Domestic Violence in Lac Su’s I Love Yous Are for White People: A Sociological Criticism Approach

This article employs sociological criticism to examine domestic violence, parenting, and communication behavior in Lac Su’s Vietnamese American memoir. The book debunks the seemingly positive myth of Asian Americans as a model minority, substantiates certain negative stereotypes of Asian men, and challenges some of the classic Asian values that apparently have shaped the Asian American identity. I argue that Su’s memoir is a critique of structural inequalities, urban poverty, unemployment, inaccessibility to a support network, and the intersection between class, gender, and race in the contexts of war and its aftermath

From Profane to Divine: The Hegemonic Appropriation of Pagan Imagery into Eastern Christian Hymnody

Spanning the first seven centuries of Christianity, this paper explores how Eastern Christian and Byzantine hymn chant was developed alongside pagan and Jewish worship traditions around the Near East. Comparison of hymns by Christian composers such as St. Romanos the Melodist and pagan poetry reveals many similarities in the types of metaphorical imagery used in both religious expressions. Common in Christian hymn texts, well-known metaphors, like the “Light of God,” are juxtaposed with pagan mythological gods, such as Apollo and Helios. This paper attempts to explain how and why Christians appropriated and adopted ancient pagan imagery into the burgeoning musical tradition of Christian hymn singing

Songsters and Film Scores: Civil War Music and American Memory

This thesis consists of two separate essays both concerned with affect, memory, and music of the Civil War. The first examines the production, use, and purpose of a booklet called The Soldier’s Friend, with an emphasis on the mission of its producer, the United States Sanitary Commission and the needs of the readers of the booklet. In addition, I highlight the explicit connections that the organization made in this document between health and music by bringing cultural and psychological theories to the study of music. While many scholars have emphasized the ubiquity and importance of music during the War (and during the greater nineteenth century), a thorough discussion of the importance of songsters is mostly missing from the narrative. My paper ultimately provides an initial insight into the prominence of songsters in American culture by tying together methods from multiple disciplines. In my second essay, I argue that Max Steiner’s film score in Gone with the Wind aids Rhett Butler’s transition from a renegade man to a southern gentleman. His transformation carries with it messages and memories of the Lost Cause, most notably through Civil War melodies. Ultimately, I conclude that affect, music, and memory are intricately tied in the production of and actualization of southern, white, masculinity

Tolkien’s Poetry (2013), edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner

Tolkien’s Poetry (2013), edited by Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner. Book review by Andrew Higgins

The Son of God and Trinitarian Identity Statements

Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue that there is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need

\u3ci\u3eMetaphasia\u3c/i\u3e: Shelley and the Language of Remoter Worlds

The aim of this project was to trace the evolution of Percy Shelley\u27s metaphasic narrative, or language of the dead, chronologically through the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Mont Blanc, and Prometheus Unbound. Proceeding from Earl Wasserman\u27s detailed map of Shelley\u27s mythopoeic structure, I charted this evolution while identifying a fifth discrete entity within the mythological hierarchy of what Harold Bloom has characterized as a mythopoeic trilogy (36). Concurrently, I examined the ongoing debate concerning Shelley\u27s influences, as well as the early formation of his personality, as it pertains to the poems in question, and his fascination with worlds beyond the grave

Metaphasia: Shelley and the Language of Remoter Worlds

The aim of this project was to trace the evolution of Percy Shelley\u27s metaphasic narrative, or language of the dead, chronologically through the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Mont Blanc, and Prometheus Unbound. Proceeding from Earl Wasserman\u27s detailed map of Shelley\u27s mythopoeic structure, I charted this evolution while identifying a fifth discrete entity within the mythological hierarchy of what Harold Bloom has characterized as a mythopoeic trilogy (36). Concurrently, I examined the ongoing debate concerning Shelley\u27s influences, as well as the early formation of his personality, as it pertains to the poems in question, and his fascination with worlds beyond the grave

The influence of present day choral music on church worship

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1933. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Christ in the world of matter: Teilhard De Chardin's religious experience and vision

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) has, through the wide diffusion and translation of his posthumous works, made a greater impact on postwar religious consciousness than any other theologian. His identity, whether as theologian, scientist, mystic, or philosopher, nevertheless remains contested. This paper highlights the importance of religious experience in forming and unifying his vision of the world. Teilhard is noteworthy as someone who both had religious experiences, and possessed the theological competence and imagination needed to interpret them. The paper begins with an examination of three short accounts of specific religious experiences which Teilhard wrote during October 1916, whilst serving as a stretcher-bearer with the French army in the Verdun region of north-east France. They are included in his collection of writings Hymn of the Universe (42-S4). The implications of these specific experiences for Teilhard’s wider religious vision will then be considered

William Cullen Bryant and The Poetry of Natural Law

The question has more than academic interest, as noted in Lloyd Weinreb\u27s Natural Law and Justice, in which he argues for a return to natural law\u27s ontological basis.\u27 Tracing its roots in Greek expressions of natural law that allowed for free will in an otherwise determinate natural order, Weinreb surveys the history of natural law only to find that what began as ontological became deontological, which led natural law theories away from nature and reason and towards a focus on concepts of morality. He argues ultimately that such deontological theories fail to answer the question of human freedom within a causal universe in the same way that the original versions of ontological natural law also failed. In seeking, however, a return to some ontological basis for natural law as the preferred way to accommodate antinomic notions of liberty and equality, desert and entitlement, and freedom and cause, he stresses the role that an understanding of nature can provide, particularly since [i]ncreasing control over nature by the discovery of its laws increases human freedom in one sense