Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4305. Adviser: Lawrence M. Clopper. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 20, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. Religious Studies, 2008. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 26, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0639. Adviser: Robert F. Campany.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the majority of children in Ontario received at least part of their education from the Sunday school. Much of this institution's success can be attributed to the dedication and commitment of its unpaid workforce. Sunday school teachers were expected to be virtuous, nurturing, moral and dutiful, and it is not surprising that this community of volunteers was made up almost entirely of women. Women's active participation in the Sunday school combined with its popularity made this religious and educational institution an important avenue in the (re)production of gender ideologies in nineteenth-century Ontario. This thesis examines how women Sunday school teachers were involved in establishing their own gender identity by consciously accepting and rejecting ideals of womanhood. It argues that the roles, responsibilities, experiences and opportunities that women had in the Sunday school community allowed them to define their own model of evangelical womanhood. Women reinforced this new ideal to their pupils, but their influence extended beyond their classrooms. They authored and distributed literature found in libraries, participated in conventions with diverse crowds and established important networks of Christian women who campaigned for women's rights within and outside of the church.

My dissertation examines the post-1949 transformation of religious and organizational culture in rural Ruian County of the Wenzhou region, Zhejiang. It explores the diversified adaptation patterns adopted by rural religious organizations in order to preserve, reinvent and even expand themselves in the volatile sociopolitical environment of post-1949 China. Based on hitherto unexploited government documents collected from local state archives, memoirs, historical accounts of religious organizations, as well as extensive oral interviews with Ruian residents, I demonstrate that, rather than following a linear and uniform decline that conventional wisdom suggests, religious organizations took divergent paths in Ruian during the Maoist era. The level of religious activities in Ruian and many regions of Zhejiang exhibited fluctuations over time rather than a linear downward movement. The Maoist period, I argue, was both destructive and constructive for religion. By stripping religious organizations of their traditional leadership and economic foundation, Maoist campaigns inadvertently accelerated the organizational reinvention of Chinese religions. Even more far-reaching, the Cultural Revolution dramatically stimulated a quick rise of Protestantism vis-à-vis other religions and fundamentally reshaped the religious landscape in parts of China, making China no exception to the global trend of religious resurgence, despite its isolation at the time. Religion in today’s China and related phenomena, in particular the uneven distribution of religious revival, the development patterns of rural organizations, and state-religion relations, cannot be fully explained without reference to the Maoist legacy. / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

This dissertation investigates Chinese Muslim (Hui) intellectual currents from the late Qing dynasty to the early years of the Communist Republic, 1908–1957. By analyzing a vast number of Muslim reformist journals, Chinese translations of Islamic sources, and diaries/memoirs of intellectuals who were connected to other zones of the Islamic world, I examine the process by which reformists sought to redefine Chinese Muslim identity and revive “true principles of Islam”—both in negotiation with the Chinese state and in conversation with local and transnational intellectual currents. In particular, this dissertation considers the ways in which intellectuals struggled to “awaken” Chinese Muslims so as to transform their past identity as Muslim subjects of the Qing Empire into “politically conscious and active” citizens of the Chinese Republic. Chinese Muslims were defined either as a religious community or an ethnic group (minzu), and this debate occupied the minds of reformist intellectuals in this period, the topic of the first two chapters. How it was settled would determine the political, social, and religious status of the Muslim community in China, where definitions of nation and ethnicity/race were constantly reassigned. Debates concerning Muslim integration into China hinged on their connection to the global Muslim community (umma). Newly introduced technologies of travel and communication, such as the steamship and print, facilitated Chinese Muslims’ participation within transnational and cross-confessional networks. I argue that it was through the selection, appropriation, and adaptation of ideas from the prominent centers of the Islamic world that these intellectuals navigated a path of integration in the Chinese context that did not put their distinct Muslim identity at risk. From these diverse sources, they were determined to find solutions to the challenges they faced in China—whether posed by the hegemonic discourse of the Nationalist Party or the iconoclastic New Culture Movement. In successive chapters, I focus on the intellectual connection of Chinese Muslims to the Kemalist secularism of Turkey, the Ahmadi movement of India, and Egyptian reformist currents. Thus, I demonstrate how a seemingly “peripheral” Muslim community in the Far East participated in complex transnational networks at a critical moment of transformation. / Inner Asian and Altaic Studies

Abstract not available.

The Ku Klux Klan has been active in North America for 139 years and organizations like the Klan have existed in North America since before the United States and Canada became independent nations. The white supremacy advocated by the Klan mimics the justifications used by colonial powers, and though the United States and Canada have espoused egalitarian ideals for quite some time, the Klan continues to attract members. Mircea Eliade and Claude Levi-Strauss have argued that history and myth share many characteristics, and that sometimes history can act as myth. Understanding how North American history can be a mythic model for the religious formation of North American people one can better explain the long-term viability of the Klan and its ability not only to inspire violence, but to articulate a particular kind of white North American identity. This study examines how the religiosity and action of the Klan has been informed by mytho-historical influences in the United States and Canada and, consequently, how these influences affect other people formed in this context.

This work provides a detailed account of the historical role of the distinction between the potential and actual infinite in a variety of debates within natural philosophy and mathematics. It then connects these historical positions to modern debates over the possibility of pluralism within philosophy of logic and mathematics. In particular, it defends a view under which theories of the infinite and logic are justified abductively, and it argues that this abductive methodology provides space for an interesting pluralism about both the infinite and logical consequence. This argument relies on a detailed and thorough historical investigation into ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern views of the infinite, revealing a range of background metaphysical and epistemological commitments that motivate different abductive criteria for sophisticated philosophical positions on the infinite. It then suggests that charitable interpretations of the historical positions on the infinite should lead one to endorse a logical pluralism.

No description available.

No description available.