advantages of the use of multimedia in the classroom. Also, the involvement of technology in the classroom can not denied giving positive point to improving the quality of teaching and giving more various techniques in teaching a foreign language. The research uses a qualitative method giving a deeply description using multimedia in the classroom. The difference between a traditional classroom and multimedia classroom has been drawn in this writing. The writing shows that there are some advantages in teaching English using multimedia as a technique in teaching process in the classroom. Through the media the teacher could give more opportunity to students to express their opinions and enjoy during the course. The highly presence and motivation also bring positive aspects to students so that they can improve their skills.

Pygmalion in Bavaria: The Sculptor Ignaz Günther and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Art Theory (review)

Reviewed by: Pygmalion in Bavaria: The Sculptor Ignaz Günther and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Art Theory Michael Yonan Christiane Hertel, Pygmalion in Bavaria: The Sculptor Ignaz Günther and Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Art Theory (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011). Pp. 270. $99.95. Ignaz Günther is a sculptor well known in his native Germany, but entirely unfamiliar outside of it. His elegant rococo compositions grace the interiors of several important Bavarian ecclesiastical spaces, and a few have found their way to American and British museums. In general, though, his name remains little known; therefore, Christiane Hertel’s book is a most welcome addition to the critical literature on eighteenth-century art. Incredibly, this is the first English-language study on Bavarian rococo art of any kind since Karsten Harries’s The Bavarian Rococo Church, published nearly three decades ago. Hertel’s book is no introductory monograph, however. It is a wide-ranging, ambitious, and intricately argued investigation of Günther’s work which posits commonalities between religious art and the widespread retheorization of sculpture that took place in late eighteenth-century philosophy. As such, it is a novel and surprising text quite without parallel in the critical literature. Hertel’s intent is less historical or biographical than it is theoretical, and her book contributes as much to the study of eighteenth-century art theory as it does to that of art itself. She employs a comparative method that alternates works by Günther with lengthy explorations of diverse texts, including works by such prominent thinkers as Winckelmann, Lessing, Hegel, Rousseau, Kant, and Herder, as well as more obscure personages like the historian Lorenz Westenrieder (1748–1829). Hertel is particularly interested in passages concerned with self-reflective perception and sensory experience, since she sees in Günther’s sculptures a visual and material examination of these processes. Her overarching point is that Günther theorized self-reflectivity, interiority, and sensation in his art, making sculptures that fulfilled devotional expectations while also silently critiquing or confusing those expectations. Commentators have long characterized Günther’s sculptures as psychologically expressive, but according to Hertel that expressiveness is the result of a palpable self-awareness on Günther’s part. She relates this self-awareness to the Protestant critique of idolatry, to sculpture’s ritual functions in Catholic religious culture, and to the spiritual meaning accorded to sculpture in eighteenth-century German aesthetics. After a brief biographical overview, Hertel introduces the Pygmalion theme in order to examine an unusual etching on the subject by Günther. This image, [End Page 457] Hertel claims, complicates notions of high and low art through its odd iconography, and she sees the Pygmalion story as both a model for sculptural practice generally and a theorization of religious sculpture especially—a fascinating suggestion. Then comes a chapter on Günther’s relationship to late eighteenth-century Bavarian religious culture. Here Hertel interprets Günther through wide-ranging comparanda, including the baroque devotional machina, the theatrical tableau vivant, and Andrea Pozzo’s writings on perspective, connections that Hertel forges associatively and nonlinearly. Hertel uses this moment to build on and partially rethink Harries’s observations on the rococo church as theatrum sacrum. Chapter three examines Günther’s angels, their locations in churches, and the effects they have on viewers and worshippers. Hertel concentrates on the multiple commissions Günther produced for the Augustinian church at Diessen, which she sees as partially subversive and potentially unruly through subtle distinctions in gender, age, pose, and position. Chapter five discusses Günther’s Kerkerheiland, a small freestanding sculpture of the flagellated Christ made in imitation of the sculpture that inspired the Wieskirche, one of Bavaria’s most celebrated ecclesiastical spaces. Hertel engages in a close visual analysis of this work to claim that it unites popular piety and institutionally sanctioned Counter-Reformational reform. The next chapter turns to the sculptural groups Günther made for the Church of Saints Peter and Paul at Weyarn, unusual objects that were intended for procession as well as for stationary display. She relates these works to the idea of sculptural vivification, for which she adopts the term Zusammensicht, or synthetic sight, an...

