The socio-religious regulations of Leviticus offer little-explored perspectives from which to reflect on the relationship between humanity and the non-human creation. The cosmological framework upon which the worldview expressed in Leviticus is constructed places humanity at the fragile interface between creation (order) and chaos (destruction), ever struggling to discern, define and delineate the sacred and the profane. Several texts in Leviticus portray the land as an active character; capable of vomiting, resting and maintaining a ritualistically demanding relationship with God. Not only does the land appear to have a distinct relationship with YHWH, but in fact that relationship predates YHWH’s commitment to Israel. When the people sin, they risk not only the retreat of YHWH’s presence from the sanctuary, but also the land ejecting them in order that it might fulfill its ritual obligations. Each member of the community is responsible for maintaining the well-being of the lived-in world as expressed through obedience to teachings concerning the body, the social group, and cultic behaviour. Within this system, the manifested symbols of created order are those essential elements which enable the sustenance of the whole community: the people, the land, its vegetation and its animals. Responsible human care for this divinely-established ecology is thus ingrained in, and carefully detailed through, the regulations in Leviticus. Important examples include prescriptions for a sabbatical year for the land to rest and to restore its fertility; the Sabbath day as a space of economic disruption and regeneration; agricultural festivals as cultic boundaries of the life of the community; and dietary and cultic laws regulating the killing of animals for humans (as food) or for God (as sacrifice). Disobedience, or sin, renders both the human community, and the land upon which it lives, polluted and unclean. A particularly significant measure of controlling or cleansing the resulting pollution, of both the community and the land, is animal sacrifice – the killing of a perfect animal for God has the potential to restore the delicate balance between chaos and creation. Given these observations, Leviticus' conceptions of the land, animal sacrifice and ritualized rest can be perceived as a fruitful biblical locus of reflection from which to engage contemporary ecological ethics and praxis.

A review of current integrated marketing communication (IMC) literature indicates that IMC has swept the globe. IMC has become the normative marketing practice for organizations to promote their goods and services, as well as an increasingly popular area of academic study. At the same time, literature shows inconsistency in IMC's professional practice and academic instruction. An increasing number of IMC theorists suggest that “true” IMC involves reorienting an organization to become consumer-focused and responsive at every level. This broader vision for IMC points to the discipline's communicative underpinnings. It is dialogic, other-oriented and interpretive in nature, yet most organizations and academics that claim to practice and teach IMC treat it as a “simple managerial task”—mere tactical coordination of marketing elements (Schultz and Patti 75). This dissertation supplements current literature to establish IMC's rhetorical and philosophical roots and provides a perspective about how organizations can achieve greater communicative understanding with their stakeholders by considering IMC from a humanities and constructive hermeneutic standpoint. By understanding the discipline as humanistic and situated in lived practices, rhetorical and philosophical acumen becomes the missing link between tactical implementation and IMC's full potential. This praxis-oriented approach moves IMC beyond the limitations of the social sciences and into the philosophy of communication to offer better insight into how IMC is an interpretive encounter that demands attentiveness to and communicative engagement with the other. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD; / Dissertation;

Philosophical tenets have been at the heart of the counseling process since its inception. This study explores the factors present within a graduate-level counseling class that directly teaches these philosophical foundations through an exploration of dialectics and its impact on the medium of conversation. Interviews were conducted with both the professor that created the class as well as its current instructor along with focus groups of both current program students and program alumni. The fundamental aim was to understand the processes at work within the class and their influence on its students. The results suggest that by bringing the students into awareness of their own interpretative process by reading and discussing dense philosophical works that require them to bring something of themselves to the literature, the class fosters within its students an understanding and appreciation for the pervasiveness of the interpretative process within all people, especially those that will one day be their clients. This knowledge also seems to provide the students with a paradigm compatible across all perspectives and theories that will contribute to their counselor education.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Arabic is the language of the Holy Qur'an, which was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) who in turn dictates it to His companions. The Prophet's companions did not encounter any difficulty in the understanding and comprehension of the Qur‘anic verses simply because the Qur'an was revealed in a language variety with which they have been quite familiar. Yet, the companions of the prophet differ in their understanding of the Qur'an. Their understanding may vary according to their competencies and their closeness to the prophet. In addition, the Qur'an includes verses that appear to be contradictory. Some verses of the Qur'an, for instance, may imply that man is free to select either the path of faith or the path of blasphemy.

