Tradition In America Research Articles

Community Spirit and Local Wisdom: Strengthening Character Education through the Ngarot Tradition in Social Studies Learning

Purpose of the study: This research aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the contribution of the Ngarot tradition in shaping student character through learning Social Sciences.
 Methodology:This research uses a qualitative approach with a naturalistic research design. Data collection techniques used in-depth interviews and participant observation. Respondents in this study were selected based on variations in roles and involvement in the Ngarot tradition using purposive sampling techniques. Data analysis will be carried out using the Miles and Huberman model.
 Main Findings: The integration of Ngarot traditions in social studies learning has succeeded in improving students' character by strengthening the values of mutual cooperation and local wisdom. The impacts include increased solidarity, cooperation and environmental awareness, as well as increased appreciation of cultural heritage. School support and collaboration between teachers, students and the community played a key role in the success of this program, while the school's social environment also experienced positive improvements. The results show the effectiveness of this approach in shaping student character and enriching students' character education experiences and social knowledge. The Ngarot tradition in Indonesia has similarities with local traditions in America (Barnraising) and also Ghana (Adinkra) which have the meaning of building and strengthening a sense of togetherness, mutual cooperation and character.
 Novelty/Originality of this study: The uniqueness of this research lies in exploring the integration of Ngarot traditions in social studies education, enriching student character formation through deep local values.

Comparative analysis of American and Russian political discourse: A discourse analysis study

This article provides an exhaustive analysis of American and Russian political discourse through the examination of the linguistic techniques employed by President Joe Biden and President Putin in their speeches. The aim of this research is to examine the linguistic approaches employed in referencing social and political traditions in the United States and Russia, investigate disparities in linguistic strategies within both political discourses, and assess variations in semantic outcomes. The analysis has been conducted to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the linguistic methods of referring to social and political traditions in America and Russia? (2) Do the linguistic strategies differ depending on the political discourse? (3) Is the semantic output different depending on the political discourse? The findings reveal marked differences between the two discourses, reflecting the social and political discrepancies between the political systems of the United States and Russia.

Antisemitism and the Contemporary Catholic Tradition in America

Antisemitism and the Contemporary Catholic Tradition in America Mary C. Boys (bio) In his article, John Pawlikowski, a colleague of many years in Jewish-Catholic relations, poses the question of whether the roots of antisemitism have been fully erased from Catholic consciousness. He discusses how antisemitism lurks in the Church's lingering Marcionism, the anti-Jewish legacy of the early Church writers, the defensive and misleading assertions of the 1988 statement We Remember, preachers' continuing vilification of the Pharisees, and the ambiguity evident in current ecclesial documents regarding Catholicism's relationship with other religious traditions. Pawlikowski concludes that despite extensive and significant declarations from various Church officials and institutions, the seeds of antisemitism have yet to be completely excised. While I agree with Pawlikowski's argument, I would like to suggest that focusing a wider lens reveals the complexities involved in uprooting antisemitism from within Catholic life. As momentous as the post-Nostra Aetate trajectory has been in Catholicism, it is naïve to think that a phenomenon as protean as antisemitism can ever be erased or excised, despite the efforts of many at various levels of the Church. Adjusting the lens brings into stark relief the challenges encountered by those committed to counteracting antisemitism. [End Page 324] The Wider Cultural Context At least in the American context with which I am most familiar, Christianity increasingly seems to exercise a waning influence on society in the face of partisan politics, exacerbated by the massive amount of misinformation and disinformation emanating from media sources. Not only does the content on our devices, made available by technology, tend to make religious practices and beliefs seem obsolete, but the nation's political partisanship spills over into congregational life. Many Evangelical churches serve as a case in point, Peter Wehner writes, by becoming politicized in ways that influence their adherents to accept the basest aspects of U.S. culture and politics. Church life thus reinforces tribal identities, nurtures fears, and sacralizes aggression and nastiness. Moral formation, consequently, happens primarily not through the churches but through the consumption of media. The ubiquitous cable shows dwarf the hour or two people may spend in church. Wehner cites humanities professor Alan Jacobs, who speaks of "culture catechesis": handing on what matters and what perspectives one should hold. Jacobs argues: "What all those media want is engagement, and engagement is most reliably driven by anger and hatred. They make bank when we hate each other. And so that hatred migrates into the Church, which doesn't have the resources to resist it."1 These sobering judgements have resonance within Catholic life as well. While much might be said about the divisions within American Catholicism, my focus here is on how these divisions complicate the process of educating Catholics in a deeper understanding of Judaism in the life of the Church. Insofar as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted in November 2019 to make countering the threat of abortion its "pre-eminent priority," the official leadership level of the Church has principally devoted its energies to the culture wars regarding reproductive rights and related issues of sexuality, such as same-sex relationships and transgender identity. In the perception of some, their "pre-eminent priority" has led to a de-facto alignment with the Trumpian wing of [End Page 325] the Republican Party in which antisemitism skulks just below the surface—and sometimes breaks through it. This alignment reveals that antisemitism has never been solely a religious phenomenon. Rather, it exists at the intersection of Christianity's anti-Jewish teachings and deeds with nationalism, white supremacy, xenophobia, and conspiracy theories. The streets of Charlottesville, Virginia provided a literal intersection for this confluence in the "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017. A mob of about 100 white nationalists—virtually all male—chanted in intimidating tones: "You will not replace us" and "Jews will not replace us." Waving Nazi and neo-Nazi flags, shouting "blood and soil," the marchers clearly intended to intimidate and terrorize. The trial of the rally's leaders (Sines v. Kessler) in Fall 2021 amply illustrates the connection between antisemitism and white supremacy. The analyses submitted by expert witnesses document the...

