Whitman at Pfaff\u27s: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century

Provides a rich historical context for understanding the years from 1859-1862 when Whitman spent time at Pfaff\u27s, a basement saloon in central Manhattan; explores the idea of Bohemianism in relation to Whitman and describes the role it played in Whitman\u27s development

Chapter 7 - Reflections on the Scholarship of Elizabeth B. Clark

Elizabeth Clark\u27s essays on early nineteenth-century reform movements make a compelling case that abolitionists and feminists alike understood individual rights from a profoundly religious perspective. Clark also demonstrates how these reformers advocated the protection of so-called natural rights for enslaved African-Americans and white women in the vivid and fervently emotional language of evangelical revivalism. Broader cultural and intellectual trends of resistance to governmental and clerical authority, trends rooted in liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Clark argues, helped fuel attacks on slavery and gender inequality. Rejecting other historians\u27 portrayals of the antebellum reformers as primarily secular in orientation, Clark makes the arresting, and well-substantiated, assertion that For a time liberal religious thought became the primary carrier of notions of individual integrity critical to liberal political theory. Antebellum reformers retrieved pre-Revolutionary language of natural rights and natural law and critiques of excessive state power and resurrected a Reformation-era faith in the epistemological reliability of individual conscience and private judgment, fusing them all into a set of moral conventions which over time . . . have become incorporated as a persistent strand in our rights tradition, notably the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866

Chapter 7 - Reflections on the Scholarship of Elizabeth B. Clark

Elizabeth Clark\u27s essays on early nineteenth-century reform movements make a compelling case that abolitionists and feminists alike understood individual rights from a profoundly religious perspective. Clark also demonstrates how these reformers advocated the protection of so-called natural rights for enslaved African-Americans and white women in the vivid and fervently emotional language of evangelical revivalism. Broader cultural and intellectual trends of resistance to governmental and clerical authority, trends rooted in liberal and evangelical Protestantism, Clark argues, helped fuel attacks on slavery and gender inequality. Rejecting other historians\u27 portrayals of the antebellum reformers as primarily secular in orientation, Clark makes the arresting, and well-substantiated, assertion that For a time liberal religious thought became the primary carrier of notions of individual integrity critical to liberal political theory. Antebellum reformers retrieved pre-Revolutionary language of natural rights and natural law and critiques of excessive state power and resurrected a Reformation-era faith in the epistemological reliability of individual conscience and private judgment, fusing them all into a set of moral conventions which over time . . . have become incorporated as a persistent strand in our rights tradition, notably the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866

Obama: The first 100 days

Seven US academics and commentators set out their hopes and suggestions for President Obama's first 100 days in office Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 ippr.