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Ara: The Life and Legacy of a Notre Dame Legend captures the personality, courage, and character of a great man who faced adversity on and off the field.Through his unprecedented access to Ara Parseghian's personal files, author Mark O. Hubbard explores the coach's innovative philosophy, organization, strategy, tactics, and motivational techniques with details to satisfy even the most knowledgeable football aficionado.Hubbard chronicles Ara's childhood and Catholic upbringing, his success as a football player, and the development of his coaching credentials at Miami of Ohio and Northwestern before delving into his sensational career at the University of Notre Dame.From the moment Ara arrived on campus, the student body and the players were electrified, and Ara's first season concluded with a dramatic reversal of the Fighting Irish's fortunes as they competed for the national title. The Hall of Famer remains one of the most successful football coaches in Notre Dame history, amassing a career record of 95-17-4 and leading the Fighting Irish to undisputed national championships in 1966 and 1973.After retiring from coaching, Ara became a successful businessman and television commentator, but his finest hours were spent in humanitarian causes, raising millions of dollars for medical research after members of his family were stricken with multiple sclerosis and Niemann-Pick Type C.Peppered with historical context and humor, this lively biography of a Notre Dame legend will delight all sports fans, providing a chance to revisit college football's golden age.

Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism examines the tenacious, lingering impact of European colonial ideology on religion and politics around the world.Even though the formal structures of colonialism have crumbled, with a few notable exceptions, European colonial ideology continues to operate across the globe, resulting in limited, nationalistic conceptualizations of religion and politics. Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism shows convincingly that not only has colonialism had a devastating impact on the colonized, but its reach has turned inward to erode the colonizer's own social and political systems.By examining the colonial violence constitutive of liberal political ideology, the continued oppression of Muslims in Europe in the name of security, and the way neoliberal economics bends religious hermeneutics to its will, the authors of Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism call attention to the threats that face our world today. They also point to potential sites of hope--for example, the work of a priest in the Balkans who seeks to build solidarity across religious differences; groups in Africa who are constructing decolonial religious imaginaries; and the Islamo-futurism of Dune, which haltingly imagines a form of modernity beyond the West.Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Santiago Slabodsky, Nadia Fadil, S. Sayyid, Luca Mavelli, Edmund Frettingham, Cecelia Lynch, Slavica Jakelic, and Gil Anidjar

Retrieving Freedom is a provocative, big-picture book, taking a long view of the "rise and fall" of the classical understanding of freedom.In response to the evident shortcomings of the notion of freedom that dominates contemporary discourse, Retrieving Freedom seeks to return to the sources of the Western tradition to recover a more adequate understanding. This book begins by setting forth the ancient Greek conception--summarized from the conclusion of D. C. Schindler's previous tour de force of political and moral reasoning, Freedom from Reality--and the ancient Hebrew conception, arguing that at the heart of the Christian vision of humanity is a novel synthesis of the apparently opposed views of the Greeks and Jews. This synthesis is then taken as a measure that guides an in-depth exploration of landmark figures framing the history of the Christian appropriation of the classical tradition. Schindler conducts his investigation through five different historical periods, focusing in each case on a polarity, a pair of figures who represent the spectrum of views from that time: Plotinus and Augustine from late antiquity, Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor from the patristic period, Anselm and Bernard from the early middle ages, Bonaventure and Aquinas from the high middle ages, and, finally, Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus from the late middle ages. In the end, we rediscover dimensions of freedom that have gone missing in contemporary discourse, and thereby identify tasks that remain to be accomplished. Schindler's masterful study will interest philosophers, political theorists, and students and scholars of intellectual history, especially those who seek an alternative to contemporary philosophical understandings of freedom.