An Architecture for Diversity-aware Search for Medical Web Content

The Web provides a huge source of information, also on medical and health-related issues. In particular the content of medical social media data can be diverse due to the background of an author, the source or the topic. Diversity in this context means that a document covers different aspects of a topic or a topic is described in different ways. In this paper, we introduce an approach that allows to consider the diverse aspects of a search query when providing retrieval results to a user. We introduce a system architecture for a diversity-aware search engine that allows retrieving medical information from the web. The diversity of retrieval results is assessed by calculating diversity measures that rely upon semantic information derived from a mapping to concepts of a medical terminology. Considering these measures, the result set is diversified by ranking more diverse texts higher. The methods and system architecture are implemented in a retrieval engine for medical web content. The diversity measures reflect the diversity of aspects considered in a text and its type of information content. They are used for result presentation, filtering and ranking. In a user evaluation we assess the user satisfaction with an ordering of retrieval results that considers the diversity measures. It is shown through the evaluation that diversity-aware retrieval considering diversity measures in ranking could increase the user satisfaction with retrieval results.

Recognizing and Escaping the Sham: Authority Moves, Truth Claims and the Fiction of Academic Writing About Adult Learning

This paper seeks to explore the meaning of the sham with regards to academic writing. It challenges the fundamental assumptions that underpin conventional academic writing and suggests that such writing is actually less honest than the other forms of writing that it sets itself against. It is precisely the reliance on what Laurel Richardson calls the “authority moves” (1997, p.167) of academic language that undermines its claim to represent reality in an open and honest way. It is, in fact, a sham. The rejection of the superior truth claims of academic writing is illustrated with reference to two interview transcripts from a completed study and the issues raised are explored theoretically in the light of the work of Helene Cixous. It is argued that the adoption of Helene Cixous’ notion of l’ecriture feminine provides a way out of the dilemma. Inspired by Cixous, it is argued that it is possible to escape the limitations of conventional academic writing firstly through the incorporation of a kind of writing practice which has more in common with poetry than rational argument and secondly through the incorporation of generically diverse texts within the social science research text.

Hortuli animae iz let 1516 in 1548 v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v Ljubljani: predreformacijski molitvenik in njegova luteranska transformacija

The collection of rare prints at the National and University Library of Ljubljana contains two small printed prayer books entitled Hortulus animae. One is from 1516 and the other from 1548, and both are embellished with numerous woodcut illustrations. On closer inspection, the similarities between the booklets soon vanish: the older one belongs to the golden age of pre-Reformation prayer books of the first two decades of the sixteenth century, and the second one to the Reformation. Nevertheless, both examples have so far been ignored by scholars. The Latin prayer book dated 1516 was published in Mainz by Johann Schöfer. It belongs to the important and numerous group of pre-Reformation prayer books, among which Hortulus animae was most successful. This type derives from books of hours, with adjustments to central European devotional practices. Hortulus animae is a compendium of diverse devotional texts designed to equip Christians for every situation in which they might need divine assistance. An important role was also played by numerous illustrations, as proven by some prayers that explicitly demand recitation before a specific image (the prayers of St. Gregory the Great and St. Anne). The importance of these booklets is confirmed by the importance of some of the artists that provided illustrations, such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger. The illustrations in the Ljubljana prayer book were all executed by a single master, which was not common for this type of publication. His name and his other works are unknown, although the quality of his woodcuts surpasses many in other series used at this time. The special value of this prayer book also lies in numerous traces left by its owners, the most impressive being the drawing of the coat of arms on the back cover. The second Hortulus animae with German text was published in Wittenberg in 1548 by the important Protestant publisher Georg Rhau. The texts, partly written by Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, show crucial differences from their pre-Reformation predecessor. Although richly illustrated with Lucas Cranach’s pre-Reformation woodcuts for a Wittenberg relics collection book from 1509, their meaning did not remain the same. Luther was very aware of the power of images, specially over the less educated. His teachings are perfectly expressed in this prayer book. The images of saints are limited to Christ’s family, the twelve apostles, and John the Baptist, and several points in the text are equipped with a warning against idolatry. The smaller group of illustrations depicting specific Reformation subjects was contributed by a younger anonymous artist known only by his monogram, A W. Each in its specific historical context, both prayer books are therefore a valuable document of pre-Reformation and Reformation piety in central Europe of the first half of the sixteenth century.

