This collection features books and book contributions written by faculty in the Department of History at Fairfield University.
-
Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historical and Global Perspective
Daniel E. Bender and Richard Greenwald
-
The Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom
Catharine Cookson and Patricia Behre
Patricia Behre is a contributing author "The French Revolution".
Book Discussion: The intertwined issues of religious freedom, religious rights and church-state relations are a major issue around the world. In fact, much of the story of human history is the story of quests for freedom by different religious groups in different places at different times. These quests and stories continue today in many countries.
The Encyclopedia consists of 150 essays by scholars on topics including concepts and ideas, historical events and eras, major world religions, key issues of religious freedom, minority groups and the stance of major world religions on the issues of religious freedom.
-
A Constant Struggle: African-American History from 1865-Present Documents and Essays.
Yohuru Williams
Primary documents and historical essays trace the struggle of African Americans for justice and equality during the nearly century and a half after emancipation. The first section offers evidence for why the study of Black history continues to be relevant and important. The rest are chronological from the Civil War to Freedom Now/Black Power. Among the documents are the Civil War Amendments 1865-70, Ku Klux Klan discipline (1871), literacy test and poll tax (1899), the Tulsa race riot of 1921, Buchanan v. Warley (1917), artistic and intellectual center of the Harlem Renaissance (1920-35), Truman's civil rights program of 1948, Martin Luther King's 1963 Letter from a Birmingham jail, and the FBI expands in counterintelligence program (1968). There is no index. The first edition appeared in 2003. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR --Barnes and Noble
-
The Souls of Black Folk: Centennial Reflections
Yohuru Williams and Tamara Brown
In this curriculum guide, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History continues its emphasis on Du Bois’ prophetic statement first enunciated at the Pan-African Conference of 1900 that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” and moreover the “double-consciousness” or “two-ness” confronting African Americans—“two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring details in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” --Publisher
-
One king, one law, three faiths: Religion and the rise of absolutism in seventeenth-century Metz
Patricia Behre
Discusses feuding between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews in the northeastern French city of Metz, and how that interaction ultimately strengthened the king's hand.
Miskimin's work considers the religious feuding, hostility, and occasional cooperation of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews in 17th-century Metz. In a series of pointed chapters, she shows how the French Crown benefited from religious disagreement in the town by using that discord to push through its centralizing political agenda. Despite the disapproval of local leaders and the lack of any ideological commitment to coexistence, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews increasingly developed daily contacts in the city as the century progressed. Though these contacts were often hostile, they nonetheless continued and led to more complex interactions which undercut traditional religious verities.
Using numerous examples from local court records, Miskimin explores the multilayered contacts between adherents of these three faiths in one of the only French towns to include this tripartite religious mix during this period. As a result, Metz became a convenient early laboratory for the fundamental intellectual shifts at work in Europe. Building on earlier studies of centralization, this book integrates social and religious history with major political shifts to illustrate the interdependence of members of these three groups, as well as the centrality of their clashes to an understanding of the climate of these turbulent times at the dawn of modernity.
-
The Colorline Revisited: Is Racism Dead?
Yohuru Williams, Baruti Kopano, and The Association for the Study of African American Life and History
-
Contemporary American Religion
Wade Clark Roof and Patricia Behre
Patricia Behre is a contributing author "Religious Persecution".
Book Description: Through waves of new immigration, and the social influence of 60s counterculture, the United States has seen an explosion in the variety of religious practice since about 1965. This 2 volume work lets students, researchers, and general readers explore American religion in all its diversity. In addition to profiling religious groups from the modern forms of Catholicism and Judaism to some of the more-extreme cults such as Heaven's Gate and the Branch Davidians, the set includes articles on cultural, social, and legal issues, as well as holidays and celebrations, the arts, and more.
-
Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Munich, notorious in recent history as the capital of the Nazi movement, is the site of Gavriel Rosenfeld's stimulating inquiry into the German collective memory of the Third Reich. Rosenfeld shows, with the aid of a wealth of photographs, how the city's urban form developed after 1945 in direct reflection of its inhabitants' evolving memory of the Second World War and the Nazi dictatorship. In the second half of the twentieth century, the German people's struggle to come to terms with the legacy of Nazism has dramatically shaped nearly all dimensions of their political, social, and cultural life. The area of urban development and the built environment, little explored until now, offers visible evidence of the struggle. By examining the ways in which the people of Munich reconstructed the ruins of their historic buildings, created new works of architecture, dealt with surviving Nazi buildings, and erected new monuments to commemorate the horrors of the recent past, Rosenfeld identifies a spectrum of competing memories of the Nazi experience. Munich’s postwar development was the subject of constant controversy, pitting representatives of contending aesthetic and mnemonic positions against one another in the heated battle to shape the city’s urban form. Examining the debates between traditionalists, modernists, postmodernists, and critical preservationists, Rosenfeld shows that the memory of Nazism in Munich has never been "repressed" but has rather been defined by constant dissension and evolution. On balance, however, he concludes that Munich came to embody in its urban form a conservative view of the past that was inclined to diminish local responsibility for the Third Reich.