“The Poetry of Interpretation” writes a pre-history of the twentieth-century phenomenon of close reading by interpreting the devotional poetry of the English Renaissance in the context of the period’s exegetical literatures. The chapters explore a range of hermeneutic methods that allowed preachers and commentators, writing in the wake of the Reformation’s turn to the “literal sense” of scripture, to grapple with and clarify the bible’s “darke texts.” I argue that early modern religious poets—principally Anne Lock, John Donne, George Herbert, William Alabaster, and John Milton—absorbed these same methods into their compositional practices, merging the arts of poesis and exegesis. Consistently skeptical about the very project they undertake, however, these poets became not just practitioners but theorists of interpretive method. Situated at the intersection of religious history, hermeneutics, and poetics, this study develops a new understanding of lyric’s formal operations while intimating an alternative history of the discipline of literary criticism.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Johannesburg, 2017 / Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has been ascribed a conservative position in relation to textual interpretation. I wish to explore what effect radical texts (texts which challenge Gadamer’s definitions of textuality) have upon philosophical hermeneutics. I chose to work with Watt by Samuel Beckett and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs because both texts challenge assumptions surrounding meaning and understanding, two key facets of philosophical hermeneutics. Both novels illustrate the effect of fragmented historical horizons upon the interpretative process. This observation is accessible through Gadamer’s descriptive theory and allows the interpretation of both Watt and Naked Lunch to engage with the meta-hermeneutic concerns in both avant-garde texts. The close-reading of both novels will illustrate how they challenge Gadamer’s notion of play between horizons, and I will show this to be productive for both interpretative understanding as well as responding to Gadamer’s critics. It is my contention that Gadamer’s theoretical description offers a unique way to read Watt and Naked Lunch but crucially, philosophical hermeneutics is indelibly changed by an interaction with these two novels. / XL2018

[pt] Esta tese é um estudo sobre a articulação entre a teologia e a realidade ecológica atual, a partir do pensamento do teólogo protestante alemão Jurgen Moltmann. A idéia é mostrar que a teologia trinitária de Moltmann, articulada a partir da pneumatologia, fornece uma base adequada para elaboração de uma teologia apropriada à  problemática ecológica. O ecológico é tema emergente na produção teológica ocidental e de abordagem interdisciplinar. Por isso, buscamos estabelecer um diálogo fecundo entre duas áreas distintas, através de uma hermenêutica teológica que conjuga pneumatologia e ecologia. A partir desse viés hermenêutico é que entendemos ser possí­vel oferecer as contribuições mais relevantes para a teologia em geral e latino-americana em particular, e articulá-la adequadamente com as interpelações que a realidade ecológica faz. / [en] This thesis is a study about the relation between theology and ecological reality today, based on the thought of the German Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann. The aim is to show that the Trinitarian theology of Moltmann, articulated from the pneumatology provides an appropriate basis for development of a theology appropriate to the ecological problems. The ecological theme is emerging in the production of theological and western interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, we sought to establish a dialogue between two distinct areas, through a theological hermeneutics that combines pneumatology and ecology. From that hermeneutic obliquity we believe that is possible to offer the most relevant contributions to theology in general, in particular to Latin American and articulate it properly with the requests that the ecological reality does.