Imaginative Reflexivity in Decolonizing Expert–Client Relationships. A Response to J. Vink: Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Imaginative Reflexivity in Decolonizing Expert–Client Relationships. A Response to J. Vink: Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity

Joey + Rory

Joey + Rory

Orestes Brownson and the Liberal Tradition in America

This essay describes Orestes Brownson’s general orientation to the American regime. As an initial starting point, comparisons are made between Brownson and the other great commentator on the American constitutional order, Alexis de Tocqueville. Brownson tends to emphasize general ideas whereas Tocqueville begins with particulars, but both recognize the unique relationship between religion and politics in America, which presents a new approach to Church-state arrangements in the modern world. Brownson is hopeful that American Catholics can take the lead in American affairs and serve as an example to the citizens of other nations, but this will require a robust educative formation in which love of Truth and love of country are both appropriately nourished.

The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview

This review synthesizes the historical literature on the criminalization and incarceration of black Americans for an interdisciplinary audience. Drawing on key insights from new histories in the field of American carceral studies, we trace the multifaceted ways in which policymakers and officials at all levels of government have used criminal law, policing, and imprisonment as proxies for exerting social control in predominantly black communities from the colonial era to the present. By underscoring this antiblack punitive tradition in America as central to the development of crime-control strategies and mass incarceration, our review lends vital historical context to ongoing discussions, research, and experimentation within criminology and other fields concerned about the long-standing implications of institutional racism, violence, and inequity entrenched in the administration of criminal justice in the United States from the top down and the ground up.