Hortuli animae iz let 1516 in 1548 v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v Ljubljani: predreformacijski molitvenik in njegova luteranska transformacija

The collection of rare prints at the National and University Library of Ljubljana contains two small printed prayer books entitled Hortulus animae. One is from 1516 and the other from 1548, and both are embellished with numerous woodcut illustrations. On closer inspection, the similarities between the booklets soon vanish: the older one belongs to the golden age of pre-Reformation prayer books of the first two decades of the sixteenth century, and the second one to the Reformation. Nevertheless, both examples have so far been ignored by scholars. The Latin prayer book dated 1516 was published in Mainz by Johann Schöfer. It belongs to the important and numerous group of pre-Reformation prayer books, among which Hortulus animae was most successful. This type derives from books of hours, with adjustments to central European devotional practices. Hortulus animae is a compendium of diverse devotional texts designed to equip Christians for every situation in which they might need divine assistance. An important role was also played by numerous illustrations, as proven by some prayers that explicitly demand recitation before a specific image (the prayers of St. Gregory the Great and St. Anne). The importance of these booklets is confirmed by the importance of some of the artists that provided illustrations, such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger. The illustrations in the Ljubljana prayer book were all executed by a single master, which was not common for this type of publication. His name and his other works are unknown, although the quality of his woodcuts surpasses many in other series used at this time. The special value of this prayer book also lies in numerous traces left by its owners, the most impressive being the drawing of the coat of arms on the back cover. The second Hortulus animae with German text was published in Wittenberg in 1548 by the important Protestant publisher Georg Rhau. The texts, partly written by Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, show crucial differences from their pre-Reformation predecessor. Although richly illustrated with Lucas Cranach’s pre-Reformation woodcuts for a Wittenberg relics collection book from 1509, their meaning did not remain the same. Luther was very aware of the power of images, specially over the less educated. His teachings are perfectly expressed in this prayer book. The images of saints are limited to Christ’s family, the twelve apostles, and John the Baptist, and several points in the text are equipped with a warning against idolatry. The smaller group of illustrations depicting specific Reformation subjects was contributed by a younger anonymous artist known only by his monogram, A W. Each in its specific historical context, both prayer books are therefore a valuable document of pre-Reformation and Reformation piety in central Europe of the first half of the sixteenth century.

Content-Driven Literacy: One Approach to Urban Secondary Teacher Education

In an attempt to address perceived shortcomings in traditional content-area literacy preparation, an interdisciplinary group of teacher education faculty developed an approach called “content-driven literacy” (CDL), which was applied to the design of courses to prepare preservice secondary science and social studies teachers. This article describes the development and implementation of the CDL course work and its five elements: reading and writing embedded in subject matter, explicit instruction, planning and modification of literacy instruction, research-based instruction, and the use of diverse content-area texts. The types of knowledge the preservice teacher participants gained from this approach and implications for secondary content instruction are discussed.

Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada (review)