Thesis advisor: Mark S. Burrows / Ecclesiology in Motion: Ecumenical Vocation and the Developing Ecclesial Identity and Self-Understanding of the United Church of Christ (USA) By: Jason M. Donnelly Advisor: Mark S. BurrowsThis study explores the question of ecclesiology in the United Church of Christ by presenting a historically descriptive account of this church's developing ecclesial identity and self-understanding during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Chapter one, "Ecumenical Vocation and the Question of Ecclesiology in the United Church of Christ" considers the context and composition of the organic union that established the United Church of Christ in 1957, engages the founding documents and early developments of the UCC's ecclesial identity and self-understanding up to 1982, and situates this study within its larger historical, ecumenical, and theological contexts. Chapter two, "Corporate Expressions of Ecclesial Identity in the United Church of Christ" examines the emergence of a theologically descriptive tradition of ecclesial identity and self-understanding in the UCC. Proposing that this united and uniting church developed its own ecclesiological tradition in the process of responding to a series of ecumenical texts from the 1980s, this central chapter charts the gathering momentum of a maturing ecclesiological tradition evident in the processes and corporate responses of the UCC to these ecumenical texts as the young church remained faithful to its ecumenical vocation by adapting to an ecumenical context vastly different from the one that inspired the creation of the UCC in 1957. The four ecumenical texts that provoked these corporate expressions of the UCC's ecclesial identity between 1982 and 1995 include: Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the 1982 text produced by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches; An Invitation to Action, the 1984 text produced from Series III of the Lutheran-Reformed Dialogue; The COCU Consensus, the 1984 text presented to the member churches of the Consultation on Church Union for formal action; and Churches in Covenant Communion, the 1988 text, also presented to the member churches of the Consultation on Church Union for formal action.Chapter three, "Deepening Ecclesial Self-Understanding" briefly explores the origins and ecclesiological significance of the UCC's three full-communion agreements, focusing primarily on the theological content behind the UCC's most recent full-communion agreement with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Reformed Church of America.Chapter four, "Assembling the Expressions of Ecclesial Self-Understanding" presents the theological content expressed in the four corporate texts considered in chapter two in conversation with The Nature and Mission of the Church.Chapter five, "Conclusion" provides a brief overview of the study and suggestively explores the significance of what has been advanced in relation to the ecumenical movement in general and the UCC's ecclesiology in motion in particular. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / What does the word of the cross mean for philosophical anthropology? That is my question in this dissertation, which undertakes a philosophical engagement with a word that is both a scandal and folly for philosophical wisdom. My task is to give a hermeneutical description of what I call the cruciform self, and to examine the significance of the cross for several key themes of philosophical anthropology. Because my focus is thematic, I engage with several interlocutors--most prominently Paul Ricoeur and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but also Luther, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas, and Charles Taylor. Given the pronounced theological aspects of this project, a recurring theme is the relation between philosophy and faith, reason and revelation. The word of the cross interrogates anthropology as well as philosophy, and so I present a hermeneutics of the cruciform self as well as a distinctly cruciform philosophy. Chapter 1 outlines the hermeneutical turn in philosophical anthropology, and argues that the self is constituted in being addressed by an external word. Chapter 2 then draws on Luther's theology of the cross to sketch an ontology of justification by faith, in which the self is constituted by eschatological possibility rather than achieved actuality, and stands outside of itself with its identity in another, in promise rather than presence. Chapter 3 interprets sin and evil according to the image of incurvature--i.e., the self curved in on itself, cut off from its true relations to God, others, and itself. Chapter 4 then argues that this incurvature must be broken open by an external word. There I draw on Bonhoeffer's phenomenological christology, which identifies this word as Christ, the Counter-Logos who reverses the intentionality and interrogation of the immanent human logos. The chapters in Part II then use Bonhoeffer's account of the ultimate and the penultimate to show how the word of the cross refigures philosophical thinking about the concreteness and continuity of faith (Ch.5), human capability, agency, and ethical responsibility (Ch.6), reflexivity, self-understanding, and intentionality (Ch.7), and the tension between faith and religion (Ch.8). