Böcker utgivna av University of Notre Dame Press

Gregory the Great (bishop of Rome from 590 to 604) is one of the most significant figures in the history of Christianity. His theological works framed medieval Christian attitudes toward mysticism, exegesis, and the role of the saints in the life of the church. The scale of Gregory's administrative activity in both the ecclesial and civic affairs of Rome also helped to make possible the formation of the medieval papacy. Gregory disciplined malcontent clerics, negotiated with barbarian rulers, and oversaw the administration of massive estates that employed thousands of workers. Scholars have often been perplexed by the two sides of Gregory-the monkish theologian and the calculating administrator. George E. Demacopoulos's study is the first to advance the argument that there is a clear connection between the pontiff's thought and his actions. By exploring unique aspects of Gregory's ascetic theology, wherein the summit of Christian perfection is viewed in terms of service to others, Demacopoulos argues that the very aspects of Gregory's theology that made him distinctive were precisely the factors that structured his responses to the practical crises of his day. With a comprehensive understanding of Christian history that resists the customary bifurcation between Christian East and Christian West, Demacopoulos situates Gregory within the broader movements of Christianity and the Roman world that characterize the shift from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. This fresh reading of Gregory's extensive theological and practical works underscores the novelty and nuance of Gregory as thinker and bishop.

Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) originated much of twentieth- and twenty-first-century theology's renewed interest in aesthetics. Von Balthasar's theology is both poetic and philosophical, and while this combination is often recognized, it calls for an explanation. In Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Risk of Art and Being, Anne M. Carpenter explores von Balthasar's use of poetry and poetic language, and she offers a detailed analysis of his philosophical presuppositions. Carpenter argues that von Balthasar uses poets and poetic language to make theological arguments because this poetic way of speaking expresses metaphysical truth without reducing one to the other. Carpenter begins with von Balthasar's very early interests in music, literature, and philosophy, in particular his work, Apocalypse of the German Soul. She explores Glory of the Lord and the trilogy, moving through his despair over the possibility of reconciling art and theology. She uncovers the major characteristics of von Balthasar's metaphysical thinking, discussing his interactions with Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Martin Heidegger to firmly link Christology, metaphysics, and the expressiveness of language. The book concludes by marshaling its themes into a focused evaluation of von Balthasar's "e;redeemed"e; theo-poetic as it comes to expression in the poetry of G. M. Hopkins. Carpenter resituates and reevaluates Hopkins's poetry in a new context, placing him in the school of Aquinas rather than Scotus, and shows us how metaphysics is necessary for a vigorous understanding of language.

During the past half century, Latin America has evolved from a region of political instability and frequent dictatorships into one of elected governments. Although its societies and economies have undergone sweeping changes, high levels of violence have remained a persistent problem. Religious Responses to Violence: Human Rights in Latin America Past and Present offers rich resources to understand how religion has perceived and addressed different forms of violence, from the political and state violence of the 1970s and 1980s to the drug traffickers and youth gangs of today. The contributors offer many fresh insights into contemporary criminal violence and reconsider past interpretations of political violence, liberation theology, and human rights in light of new questions and evidence. In contrast to many other studies of violence, this book explores its moral dimensions-up close in lived experience-and the real consequences of human agency. Alexander Wilde provides a thoughtful substantive introduction, followed by thematic chapters on "rights," "violence," and case studies of ten countries throughout the region. The book breaks new ground examining common responses as well as differences between Catholic and Evangelical pastoral accompaniment. These new studies focus on the specifically religious character of their responses-how they relate their mission and faith to violence in different contexts-to better understand how and why they have taken action.

With the goal of showing the effect of domestic factors on the performance of poverty alleviation strategies in Latin America, Tracy Beck Fenwick explores the origins and rise of conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) in the region, and then traces the politics and evolution of specific programmes in Brazil and Argentina.

Douglas Finn seeks to redress several imbalances with respect to Augustine, imbalances that have one of their hermeneutic causes in a Hegelian-influenced theological tradition. Finn argues that common readings of Augustine focus too much on his De Trinitate, books 8-15, betraying a modern prejudice against considering sermons and biblical commentaries serious theological work.

