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Explorations of how "the feminine" functions in the systematic mystical theology of Ibn al-ʿArabī (1165-1240) begin, in English, with Reynold Nicholson's early 20th century analysis of Tarjumān al-Ashwāq and extend through the work of dozens of scholars since then, most notably Henry Corbin, Toshihiko Izutsu, William Chittick, Sachiko Murata and Sa'diyya Shaikh. (Of course, one could argue that such studies in Arabic reach back as far as his foremost disciple al-Qunawi, and his foremost critic, Ibn Tamiyya. St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) shares with the Shaykh a general historical context as well as a famously passionate devotion to mystical practice as a strategy for achieving proximity to God. He, too, has engendered scholarly interest in his attitude toward women and the feminine as intrinsic to making that ascent, and not just among his earliest hagiographers, but through hundreds of interpreters since, most recently André Vauchez and Jacques Dalarun. Yet, despite generations of scholarship on that point, a comparative study of these two mystics has yet to be published. "Transcending the Feminine: Negotiations of Gender in the Mysticism of Ibn al-ʿArabī and Francis of Assisi" endeavors to fill that gap, and in so doing to unpack the distinctive aspects of the saint's and the Shaykh's mystical approaches, demonstrating intersections as well as departure points. Instrumental to that task are the conclusions of feminist scholars focusing on either man, but also--because the question of the feminine is so intimately associated in mystical texts with physical and spiritual desire--such an endeavor is relevant to the psychoanalytical approach to medieval religious texts, one made possible by Sigmund Freud and particularly Jacques Lacan, and then expanded upon by Luce Irigaray and Amy Hollywood. The pathway linking Francis and Ibn al-ʿArabī traverses their mysticisms, their use of metaphorical language, their specific constructions of gender, theologically and poetically, and their surprisingly complementary strategies for underscoring how the physical body emerges as crucial to the mystical ascent. Accordingly, this dissertation navigates the intriguing space in between the two--that is, in Ibn al-ʿArabī's phrasing, the barzakh where the ultimate priorities of one virtually touch those of the other, yet in a way that preserves their contradictions. / Religion

This dissertation comprises a study revealing the differences and similarities between late Roman and medieval Christian conceptions of tragedy and classical Greek ideas of tragedy. Representative of the Roman conception of tragedy is the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. As the legends of the martyrs and the teachings of the Fathers made their way into the Middle Ages, they brought with them the mixture of Greek, Roman, and Christian tragical motifs as well as an awareness of, and at times anxiety over, the similarity of pagan and Christian elements. Our failure to understand the Roman conception of tragedy has caused us to miss much in medieval literature that is tragical. To miss the Senecan content of Boethius, for instance, is to miss the Senecan element in medieval conceptions of tragedy. My analysis of the tragedies of Seneca, early and medieval Christian commentaries thereon, and the influence of this tradition on medieval works reveals a direct line of influence from Seneca's Latin plays, through the Consolatione de Philosophiae of Boethius, to de Meun, Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer. My study culminates in a comprehensive, detailed investigation of tragedy as it appears in various of the works of Chaucer. It is my contention that Chaucer recognized the similarity of the pagan and Christian traditions, and explored the significance of this correspondence in his writings. I find evidence, in his Monk's Tale, for example, of a fully-developed understanding of the nature of Senecan tragedy with its characteristic defiance, as well as its shortcomings in light of the Boethian-Platonic interpretation of tragedy which postulates all misfortune as a Good, i.e. a part of the workings of the inscrutable divine plan. The Chaucerian conception of tragedy, I conclude, is the philosophically and artistically inclusive playfulness by which he reveals the surprising similarities and crucial differences between classical and Christian viewpoints. Thus I attempt to reconnect the literatures and attitudes towards tragedy of these periods, by tracing continuities, literary patterns in which pleasure, transcendence, even comedy are merged with motifs that are generally considered tragical.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / During the 1950s, a decade scholars call the high point of American civil religion, journalist and historian William Lee Miller complained that the “popular religious revival is closely tied to a popular patriotism, of which it is the uncritical ally: religion and Americanism, god and country, Cross and flag.” If it bothered Miller that Americans too often “slipped unnoticing from one to the other,” he suspected that at least part of the problem had to do with mass media. “It is ‘salable’ religion,” he quipped, “quite clearly and often quite candidly cut to fit the requirements of Hooper ratings, box offices, and newsstand sales.” This study examines the relationship between American civil religion and radio drama in the 1950s as well as the two decades that shaped the 1950s, the 1930s and 1940s. It argues that by adapting an earlier tradition of civil religion to the twentieth century’s popular, mass-mediated culture, radio drama reinforced the centripetalism of American public life in those decades. Radio was the right medium at the right time for a nation new to global leadership and eager to rebuild its economy. As a national medium, radio enabled civil religion to continue its role in helping to forge a national identity, and as an emotionally intense medium — or what media theorist Marshall McLuhan called a “hot” medium — radio connected individual Americans to an ethereal, imagined “community of the air.” This study sheds light on constructions of the mid-twentieth century as an era of consensus in the United States by examining how centripetalism was constructed not simply by specific actors, such as the federal government and corporate broadcasting networks, but also by the specific properties of the dominant national medium, radio, and by radio’s ability to unite Americans around deep-seated civil religious understandings of their nation. It contributes to the scholarly conversation about civil religion by locating it not only in official pronouncements and public ceremonies, but also in commercial, mass-mediated cultural products, something most Americans consumed daily.