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This dissertation brings two recent strands of research together and attempts to contribute to two areas of study: (1) apocalyptic Paul studies and (2) the discipline of intertextuality. When apocalyptic Paul is concerned, many works utilize comparative literature approaches. The present study, however, is different in two respects. First, this study sees intertextuality and apocalyptic as a cultural semiotic that is a meaning potential in culture. Whereas many intertextual studies focus on how later texts employ earlier texts for literary and theological purposes, the present study views culture as a matrix of intertextuality. In addition, this study deems apocalyptic as a cultural discourse that society and culture share to understand transcendent phenomena and events. The second distinctiveness of this study is its analytic method. Instead of word-to-word comparison, we investigate whether Paul’s letters present similar patterns of semantic relations between apocalyptic thematic items. After identifying recurrent thematic formations throughout multiple texts, this study explores Paul’s heteroglossia (different voices) in the thematic formations. As such, the meaning of Paul’s apocalyptic can be construed, when we scrutinize, first, how the apocalyptic languages or themes are used in culture, and second, how Paul differently employs them from others. To paraphrase, the meaning of Paul’s apocalyptic language can be vivid when the same apocalyptic thematic formations in Paul’s letters present different linguistic features from other writings. Through this procedure, the present study argues that though Paul shares similar thematic formations with other texts in the Greco-Roman world, the apostle’s apocalyptic thought is significantly distinctive from others. In Paul’s apocalyptic discourse, Jesus is the primary participant that interacts with other thematic items. Also, the apostle’s peculiar linguistic features in the shared apocalyptic formations converge around one figure that is Christ. In other words, Christ takes the central role in his apocalyptic discourse. Christ, therefore, is the apocalyptic lens for Paul to shape his understandings of transcendent phenomena (i.e., otherworldly journey, resurrection, sin and evil, and the two-age apocalyptic eschatology) through Christ.

In response to the argument that Paul seeks to dominate his audience through his discourse, I join the current conversation about Paul and power by exploring language and power in the Pauline Epistles. By analyzing Paul's use of power embodied in his use of language, I argue that Paul seeks to empower the Corinthians to think and act according to Jesus Christ's cruciform authority. I work within a postmodern hermeneutical paradigm of diversity. My study acknowledges the personal interest and subjectivity of any interpreter but seeks to avoid subordinating the notion of understanding to that of self-interest. Thus, it approaches the topic as a dialogue with the author-other Paul and, at the same time, a conversation with other interpreters of Paul. To achieve a dialogic interpretation, I begin by reflecting on my social location and personal interests concerning power and authority and then complete the circle by reflecting theologically on using power in my context. At the core of the dissertation, I appropriate a socio-linguistic approach to analyze, first, the power structure embedded in Paul's discourse and, second, the influence enacted via Paul' s discourse- i.e., power in words and power via words. I present my argument in this way owing to my conviction that social structure and power relationships shape linguistic behaviour, and conversely, discursive practices influence social (and personal) formation. After a thorough analysis and comparative study of 1 and 2 Corinthians, I critically evaluate Paul's use of power, engaging in dialogue with diverse perspectives on various power-related issues, and theologically reflect on ethics of power. Overall, Paul represents himself as a leader authorized and empowered by God and also as a steward accountable to his Lord Jesus Christ. Although he shows little interest in changing unjust social structures, his discourse indicates an effort to foster a culture of empowering less privileged members within Christian communities. When handling unjust criticisms against him, he stands firm to defend his apostleship and mission. But I suggest that his defense should not be regarded as selfish but as a means to a better end, namely, the protection and upbuilding of the community. Moreover, Paul represents himself as having long-term responsibility to care for the congregations he (and his team) has planted without necessarily seeking permanent control over them. In conclusion, I argue that given his social context, Paul, as God's accountable steward, seeks not to dominate the Corinthians but to empower them to mature in their understanding and to conduct themselves appropriately under the cruciform authority of Jesus Christ.