Travis Pickell explores the paradoxes of choice in modern dying and the ways Christian theology can aid in navigating the relationship between moral agency and dignity at the end of life.Burdened Agency addresses the problem of death and dying through Christian theology and ethics. In previous centuries, death was something that simply "happened" to us. To choose how or when one died was the exception, not the rule. However, due to advances in modern medicine, individuals are increasingly required to make concrete choices about the nature and timing of death. Modernity, with its emphasis on individualism, complicates this further because we are increasingly bereft of cultural and religious guidance regarding death. This gives rise to the phenomenon of "burdened agency" the predicament of having to make such difficult choices with so little to help us.This engaging book offers a historical and philosophical account of the origins of our situation of burdened agency, as well as a Christian solution to the problems that it raises. Looking to theologians such as Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Stanley Hauerwas, Pickell devises a radically countercultural approach to death and dying rooted in Christian theological commitments and enacted in the practices of baptism, Eucharist, and prayer.

In the context of the global decline of democracy, The Authoritarian Divide analyzes the tactics that populist leaders in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador have used to polarize their countries.Political polarization is traditionally viewed as the result of competing left/right ideologies. In The Authoritarian Divide, Orçun Selçuk argues that, regardless of ideology, polarization is driven by dominant populist leaders who deliberately divide constituents by cultivating a dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion. This practice, known as affective leader polarization, stymies compromise and undermines the democratic process.Drawing on multiple qualitative and quantitative methodologies for support, as well as content from propaganda media such as public speeches, Muhtar Meetings, Aló Presidente, and Enlace Ciudadano, Selçuk details and analyzes the tactics used by three well-known populist leaders to fuel affective leader polarization: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Selçuk's work provides a rubric for a better understanding of--and potential defense against--the rise in polarizing populism across the globe.

Bioethics after God explores the relationship between morality and medicine in a society that has denied the existence of God.Medicine and bioethics are going through profound changes in the Western world. Practices that prior generations would have recognized as morally impermissible, such as abortion, eugenics, and euthanasia, are becoming central components of modern health care. Bioethics after God argues that in the process of rejecting its Christian roots, the Western world has upended traditional understandings of truth that are central to both scientific and moral judgment. The effect is being felt throughout medicine as healthcare professionals increasingly work without the context and guidance provided by traditional Christian ethics.Cherry uses the conceptual framework of "weak bioethics"--bioethics solely informed by secular knowledge--to delve into shifting concepts of health and disease, the active embrace of ethically fraught practices, and technological developments such as brain transplantation and humanoid robots designed for sexual activity. The implications of a bioethics after God are wide-ranging and profound, and Cherry challenges us to consider the repercussions of pushing forward in medicine without the support of a solid ethical foundation.

Challenging the prevailing understanding of the authority of law, Daniel Mark offers a theory of moral obligation that is rooted both in command and in the law's orientation to the common good.When and why do we have an obligation to obey the law? Prevailing theories in the philosophy of law, starting with the work of H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz, fail to provide definitive answers regarding the nature of legal obligation. In this highly original and effective new work, Daniel Mark argues that there is a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law simply because it is the law. In Mark's view, the best concept of law--one that allows for the possibility of justified authority and obligation--defines law as a set of commands oriented to the common good. Legal obligation, he proposes, shares defining features with moral obligation and with religious obligation while aligning wholly with neither.This philosophically coherent view of legal obligation offers a viable framework for analyzing important and seemingly paradoxical puzzles about the law, such as why civil disobedience is punished as lawbreaking or why war-crimes trials for legal but immoral acts present a moral quandary.By reconciling the concept of law as command with the role of law in promoting the common good, The Nature of Law provides an original and important scholarly contribution to the fields of legal philosophy and political thought.

The Catholic Case against War demonstrates how the Catholic mantra "Never again war!" reflects a set of powerfully realistic teachings on war and peace.Over the last five decades, the Catholic Church has emerged as a powerful critic of war and as an advocate for its alternatives. At the same time, researchers of armed conflict have produced a considerable body of scholarship on war and its prevention. The Catholic Case against War compares these seemingly disparate lines of thought and finds a remarkable harmony between the two.Drawing on years of Vatican documents and papal statements, political scientist David Carroll Cochran clearly presents the key elements of the Church's case against war. Far from a naïve, optimistic call for peace, these teachings are consistent with the empirical research on the realities of contemporary warfare. The result is a look not only at the explicit moral case against war developed by the Vatican but also at its remarkable realism and relevance to world conflict today.

This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.

