Thesis directed by Professor Christopher Braider This dissertation contends that harmonious conceptions of eternity, time, and history underwrite political, religious, and social institutions, whilst discordant ones dismantle them by sustaining dissent or even inciting revolutio…
"56" Result
Sort By:
This dissertation considers the concept of walāyah, commonly translated as guardianship, within Islam in terms of theology, hermeneutics, religious law, and praxis. These applications are analyzed for the ways in which they lend themselves to an authoritative application of walā…
This study presents an interpretive approach to Cormac McCarthy’s early works—The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, and Child of God—which seeks to account for the deterioration of traditional community values and the accompanying degradation of the individual that occurs over the cou…
This qualitative case study assessed the need for a Catholic Education Center (CEC) for Catholic school principals within the United States. The research questions that were addressed were: 1) How have Catholic school principals experienced support around complex and controversi…
This project’s purpose was to grow greater confidence in the Bible resulting in a more faithful reliance upon it in all areas of life and ministry among adult attenders at Hopewell Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. The desired result of growing confidence in Scripture was …
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a genre with a long history and several well-established assumptions. Scholarship and journalism about Wikipedia often consider the ways it carries forward, diverges from, or takes to an extreme the various qualities commonly ascribed to encyclopedi…
Opportunities to participate in dialogic practices are essential to the co-construction of meaning. Such opportunities not only afford deeper learning for the individual, they open up different kinds of possibilities for the community as a whole. Participating in dialogic practi…
This dissertation is an ethnographic account of the moral politics of food safety in post-Soviet Georgia. It focuses on the uneasy articulation and production of “global food safety” in the post-Soviet context, centering on the intersections of Georgian popular food politics, re…
This dissertation is a study of the intellectual practice of the Platonic character, Socrates, with emphasis on the presentation of dialectical engagement with authority. I argue that authority, conceptually and in practice, constitutes a serious problem for Socrates. On my read…
This project uses a historical case study of teacher-support programs at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City between 1880 and 1962 to better understand how science museums have come to be viewed as spaces for improving the effectiveness of classroom te…
This dissertation examines the contemporary paradoxes, impasses, and new possibilities negotiated by Syrian Muslim men who practice the musical group worship of dhikr. Dhikr is group activity often associated with Sufism, and has long been an important part of Islamic practice i…
Senior Islamic authorities (`ulama ) have reached different levels of consensus when contesting their response to major international events in the 21st century, largely agreeing on the appropriate response in some cases while remaining strongly divided in others. This variation…
This research looks at attempts by the Egyptian polymath Jalal al-Din al-Suyut [dotbelow]i (d. 1505) to frame his authority as a jurist in his legal writings. The research aims to access the multi-faceted legal persona that the author constructs through his use of the written wo…
This dissertation evaluates the political history of Islam through the prism of the Sunni conception of authority. It finds an historical red thread that explains the legal and political evolution of different types of Islamic government that have, instead of a European-type sov…
This dissertation is an attempt to explain how different jurisconsults (muftis ) throughout the Ottoman domains perceived, constituted, and negotiated their jurisprudential authority over the course of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The debates and exchanges betwee…
My thesis investigates how traditional notions of religious authority in Muslim societies are complicated and challenged by religious leadership roles and prescriptive stances that two female American Muslim figures, namely Ingrid Mattson and Amina Wadud, take on gender debates …
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is currently considered one of the most conservative countries in the world with regards to the role of religion in shaping both internal politics and international relations. This dissertation focuses on how The London Times and New York Times, two o…
This dissertation examines the literary corpus of the modernEgyptian short story writer Mohammad al-Makhzanjî. It provides a critical reading of approximately one quarter of the author's work. The fundamental issue linking the four chapters of the dissertation is the examination…