Lily Cho. Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 207 pages. When one Chinese meets another Chinese who is stranger, ready way index each other is through the dialects they speak: Cantonese from Hong Kong or Macau? One of the many southern dialects from the coast? Shanghai vernacular? Taiwanese? Or Putonghua, the official spoken language of mainland China? And if one wants pursue ethnic origin further, what kind of Chinese character does Chinese write: the more classical and complicated script that Chinese of certain age from Hong Kong would have learned while Hong Kong was still British colony or the abbreviated script instituted in China after the Second World War? All these questions and answers, as might be noted, do not include Chinese who had immigrated North America, or Australia, or parts of Europe and on century ago. Second- and third-generation overseas Chinese might rightly feel marginalized by, first, the dominance of the People's Republic of China as the focus of Chinese issues and, second, by the economic clout wielded by recent immigrants who have chosen mainly settle in cities such as Vancouver or Toronto or Sidney or New York. Eating Chinese by Lily Cho attempts redress this oversight in current scholarship on diasporic Chinese cultures. To Cho, the restaurants that served chop suey and the Chinese who owned them are seen as Too old be recuperated within the new narratives of multiculturalism and too new be proper object of wistful histories (5-6), but Cho wants to suggest that these restaurants illuminate both the difficulty of sustaining the presentness of the past in Chinese and the need do so (7). To that end, the author engages in examining a range of diverse texts: folk tales and rumours, menus, Canadian folk songs, art installations, and literature in order illuminate a different facet of the restaurant as cultural (14). Wanting go beyond the theoretical positions on taken by critics such as Rey Chow or Avtar Brah, Cho writes, Rather than worrying over who might be counted as diasporic and who should have their claims diasporic membership revoked, I am committed showing how diasporic communities emerge out of the relationships within and across diaspora (15). In chapter 1, Cho moves from a narrative of containment and expulsion symbolized by cooking by Hong Kong Chinese under British colonial rule, the serving of sweet and sour pork in Chinese Canadian restaurants, practice described as a semiotic virus that cannot be contained (31). (1) Interspersed between examinations of the two poles of food production are readings and references Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Raymond Williams, Freud, and Stuart Hall. chapter ends with Cho reminding the reader that The public space of the small town Chinese restaurant opens up the possibilities of resistances that may not have record in the colonial or settler colonial archive, but that are nevertheless present (43) and thus should be part of the postcolonial narrative in scholarly research. Cho underlines this claim and expands it in chapter 2 by an elegiac overview of small town Chinese restaurants in Alberta. Cho's lingering over the establishing of Public Lunch Counter in Olds, or New Dayton Cafe and its menu, is part of the attempt prevent relegating what might be considered old subjectivities the dustbin of Chinese history rather than thinking through the ways in which these identities . …

Old Questions in New Boxes: Mia Kirshner's I Live Here and the Problematics of Transnational Witnessing

Old Questions in New Boxes: Mia Kirshner's I Live Here and the Problematics of Transnational Witnessing Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg (bio) and Alexandra Schultheis Moore (bio) Symbolized in Amnesty International's candle illuminating the darkness, the rhetoric of exposure has long been a central trope of humanitarian discourse: the promise of revelation presumes that egregious violations are otherwise secret and that, in Thomas Keenan's words, "those agents whose behavior it wishes to affect—governments, armies, businesses, and militias—are exposed in some significant way to the force of public opinion, and that they are (psychically or emotionally) structured like individuals in a strong social or cultural context that renders them vulnerable to feelings of dishonor, embarrassment, disgrace, or ignominy." 1 Despite the implausibility of these conditions, as well as the dangers of oversaturation, "mass and especially the image-based media" have only accentuated the ostensible self-evidence of this approach. 2 The rhetoric of exposure posits a liberal subject as its addressee who is ready and willing to respond to humanitarian appeals constructed through an "aesthetics of suffering," particularly in the form of indignation-inducing shock or the representation of victims who are "deserving" of aid or assistance. 3 Such familiar humanitarian narratives comprise, as Lilie Chouliaraki writes, "rhetorical practices of transnational actors that engage with universal ethical claims, such as common humanity or global civil society, to mobilize action on human suffering." 4 In her recent scholarship, Chouliaraki traces the contemporary movement from these rhetorical practices to a new "post-humanitarian sensibility"—one she locates explicitly in mixed-media humanitarian appeals—that "breaks with [the emotional repertoire of] pity and privileges a short-term and low-intensity form of agency, which is no longer inspired by an intellectual agenda but momentarily engages us in practices of playful consumerism." 5 The humanitarian rhetorics she identifies at both poles, whether based on shared sentiment "in a moral economy of abundance, an economy where everyone can, in principle, feel for and act on distant suffering in an unrestricted manner" or appeals operating in an "economy of scarcity" and through the "individual judgment" of the consumer, pose particular challenges for a transnational feminist approach to gender-based rights violations. 6 We turn to a case study of the Canadian actress and self-styled activist Mia Kirshner's multimedia project I Live Here to illuminate both the contradictions and the potential embedded in its construction of transnational subjects and addressees, as well as to resist the collapse of "transnational" into a presumed universalism of either [End Page 233] capitalist or post-Enlightenment humanitarian sensibilities. Executed with support from Amnesty International and linked to a website featuring book sales, short videos, fan art, and descriptions of ongoing projects, I Live Here encourages consumption of its diverse texts "revealing secret lives" as a means of raising awareness and mobilizing public opinion against the violations it chronicles. 7 The project is presented in a whitewashed box which folds out to reveal one eighty-four-page "notebook" in each of its four pockets, each claiming to bear witness to the experiences of people living in a distinct region in the grip of a distinct human rights or humanitarian crisis. The goal of our inquiry into I Live Here is to further ongoing intellectual conversations about the potential for literary and cultural texts to ethically advance the emancipatory and progressive aspects of global human rights claims and cultures—and about the risks that they may instead remain aestheticized commodities, nourishing the neo-imperialist global capitalism that is so profoundly implicated in conditions enabling both civil and political rights violations and economic deprivations and abuses. In an essay on the "geopolitical rhetorics" of human rights responses to the global sex trade, Wendy Hesford examines the trope of exposure and argues that campaigns based on that trope "overlook the rhetorical-geopolitical dimensions of identity and identification practices produced by the contradictions of transnationality." 8 We extend Hesford's argument in order to decipher the transnational address of I Live Here at our particular historical moment. The text, which depicts women's vulnerability, sexual abuses, and sex work in Chechnya/Ingushetia, Burma, Ciudad Juárez, and Malawi, begins with the statement...

