Evaluating Sport Hero/ines : Contents, Forms, and Social Relations

This essay engages in a reflexive analysis of how to say something officially recognized as intellectual about some person who is emotively sensational. This essay has two parts: (a) a position statement on hero/ines that invites engagement in a process of rediscovery and reconsideration how the privileged, intellectual class can write biographies that, in C. Wright Mills\u27 terms, truly integrates the subject\u27s biography with the historical and socially constructed essence of his or her being; and (b) an inquiry into whether celebrated individuals are truly worthy of respect and in what ways he or she may be reactionary, reformative (playing by the rules of liberal democracy with some changes in mind), or revolutionary

The Tell-Tale “Heart”: Determining “Fair” Use of Unpublished Texts

Copyright laws require that courts consider at least four factors in determining whether a quotation or close paraphrase of another\u27s unpublished work without permission falls under fair use. Several cases involving fairuse are discussed

Libanius the Historian? Praise and the Presentation of the Past in Or. 59

A study of Libanius' use of historiographical topoi in his imperial panegyric of Constans and Constantius I

Louis Henry Ziemer: A Journey of Faith

This article seeks to present the importance of studying lesser known leaders in American Evangelicalism by looking into the life, conversion, and ministry of Dr. Louis Henry Ziemer. Not only was his ministry as a Christian Missionary Alliance pastor extensive, but his life and conversion story highlight some of the most controversial and highly debated issues regarding salvation. Ziemer served as a pastor in the Lutheran church for many years, before he was placed on trial for heresy. As a result, Ziemer left the Lutheran church and joined the Christian Missionary Alliance. Through the examination of Ziemer\u27s conversion and ministry both as a Lutheran and Christian Missionary Alliance pastor, it is clear to see that American Christian heritage is greatly impacted not only by well know religious leaders such as Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, but also greatly shaped by lesser known men who faithfully carried on the ministry and faith

Buddhism\u27s Worldly Other: Secular Subjects of Tibetan Learning

By analyzing the writings of select Tibetan authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this article reflects on the prestige attached to secular (but not anti-religious) knowledge, and the ambivalence prominent thinkers expressed around the proper relationship between worldly and religious learning. Tibetan lay and religious leaders have long been steeped in a classical Indic system of categorizing knowledge, known in Sanskrit as pañcavidyāsthāna and in Tibetan as rikné nga (Tib. rig gnas lnga). Sakya Paṇḍita first established the importance of these fields of knowledge in Tibet during the thirteenth century. Later intellectual figures such as the Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lozang Gyatso and his cohort, including figures associated with the influential Nyingma monastery called Mindroling (Smin grol gling), all acknowledged the significance of rikné even as they struggled to balance their worldly interests with religious concerns. Their writing shows that worldly subjects, distinct from but in combination with the study of religion, have been important in shaping Tibetan thinking and social life for many centuries. Worldly knowledge was and is a basis for political and cultural prestige in Tibetan society as well as a common ground for connecting with the ruling classes of neighboring civilizations, also shaped in part by Buddhism. Over the centuries, the inculcation of rikné among educated Tibetans contributed to the development of a connoisseur class. Further, the Tibetan socio-political theory of the union of religion and the secular (chos srid zung ’brel) and the closely related ‘two traditions’ (lugs gnyis) model, were primary concerns of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his colleagues. These theories articulated an ideal union between worldly and religious power. Precisely how Tibetan literati have understood and valued worldly fields of learning in relation to religious subjects has varied across time, place, and religious tradition. Investigating particular Tibetan statements on the significance of rikné reveals the strong, if notably ambivalent, presence of secular values in Tibetan history and culture

Literal means and hidden meanings : a new analysis of skillful means

Skillful means is usually used by scholars and Buddhists to denote the following simple idea: the Buddha skillfully adapted his teaching to the level of his audience.1 This very broad and somewhat oversimplified definition tries to incorporate the whole range of Buddhist views on the subject. However, it does not help to explain why there is an extensive use of the term in central Mahayana su tras while pre-Mahayana texts are almost completely silent on this issue. I suggest that skillful means has not always been an all-Buddhist concept; rather, it was developed by Mahayanists as a radical hermeneutic device. As such, skillful means is a provocative and sophisticated idea that served the purpose of advancing a new religious ideology in the face of an already established canonical knowledge. The Mahayana use of the concept exhibits an awareness, not found in pre-Mahayana thought, of a gap between what texts literally say and their hidden meaning

It didn't seem to be like that when I was there: ethical dilemmas of representing lives

“It didn’t seem to be like that when I was there: The ethical dilemmas in representing a life” In any biographical account, there are at least two points of view, and multiple representations of one life story. An agreement is made at the outset of the dialogue to represent the ‘truth’ in the story. But what if the truth is equivocal or disagreeable? Current ethical recommendations urge the review of transcripts by the individual, providing an opportunity for change and clarification. But beyond that, what rights does the subject have over the story and in what ways should the researcher address the possibility of pain caused by representing that individual? Annie and Judith trod this delicate path when Annie, who was researching the lives of colonial women in East Africa, interviewed Judith. Judith subsequently attended a conference where Annie gave a paper on her research. What ensued was an emotional dialogue around portraying and being portrayed. These complex issues raised ethical questions about the research participant’s anonymity and the use of voice and pseudonyms. Temporal and authorial issues were highlighted in the re-writing and presentation process. This paper is a collaborative venture exploring our attempts to represent a life and the mutual shaping of ethics and truth

Revising Lives: Bernard Shaw and His Biographer

Shaw\u27s galley revisions of Archibald Henderson\u27s 1932 biography, Bernard Shaw: Playboy and Prophet, reveal a unique collaboration between biographer and subject. The result is a subversion of biographical conventions, in which the assumed voice of the biographer lends credence and authority to the disguised voice of the subject

Decisions and indecisions: political and intellectual receptions of Carl Schmitt

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Holland\u27s Informants: The Construction of Josiah Holland\u27s \u27Life of Abraham Lincoln\u27

Abraham Lincoln\u27s coffin had lain in the receiving vault in Springfield\u27s Oak Ridge Cemetery for less than three weeks when a dapper, walrus-mustachioed New Englander stepped off the train and checked into Springfield\u27s St. Nicholas Hotel. He was Josiah Gilbert Holland, one-time editor (and still part owner) of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, a nationally popular writer of advice books, and (what would turn out to be most memorably) part of a small circle of admirers and encouragers of an unknown Amherst poet named Emily Dickinson. None of those attributes, however, provided the slightest qualification for the task that brought him to the Illinois namesake of his hometown, which was the writing of a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Holland had not known Lincoln personally—had never even met him casually. Notwithstanding those deficits, Holland produced a landmark Lincoln biography, the first of any substantial length as a biography, the first with any aspirations to comprehensiveness, and a best-seller of 100,000 copies that was published in several languages. It was precisely his lack of personal acquaintance with Lincoln that brought him to Springfield ( in search of original and authentic material for the work ), and he came away with some of the most important informant materials any early Lincoln biographer would gather. Holland would use them to create the first life of the inner Lincoln, setting the stage for a genre of Lincoln studies that remains compelling and fruitful to this day and producing a biography that Paul Angle ranked by far the best of the early Lincoln biographies. [excerpt