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This dissertation addresses the tendency among some disability scholars to overlook the importance of congenital deformity and disability in the pre-modern West. It argues that congenital deformity and disability deviated so greatly from able-bodied norms that they have played a pivotal role in the history of Western Civilization. In particular, it explores the evolution of two seemingly separate, but ultimately related, ideas from classical antiquity through the First World War: (1) the idea that there was some type of significance, whether supernatural or natural, to the existence of congenital deformity and (2) the idea that the existence of disabled people has resulted in a disability problem for western societies because many disabilities can hinder labor productivity to such an extent that large numbers of the disabled cannot survive without taking precious resources from their more productive, able-bodied counterparts. It also looks at how certain categories of disabled people, including, monsters, hunchbacks, cripples, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and dwarfs, which signified aesthetic and functional deviations from able-bodied norms, often reinforced able-bodied prejudices against the disabled.
ContributorsParry, Matthew (Author) / Fuchs, Rachel (Thesis advisor) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
One of the great hallmarks of Russian life during the nineteenth century was the proliferation of alternative identities at nearly every level of society. Individuals found, created, or adopted new ways of self-identifying oneself vis-à-vis religion, nationality, and politics. This project examines the life of Daniil Avraamovich Khvol'son (1819-1911) and his understanding of his identity--from poor Lithuanian Jew to German educated scholar, to leading defendant of Jews accused of ritual murder, to renowned university professor. Khvol'son is often mentioned in works of the period but remains understudied and, as a result, poorly understood. This dissertation is the first to examine the man's life and times, his scholarly and public writings, as well as available commentaries about him from former students, opponents, and colleagues. This project is based on the available archival sources housed in the central archives of Russia and draws upon the different literary venues in which Khvol'son published during his lifetime. While it provides a broad biography of the man, more importantly, it takes on the content of his writing, the themes he explored, and the ways in which his contributions were viewed within their own time. This project argues that the aim of Russian imperial policy toward Jews was based on a hopeful, if hesitant, desire to gradually bring Jews into the state's service. Khvol'son was among the most successful of those candidates who received a world-class German education, a position within the state, and an opportunity to participate fully within Russian intellectual circles. However, Khvol'son's legacy is complex because he promoted a radical rethinking of Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism and by doing so, he challenged the Orthodox world to reconsider in a deeply personal way the ongoing persecutions of Jews based on false tales about them and their religion. Khvol'son painstakingly challenged the blood libel and sought to prove that it was not based in any identifiable reality but perpetuated an un-Christian worldview that demonized and vilified Jews. In doing so, Khvol'son formulated a controversial self-understanding for his position in society as situated between two diametrically opposed worlds--one Christian, the other Jewish.
ContributorsReed, Andrew C (Author) / Batalden, Stephen K. (Thesis advisor) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Clay, Eugene (Committee member) / Horowitz, Brian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In "Gendering Consumption," Jayne Kaiser explores the public consumption experience associated with late-nineteenth century Parisian department store within the context of the leisure travel industry. Capitalizing on increased travel abroad, the Bon Marché department store attempted to attract British and American tourists (and their money) to the store by marketing shopping as a cultural experience. The production and distribution of Souvenir booklets that mirrored the organization, content, and imagery of travel guides offered an opportunity for the Bon Marché to position the store among traditional cultural institutions. By focusing on the material and non-material experiences of men in the Bon Marché described in narratives and diaries, "Gendering Consumption" advocates for a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of public consumption. Careful not to minimize the important role the department store played in the increasing agency of women, the author challenges historians to consider alternative spaces created by department stores as new products of masculine consumption. In an innovative approach, "Gendering Consumption" analyzes government documents to discover how American tourists used the new retailing model perfected by department stores such as the Bon Marché, to create opportunities for economic transgressions in the form of tariff fraud.