Laura Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century ItalyThe Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy. Laura Benedetti. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. viii+165.

<i>Laura Benedetti,</i> The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy<i>The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy</i>. Laura Benedetti. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Pp. viii+165.

A Defensible Conception of Tolerance in Aquinas?

1 See J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 215. In the page that follows Rawls provides equally simplistic references for the attitudes of the Protestant Reformers towards tolerance. 291 The Thomist 75 (2011): 291-308 A DEFENSIBLE CONCEPTION OF TOLERANCE IN AQUINAS? MANFRED SVENSSON Universidad de los Andes Santiago de Chile INTRODUCTION: A COHERENT THEORY OF TOLERANCE? D OES AQUINAS HAVE a theory of tolerance that is not only “understandable in its own context” but defensible in our context? The question is not an easy one to answer and has, in fact, been given opposite answers. This should come as no surprise, since at first sight the diverse articles in the Summa Theologiae that deal with tolerance seem to be written in a spirit very different from each other. When Aquinas explicitly asks, for example, whether heretics must be tolerated, the answer seems to consist in an unqualified denial of tolerance (STh II-II, q. 11, a. 3). On other occasions, however, he speaks on behalf of the tolerance of actions or rites that he clearly describes as sins. This, as is well known, is his position regarding prostitution as well as regarding Jewish religious ceremonies (STh II-II, q. 10, a.11). Naturally, from these two kinds of texts opposite images of Aquinas are projected into the secondary literature regarding tolerance. When John Rawls, for instance, writes that Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers did not even acknowledge the limited tolerance that Locke or Rousseau later promoted,1 he supports his interpretation with reference to only one proof-text: question 11, article 3 of the Secunda Secundae, the question concerning MANFRED SVENSSON 292 2 See, e.g., E. Téllez, “Tomás de Aquino como Antecedente Medieval de la Tolerancia Moderna,” Tópicos 36 (2009): 37-63. 3 See R. Forst, Toleranz im Konflikt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 91-96. 4 J. Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), vii. 5 J. Knasas, Thomism and Tolerance (Scranton and London: University of Scranton Press, 2011), 7. 6 In fact, none of these texts are even quoted until the very last chapters of his work. tolerance of heretics, which Aquinas answers negatively. Other authors, wishing to evoke the image of a tolerant Aquinas, simply disregard this passage, quoting instead diverse texts from which a more tolerant author seems to emerge—for instance, texts in which we see a Christian in dialogue with Muslim philosophers.2 There are also those who are more willing to admit the existence of texts pointing in both directions in the work of Aquinas.3 Some try to give us reasons to privilege the more “tolerant” texts, or to go beyond mere tolerance to full-fledged freedom of religion. This kind of project, which can be found for instance in the work of John Finnis, rests on the idea that one can make an “internal” correction of the system: that “some serious flaws” which can be found in Aquinas’s thoughts on human society can be criticized on the basis of “premises he himself understood and articulated better” than his own masters and successors.4 John F. X. Knasas, in his recent Thomism and Tolerance, holds a similar position, arguing for what he calls “fraternal tolerance,” a perspective that widens the concept of tolerance to include our engagement, respect, and sympathy for the other.5 Accordingly, the texts where Aquinas speaks about tolerance proper play no decisive role in Knasas’s argument.6 The preceding summary suggests that contemporary scholarship has been largely unable to draw a coherent and defensible view of tolerance from the texts in which Aquinas addresses this topic. That is the goal of the present article. Thus, I will not argue for freedom of religion, nor even for respect. Such freedom and such respect are great things indeed, things that deserve to be defended. But it is also a good thing to have an adequate theory of mere tolerance, and the limited goal of the present article is to show that Aquinas does have one. Furthermore, while I agree with TOLERANCE IN AQUINAS? 293 7 For a good version of the...