This latest book from veteran O'Neillian Edward L. Shaughnessy examines the influence of the Irish playwright's Catholic heritage on his moral imagination. Critics, due to O'Neill's early renunciation of faith at age 15, have mostly overlooked this presence in his work. While Shaughnessy makes no attempt to reclaim him for Catholicism, he uncovers evidence that O'Neill retained the imprint of his Irish Catholic upbringing and acculturation in his work.Shaughnessy discusses several key plays from the O'Neill cannon, such as Long Day's Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, and Mourning Becomes Electra, as well as the lesser-known Ile and Days Without End.Winner of the Irish in America Manuscript competition, Down the Days and Down the Nights: Eugene O'Neill's Catholic Sensibility is a compelling investigation into the psyche of one of the most brilliant, internationally honored playwrights of our time.

Fueled by new data from the Varieties of Democracy project, Democratic Quality in Southern Europe takes a close look at the democratic trajectories of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain over the past fifty years.

Aaron Alexander Zubia argues that the Epicurean roots of David Hume's philosophy gave rise to liberalism's unrelenting grip on the modern political imagination.

Coming in the wake of momentous changes in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, Germany and the movement for democracy in China, Celebrating Peace presents original essays by thinkers and writers to provide reflections on peace that go beyond current events and point towards extending and building peace. This volume intends not only to celebrate peace but to contribute to an understanding of it through philosophical, theological and literary explorations.Contributors include: Part I: Just War, Perpetual Peace, and the Nation-StateJohn J. Gilligan, John H. Yoder, Sissela Bok, and Stephen ToulminPart II: Christian Conceptions of PeaceTrutz Rendtorff, Jurgen Moltmann, and Paul S. MinearPart II: Hindu and Buddhist Views of PeaceGerlad J. Larson, Ninian Smart, and Bhukhu ParekPart IV: Making Peace: Prophecy, protest and poetryDaniel Berrigan, S.J., and Denise Levertov

In Yeats and Afterwords, contributors articulate W. B. Yeats's powerful, multilayered sense of belatedness as part of his complex literary method. They explore how Yeats deliberately positioned himself at various historical endpoints--of Romanticism, of the Irish colonial experience, of the Ascendancy, of civilization itself--and, in doing so, created a distinctively modernist poetics of iteration capable of registering the experience of finality and loss. While the crafting of such a poetics remained a constant throughout Yeats's career, the particular shape it took varied over time, depending on which lost object Yeats was contemplating. By tracking these vicissitudes, the volume offers new ways of thinking about the overarching trajectory of Yeats's poetic engagements.Yeats and Afterwords proceeds in three stages, involving past-pastness, present-pastness, and future-pastness. The first, "The Last Romantics," examines how Yeats repeats classic motifs and verbal formulations from his literary forebears in order to express the circumscribed cultural options with which he struggles. The essays in this section often uncover Yeats's relation to sources and precursors that are surprising or have been relatively neglected by scholars. The second section, "Yeats and Afterwords," looks at how Yeats subjects his own past sentiments, insights, and styles to critical negation, crafting his own afterwords in various ways. The last section, "Yeats's Aftertimes," explores how, thanks to the stature Yeats achieved through its invention, his style of belatedness itself comes to be reiterated by other writers. Yeats is a towering figure in literary history, hard to follow and harder to avoid, and later writers often found themselves producing words that were, in some sense, his afterwords.

At the heart of the University of Notre Dame's campus sits the Main Building with its trademark golden dome. Flanking it on the west is the equally distinctive Sacred Heart Basilica, and on the east is the building known today as Washington Hall. Washington Hall at Notre Dame is the first history of this building--the university's first performing arts center--and illuminates the ways in which Washington Hall has served as the prime venue of secular communal assembly for the university and surrounding communities since 1864. In addition to detailing the history of Washington Hall, Mark Pilkinton, a theatre historian, emphasizes the art form of theatre and its development at Notre Dame, but also discusses the contributions of music, debate, and lectures, as well as the introduction of the "new media" of film, radio, and television. Among many other fascinating stories, the author recounts the early commencements and "exhibitions" that included students' orations in Latin and Greek, chronicles the history of the ghost of Washington Hall, and describes the contributions Knute Rockne made to the performing arts at the university, both as a student actor and as a faculty member. Lavishly illustrated with 50 halftones and 5 line drawings, Washington Hall at Notre Dame offers a fascinating history of Notre Dame through the prism of its first performing arts center and adds to our understanding of American Catholic higher education and American history in general.

