2007

David Alvarez (Associate Professor of English) – to write a chapter of a book on "Religious Toleration and the Periodical Essay in Enlightenment England"

This book aims to provide a fuller understanding of the discourse of religious tolerance and its political uses in early modern liberalism (1640-1750). While considerable scholarship exists on the legal and philosophical history of religious toleration in early modern England, scant attention has been given to how literature fostered toleration. To understand how people became more tolerant during the English Enlightenment, we need to consider how literature and other social practices fostered the production of tolerant subjects. This book examines the models of toleration found in poetry, novels, and other literary forms in this period. It also considers how the rhetoric of tolerance invites people to be tolerant (it is not such an easy task to make the intolerable tolerable!), and how this rhetoric reframes the issues of religious toleration to make it a mainstream value. Examining major literary works by John Milton, John Locke, John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, and others, this study also builds upon recent scholarship about toleration that emphasizes its political functions (for example, the way that its division of the world into the tolerant and the intolerant, the civilized and the barbarian, could be used to justify empire). Thus, I argue that the need to control the threat of violence posed by religion in England during this period is itself a political and ideological effort that performs its own kind of violence on both the radical potential of debate in the public sphere and on the tolerating subject, who must be induced to devalue their religious commitments for the sake of civil community.

Russell Arnold (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies) – to prepare for publication an article titled "As Though We Ourselves Came Out of Egypt"

This article investigates the structure and interpretation of the biblical passage describing the origins of Israel’s Passover ritual and its rules for practice in future generations (Exodus 12-13). This project originated in a graduate seminar on Exodus. In that original work, I completed a detailed investigation of the grammar and structure of this complex passage. In the years since, I have pursued research, including my dissertation, in the ritual practice of ancient Jewish communities such as the Qumran community. The present project allows me to apply some of the methodological approaches and ritual theories used in my dissertation to biblical ritual practice. My earlier structural analysis of the Exodus passage will be greatly enhanced by developing a methodological approach that moves the focus away from the author of the text and onto the impact on its readers. I will also be developing the connections with ritual studies in order to strengthen my claims that this text not only describes a ritual practice, but the reading of this text constitutes a ritual experience as well.

Scholars have often discussed the Passover (Pesah) ritual itself as a rite of passage marking Israel’s transition into nationhood. While the ritual is surely significant for this transition, I intend to argue that the text of Exodus 12-13 has been structured in such a way as to enable the reader also to experience, in some way, just such a transition. Rites of passage are characterized by transition through a dangerous liminal space, which stands betwixt and between places of clearly defined positions in society. Close investigation of the words and phrases used to describe the Pesah/Matzot (Passover/Unleavened Bread) complex, in these chapters, indicates that these chapters literarily express both the danger and the uncertainty of this space. The narrative of Israel’s redemption from Egyptian slavery is interrupted abruptly by these ritual instructions at precisely its climax. This interruption serves to heighten the tension by withholding the conclusion. Chapter 12 begins with the announcement of a new calendar. This indicates that all time shall now be calculated from the month of the exodus.

The ritual descriptions also introduce into the story a mortal danger, the possibility that God might destroy Israel with the Egyptians (notably absent from the previous plagues). The blood of the sacrifice provides protection from this danger, but even this protection must be left behind as the sacrifice must be totally consumed before morning. In the Matzot descriptions, that danger of being cut off, threatens even the readers, if they are not careful about separating themselves from leaven. The great complexity of this passage, as well as its centrality to the development of Judaism, makes it a perfect place to highlight the multidirectional relationships between text and ritual practice.

Melanie Finney (Associate Professor of Communication and Theatre) – to research the history of the "Troubles' of Northern Ireland"

This endeavor links well with the “When Tragedy Strikes the Academy” Faculty Fellowship project I am completing. This new project examines how a community has tried to cope with trauma and loss. Further, it examines how a community still grapples with how to construct a new identity for itself.

First and foremost, I want to gain a broad base of knowledge that will help provide the social, historical, and political context for an informed analysis of the conflict in Northern Ireland. I want to develop a research program that examines the continuing cultural effects of the ‘Troubles’ and the ways in which the identity conflicts in this region are handled. The murals found in Belfast are a byproduct of the conflict, as they serve both to memorialize the fallen and promote (or decry) their causes. But what are the deeply ingrained issues that prevent these communities from finding reconciliation and peace? I need time and resources to research and learn about this new area.

Richard Lynch (Instructor of Philosophy) – to develop a new course for PHIL 211 titled "Ethics and Business"

This course will integrate three perspectives on ethics and business: 1) analysis of particular cases and dilemmas that are directly relevant for business and management? 2) reflection upon core values and justification? 3) consideration of broader contexts and frameworks of business that enrich the particular cases.

These might be addressed as follows: In the first week of class, we begin with a particularly pithy casestudy to get students to actively consider the range of ethical and moral questions at play: How might we address this problem? What’s at stake in the various possible resolutions? What values do we have as resources to make decisions? And what are the bases for good decisions? The next six weeks will consider theoretical approaches and justifications. Over the next 34 weeks, we will again consider a number of case studies – but now not only to understand the problems at stake but to try to address them substantively. In the final 34 weeks of the semester, we would turn to broader perspectives and questions of ethics and business.