Matching Items (2)
Description
This dissertation explores the history of ancestral rituals and the related political controversy in the Song China (960-1279). Considering the pivotal role played by ancestral rites in shaping Chinese identity and consciousness, this study contributes to a better understanding of how ancestral ritual has been politicized in Chinese history as a specific cultural apparatus to manipulate politics through theatrical performance and liturgical discussion. Through a contextual analysis of a variety of Song scholar-officials and their ritual writings, including memorials, private letters, and commentaries on the ritual Classics, this study demonstrates that Song ritual debates over the zhaomu 昭穆 sequence--that is, the positioning of ancestral temples and spirit tablets in ancestral temples with preparation for alternation or removal--differentiated scholar-officials into separate factions of revivalists, conventionalists and centrists. From a new perspective of ritual politics, this study reveals the discursiveness of the New Learning (xinxue新學) community and its profound influence on the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學) fellowship of the Southern Song (1127-1279). It examines the evolution of the New Learning fellowship as a dynamic process that involved internal tension and differentiation. Daoxue ritualism was a continuation of this process in partaking in the revivalist approach of ritual that was initiated by the New Learning circle. Nowadays, the proliferation of ritual and Classical studies crystallizes the revitalization of Confucianism and Confucian rituals in China. Taking zhaomu as a point of departure, this project provides a lens through which modern scholars can explore the persistent tension between knowledge and power by rethinking the modernization of ritual and ritual politics in contemporary China.
ContributorsCheung, Hiu Yu (Author) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt (Committee member) / Mackinnon, Stephen (Committee member) / Rush, James (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Catholic education is an education in the scriptural and traditional teachings of the Church as well as knowledge of the world in. As the main educational aid to the Catholic family, Catholic schools have an obligation to provide an environment in which students are not just taught doctrines through rote memorization or for the sake of passing an exam, but to come to understand the Catholic faith for the sake of knowing and living it out. In America today, Catholic education looks eerily like public education, a system of schools that is notoriously failing the American people and students. While Catholic schools compete with public schools in college and career readiness, they are failing to educate students effectively in the doctrines of faith and morality, neglecting to prepare them to enter society with at the very least a non-relativistic worldview, let alone a Catholic one.The modern progressive model of education employed in American public schools has been adopted by Catholic schools en masse. This pedagogical model undermines Catholic education because it is based in philosophies that espouse that education is for the sake of becoming a good worker, that man does not need supernatural help to work towards his perfection, and that morality is relative. Research shows that this model has not served Catholic students well; they are just slightly more likely to believe in Catholic teachings than their public counterparts. One major facet necessary for renewing the spiritual and academic rigor of Catholic education is re-implementing the classical liberal arts in the Catholic schools. Classical liberal education is an education in the great books and languages of the Western tradition with the intention to seek the fullness of truth, goodness, and beauty. The Catholic and classical traditions both hold a view of man as teleological, an understanding that truth can be known, and that moral training is essential to a proper education. Re-adopting a classical liberal education would bring a synergistic pedagogical method and curriculum to Catholic schools, working with Catholic doctrine to reinforce understanding of man and the world in which he lives.
ContributorsVibbert, Magda Carolina (Author) / Sheehan, Colleen A (Thesis advisor) / Shelley, Trevor (Committee member) / Doody, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023