Walls: Essays, 1985-1990, Kenneth McClane's first book of autobiographical essays (originally published in 1991), is closely related to his second collection, Color, published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009. Walls is a powerful and deeply moving meditation on relationships. It begins with an essay on the death of McClane's brother, Paul, which "e;changed everything. Time, my work, everything found a new calculus."e; His brother's life and death are present in some way in all the essays that follow "e;A Death in the Family,"e; as McClane tells us about giving a poetry reading in a maximum-security prison; his experience of being one of the first two African American students to attend America's oldest private school; teaching creative writing; his sister, Adrienne; a divestment protest at Cornell; and his encounters with James Baldwin. McClane has written a new preface to this paperback edition of Walls. "e;Walls reminds us of the differences that set us apart, dividing our world into good kids and troublemakers, winners and losers, the beautiful and the damned. The anodyne for exile in these essays is McClane's common but by no means commonplace lexicon, at once evocative and spare, that leads us to painful but honest connection and the luminous possibility of empathy."e; --William L. Andrews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "e;Kenneth McClane's Walls is a collection of exquisitely crafted autobiographical essays that rivals the most profound nonfictional writings of James Baldwin in its skillful investigation of the hidden recesses of the always-throbbing black American soul. Indeed, Walls is a beautifully calibrated exploration of the challenges faced by a courageously self-aware--and refreshingly self-revealing--black intellectual whose journey to and in the American mainstream is both menacing and exhilarating."e; --Michael Awkward, University of Michigan

Pastoral poetry has long been considered a signature Renaissance mode: originating in late sixteenth-century England via a rediscovery of classical texts, it is concerned with self-fashioning and celebrating the court. But, as Katherine C. Little demonstrates in Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Medieval Poetry, the pastoral mode is in fact indebted to medieval representations of rural labor.Little offers a new literary history for the pastoral, arguing that the authors of the first English pastorals used rural laborers familiar from medieval texts--plowmen and shepherds--to reflect on the social, economic, and religious disruptions of the sixteenth century. In medieval writing, these figures were particularly associated with the reform of the individual and the social world: their work also stood for the penance and good works required of Christians, the care of the flock required of priests, and the obligations of all people to work within their social class. By the sixteenth century, this reformism had taken on a dangerous set of associations--with radical Protestantism, peasants' revolts, and complaints about agrarian capitalism. Pastoral poetry rewrites and empties out this radical potential, making the countryside safe to write about again.Moving from William Langland's Piers Plowman and the medieval shepherd plays, through the Piers Plowman-tradition, to Edmund Spenser's pastorals, Little's reconstructed literary genealogy discovers the "other" past of pastoral in the medieval and Reformation traditions of "writing rural labor."

Since the 1973 publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez's groundbreaking work A Theology of Liberation, liberation theology's central premise of the preferential option for the poor has become one of the most important yet controversial theological themes of the twentieth century. As the situation for many of the world's poor worsens, it becomes ever more important to ensure that the option for the poor remains not only a vibrant theological concept but also a practical framework for living out the gift and challenge of Christian faith. The Preferential Option for the Poor beyond Theology draws on a diverse group of contributors to explore how disciplines as varied as law, economics, politics, the environment, science, liberal arts, film, and education can help us understand putting a commitment to the option for the poor into practice. The central focus of the book revolves around the question: How can one live a Christian life in a world of destitution? The contributors address the theological concept of the option for the poor as well as the ways it can shape our social, economic, political, educational, and environmental approaches to poverty. Their creative examples serve as an inspiration to all those who are seeking to put their talents at the service of human need and the building of a more just and humane world.

