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1	A comparative analysis: Buddhist Madhyamaka and Daoist Chongxuan (twofold mystery) in the early Tang (618-720) Ozkan, Cuma 01 May 2013 (has links) The interactions between Chinese religions has occupied an enormous amount of scholarly attention in many fields because there have been direct and indirect consequences resulting from the interactions among Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. These religious traditions have obviously influenced each other in many respects such as rituals, doctrines, textual materials, philosophy and so on. Accordingly, I will, in this paper, critically analyze the implications of the interactions between Buddhism and Daoism by examining Twofold Mystery. Since Twofold Mystery is heavily dependent on Madhyamaka Buddhist concepts, this study will, on the one hand, examine the influence of Madhyamaka Buddhism on the development of Twofold Mystery. On the other hand, it will critically survey how Twofold Mystery remained faithful to the Daoist worldview. Comparative Religious Studies Emptiness Madhyamaka Buddhism Tetralemma Twofold Mystery Daoism Religion
2	Heart of darkness: a deconstruction of traditional Christian concepts of reconciliation by means of a religious studies perspective on the Christian and African religions Meiring, Arnold Maurits 31 October 2005 (has links) African Religion offers new images and symbols of reconciliation that may enhance existing Christian reconciliation metaphors and liturgies. Traditionally, Christians understood reconciliation through the images of either Augustine’s victory model, Anselm’s objective model or Abelard’s subjective model. While these images offered valuable insights, they are limited and increasingly difficult to understand in our modern context. Postmodern philosophy presents theologians with the possibility of deconstructing dominant discourses in order to consider new possibilities. This approach is eminently applicable to the traditional Christian reconciliation models. A comparative study of Western Christian and African reconciliation myths, rituals and concepts is used to deconstruct the accepted positions on the matter of reconciliation. Interviews with four African theologians, John Mbiti, Agrippa Khathide, Daniel Ngubane and Tinyiko Maluleke, reveal that African Christians have often understood reconciliation in more and different ways than those available in traditional Christian thought. They often derived their ideas from African Traditional Religion as well as the modern liberation struggle. In studying African Traditional Religion, it becomes clear that that African religion offers very different options to traditional Christianity with regard to its view on God, ancestors and spirits, life force, and of special importance for this study, shame, guilt and sin. African religion’s this-worldly focus views reconciliation as taking place on a mostly human level rather than between humans and God. African reconciliation rituals can be classified according to the purpose or the myths behind them. Some rituals are intended to create or restore community, while others are meant to propitiate or at least transfer guilt. A third grouping of rituals have the purpose of either expelling or accepting (and thus in a certain sense neutralising) evil (or perceived evil) in the community. Other rituals have a number of intentions, and can use unlikely rituals like open rebellion or dance to bring about reconciliation. A comparison between two religions should treat the religions equally. An investigation that examines both the integrating and transcending possibilities of religions can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the various reconciliation models without reference to some sort of supernatural reality. The anthropological and social sciences also offer valuable insights into the possible structure of reconciliation. And the South African context demands some minimum requirements for reconciliation in this country. When all these criteria are used to evaluate African and Christian reconciliation models, new possibilities emerge. Different models show themselves to be useful in different contexts. Some African models can improve our understanding of reconciliation between humans and God, while others fit the social context of South Africa. It seems that African thought and religion has a lot to offer to the study of reconciliation. The African emphasis on this-worldliness and community, the use of rituals and symbols, as well as Africa’s still-coherent myths presents new and exciting perspectives. These insights and models can be incorporated into Christian liturgies and rituals that will deepen Christians’ understanding and celebration of reconciliation. / Thesis (DD (Science of Religion and Missiology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted Liturgy Rituals This-worldly Community Ubuntu African traditional religion Christianity Reconciliation Myths African theology Postmodern theology South africa Comparative religious studies Religious studies Missiology UCTD
3	“DOUBLE REFRACTION”: IMAGE PROJECTION AND PERCEPTION IN SAUDI-AMERICAN CONTEXTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Ghaleb Alomaish (8850251) 18 May 2020 (has links) <p>This dissertation aims to create a scholarly space where a seventy-five-year-old “special relationship” (1945-2020) between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States is examined from an interdisciplinary comparativist perspective. I posit that a comparative study of Saudi and American fiction goes beyond the limitedness of global geopolitics and proves to uncover some new literary, sociocultural, and historical dimensions of this long history, while shedding some light on others. Saudi writers creatively challenge the inherently static and monolithic image of Saudi Arabia, its culture and people in the West. They also simultaneously unsettle the notion of homogeneity and enable us to gain new insight into self-perception within the local Saudi context by offering a wide scope of genuine engagements with distinctive themes ranging from spatiality, identity, ethnicity, and gender to slavery, religiosity and (post)modernity. On the other side, American authors still show some signs of ambivalence towards the depiction of the Saudi (Muslim/Arab) Other, but they nonetheless also demonstrate serious effort to emancipate their representations from the confining legacy of (neo)Orientalist discourse and oil politics by tackling the concepts of race, alterity, hegemony, radicalism, nomadism and (un)belonging.</p> Art Literature History Disability Studies Gender studies Language North American Literature Other Literatures in English Middle Eastern Literature Comparative Literature Studies Literary Theory Aesthetics Epistemology Feminist Theory Hermeneutic and Critical Theory Comparative Religious Studies Islamic Studies Gender, Sexuality and Education British History Saudi culture American Saudi-American Orientalism Orientalism in art neo-Orientalsim Desert oil Cultural studies Arabian Gulf migration Diaspora Studies blackness slavery literature Mormonism Mormon biblical studies disability studies geopolitics 9/11 post-9/11 post-9/11 America Post-9/11, fiction terrorism extremism radicalism visual studies orientalist painting postcolonial Postcolonial Discourse Otherness Alterity munif cities of salt urbanism Modernity tradition Islamic feminism Islam whiteness studies

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