The writings and the experience of independent African American editors in the first half of the twentieth century from 1901 to 1955 played an invaluable role in laying the ideological groundwork for the Black Freedom movement beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The anti-imperialist writings of Pauline Hopkins who was literary editor of the Colored American Magazine from 1900 to 1904 celebrated revolutionary leaders, and adopted an independent course that refused partisan lines, which prompted her replacement as editor according to a letter she writes to William Monroe Trotter. The anti-imperialist writing of A. Philip Randolph as editor of The Messenger from 1917 to 1928, raised the role of labor organizing in the advancement of racial justice and helped to provide future organizers. These individuals founded the Southern Negro Youth Congress an analytical framework that would help organize thousands of Southern workers against the Jim Crow system into labor unions. Based on the letters he wrote to the American Fund For Public Service, Randolph raised funds by appealing to the values that he believed Fund chair Roger Baldwin also valued while protecting individual supporters of The Messenger from government surveillance. The anti-imperialist writing of Paul Robeson as chair of the editorial board of Freedom from 1950 to 1955 could not escape McCarthyist government surveillance which eventually caused its demise. However not before including an anti-fascist editorial ideology endorsing full equality for African Americans that inspired plays by Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry that imagined a world that defies the increasingly fascist rule of the American state. This thesis will argue that the Black Freedom Struggle that developed after the fifties owed a great deal to Hopkins, Randolph, and Robeson. The work that these three did as editors and writers laid a solid intellectual, ideological, and political foundation for the later and better known moment when African American would mobilize en masse to demand meaningful equality in the United States. / African American Studies

This thesis is an integrated part of the process-oriented artistic project Upprepa repa upp veckla ut veckla in and involves reflections upon its artistic accretions as well as the process itself.  The process gravitated around different nodes of attraction such as listening, attention, improvisation, repetition, slowness and language. These nodes were investigated through improvised piano playing (solo and in groups), writing, reading, listening and discussing, and materialized in three work in progress- concerts, one exam concert and a solo cassette. I approached music playing-listening in a relational way, acknowledging bodily sensations and intuition as well as memory and thought; this in dialogue with thinkers and artists such as Pauline Oliveros and Éliane Radigue.  The project also examined how to destabilize the traditional roles between musician and audience, and gave valuable insights in how to create a mutual encounter as well as a collective space of listening, and the political potentials of this.  The results points toward a reformulated performative artistic practice centered around listening and shared spaces, and ways of integrating different artistic expressions such as written language, music and sounds.

Ce mémoire fait état de mes réflexions au cours de cette maitrise et des deux champs de recherches à travers lesquels celles-ci se sont développées. J'aborde dans un premier temps mon rapport au dessin, en particulier le dessin naturaliste et son ambiguïté dans le monde de l'art, dû à son lien avec la mimesis. Reconsidérant, à partir des réflexions élaborées par Gérard Genette et Nelson Goodman, la fonction esthétique du dessin naturaliste, j'ai pu confirmer sa nature interprétative révélant la personnalité de l'artiste dans la singularité de ses œuvres. Je me suis également intéressée à l'abstraction et à la façon dont celle-ci pouvait se révéler au travers du naturalisme. Ma fascination pour les planches d'artistes naturalistes et mon intérêt pour l'histoire m'ont également poussée à remonter aux origines du dessin naturaliste et à explorer son évolution. Exploration à travers laquelle j'ai pu retracer la participation de nombreuses femmes dans ce champ de création, les carrières artistiques leur étant pourtant très difficiles d'accès. La seconde partie s'articule autour des recherches en lien avec mon projet artistique. Ma pratique du dessin naturaliste a constitué dans ma mémoire un large répertoire de formes et de détails, qu'il m'était possible de reconstituer librement sans nécessiter l'observation directe. Je me suis inspirée davantage de phénomènes d'intelligence collective observés chez les oiseaux, abeilles et fourmis, où l'agglomération des individus mettait l'accent sur la configuration de la masse en faisant disparaitre l'entité singulière. Des fragments se sont accumulés librement dans des compositions abordant de multiples degrés d'abstraction, sans éliminer le détail naturaliste qui est devenu l'élément de base de ma démarche créatrice. Saturant l'espace de la répétition d'un élément figuratif, je crée une composition à la rythmique abstraite décontextualisée, animée d'une mouvance naturelle.