Page and Screen

Courses on ethnic American literature can unintentionally reinscribe students' preconceptions and stereotypes about ethnic American subgroups or create the false impression that each ethnic group is homogeneous. A student with limited experience with people of color might think she now understands an ethnic group after reading an ethnic American novel, for example. By using fiction and non-fiction film, teachers can destabilize students' oversimplified views of ethnic groups and of the concepts of race and ethnicity themselves. The course described here started with Toni Morrison's short story, “Recitatif,” which ingeniously leads readers to examine their own racial preconceptions. Then, novels (Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, Sent for You Yesterday by John Wideman, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, and Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen) are paired with films to demonstrate that greater diversity exists within any ethnic group than between any two. Students also engage a few key articles about canon formation so they can understand ethnic literature in the context of American literary traditions. By the end of the course, students have a healthy uncertainty regarding race and ethnicity, their oversimplifications having been undermined by their work with diverse texts.

Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (review)

Reviewed by: Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area Carl Lindahl (bio) Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area. Ed. Terry Gunnell. Acta academiae regiae Gustavi Adolphi 98. (Uppsala, Sweden: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur, 2007. Pp. 840, 45 maps, 168 figures, bibliography, index, notes on contributors.) At 840 pages, Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Areais a great and sprawling book. Yet given the goals it sets for itself and the voids that it fills, it is remarkably concise. At the very least, here are two books in one: an encyclopedic catalog of masked festive traditions and a collection of essays exploring specific traditions from a variety of angles. Together, these two sections comprise both a summa of the early descriptive techniques of Nordic folklorists and a cross-section of current contextual and theoretical interests. Two introductory statements outline the book's orientation and scholarly development. First, the editor's dedication ("in memory of Herbert Halpert and George M. Story") testifies to an inspiration from the outskirts of the Nordic area. Halpert and Story's edited collection Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland(University of Toronto Press, 1969) combined historic-geographic methodology with close contextual focus to change the direction of folkloric festival studies. Second, a two-page foreword by Bengt af Klintberg outlines how Danish scholar Carsten Bregenhøj's Helligtrekongersløb på Agersø(Akademisk Forlag, 1974) extended the Halpert-Story methodology to the study of Danish Epiphany mummings, how Terry Gunnell's The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia(Boydell and Brewer, 1995) worked to connect the earliest records of Scandinavian masking traditions with modern observations of their practice, and how Bregen-høj and Gunnell began a collaboration, in 1999, resulting in the present book. Editor Terry Gunnell thickens the description with an introduction outlining the history, convictions, and orientations underlying the present volume (pp. 27-43). Crucially, Gunnell cites ways in which Scandinavian folklorists, following Carl von Sydow, revolutionized the historic-geographic approach by abandoning the effort to level diverse texts into some posited universal pattern and by insisting, on the contrary, that inferences regarding the background and meaning of customary practices "be based wholly on firm localevidence rather than international comparisons" (p. 38). This is an important qualification for North American readers, many of whom have summarily dismissed historic-geographic methods on the false understanding that they serve only to articulate the abstract patterning of preconceived notions. Part 1 of the book, which runs to 447 pages, honors local knowledge through its close attention to the individual traditions surveyed, as well as by incorporating and building upon the archival work and published scholarship of generations of local experts. Leading specialists provide detailed surveys of seven Nordic regions: Christine Eike takes on Norway; Eva Knuts, Sweden; Carsten Bregenhøj and Hanne Pico Larsen, Denmark; Terry Gunnell, the "North Atlantic" (encompassing Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes, and Iceland); Urpo Vento, Finland and Karelia; Ülo Tedre, Estonia; and Adriënne Heijnen, Greenland. Each survey covers seven topics in the following order: a brief description of the region; early historical references to masking traditions; a characterization of the documentary sources for the survey; a précis of the "general features" of the festive activities surveyed; an overview of the region's calendrical masking traditions; a summary of noncalendrical traditions; and a conclusion. The contributors vary significantly in the ways in which they flesh out this seven-part outline, and a brief review of some of the details [End Page 352]of the discussions illustrates the range, sources, and scope of the national surveys. For example, the most detailed description of a region is the section on Denmark, which devotes seven pages to geographic and cultural variations, as well as to historical influences on variation. The most detailed section on historical references to masking traditions is the seventeen-page section on the North Atlantic, which draws most extensively on medieval Icelandic texts. For its documentary sources, the section on Finland and Karelia brings together 1,900 records, principally archival resources based on fieldwork conducted in the 1930s, questionnaires administered in the 1960s, and audio interviews and video documentation undertaken in the 1970s. The Greenland section, in its pr...