ContributorsKaiser, Jayne (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis advisor) / Fuchs, Rachel (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation analyzes the way in which leaders of certain Taiwanese Buddhist organizations associated with a strand of Buddhist modernism called "humanistic Buddhism" use discourse and rhetoric to make environmentalism meaningful to their members. It begins with an assessment of the field of religion and ecology, situating it in the context of secular environmental ethics. It identifies rhetoric and discourse as important but under acknowledged elements in literature on environmental ethics, both religious and secular, and relates this lack of attention to rhetoric to the presence of a problematic gap between environmental ethics theory and environmentalist practice. This dissertation develops a methodology of rhetorical analysis that seeks to assess how rhetoric contributes to alleviating this gap in religious environmentalism. In particular, this dissertation analyzes the development of environmentalism as a major element of humanistic Buddhist groups in Taiwan and seeks to show that a rhetorical analysis helps demonstrate how these organizations have sought to make environmentalism a meaningful subject of contemporary Buddhist religiosity. This dissertation will present an extended analysis of the concept of "spiritual environmentalism," a term developed and promoted by the late Ven. Shengyan (1930-2009), founder of the Taiwanese Buddhist organization Dharma Drum Mountain. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that the rhetorical methodology proposed herein offers offers a direction for scholars to more effectively engage with religion and ecology in ways that address both descriptive/analytic approaches and constructive engagements with various forms of religious environmentalism.
ContributorsClippard, Seth (Author) / Chen, Huaiyu (Thesis advisor) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Tillman, Hoyt (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This thesis addresses the concept of "silence" in Vercors' 1943 novel on resistance in occupied France, The Silence of the Sea, contesting the arguments of scholars who designate silent resistance as expressly "female" and applicable only to women. Although women in France were supposed to be apolitical and removed from activities such as public debates and direct warfare, an examination of allegorical and historical female figures, together with male and female interpretations of those figures, suggests that men and women in France understood patriotism, and especially female patriotism, through a conceptual framework that was informed by and manifested itself in female images of the French Republic. My study on the gendered applications of female images focuses upon the French use of female allegorical figures, and resistance symbols such as the Lorraine Cross, to denote opposition to the Prussian/German acquisition of lands that the French people perceived as French, exploring commonalities between images from the Franco-Prussian War and World War II. Utilizing images relating to the republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, including Marianne, the female allegory of the people's Republic, and Joan of Arc, a historical character who became a female allegorical figure, this thesis argues that female allegories of republican resistance to tyranny were combined with resistance to Prussia (Germany) during the "Terrible Year" of 1870-1871. Furthermore, these images combined masculine militant elements, with perceived feminine qualities such as purity and saintly endurance, giving rise to divergent interpretations of female imagery among men and women, and a perceived association between women and silent, indirect resistance. Bourgeois men applied the militant aspects of female images to real women in abstract form. However, with the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, resistance techniques and symbols that had been gendered feminine gained precedence and became associated with men as well as women. Recent scholars have utilized the masculine/feminine dichotomy in French female allegories to classify World War II-era resistance as either "active" or "passive," failing to consider the conflation of the masculine/temporal and feminine/spiritual spheres in Vercors' novel and in documents such as "Advice to the Occupied."
ContributorsStevenson, Julia (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis advisor) / Fuchs, Rachel (Committee member) / Wright, Kent (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Women. War. What is the relationship between women and war? As evidenced by movies, popular memoirs and journals, there is a definite relationship between men and war. However, this definite relationship has created a problematic and a complex relationship between women and war. The two historical events that are considered as the ‘turning points’ for women are the French Revolution and World War I are compared in this thesis. The popular perception of women’s legacy of the French Revolution is that the Revolution cultivated the ideas of Republican Motherhood and the Cult of Domesticity while World War I catapulted women to the public sphere. These two contrasting legacies are compared to see if French women’s lived experiences, memories, and writings verify these popular perceptions. Or, do the writings of the French women present a different argument? The thesis compares the writings and the lived experiences of the French women through three different themes: the argument for political rights, victimization and agency, and gendered connections (the development of sisterhood for the Revolution) or gendered divides (women’s role on the home and war front). In addition, these three themes come together to show how it is difficult to come up with a collective, public memory.