-
From without the Flaminian Gate : 150 years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales: 1850-2000
V. Allen McClelland, Michael Hodgetts, and Jeffrey P. von Arx S.J.
Jeffrey P. von Arx is a contributing author, "Catholics and Politics", p. 245-271.
From Without the Flaminian Gate is a collection of articles which discusses aspects of the development of Roman Catholicism from 1850 to the present. It recognizes the slow but steady growth of the Catholic Church following the restoration of the hierarchy and considers the more recent developments in the life of English Catholicism, especially the influence of Vatican Council II.
Jeffrey von Arx effectively argues that Roman Catholics did contribute to the political life of the country, although not following the continental approach of Catholic Action. -- Synposis of a review written by Rene Kollar in The Catholic Historical Review 86.4 (2000) 696-697 .
-
Varieties of Ultramontanism
Jeffrey P. von Arx S.J.
Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J. is the Editor and a contributing author, "Cardinal Henry Edward Manning" p. 85-102.
Explores the differing views of six ultramontane cardinals on papal authority. Ultramontanism, the belief that the papacy is and should be at the center of the Church, came to dominate the Roman Catholic Church in the course of the nineteenth century, and it is still a powerful force in the Church today. Most people assume that because it stands for centralization, ultramontanism is a uniform phenomenon. By looking at the careers of six ultramontane cardinals from different countries over the course of a hundred years from the middle of the last century, this volume argues that the character of ultramontanism differed from one national church to another. The most decisive factor in the different ways in which ultramontanism expressed itself had to do with the relationship of the Catholic Church to the state. By looking at the circumstances of the church in the various national contexts in which the subjects of this study found themselves, the authors are able to specify the varieties of ultramontanism present in the period between 1844 (the accession of Cardinal Johannes von Geissel to the See of Cologne) and 1945 (the death of Cardinal William O'Connell of Boston). The contributors also examine whether the tendency to impose doctrinal and disciplinary uniformity was an essential expression of ultramontanism, or whether it was time-conditioned and contingent-in other words, another of the "varieties" that ultramontanism assumed in certain contexts over the course of a century. - Publisher description
-
Passing into History: Nazism and the Holocaust Beyond Memory,(History & Memory-Volume 9 No. 1/2)
Geulie Ne'eman Arad, Steven E. Aschheim, Jose Brunner, and Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Gavriel Rosenfeld is a contributing author, "The Architects' Debate: Architectural Discourse and the Memory of Nazism in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1977-1997", pp. 189-225.
Book description: "History & Memory, Volume 9", numbers 1 and 2 - more than a decade has passed since the Historians' Debate erupted in Germany. The themes that were at the heart of that impassioned controversy continue to pulsate in historical thinking about the National Socialist era. As a result of the Historikerstreit, increased credence is being lent to the issues of historicization, national identity, historical consciousness, the 'guilt question,' and collective memory, which heretofore had been considered tangential in the historiographical context of the Nazi epoch. This special double issue reconsiders the central themes that surfaced as a result of the debate: the problematic of historical representation of the Third Reich and the Shoah as it passes from living memory; the place of personal and collective memories in historical narratives; and the uneasy question of who should/can/may write whose history/ies. Several of the articles in this volume which is dedicated to Saul Friedlander on this sixty-fifth birthday, will related to Friedlander's rich oeuvre, which has probed many facets of this highly charges past.
-
Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion
R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Geoffrey Wigoder, and Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Gavriel Rosenfeld is a contributing author, Biographical essays on Wilhelm Bacher, Adolf Buechler, David Kaufmann, and Moritz Lazarus, pp. 95, 142, 394.