Looking Backwards: “Have We Kept the Faith?” by Norman Foerster

Looking Backwards: “Have We Kept the Faith?” by Norman Foerster Jeraldine R. Kraver In their Introduction to this special issue of The CEA Critic, guest editors Lauren DiPaula and Tammy Winner conclude that, taken together, the collected essays ask us to consider how we, through the study of our various disciplines, can teach peace, examine oppression, and heal trauma. These ideas seem particularly appropriate at the present time. Whether legitimate or not, the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis have inspired comparisons to the Great Depression and World War II. As a result, in selecting an essay from The Critic’s past to share in this issue, I looked to the war years and selected Norman Foerster’s 1942 piece, “Have We Kept the Faith?” in which he urges his readers to consider (or reconsider) the place of education in a world at war. Featured in the January 1942 issue of The News Letter of the College English Association (vol. 4, no. 1) was a report about the surprising turn-out the previous month for the Annual Meeting of the CEA: “In spite of war and a deeper national crisis than was anticipated when plans were made, a total of 141 persons—from Nova Scotia, Texas, Wyoming, Florida, Alabama, and less remote regions—registered their attendance at the CEA annual meeting in Indianapolis” (1). A respectable 20 percent of the organization’s members were in attendance. In stark contrast, the 2020 Annual Meeting of the CEA was not quite so fortunate, cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 crisis that is still raging as this issue of The Critic goes to press. At that 1941 meeting, Howard Lowry1 was elected CEA President for 1942. Not present was outgoing president Foerster,2 but his address was read to the assembly by Lowry. Foerster was a leading proponent of the New Humanism, and the principles of that movement are evident in his talk. The editors of The News Letter thought Foerster’s comments so significant that they decided to “break our rule concerning the length of contributions and print it entire” (1). Although Foerster is not speaking directly about “peace” in his comments, he opens his discussion acknowledging a “national emergency.” He proceeds to refute the notion that “a nation at war needs a kind of education different from that of a nation at peace.” Rather, he asserts, “Education makes democracy strong in peace and makes it strong in war. It follows that if we teachers of English should now undertake to do something new [End Page 99] and different, it is only because we should have done it long ago” (1). The “something new and different” is the focus of his comments. Having not lived during a time of a war of the magnitude of World War II, I hesitate to draw comparisons between the current pandemic and that international crisis. Nonetheless, conversations across all elements of society—from political to economic to academic to social institutions— have suggested that, on the other side of this Covid-19 crisis, things will be “new and different.” For those of us involved in education, perhaps we can find direction in Professor Foerster’s words. As a New Humanist, who more than Professor Foerster would appreciate our looking backwards for inspiration? Jeraldine R. Kraver University of Northern Colorado Have We Kept the Faith? Norman Foerster Upon accepting the honor of the presidency of our Association, I was informed that my first duty was to offer, through our News Letter, some sort of message to the members. In that message I suggested, as our primary aim, that we should inquire “how our organization, founded in a time of inhumanities, might best set out to serve the humanities.” To make this aim more specific I suggested that we adopt, as our theme for the 1941 meeting, the question to which part of the 1940 meeting had been devoted, the question “What Can Teachers of English Do to Help Preserve the Democratic Tradition in America?” This question is now before us. There may be many good ways of answering it. I shall give my own answer, as briefly as I can. Whether it...

The Pragmatist Turn: Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Formation of American Literature

The Pragmatist Turn: Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Formation of American Literature

The Ideological Boundary Condition on Great Society Employment Policy

Abstract:The 1960s was a period of political opening for employment policy, when important questions about unemployment and economic insecurity were debated and a number of ambitious policies were enacted. Yet the Great Society’s employment policy agenda was also fundamentally limited in scope; it comprised interventions that reinforced rather than altered existing labor market mechanisms. Previous work suggests that primarily institutional factors were responsible for this constraint. By contrast, I contend that in addition to institutional factors, there was an ideological boundary condition on the era’s employment policy. The Johnson administration’s policymakers conformed to aspects of the liberal tradition in America, which limited policy options as well as the efficiency and efficacy of implemented policy.

Intellectual Roots of Independent Regulatory Authorities in America and India

The contemporary omnipresence of independent regulatory authorities (IRAs) as formidable structures of governance in different countries has long intellectual roots that helped in their evolution over a period of time. Though such intellectual traditions might have been found in every country, they appear to be more pronounced and definite in the countries where the idea of independent regulatory bodies has been originated and practised more fundamentally than others. In this context, America and India stand out prominently for obvious reasons. For instance, they represent two distinct political systems in which certain variations in intellectual traditions of independent regulatory bodies may be discerned. Further, while the intellectual traditions in America seem to be relatively autonomous vis-à-vis external influences, such traditions in India have surely been influenced by the long years of colonial rule that laid the foundation of the post-independence politico-administrative system of the country. This article seeks to present an analytical study of the intellectual roots of independent regulatory bodies in the two countries in a comparative perspective.