Fr. Robert Griffin, C.S.C. (1925-1999), was a beloved member of the Notre Dame community. With his cocker spaniel, Darby O'Gill, he was instantly recognizable on campus. He was well known for his priestly work counseling students as university chaplain for thirty years, his summer ministry to the homeless and parishioners in New York City, and his weekly columns in the student newspaper, The Observer, in which he invited the campus community to reflect with him on the challenges and joys of being Catholic in a time of enormous social and religious change. This collection draws together essays that Griffin wrote for Notre Dame Magazine between 1972 and 1994. In them, he considers many of the challenges that beset church and campus, such as the laicization of priests, premarital sex, the erosion of institutional authority, intolerance toward gay people, and failure of fidelity to the teachings of the church. Griffin also ruminates on the distress that human beings experience in the ordinariness of their lives--the difficulty of communication in families, grief over the loss of family and friends, the agonies of isolation, and the need for forgiveness. Griffin's shrewd insights still ring true for people today. His efforts to temper the winds of institutional rules, cultural change, and personal suffering reveal a mind keenly attuned to the need for understanding human limitations and to the presence of grace in times of change. Griffin quotes from the works of literary modernists, such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, whose novels and short stories he loved; in these allusions and in his own reflections and experiences, Griffin bridges the spiritual and the secular and offers hope for reconciliation and comfort.

Since the publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez's 1973 groundbreaking work, A Theology of Liberation, much has been written on liberation theology and its central premise of the preferential option for the poor. Arguably, this has been one of the most important yet controversial theological themes of the twentieth century. As globalization creates greater gaps between the rich and the poor, and as the situation for many of the world's poor worsens, there is an ever greater need to understand the gift and challenge of Christian faith from the context of the poor and marginalized of our society. This volume draws on the thought of leading international scholars and explores how the Christian tradition can help us understand the theological foundations for the option for the poor. The central focus of the book revolves around the question, How can one live a Christian life in a world of destitution? The contributors are concerned not only with a social, economic, or political understanding of poverty but above all with the option for the poor as a theological concept.While these essays are rooted in a solid grounding of our present "reality," they look to the past to understand some of the central truths of Christian faith and to the future as a source of Christian hope. Following Gustavo Gutiérrez's essay on the multidimensionality of poverty, Elsa Tamez, Hugh Page, Jr., Brian Daley, and Jon Sobrino identify a central theological premise: poverty is contrary to the will of God. Drawing on scripture, the writings of the early fathers, the witness of Christian martyrs, and contemporary theological reflection, they argue that poverty represents the greatest challenge to Christian faith and discipleship. David Tracy and J. Matthew Ashley carry their reflection forward by examining the option for the poor in light of apocalyptic thought. Virgilio Elizondo, Patrick Kalilombe, María Pilar Aquino, M. Shawn Copeland, and Mary Catherine Hilkert examine the challenges of poverty with respect to culture, Africa, race, and gender. Casiano Floristán and Luis Maldonado explore the relationship between poverty, sacramentality, and popular religiosity. The final two essays by Aloysius Pieris and Michael Signer consider the option for the poor in relationship to other major world religions, particularly an Asian theology of religions and the meaning of care for the poor within Judaism.

The Open Light: Poets from Notre Dame, 1991-2008 celebrates the distinction and diversity of poets associated with the university during these nearly two decades. This anthology is a companion volume to James Walton's earlier collection, The Space Between: Poets from Notre Dame, 1950-1990. The twenty-four poets represented in The Open Light range from National Endowment for the Arts Award-winner Beth Ann Fennelly, who received her undergraduate degree from Notre Dame, to the Nobel Prize nominee Bei Dao, who taught as a visiting professor at Notre Dame between 2005 and 2007. All have been students at Notre Dame, members of the faculty, or both. Each has published at least one volume of poetry.As evidenced by the founding of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program in 1991, creative writing has thrived over the years and grown more essential to the intellectual identity and artistic ambitions of the university. Notre Dame's M.F.A. graduates, who have published poetry collections and fiction with both commercial publishers and independent presses, have garnered considerable praise from the literary establishment. In the preface to this anthology, Orlando Ricardo Menes presents a brief historical account of poetry at Notre Dame since 1991, emphasizing the remarkable range of talent and accomplishment of its poets, and the establishment of both The Notre Dame Review and the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize. The plethora of voices included in this collection and the poems themselves provide a rich and vibrant legacy of poetry at Notre Dame.Contributors: Francisco Aragón, Robert Archambeau, Bei Dao, Karni Pal Bhati, Kimberly M. Blaeser, Jenny Boully, Jacque Vaught Brogan, Stacy Cartledge, Michael Coffey, Seamus Deane, Joe Francis Doerr, Kevin Ducey, Cornelius Eady, Beth Ann Fennelly, Kevin Hart, Mary Kathleen Hawley, Joyelle McSweeney, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Thomas O'Grady, John Phillip Santos, Michael Smith, Anthony Walton, Henry Weinfield, and John Wilkinson.

