VIEWPOINT: Fight or Flight: Thomas Merton and the Bhagavad Gītā\u3csup\u3e1\u3c/sup\u3e

Two commemorative events of landmark stature inspired the essay you are about to read: First, the year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s abrupt departure from our material vision. Second, 2018 is also the semicentennial celebration of a consequential publication: It was in 1968 that His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedānta Swami Prabhupāda released his unprecedentedly influential Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. As we shall see, the trailblazing Western visionary, Merton, and this particular edition of the Gītā engaged in productive conversation with each other

Material Vision : A Portrait of Change from Victorianism to Modernism in America

This study is a portrait of Victorian culture in America as it is represented in the photographic album and an examination of the album as an artifact of material culture. The album is viewed as a material and visual reference and the photograph as an historical document. Parallels are drawn between the album\u27s structure, pictorial content and presentation, and compare similarly to the infra-structure of the society. A series of four photographic collections establish a chronology from the 1860s to the early twentieth century, while each documents the changes in the process and presentation of the photographic medium respectively, the four collections provide evidence that signify changes in social attitudes and behaviors that were occurring from 1860s to early 1900s

From eternity to eternity\u27 : Blake\u27s last judgment, the material vision and its living form

Thematically, this thesis positions William Blake\u27s thought in relationship to a fairly orthodox Christianity—specifically, the notions of a last judgment, providence,and dualism. This thematic procedure, however, raises several methodological questions, such as how Blake is, wanted to be, and should be read; and how to reconcile diachronic reading practices with synchronic interpretations.Using Christ\u27s unique position between time and eternity and between body and spirit, Blake rejects the abstraction that results from privileging any one of these over the others. When Blake does seem to privilege spirit, he does not mean immaterial soul but imagination as the ultimate semantic precondition. Blake\u27s Visions (his specific works) reveal this precondition 1) by dialogically engaging narrative conventions—^using and critiquing them simultaneously: the plot of TheFour Zoas posits and unravels the Aristotelian unity and Christian closure it aims for and in doing this, becomes a site of perpetual narrative desire; and 2) by embracing its material existence in a manner that makes the accident of its composition an essential part of the work. A Vision of the Last Judgment and The Four Zoas seem unfinished fragments, but the play and chaos that exist in their respective notebookand manuscript states suggest a flux of meanings beyond authorial control or intention. This concept of imagination resembles contemporary notions of discourse.Hence, the figures of orthodoxy introduced in Night VIII of The Four Zoas show Blake engaging orthodox theodicy discursively and directly, and not allegorically ashe does in his earlier works, critiquing orthodoxy while using its own language

Material vision into fashion: design, branding and innovation in the process of setting up a fashion label, case Luxaa

The objective of the study was to examine the role of design, branding and innovation in the process of setting up a fashion label. These key terms provided the theoretical point of view to my thesis. The aim was to explain these concepts and describe the relationship between them. Operational point of view explored the process of setting up a label and within this framework the thesis introduced one real-life example; Luxaa. The material innovation created the foundation for the whole concept of Luxaa. The thesis is a qualitative case study that provided a deep knowledge of the case. Main sources of evidence were observations and a semi-structured in-depth interview of Anne Trautwein who is the founder and the designer behind the label. As a method I used qualitative content analysis. The main purpose of the study was to link the theoretical point of view with practice and to analyze how design, branding and innovation can be seen in the process of setting up a label in the case of Luxaa. Findings of the study showed that all these aspects are meaningful factors and together they can be a benefit for a start-up company. The study states that in Luxaa’s case the process has been innovation-driven and all these aspects are visible in the label’s actions and philosophy. Luxaa as a label is a combination of visionary thinking, meaningful innovation, strong brand vision and high-quality design guided by the philosophy Material Vision Into Fashion

Mirroring Modernity: on consumerism in cosmopolitan Zanzibar

This essay develops an image of nineteenth century Zanzibari consumer sensibilities by demonstrating how goods from and new engagements with distant locales affected the socio-cultural landscape of Zanzibar. The East African port’s particular cosmopolitanism represents one form of social reconstitution stimulated by global integration. It also represents a material vision of global relations that was discounted by nineteenth century theorizations of Western modernity. By focusing on the rise of a new materiality in Zanzibar, I excavate precolonial visions of global relations and cultural assimilations of global symbols. I argue that East African desires for goods produced all over the globe represented not simply a Westernization, Indicization, or Arabization of Zanzibar, but also a reconfiguration of a standardized set of global materials in an attempt to bring Zanzibari cultural forms into conversation with broader global trends

What Has History to Do with Philosophy? Insights from the Medieval Contemplative Tradition

This paper highlights the corrective and complementary role that historically informed philosophy can play in contemporary discussions. What it takes for an experience to count as genuinely mystical has been the source of significant controversy; most current philosophical definitions of ‘mystical experience’ exclude embodied, non-unitive states -- but, in so doing, they exclude the majority of reported mystical experiences. I use a re- examination of the full range of reported medieval mystical experiences (both in the apophatic tradition, which excludes or denigrates embodied states, and in the affective tradition, which treats such states as fully mystical) to demonstrate how a better understanding of the historical medieval mystic tradition can serve as a valuable complement to ongoing philosophical discussions of religious and mystical experience

Tarble Arts Center Newsletter February 1993

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/tarble_newsletter/1035/thumbnail.jp

Tarble Arts Center Newsletter February 1993

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/tarble_newsletter/1035/thumbnail.jp

The determinants of marriage and cohabitation in Europe

According to the theory of ideational shifts [Preston 1986], the growing spread of new forms of life as a couple may be attributed to the increase in individual autonomy in the ethical, religious and political field, i.e. to changes in the scale of subjective values. The cultural dimension influences the acceptance and experimentation of the different forms of union in a different way for the man and for the woman. The importance at the explanatory phase of taking account of ideational factors in addition to economic ones has been discussed in depth and demonstrated in the case of certain countries of central Europe by Lesthaeghe and Moors [1996]. And it is the framework of Lesthaeghe and Moors which we take as our starting point in this study, for the analysis from a gender perspective of the role played by value orientations in the choice of the various forms of life as a couple, marriage and cohabitation, in certain areas of Europe. In particular, cohabitation will be taken as representing that type of partnership which, at least theoretically, is associated with a reduction in gender differences: indeed, the absence of pre-established roles for the partners should render the relationship within the couple more egalitarian and free. Moreover, in consideration of the fact that the various European countries exhibit a distribution of types of union which is extremely differentiated [Kiernan 2000], we wish to assess whether there is any corresponding existence of similarly differentiated ideational factors; indeed, we cannot necessarily assume that the same value orientations lead to similar patterns of behaviour [Lesthaeghe 1998].

Exploring the Depths of Leveled Literacy

Do you have a diverse group of learners? Are you struggling to find reading material to fit their needs? Do you wish there was a one stop shop for differentiated reading material? Look no further! Leveled Literacy is here to help