The essay form that Aers has chosen for his book contributes to the effectiveness of the argument he develops in tandem with the structure of Langland's poem: he sustains and tests his argument in a series of steps or "e;passus,"e; a Langlandian mode of proceeding. His essay unfolds an argument about medieval and early modern forms of Constantinian Christianity and reformation, and the way in which Langland's own vision of a secularizing, de-Christianizing late medieval church draws him toward the idea of a church of "e;fools,"e; beyond papacy, priesthood, hierarchy, and institutions. For Aers, Langland opens up serious diachronic issues concerning Christianity and culture. His essay includes a brief summary of the poem and modern translations alongside the original medieval English. It will challenge specialists on Langland's poem and supply valuable resources of thought for anyone who continues to struggle with the church of today.

In this ethnography of Catholic religious practice in Fresno, California, David P. Sandell unveils ritualized storytelling that Mexican and Mexican American people of faith use to cope with racism and poverty associated with colonial, capitalist, and modern social conditions. Based on in-depth interviews and extensive field research conducted in 2000 and 2001, Sandell's work shows how people use story and religious ritual (including the Matachines dance, the Mass, the rosary, pilgrimage, and processions) to create a space in their lives free from oppression. These people give meaning to the expression "e;open your heart,"e; the book argues, through ritual and stories, enabling them to engage the mind and body in a movement toward, as one participant said, "e;the sacred center"e; of their lives. Sandell argues that the storytelling represents a tradition of poetics that provides an alternative, emancipatory epistemology. Americo Paredes, for example, defined this tradition in his scholarship of border balladry. According to Paredes, storytelling with ritual elements raises a feature of performance characterized as a convivial disposition and shared sense of identity among people who call themselves Mexican not for national identification but for a cultural one, understood as "e;Greater Mexico."e; Sandell contributes to this tradition and achieves an understanding of Greater Mexico characterized by people whose stories and rituals help them find common ground, unity, and wholeness through an open heart.

Seeks a vision like that of the great circle of love an old Bedouin described to Lawrence of Arabia, ""The love is from God and of God and towards God."" This inspirational work features a series of meditations by the author, enriched by his wide-ranging insights and quotations from the areas of theology, philosophy, and literature.

Combining a comprehensive account of Freudian theory with a synthesis of contemporary psychoanalysis, this volume details the development of analytic theory. The author traces this evolution from the earliest stages of Freud's psychoanalytic thinking to developments such as relations theory.

Examines the question of how crime and crime fighting impact the consolidation of democracy and the rule of law in Latin America. This book evaluates broadly a relative dearth of hard data about the Latin American security situation. It is suitable for those in the fields of Latin American and comparative law, political science, and sociology.

These essays analyze the importance of Christian democracy in European politics. Contributions from American and European historians and political scientists explore the historical roots of the European Christian democratic movement in Catholic social doctrine and political practice.

This collection represents Arturo Vivante's quest to use writing to uncover hidden truths. Although not explicitly autobiographical, many of these stories do have an autobiographical tone. Vivante's stories often stem from the observation of a bright or meaningful moment and always centre on exploring the ideas and emotions of his characters.

10 Catholic scholars, all recipients of the University of Dayton's Marianist Award, explore how their faith as Catholics has influenced their scholarship and how, in turn, their scholarship has affected their faith. They reveal how they have bridged the gap between the two.

This collection of essays assess the continuing relevance of Darwin's work from the perspectives of biological science, history, philosophy, and theology. The contributors focus on three primary areas: developments in evolutionary biology that open up new ground for interdisciplinary dialogue; reflections on human evolution; and new reflections on theology and evolution.

Gathers together ten philosophical essays by the late Frederick J. Crosson, scholar, author, and professor of philosophy in the Program of Liberal Studies and Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Themes common to all are the nature of religion and its forms, its genealogy, and its history.

This study offers insight into the challenges and triumphs of beginning teachers, presenting both research findings and case studies on the challenges faced by new teachers. More than 20 categories and 500 examples of specific problems are listed, along with stories of the teaching experience.