This study was made to gather data and information to aid the Burleson Independent School District in initiating an industrial arts general shop program in the Pauline G. Hughes Middle School. The data and information were obtained from the Texas Education Agency, the Burleson Independent School District records, the vocational director, the assistant superintendent, a questionnaire, and the Brodhead-Garrett 1976-1977 Catalog. The majority of the general shop programs in the north Texas area conduct classes five days a week for fifty-five minutes a day and accommodate twenty-four students per class. Furthermore, the majority of the general shop programs offer three units of instruction per year and teach one unit of instruction each quarter.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 260 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-256).

This study explores the practice of hospitality within the Pauline churches and links this practice with mission. It is theoretically informed by Käsemann’s (1963) emphasis on the unity of the church as “an eschatological datum.” While highlighting faith, Käsemann downplays the role of organization and religious practices. Neither he nor missiological studies deal with the practice of hospitality within this context. Hospitality has been interpreted in the literature primarily as an ethic one should adopt towards strangers. Alternatively, this study interprets it as a ritual-like practice aimed at family, friends and strangers in the context of meal gatherings. The question is whether it served as an instrument of koinonia, a practice aimed to create, maintain and extend the Pauline churches as an open network, without denying the role of kerygma. This enquiry utilizes two methodological approaches to answer this question. First of all, it uses Stark’s (1996) network theory of conversion, in order to provide a framework for hospitality in early Christian mission. Secondly, it uses Bell’s (1992) ritual theory in order to interpret meal fellowship in the Pauline churches. Presupposing that science is a conversation, the relationship between missiology and anthropology is depicted as a conversation, ideally an ongoing conversation. This conversation is possible and potentially coherent because the “basic convictions” of both disciplines, respectively love and power, do not contradict each other. The key contribution of this study is that it shows that several practices in the Pauline churches such as welcoming, foot washing, seating order, distribution of portions, etc. qualify as ritual-like. This finding establishes the ritual-like character of meal fellowship within the Pauline churches. Yet, these practices were found ambiguous. They were not simply an instrument to achieve social integration or the transmission of beliefs. While they set the meal off from daily reality, they did not resolve the tension within the churches. Paul knew that this tension was part of a larger apocalyptic picture, the battle between Christ and Satan. Through ritual-like practice he participated in this battle, employing a “poetics of power” that fostered the church as an open network. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology with specialisation in Urban Ministry)

This thesis is a study of the interpretation and reception of the writings attributed to the apostle Paul based on the collation of references to Pauline texts in pre-Nicene Christian writings. The material is analysed utilising a method worked out by Teresa Morgan and Raffaella Cribiore to understand the nature and extent of indebtedness to literary authorities in ancient pedagogy. The application of their method means that the most frequently cited passages from the Pauline corpus become the focus for detailed examination, and a chapter is devoted to the following passages: 1 Corinthians 2.6-16, Ephesians 6.10-17, 1 Corinthians 15.50-58, and Colossians 1.15-20. In each chapter, selections from early Christian texts which use these passages are chosen for in-depth analysis because they are representative in their interpretative approaches of the totality of texts examined. Across many different early Christian writings, images and phrases from these Pauline pericopes were used to support and defend a wide range of theological arguments about the nature of divine wisdom and its contrast with human wisdom, the importance of standing firm in faith, the nature of resurrection and the body, and the nature of Christ. On the basis of the analysis throughout this thesis, conclusions are drawn firstly, about the close connection between scriptural interpretation and theological doctrines; secondly, about early Christian formation, separate from scholarly attempts to recover early Christian catechesis, school teaching, and pedagogy; and finally, about early Christian identity and how it is formed and informed by early Christian use of these four passages.