Book description: This comprehensive dictionary of the Jewish religion contains nearly 2,400 alphabetically arranged entries ranging from short definitions to lengthy essays on major topics. It is the most accessible and complete one-volume resource available for information on the concepts, beliefs, and practices of historical and contemporary Jewish religious practice. The combined effort of Israeli, American, and European scholars, this dictionary reflects the great variety of Jewish religious expression, from the traditional approaches to such recent variations as Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Judaism. It covers all aspects of Jewish practice, law, and theology as expressed in the Bible and the Talmud and by philosophers throughout history. The work also includes biographical sketches of important personalities associated with the development of the Jewish religion over the centuries, articles on the mystical tradition and folklore, and entries addressing the more recent religious issues posed by the existence of the State of Israel.
-
Georges de La Tour and His World
Philip Consibee and Patricia Behre
Patricia Behre Miskimin is a contributing author "Lorraine in the Time of Georges de La Tour".
Book Description: Georges de La Tour, now considered one of the greatest painters of seventeenth-century France, was virtually unknown until the early twentieth century. His works were attributed to a variety of other artists until some were correctly identified in 1915, and he only came to the attention of a larger public in an exhibition in Paris in 1934. Since the major retrospective exhibition held in Paris in 1972, new paintings have continued to emerge, most recently the exquisite Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, in 1994. La Tour painted common men and women with sympathetic insight, and his religious paintings are among the most powerful expressions of the Counter Reformation. Whether a subject was from modern life or a religious scene, he treated it with remarkable originality and intensity of vision.
This beautiful book is a complete overview of the work and world of La Tour. Drawing on new technical and art historical material, it discusses his life, his paintings, and the context in which he worked. It traces La Tour's development from the early, realistic daylight works to his later nocturnal scenes, in which forms are dramatically illuminated, to his final works, in which figures are reduced to simple, sculptural forms rendered in warm colors. The book also addresses such issues as the contemporary replication and dissemination of La Tour's work; the place of his art in Counter-Reformation Europe; and the parallels that link his work with that of artists in other European cities. The book also presents the latest scientific research into his materials and working methods.
-
Exploring America's Past: A Reader in Social, Political, and Cultural History, 1865-Present
Richard Greenwald
This book presents some of the most significant social history to date in one single volume. Readers will find that Exploring America's Past is not only up to date, but also more inclusive and multicultural than other similar collections. The essays in this book concentrate on issues in America, ranging from freedom, to sexuality, to industry, to war, to minorities, to our youth culture, dance, and music. This comprehensive collection of essays will be ideal for U.S. history survey courses.
-
Victorian faith in crisis : essays on continuity and change in nineteenth-century belief
Richard J. Helmstadter, Bernard Lightman, and Jeffrey P. von Arx S.J.
Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J. is a contributing author, " The Victorian crisis of faith as a crisis of vocation" p. 262-282.
This collection is made up of eleven papers by scholars who have explored shifts in religion as they relate to changes taking place in society as a whole. -- from Introduction written by Sydney Eisen (p.4).
-
Religion in Victorian Britain: Interpretations
Gerald Parsons, James Moore, Jeffrey P. von Arx S.J., and F. M. Turner
Jeffrey P. von Arx, S.J. is a contributing author (with F.M. Turner), "Victorian ethics of belief: a reconsideration" p. 198-217.
-
Progress and Pessimism: Religion, Politics, and History in Late 19th Century Britain
Jeffrey P. von Arx S.J.
Faith in progress is a characteristic we often associate with the Victorian era. Victorian intellectuals and free-thinkers who believed in progress and wrote history from a progressive point of view—men such as Leslie Stephen, John Morley, W.E.H. Lecky, and James Anthony Froude—are usually thought to have done so because they were optimistic about their own times. Their optimism has been seen as the result of a successful Liberal campaign for political reform in the sixties and seventies, carried out in alliance with religious dissenters—a campaign that removed religion from the arena of public debate.
Von Arx challenges this long-standing view of the Victorian intellectual aristocracy. He sees them as preoccupied with and even fearful of a religious resurgence throughout their careers, and demonstrates that their loss of confidence in contemporary liberalism began with their disillusionment over the effects of the Franchise Reform Act of 1867. He portrays their championing of the idea of progress as motivated not by optimism about the present, but by their desire to explain away and reverse if possible contemporary religious and political trends, such as the new mass politics in England and Ireland.
This is the first book to explore how pessimism could be the psychological basis for the Victorians’ progressive conception of history. Throughout, von Arx skillfully interweaves threads of religion, politics, and history, showing how ideas in one sphere cannot be understood without reference to the others. - Publisher description.