New Puzzles/Next Moves: Using Critical Literacy to Engage Learners: What New Teachers Can Do

Shanklin knows that as school populations become more culturally and linguistically diverse, perspectives such as critical literacy become of interest to students themselves and act as keys to their engagement. Critical literacy marks an exciting shift in thinking toward English/language arts, global education, English language learners, and ways to produce and view genres with new technologies. Here is guidance, especially for the new teacher, about how to introduce the concept and activities that will broaden students’ perspectives and abilities to navigate increasingly diverse texts.

An Inquiry into the Definition of tarka in Nyāya Tradition and Its Connotation of Negative Speculation

The technical term “tarka” in the Nyāya tradition is the object of the present investigation. Diverse texts including Buddhist ones exhibit a negative estimation of activities using tarka. In contrast, more often than not, later treatises dealing with logico-epistemic problems, especially certain Naiyāyika works, identify the methodological peculiarity of Nyāya with tarka. Such an ambivalent attitude toward tarka can be understood in a coherent way if the essential features of tarka that gave rise to it can be grasped. Starting from the Nyāyasūtra 1.1.40 and the explanation given in the Nyāyabhāṣya on it, the present researcher sorted out three characteristic features of tarka in the early Nyāya tradition. These three features focus on the main feature of tarka: namely, reflective analysis without requiring further factual information on the object of investigation. Based on this, the present researcher critically reviewed what promoted an understanding of tarka as a reductio ad absurdum argument or an a priori reasoning. Furthermore, certain passages from the Nyāyamanjarī, Nyāyakalikā, and Tarkasaṅgraha were examined to demonstrate that the present researcher’s interpretative understanding of tarka was adequate for explaining the usage of this term in a broad sense, with positive connotations.

Using Explicit Instruction to Promote Vocabulary Learning for Struggling Readers

Research supports the need for active vocabulary learning across grade levels and subject areas to help increase readers' comprehension of diverse texts that they encounter. Given the increasing emphasis on decoding and reading comprehension, the relative importance of vocabulary instruction has been diminished in recent years. The authors argue that explicit support for vocabulary is an important aspect of reading instruction across the primary- and secondary-grade levels. Explicit vocabulary strategies for classroom use are included.

DELETED TEXT IN A MANUSCRIPT. GALEN ON THE EYE AND THE MARC. GR. 276.

DELETED TEXT IN A MANUSCRIPT. GALEN ON THE EYE AND THE MARC. GR. 276.