ContributorsYu, Heajin (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis director) / Hopkins, Richard (Committee member) / Fuchs, Rachel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The following text is a re-evaluation of Robert Moore's persecuting society thesis in light of recent criticism. The Persecuting Society asserts that the fundamental condition of Jewish persecution in the 13th century was law and order. In other words, persecution had become an institutionalized phenomenon through which medieval Christians--particularly, the English and French monarchies--segregated, both geographically and ideologically, Jews in England and France. The character of such persecution was primarily economic, but based in religious roots. The paper thus also discusses the role of the Church in establishing and justifying social and economic controls against Jews within the English and French persecutional state apparatuses. The text affirms Moore's persecuting society thesis on two accounts: First, that the English and French crowns developed institutions which marginalized and persecuted Jews; secondly, that functionaries of the Church, particularly ecclesiastic functionaries and later popes of the 13th century, did so as well.
ContributorsAngulo, Zach Daniel (Author) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Thesis director) / Bruhn, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The Norman invasion and conquest of England in 1066, led by Duke William "the Conqueror," is well-known in British history; less well-known is the fact that the conquest caused a group of Norman Jews to immigrate to England. These immigrants were the first significant population of Jews to ever reside in England, and by about 1100, distinct communities of Jews had established themselves in several cities throughout the country. However, Jewish life in England came to an abrupt end less than two-hundred and thirty years after its beginning when King Edward I expelled the entire Jewish population from England in 1290. The edict of expulsion was approved by the English parliament on June 18, 1290, and there are no surviving records of what happened in that meeting or why Edward decided to banish the Jews. Accordingly, there are a host of questions that need answering if one is to propose a explanation. For example, what could compel Edward I, who struggled financially and was deeply in debt for the duration of his reign, to expel the people who had been the crown's greatest asset for two centuries? Why did the king break the charter which specifically placed the Jews under the monarchy's protection? Why was the aristocracy so intent on getting rid of the Jews who, on several occasions, kept the baronies financially afloat through generous loans? My goal in writing this thesis is threefold: first, to provide a concise but clear account of this extraordinarily specific section of history; second, to present the information in such a way that those who read it might be convinced that the Expulsion was, in fact, primarily motivated by financial factors; and third, to identify several structural and institutional factors which were critical to the Jews' experiences in medieval England.
ContributorsMiller, Drew Beaupre (Author) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Thesis director) / Barth, Jonathan (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Between 1820 and 1875, the United States saw a surge in German-Jewish immigration. This wave of immigration brought Jews that were eager to adapt Judaism to their modern lives in a rational and accessible way. The challenge in America, however, was maintaining the desire to be Jewish and practice Judaism within a societal context that did not require them to be Jewish. The adoption of Reform Judaism in the 19th century amongst German-Jewish immigrants helped these new immigrants remain faithful and proud to be Jewish in within their new American lives. Furthermore, Reform Judaism helped these determined Jews balance their Jewish identities within the context of American society and culture.
ContributorsBurke, Randall Maxwell (Author) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Thesis director) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Transhumanist concepts and themes increasingly occupy a prominent place in contemporary visions of the future, particularly with regard to technology. A growing number of scholars, including some self-described transhumanists, see transhumanism as functioning like a religion for secular people, in that it fulfills many of the same desires and impulses without reference to any supernatural forces. For this reason there is a growing discussion of transhumanism in comparison with major religious traditions, but one which has heretofore been underappreciated is Protestant pietism. Pietism grew out of a need among Protestants after the Reformation to realize a better Christian community and better prepare individual believers for the afterlife. It had a significant influence over the European Enlightenment, of which transhumanists claim to be the successors. In its understanding of human improvement, human nature, and ultimate human destiny in death and the end-point of history, pietism has multiple interesting points of comparison with transhumanism. Both ideologies begin by improving individual human beings as the primary means to the end of eliminating suffering, especially death and disease, and building the ideal human community. Transhumanism accomplishes its goals for humanity through the use of advanced technologies which enable human beings to transcend their natural limitations. Pietism focuses, as its name suggests, on moral and spiritual improvement according to practical guidelines that lead a Christian believer to take an active role in his or her own sanctification. This essay concludes that pietism reveals certain key limitations in transhumanism as a comprehensive life philosophy, especially in its ability to organize society according to its system of values.
ContributorsDepew, Mason James (Author) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Thesis director) / Bennett, Gaymon (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12