Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of the History of Art, 2006. / Adviser: Bruce Cole.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of the History of Art, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 3, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 2787. Adviser: Bruce Cole.

Thesis (Th.D.)--Harvard University, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3239143. Adviser: Francois Bovon. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3856.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Religious Studies, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 17, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4579. Adviser: Stephen J. Stein.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Chinese, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 26, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0615. Adviser: Bokenkamp R. Stephen.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3285579. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4339. Adviser: Robert Gimello.

Prophet, pamphleteer, and hermit, Roger Crab (c.1616-1680) stands out from the sectarian tumult of mid-seventeenth century London as a zealous religious independent and a noteworthy oppositional figure. This study describes Crab's brief publication career as shaping a "rhetoric of reclusion," identifying in his work the distinct patterns of self-representation intended to free a purportedly divine message from the damaging influences of printers and booksellers, hireling ministers, and even the authorial self. Crab writes against the untoward mediation of his own text, but also against such interference with other sacred text. Beyond reclusion, the hermit's task proves one of reclamation. He seeks through publication and public attestation to reclaim the word of God from wayward church interpretation and from sectarian misappropriation.

This thesis examines the philosophy of language of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), one of the most influential and creative early Hasidic masters, and the teacher whose students effectively created the Hasidic movement. I argue that Dov Baer offers an innovative approach to the role of language in religious life and its relationship to the inner workings of the human psyche. In contrast to scholars who emphasize aspects of Dov Baer’s thought that idealize silence, my research demonstrates that he embraced words as a divine gift, even describing the faculty of speech as an element of God imbued within humanity. Dov Baer does refer to a realm of creativity and inspiration that lies beyond words. It is into this region that the mystic journeys in his contemplative prayer, tracing spoken words back to their roots in the mind, and then the ineffable beyond. Yet this realm is restricted by its silence, for flashes of insight have no expression until they are brought into language. Indeed, says Dov Baer, all conscious thought occurs within the framework of words, even before it is spoken aloud. A similar transformation characterizes all acts of divine revelation, including Creation and the giving of the Torah, which originate in a pre-verbal inner divine realm and then spread through the pathways of language. My dissertation is a diachronic study illustrating the ways in which Dov Baer’s sermons creatively interpreted and developed conceptions of language in rabbinic, philosophical and kabbalistic literature, but devotes careful attention to his social and historical context as well. This project models a novel approach to the study of mystical texts that interfaces with contemporary issues like the study of language and epistemology, as well as broader methodological questions of the relationship between orality, authorship, and textuality. Dov Baer did not transcribe any of his own sermons, and all homilies attributed to him were recorded in writing by his disciples. Instead of attempting to reconstruct the historical sermons that have been forever lost, my dissertation draws upon the full spectrum of his teachings as they appear in printed books, manuscripts, and quotations by students in the decades after his death. The task is not to determine the veracity of these traditions in order to reconstruct Dov Baer’s “authentic” sermons, since no such Urtext ever existed in written form. I examine his theology of language as presented in early Hasidic literature, acknowledging their diversity while tracking their consistency, seeking to understand the ways in which they shaped emerging Hasidic thought. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

This dissertation uses the histories and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as case studies to consider how nineteenth-century Americans turned to religion to solve the early American republic’s “race problem.” I begin by approaching Mormonism’s foundational text, the Book of Mormon, as the earliest Latter-day Saints did: as a radical new lens to view the racialized populations—Americans of European, African and Native American descent (“white,” “black,” “red”)—that dominated the antebellum American cultural landscape in which the church was founded in 1830. Early Mormons believed themselves called to end all schisms, including racial ones, within the Body of Christ as well as the political body of the American republic. However, early Mormon leaders were not racial egalitarians. Their vision consisted not of racial pluralism, but of the redemptive “whitening” of all peoples. Whiteness—both as a signifier and even phenotype—became an aspirational racial identity that non-whites could achieve through conversion to Mormonism. As the church failed to become the prophesied panacea for American racial and religious divisions, its theology evolved to view race as fixed. Black and Mormon became mutually exclusive identities. And though based on Book of Mormon theology, the Mormons held out hope for mass Indian redemption, it was forestalled as the church focused on shaping white converts into respectable Mormons. However, this history is not simply one of declension. Instead, the church’s evolving view on race arose out of the persistent dialectal tension between the two central, and seemingly paradoxical, elements of the Mormon people’s identity: a missionary people divinely called to teach the gospel to everyone everywhere, and a racially particularistic people who believe that God has, at times, favored certain racial groups over others. As Mormon identity became more racially particularistic, white Mormons began to marginalize non-whites in the “Mormon archive”— which I conceptualize as the written and oral texts that compose the Mormon people’s collective memory. However, a handful of black and Native Americans wrote themselves into this archive, claiming their place among the prophets and pioneers that mark membership in Mormon history. They understood that literacy signified authority, and thus with their own narratives, they wrote against what they believed was the marginalization of their historical subjectivity. / Religion, Committee on the Study of

This study explores the emergence of OM, the Sanskrit mantra and critically ubiquitous "sacred syllable" of South Asian religions. Although OM has remained in active practice in recitation, ritual, and meditation for the last three thousand years, and its importance in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions is widely acknowledged, the syllable's early development has received little attention from scholars. Drawing on the oldest textual corpus in South Asia, the Vedas, I survey one thousand years of OM's history, from 1000 BCE up through the start of the Common Era. By reconstructing ancient models of recitation and performance, I show that the signal characteristic of OM in the Vedas is its multiformity: with more than twenty archetypal uses in different liturgical contexts and a range of forms (oṃ, om̐, om, o), the syllable pervades the soundscape of sacrifice. I argue that music is integral to this history: more than any other group of specialists, Brahmin singers of liturgical song (sāmaveda) fostered OM's emergence by reflecting on the syllable's many and varied uses in Vedic ritual. Incorporating the syllable as the central feature of an innovative soteriology of song, these singer-theologians constructed OM as the apotheosis of sound and salvation. My study concludes that OM plays a crucial role in the development of South Asian religions during this period. As the foundations of South Asian religiosity shift, from the ritually oriented traditions of Vedism to the contemplative and renunciatory traditions of Classical Hinduism, OM serves as a sonic realization of the divine, a touchstone of Vedic authority, and a central feature of soteriological doctrines and practices. / South Asian Studies