Jewish American Literature: A Scholar's Map

ABSTRACT In the new millennium, Jewish American literature is rarely taught within its own tradition in America's English departments. This bibliographical essay provides a scholar's gateway map replete with headnotes and introductory explanations of the primary divisions and subdivisions of the relevant academic traditions of Jews writing in America. Accordingly, it covers Jews in American history; anthologies; encyclopedias; bibliographies; periodicals; Hebrew, Sephardic, and Yiddish traditions; Holocaust materials; Jewish American poetry, drama, fiction, memoirs, women writers, gay and lesbian writers, comic books, graphic novels, humor, folklore, and literary theory. It also delineates all major periods in Jewish literary production such as Yiddish theater, immigrant literature, early twentieth-century fiction, the so-called Jewish Decades (1950–70), Holocaust literature, the Jewish American literary resurgence (1980–present), and the New York literary resurgence (2000–present).

Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer

Reviewed by: Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer David S. Brown Russell Kirk: American Conservative. By Bradley J. Birzer. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Pp. viii, 574. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8131-6618-6.) Over the past several years a number of commentators have explored various facets of political theorist Russell Kirk's thought and "imagination." Among the best of these are W. Wesley McDonald's Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology (Columbia, Mo., 2004) and Gerald J. Russello's The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk (Columbia, Mo., 2007). Now arrives Bradley J. Birzer's big biography, which will immediately become the standard life-and-times account of Kirk. This work offers a full portrait, appropriately devoting most of its pages to Kirk's writings, politics, and critical role as an intellectual engagé helping elucidate a conservative tradition in America. Kirk's scholarship, particularly his important book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (Chicago, 1953), challenged the notion advanced by much of the postwar professoriat that the country's political philosophy, as a rule, trended liberal. In effect, he gave the Right a respectable intellectual heritage, which included Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Adams, and Irving Babbitt. More than sixty years after publication, it remains an iconic text among conservatives. The strengths of Birzer's biography are numerous. Birzer, a historian at Hillsdale College, has immersed himself in Kirk's oeuvre, reading not simply his subject's major writings but also Kirk's many opinion pieces, articles, and [End Page 1012] novels. He ventures into Kirk's psychology and makes altogether reasonable and insightful observations about Kirk's search for faith and community, delight in the gothic, and antisocial pose as an undergraduate at Michigan College, now Michigan State University, before flowering in Scotland, where he completed his graduate work at the University of St. Andrews. He was a Catholic convert who swore he saw sundry fairies, goblins, and ghosts throughout his life. One has the impression of a preternaturally mature young man who may not have taken his callow American peers seriously. The bulk of Birzer's work assays Kirk's quixotic quest to challenge the secularism of the twentieth century and create a Christian humanist movement in response to the major ideologies—liberalism, communism, and fascism—of that period. For Kirk, this amounted to a proposed "return to first principles" (p. 185). Birzer rightly notes, however, that Kirk's high-humanistic pursuit began to lose focus in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he became increasingly involved in politics. Much against the advice of his friend T. S. Eliot, Kirk began writing for William Buckley's National Review and advising Barry Goldwater. By the 1980s and the onset of the Reagan Revolution, these connections helped make Kirk an éminence grise among the conservative faithful, but, as Birzer notes, such efforts in print and partisan politics took time away from his intellectual work. Kirk is certainly deserving of a large biography, but this one would have benefited from a bit of careful pruning. There are many pages examining the lives and works of important thinkers who knew or had some influence on or association with Kirk, including T. S. Eliot, Irving Babbitt, Ayn Rand, and Garry Wills. These often expansive vignettes border on becoming extraneous. One seven-page section explicates English critic T. E. Hulme's influence on Eliot and effectively de-emphasizes Kirk. Birzer also devotes considerable space to Kirk's three periods as a short fiction writer in a section that at times feels like a detour. Caveats aside, Birzer has provided an impressively researched and lucidly written study. Readers looking for a sensitive, sympathetic account of Kirk and his commanding role on the last century's intellectual Right will not be disappointed. David S. Brown Elizabethtown College Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Imperial and Philological Encounters in the Early Modern Era