One of the most exciting developments in recent literary studies bases interpretation on a new understanding of bodily aspects of text. Contributors Mary Carruthers, Michael Camille, Seth Lerer, and Carolyn Dinshaw bring various disciplinary perspectives to this intriguing subject.The method employed here views the body as a text to be read. Though the approaches of these essays are widely varied, three concerns figure and refigure themselves throughout the book: the gendered body and the copied book as locus of pain, pleasure, and desire. They will be of immense interest to medievalists and other scholars of language, philosophy, history, art history, and gender studies.Frese and O'Keeffe explore the liminal areas between the book and the body from contemporary perspectives. Though the approaches of these essays are widely varied, three concerns figure throughout the book: the gendered body and the copied book as locus of pain, pleasure, and desire.

On 31 May 1310, at the Place de Grève in Paris, the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris read out a sentence that declared Marguerite "called Porete," a beguine from Hainault, to be a relapsed heretic, released her to secular authority for punishment, and ordered that all copies of a book she had written be confiscated. William next consigned Guiard of Cressonessart, an apocalyptic activist in the tradition of Joachim of Fiore and a would-be defender of Marguerite, to perpetual imprisonment. Over several months, William of Paris conducted inquisitorial processes against them, complete with multiple consultations of experts in theology and canon law. Though Guiard recanted at the last moment and thus saved his life, Marguerite went to her execution the day after her sentencing. The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor is an analysis of the inquisitorial trials, their political as well as ecclesiastical context, and their historical significance. Marguerite Porete was the first female Christian mystic burned at the stake after authoring a book, and the survival of her work makes her case absolutely unique. The Mirror of Simple Souls, rediscovered in the twentieth century and reconnected to Marguerite's name only a half-century ago, is now recognized as one of the most daring, vibrant, and original examples of the vernacular theology and beguine mysticism that emerged in late thirteenth-century Christian Europe. Field provides a new and detailed reconstruction of hitherto neglected aspects of Marguerite's life, particularly of her trial, as well as the first extended consideration of her inquisitor's maneuvers and motivations. Additionally, he gives the first complete English translation of all of the trial documents and relevant contemporary chronicles, as well as the first English translation of Arnau of Vilanova's intriguing "Letter to Those Wearing the Leather Belt," directed to Guiard's supporters and urging them to submit to ecclesiastical authority.

St. Jerome (347-420) was undoubtedly one of the most learned of the Latin Church Fathers. He mastered nearly the entirety of the antecedent Christian exegetical and theological tradition, both Greek and Latin, and he knew Hebrew and Aramaic. We have the fruit of that knowledge in his most famous editorial achievement, the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. Declared "the greatest doctor in explaining the Scriptures" by the Council of Trent, Jerome has been regarded by the Latin Church as its preeminent scriptural commentator. Much of Jerome's prodigious exegetical output, however, has never been translated into English. In this volume, Thomas P. Scheck presents the first English translation of St. Jerome's commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon. Jerome followed the Greek exegesis of Origen of Alexandria, proceeding step by step and producing the most valuable of all of the patristic commentaries on these three epistles of St. Paul. Jerome's exegesis is characterized by extensive learning, acute historical and theological criticism, lively and vigorous exposition, and homiletical exhortation. Scheck's translation is supplemented with thorough annotations and a detailed critical introduction that sets the context for reading Jerome's commentaries. It is an invaluable reference for patristics scholars, historical theologians, Church historians, and New Testament scholars.