Celebrates the remarkable scholarly career of medieval historian John Van Engen with eighteen exceptional essays contributed by Van Engen's colleagues. Together, their work reflects the wide-ranging but coherent body of John Van Engen's own scholarship.

In 1988, Brazil's Constitution marked the formal establishment of a new democratic regime. In the ensuing two and a half decades, Brazilian citizens, civil society organizations, and public officials have undertaken the slow, arduous task of building new institutions to ensure that Brazilian citizens have access to rights that improve their quality of life, expand their voice and vote, change the distribution of public goods, and deepen the quality of democracy. Civil society activists and ordinary citizens now participate in a multitude of state-sanctioned institutions, including public policy management councils, public policy conferences, participatory budgeting programs, and legislative hearings. Activating Democracy in Brazil examines how the proliferation of democratic institutions in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, has transformed the way in which citizens, CSOs, and political parties work together to change the existing state. According to Wampler, the 1988 Constitution marks the formal start of the participatory citizenship regime, but there has been tremendous variation in how citizens and public officials have carried it out. This book demonstrates that the variation results from the interplay of five factors: state formation, the development of civil society, government support for citizens' use of their voice and vote, the degree of public resources available for spending on services and public goods, and the rules that regulate forms of participation, representation, and deliberation within participatory venues. By focusing on multiple democratic institutions over a twenty-year period, this book illustrates how the participatory citizenship regime generates political and social change.

These essays analyze how race affects people's lives and relationships in all settings, from the United States to Great Britain and from HawaiE i to Chinese Central Asia. They contemplate the racial positions in various societies of people called Black and people called White, of Asians and Pacific Islanders, and especially of those people whose racial ancestries and identifications are multiple. Here for the first time are Spickard's trenchant analyses of the creation of race in the South Pacific, of DNA testing for racial ancestry, and of the meaning of multiplicity in the age of Barack Obama.

In Thinking Prayer, Andrew Prevot presents a new, integrated approach to Christian theology and spirituality, focusing on the centrality of prayer to theology in the modern age. Prevot's clear and in-depth analysis of notable philosophical and theological thinkers' responses to modernity through the theme of prayer charts a new spiritual path through the crises of modernity. Prevot offers critical interpretations of Martin Heidegger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Louis Chretien, Johann Baptist Metz, Ignacio Ellacuria, and James Cone, among others, integrating their insights into a constructive synthesis. He explains how doxological and contemplative forms of prayer help one avoid dangers associated with metaphysics, including nihilism, conceptual idolatry, and the concealment of difference. He considers the powerful impact that the prayers of oppressed peoples have on their efforts to resist socioeconomic and racialized violence. The book upholds modern aspirations to critical freedom, while arguing that such freedom can best be preserved and deepened through prayerful interactions with the infinite freedom of God. Throughout, the book uncovers the contemplative dimensions of postmodern phenomenology and liberation theology and suggests how prayer shapes liberative ways of thinking (theology) and living (spirituality) that are crucial for the future of this crisis-ridden world.

Imagines Cuba's future after the ""poof moment"" - when the current regime will no longer exist. This volume does not try to predict how and when the Castro regime will end, but instead considers the possible consequences of change. Each chapter takes up a basic issue: politics, the military, the legal system, civil society, and US-Cuba relations.

In Aims: A Brief Metaphysics for Today, James W. Felt turns his attention to combining elements of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics, especially its deep ontology, with Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy to arrive at a new possibility for metaphysics. In his distinctive style, Felt concisely pulls together the strands of epistemology, ontology, and teleology, synthesizing these elements into his own "e;process-enriched Thomism."e;Aims does not simply discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each philosopher's position, but blends the two into a cohesive argument based on principles derived from immediate experience. Felt arrives at what he calls a "e;Whiteheadian-type solution,"e;appealing to his original concept of the "e;essential aim"e;as necessary for understanding our existence in a coherent yet unique world. This concise, finely crafted discussion provides a thoroughly teleological, value-centered approach to metaphysics. Aims, an experiment in constructive metaphysics, is a thorough and insightful project in modern philosophy. It will appeal to philosophers and students of philosophy interested in enriching their knowledge of contemporary conceptions of metaphysics.

