Looking Back
Asynchronous Session
The Quest for Islam and Muslim Society: Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Century Muslim Intellectual Reflections on Reform View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maha F. Habib
Since the nineteenth century, the Muslim world has been the subject of discussions that reveal its dire state of affairs. How Muslim intellectuals characterize their own predicament is integral to understanding Muslim articulations for reform. Concerned for the state of their societies and cultures, religious intellectuals reflect on the state of society and re-examine religious sources and modes of thinking in an attempt to respond to current needs. More so, there are elements that a diverse selection of Muslim intellectuals from various parts of the Muslim world seem to coalesce around that is suggestive of a constitution of a shared reform vision. These elements include: the reconciliation of the relationship of Islam to modernity/West; the reinvigoration of the Islamic civilizational essence and its tawḥidic epistemology; a centralization of Islamic heritage and its values; and, a restoration of Islamic epistemology. These elements form the theoretical underpinnings of reform and an Islamic alternative; they represent a rigorous intellectual investment in the rethinking of Islam and its role, and in meeting the challenges of modernity, the challenges to Muslim society, and in constituting a trajectory inspiring of change. These intellectuals share a common set of features: a commitment to Islam, with an openness to cultural exchange; the encouragement of the development of Muslim thought; and, a need to respond to modern concerns, coupled with an investment in (re)establishing common boundaries for religious understanding. The anticipation is that there would be a restoration of Muslim society and civilization; thus, civilizational reform, renewal, and progress.
Featured Historical Faces of Jesus - Late Antiquity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hannah Tonn
Christianity adapted through the centuries. Jesus has changed along with it. This study explores what was occurring in the Late Antiquity centuries that caused Jesus’ appearance and image to change drastically between cultures. The essay investigates interpretations of Jesus that have come about through the early centuries. This includes examinations of artwork and writings from a historical perspective. Questions about what happened in history during these times are taken into consideration.
The Evolution of Primary and Secondary Burial in Greece: An Analysis of Contemporary Accounts of Funerary Ritual Across Three Periods in Time View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Milo Rhys Teplin
Death is a universal event. But how is death conceptualized? Not death as in its scientific terms or in personal terms, but how does each culture answer the question “what happens next?” When that question has a concrete answer, popular ways of interacting with this “next” create a social space for death to exist in. The creation of social boundaries entail such requirements as etiquette between different groups and ritual to mark social transition. Disregarding the boundaries between the living and the dead would invite disaster on a supernatural level. To better explore these concepts, this paper will examine three different time periods in the same region and examine how death worked within the social structure. These are: Ancient Greece [between 700 BC to 400 CE], Serbia & Greece in the 17th/18th centuries, and rural Greece in the 1970s. These three periods provide snapshots in time within the same geographic area, allowing for present-day observers to examine the changes in how death was addressed as a social status.
Prohibition, Censorship, Denial: Polish Episcopate’s Discourse on Homosexuality Between 1945 and 1989 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Agnieszka Laddach
One of the most important issues for the Polish Episcopate under communism was moral evaluation of differential sexual activities. Bishops believed that along with other immoral activities, homosexuality was resulted from the popularization of Marxism and atheization of symbolic culture and customs. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the episcopal writings from 1945–1989 and their evaluation in light of Michel Foucault’s theory in order to discuss the specifics of the Polish episcopal power in the context of the narrative on homosexuality. I highlight the doctrinal context of the Polish Episcopate’s thought: biblical sources, selected historical points that show the tendencies in the formation of teaching about homosexuality in the Church, and the universal Church’s magisterial thought from the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, I indicate the factors characterizing the episcopal discourse’s content and language about homosexuality. I treat the statements of bishops as impacting the construction of: (1) social knowledge about sexuality; (2) the agency of homosexuals, meaning their experience of themselves and events in Poland.
Paul's Rebuke of Christian Patriarchy in First Corinthians: Paul's Dialogue Concerning the Undo Influence of Patriarchal Civic Ecclesial Discourse View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Odell-Scott
I argue that 1 Cor 14:34 & 35 is a quotation of a declaration by members to a line the Corinthian Christian ecclesiae with the patriarchal codes and practices of Greek civic ecclesial discourse so as to silence and subordinate women to men in the churches. Paul quotes their declared position in order to directly rebuke their efforts beginning in v 36 with a two-fold negative interrogation, which is followed up with a rhetorical reminder in 15:1 & 2 as to the shared circumstances by which all the congregants received the proclamation from Paul and came to believe. Paul concludes v 2 with a stinging critique that impeaches the faith of those quoted as believing in vain. I argue that the critique plays upon themes introduced in 13:1-7, which serves to qualify the value of all spiritual gifts by the features of "love" - without which faith and all forms of public spiritual presentations are assessed to be nothing. Paul's quote and reply, serve to rebuke those who incorporate social "public" conventions and mores into the "public" gatherings of a small religious community when such established social codes serve to reinforce the insistence on advantage and disadvantage based on gendered arrogance by some men who seek to institute their entitled civic privilege in an emergent faith community that values the voices and leadership of women.
The Religious Thought of Alchemy and the Novalisian Expansion of Consciousness: How Alchemy and the Spiritual Thoughts of Romanticism Can Develop a More Conscious Outlook on the World View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sérgio Das Neves
Alchemy can be understood as an ancient and syncretic theoretical-practical system. The main ideas can be summed up to the premise of the correspondence between micro and macro cosmos, as well as the objectives of transmutation and conjunction of opposites, all of which lead to the manufacture of the Philosopher's Stone. Metaphorical writing and its allegorical narratives allow alchemy to be both practical in a chemical and metallurgical sense and speculative in a philosophical and literary way. Taking an interest in alchemical studies, Novalis began conciliating their conclusions within the spirit of his time through his literary productions. In the philosophical way, alchemy works towards the expansion of consciousness. The perfection of the matter is related to the perfection of the human being in a moral and spiritual senses. This idea will find a space to be developed with German Idealism and Romanticism, specially with Novalis, for whom this expansion results from the return to a primordial unity. Novalis found the perfect symbol of this unity: the blue flower. This paper considers how the alchemical process was thought to lead to the expansion of consciousness and how Novalis reworked this idea in his literary productions. Moreover, I link Novalis's thought to the question of how a (re-)confrontation with Romantic poetry and its reconceptualisations of alchemy may catalyse its readers' own (spiritual) awakening and the development of a more conscious and thus perhaps 'woke' outlook on the world.