In the archetypal confrontation between the Athenian lawmaker Solon and the Greek poet Thespis, Solon confronts Thespis after seeing him act in a tragedy. He asks Thespis if he is not ashamed to tell so many lies before so many people. In response to Thespis's reply--that it was no harm to say or do so in a play--Solon vehemently blames Thespis for a professional deceit that threatens to pervade society.Solon's criticism of Thespis points to a fundamental motivation for Solon and Thespis: an exploration of the long-standing antagonism between law and theater, between drama's inconsequential fiction and the real world's socially consequential fact, at a crucial moment--the sixteenth century--in England's cultural and legal formation.The literary critics and historians in this volume examine that antagonism and find it revelatory of English Renaissance law and Renaissance theater's institutional connections and interdependences at a time when both were emerging as powerful forces in English society. Renaissance legal processes were subject to dramatic and public representation, appropriation, and evaluation. Renaissance commercial theater, often populated by law students and practitioners, was both subject to the law and subversive of it. The contributors demonstrate that theater and law were not simply relevant to each other in the early modern period; they explore the physical spaces in which early modern law and drama were performed, the social and imaginative practices that energized such spaces, and the rhetorical patterns that make the two institutions far less discrete and far more collaborative than has previously been recognized.

In his latest book, Marshall Gregory begins with the premise that our lives are saturated with stories, ranging from magazines, books, films, television, and blogs to the words spoken by politicians, pastors, and teachers. He then explores the ethical implication of this nearly universal human obsession with narratives. Through careful readings of Katherine Anne Porter's "e;The Grave,"e; Thurber's "e;The Catbird Seat,"e; as well as David Copperfield and Wuthering Heights, Gregory asks (and answers) the question: How do the stories we absorb in our daily lives influence the kinds of persons we turn out to be? Shaped by Stories is accessible to anyone interested in ethics, popular culture, and education.

The topic of Shakespeare and religion is a perennial one, and the recent "turn to religion" in historical and literary scholarship has pushed it to the fore. Besides speculating about Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs and allegiance, historians and literary critics writing about early modern England are reexamining the religious dynamics of the period and emphasizing the ways in which old, new, and emerging religious cultures coexisted in conflicting hybrid and unstable forms. The contributors to Shakespeare and Religion: Early Modern and Postmodern Perspectives deal with the topic of Shakespeare and religion from two points of view not always considered complementary--that of the historical approach to Shakespearean drama in its early modern contexts, and that of postmodern philosophy and theology. The first illuminates the culture-specific features of the plays, whereas the second emphasizes their transhistorical qualities and the relevance of the deep religious and philosophical issues surfacing in early modern culture to contemporary religious struggles and awareness.

In Ruling Women, Stacy S. Klein explores how queens functioned as imaginative figures in Anglo-Saxon texts. Focusing on pre-Conquest works ranging from Bede to Ælfric, Klein argues that Anglo-Saxon writers drew upon accounts of legendary royal wives to construct cultural ideals of queenship during a time when that institution was undergoing profound change. Also a study of gender, her book examines how Anglo-Saxon writers used women of the highest social rank to forge broader cultural ideals of femininity, even as they used female voices to articulate far less comfortable social truths. Capitalizing on queens' strong associations with intercession, Anglo-Saxon writers consistently looked to royal women as mediatory figures for negotiating sustained tensions, and sometimes overt antagonisms, among different peoples, institutions, and systems of belief. Yet as authors appropriated legendary queens and inserted them into contemporary Anglo-Saxon culture, these royal "peaceweavers" simultaneously threatened to destroy existing unities and to expose the fragility of seemingly entrenched social formations. Drawing on the strengths of historical, typological, and literary criticism, feminist theory, and cultural studies, Ruling Women offers us a way to understand Anglo-Saxon texts as both literary monuments and historical documents, and thus to illuminate the ideological fissures and cultural stakes of Anglo-Saxon literary practice.