Rhina P. Espaillat, judge of the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, describes Furious Dusk, David Campos's winning collection, as "e;a work whose five parts trace a son's efforts-only partially successful-to fulfill his father's expectations and-perhaps even more difficult-understand those expectations enough to forgive them."e; The poet's reflections are catalyzed by learning of his father's impending death, which, in turn, forces him to examine his father's expectations against his own evolving concept of what it means to be a man.

Winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize, this ambitious collection of poems evokes the cultural and environmental history of the Mississippi watershed and meditates on how its rivers are ceaselessly shaping, and shaped by, the lives around them. John Shoptaw guides us from the Mississippi's headwaters in Lake Itasca to its delta in the Gulf of Mexico, weaving together episodes in the life of the river system-the New Madrid earthquakes, the 1927 flood, the EPA's eradication of the dioxin-laced town of Times Beach-with his own memories of growing up in the Missouri Bootheel: picking cotton, being baptized in a drainage ditch, and working in a lumber mill. Formally renovative, the poems in Times Beach ring the changes on the big muddy place and hymn its everlasting possibilities.

The poems of Kevin Hart have nurtured international poetry audiences for nearly four decades. Translations of Hart's work have appeared in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Vietnamese, among other languages, and bear witness to the growing interest in Hart's poetry both in the United States and abroad. This volume performs a valuable service by bringing together the best of Hart's work from seven published collections, some of them now out of print, and from his forthcoming book, Barefoot. Wild Track reveals a poet capable of articulating genuine feeling and considerable philosophical depth. This volume confirms Hart's standing as one of the most sophisticated poets writing today.

Rather than focus on the departures of the sixteenth-century Reformation from medieval traditions, the essays in this volume explore one of the most remarkable yet still under-studied chapters in its history: the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.

In The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, Muhsin J. al-Musawi offers a groundbreaking study of literary heritage in the medieval and premodern Islamic period. Al-Musawi challenges the paradigm that considers the period from the fall of Baghdad in 1258 to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 as an "e;Age of Decay"e; followed by an "e;Awakening"e; (al-nahdah). His sweeping synthesis debunks this view by carefully documenting a "e;republic of letters"e; in the Islamic Near East and South Asia that was vibrant and dynamic, one varying considerably from the generally accepted image of a centuries-long period of intellectual and literary stagnation. Al-Musawi argues that the massive cultural production of the period was not a random enterprise: instead, it arose due to an emerging and growing body of readers across Islamic lands who needed compendiums, lexicons, and commentaries to engage with scholars and writers. Scholars, too, developed their own networks to respond to each other and to their readers. Rather than addressing only the elite, this culture industry supported a common readership that enlarged the creative space and audience for prose and poetry in standard and colloquial Arabic. Works by craftsmen, artisans, and women appeared side by side with those by distinguished scholars and poets. Through careful exploration of these networks, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters makes use of relevant theoretical frameworks to situate this culture in the ongoing discussion of non-Islamic and European efforts. Thorough, theoretically rigorous, and nuanced, al-Musawi's book is an original contribution to a range of fields in Arabic and Islamic cultural history of the twelfth to eighteenth centuries.

Using the method of spirital reading, ""lectio divina"" or ""divine reading"" as it is called in monasteries, the author of this book sets out his interpretation of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and especially John. He argues that reading the Gospels means passing over into the relation of Jesus with his God.

Covers the years from the author's birth in 1941 to 1975, when he received his doctorate in Christian ethics from Vanderbilt. This book portrays his childhood growing up in the northeast Washington, DC, neighborhood of Brookland (the neighborhood's alias was 'Little Rome' because of all the Catholic church-related institutions it encompassed).

Offers an English translation of William of Ockham's work on ""Aristotle's Posterior Analytics"", which contains his theory of scientific demonstration and philosophy of science. This book also includes a commentary and a detailed history of the intellectual background to Ockham's work in the Latin Middle Ages.