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Trata-se de pesquisa empírica e documental realizada com três grupos distintos de jovens e adultos leitores habituais e leitores não-habituais. Um grupo composto por alunos do Cursinho Comunitário Pré-Vestibular Sagrado Coração Pastoral Cultural -, sediado na Paróquia Nossa Senhora do Sagrado Coração, outro grupo constituído por assíduos frequentadores da Biblioteca Pública Paulo Setúbal, ambos localizados na Vila Formosa, Zona Leste da Cidade de São Paulo, e, o terceiro grupo formado por participantes do Núcleo da Palavra, do Laboratório Experimental de Arte- Educação & Cultura Lab_Arte, da Faculdade de Educação, da Universidade de São Paulo Feusp. O Objetivo é desvelar as principais questões comportamentais e educacionais geradoras das dificuldades e/ou facilidades com a leitura de obras literárias desenvolvidas no trajeto da formação do leitor. Formação para leitura que pressupõe, nesta tese, uma fisiologia simbólica da leitura, que se instaura nos espaços-tempos familiar, escolar e cultural, conformando-se através da pessoa do leitor, num processo que perpassa a corporeidade. A pesquisa reflete sobre os leitores a partir da reflexão dos mesmos sobre suas trajetórias com a leitura de obras literárias, registradas nas redações produzidas pelos alunos do cursinho, nas entrevistas concedidas pelos leitores da biblioteca e nas produções de textos de cunho poético e narrativo, escritas pelos participantes do Núcleo da Palavra, privilegiando assim uma hermenêutica pontuada pelo gradiente-holonômico, ou seja por múltiplos olhares que integram vários pontos de vista, inclusive o do leitor, focando o tema de modo a verificar as relações que as pessoas estabelecem com a leitura, interpretando-a de modo de deleitoso ou angustiante. O referencial teórico norteador fundamenta-se em Gilbert Durand nAs Estruturas Antropológicas do Imaginário e A Imaginação Simbólica, apoiado pela compreensão do imaginário em Gaston Bachelard, Danielle Perin Rocha Pitta, Marcos Ferreira-Santos, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, acrescidos dos pensamentos sobre literatura, arte e educação de Antônio Cândido, Edmir Perrotti, Paulo Freire, Michel de Certeau, dentre outros. / This paper deals with empirical and documentary research data culled from 3 different habitual and non-habitual readerships comprised of youngsters and adults. The first group comprehends students from the Sacred Heart Community Pre- College Preparatory Course, located in the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish. The second group comprehends regular readers from Paulo Setúbal Public Library. Both sites are located in Vila Formosa district, East Area of the city of São Paulo. The third group was formed by collaborators of the Literary Nucleus of the Art, Education and Culture Experimental Lab belonging to the School of Education of Universidade de São Paulo (FEUSP). The aim of the present work is to reveal the main behavioral and educational issues which generate both the difficulties and ease of understanding literary works, and which occur along the formation of readerships themselves. Reading formation presupposes herein a symbolic reading physiology, which settles upon family, school and cultural space-times and shows itself through the figure of the reader, in a process which lies beyond readers´ actions. The research reflects on readerships based on their own perception about their track records in reading literary works, which were registered in prep courses´ students´ essays, in interviews with library readers and in poetic and narrative texts written by Literary Nucleus collaborators. Thus there is herein the prevalence of hermeneutics marked by an emerging paradigm, that is, by multiple looks which belong to several viewpoints, including that of the reader, framing the subject matter so that relations between reader and reading process might be verified, the last being interpreted as either pleasant or annoying. Theoretical references are mainly Gilbert Durand´s works (Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary and The Symbolic Imagination), supported by the understanding of the imaginary in Gaston Bachelard, Danielle Perin Rocha Pitta, Marcos Ferreira-Santos, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur, as well as by thoughts about literature, art and education in Antonio Candido, Edmir Perrotti, Paulo Freire, Michel de Certeau, among others.