Although the history of philology is merely an addition to the rediscovery of textual traditions which have been neglected for too long by academic philology, it is nonetheless an important one for its ability alone to provide an explanation of the existing asymmetric situation. When the world opened up after the 16th century following transoceanic navigations, European encounters with written traditions in America, Africa and Asia led to a variety of attitudes—from denial to fascination, from destruction to collection. These “philological encounters”, both material and conceptual, largely contributed to shape the views of the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment regarding language and writing. To understand the semiological and epistemological consequences of these views, this paper focuses on a single text produced at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Codex Mendoza, and on the different interpretations to which the latter was subjected in Europe after crossing the Atlantic. The history of the Codex Mendoza would have us believe that it was during the 18th century, and not before, that writing became exclusively synonymous with alphabet, resulting in the marginalisation of non-alphabetic written systems—and this mainly for historiographical reasons.

Cicero and the natural law tradition in America

In a famous letter to Henry Lee, written on May 8, 1825, almost fifty years after the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson gave his most extensive and reflective account of his great handiwork. By way of response to a published remark of Timothy Pickering that the Declaration did not contain an idea but what had been hackneyed in Congress two years before, Jefferson wrote:

Cicero and the liberal arts tradition in America

Cicero and the liberal arts tradition in America

Thoughts on racial democratic education and moral virtue

The taking of Black life by state authorities is a long-standing tragic tradition in America. However, in recent years, instances of Black death have gained wider media attention. This is a potentially important teaching moment, especially as it regards moral virtue and racism. In this article, I argue that Blacks have been put through a kind of educational regimen on account of racism and that moral imagination is crucial to the development of Whites’ moral virtue. I conclude by suggesting that radicalism broadly construed needs to return as part of Blacks’ political sensibilities.

The beauty of his holiness

The founder of the Keswick Convention (KC) once was asked to put in a sentence that has brought such a joy into his life and made the name of Keswick fragrant over the whole world. The answer was in the words of the Psalm 16:8, ‘I have set the Lord always before me’. Keswick theology, emphasising sanctification, arose within the concept of the holiness tradition in America with the higher Christian life movement in England during the second part of the 19th century. The merging of several theological traditions formed a way of expressing oneself and a way of life, which was determined as typical ‘Keswickian’. It also found expression in other theological (conservative) movements, in new founded institutions and gave a boost to missionary enterprise. The language and the teaching of Keswick until today clarify the pattern of evangelical piety of the 20th century.

“Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions:” Franklin Roosevelt's Quest for Religious and National Unity Leading Up to the Second World War

The letters were portrayed as a goodwill gesture toward the three more dominant religious traditions in America and, as far as President Franklin Roosevelt was concerned, the world. After being carefully constructed over the preceding weeks, they were held in strict secrecy until they were released to the media on December 24, 1939. Each was written to the leader of his respective religion: as president of Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Cyrus Adler represented American Jews and George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC), received a letter on behalf of American Protestants, with the last letter going to Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Each letter was, at least ostensibly, a Christmas greeting. Roosevelt offered each man warm wishes and his hearty thanks for all that he had done for his people and the world. Yet Roosevelt also noted the fear and uncertainty of the time. War had again come to Europe and threatened to envelop the globe. It was the responsibility of all people of goodwill, Roosevelt argued, to come together in any way they could for the cause of peace. He hoped the three men, and those they represented, would put aside religious differences and join together for the common good.

The American liberal colonial tradition

The American liberal myths of the self-made man, of the liberal individual, and of American exceptionalism all rely upon a disavowed relationship to the constitutive role of settler colonization in the foundation, development, and structure of the USA. I place political scientist Louis Hartz's 1955 work, The Liberal Tradition in America, at the center of this essay because his argument re-animates while posing as a critique of the narrative of American exceptionalism. We see in Hartz someone struggling, and not quite succeeding, to challenge the constraints of American political discourse. In this effort, Hartz implicitly suggests the presence of an American liberal colonial tradition, one that upsets the story of America's exceptionalist founding by seeing liberalism and settler colonialism as mutually constitutive logics. In the end, Hartz sees but cannot fully grasp the explanatory power that comes with placing settler colonial logic at the center of a critique of the foundational myths of America.