Author : Milton Ridvas Konvitz
Publisher : Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 29,25 MB
Release : 1987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780838632918
This group of essays critically examine Horace Kallen's ideas and philosophy, and the extent of his influence. It describes how Kallen helped introduce Zionism in the United States, and how he became one of the first Americans involved in the founding of national civil rights and civil liberties organizations.
Author : Michael C. Steiner
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 32,46 MB
Release : 2020-05-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0700629548
The Harvard-educated, Jewish American philosopher Horace Meyer Kallen (1882–1974) is commonly credited with the concept of cultural pluralism, which envisioned immigrant and minority groups cultivating their distinctive social worlds and interacting to create an inclusive, ever-changing true American culture. Though living and teaching in Madison, Wisconsin, when he developed this influential theory, Kallen’s seven-year sojourn in the Midwest (1911–1918) rarely figures in accounts of the theory’s origins. And yet, Michael C. Steiner suggests, the Midwest, far from being a mere interruption in Kallen’s thought, was in fact the essential catalyst for the theory of cultural pluralism, a concept that continues to shape public debate a century later. The Midwest in the first decades of the twentieth century was a youthful region experiencing massive immigration and the xenophobic fervor of approaching war. In this milieu Steiner locates a pervasive pluralist zeitgeist rife with urban- and rural-based intellectuals and public figures deeply critical of both the all-absorbing melting pot ideology and white racist Anglo-Saxon exclusionism. Early proponents of diversity who interacted with Kallen to forge a pluralist sensibility and ideology as the Midwest was becoming the nation’s dominant region included public figures Hamlin Garland, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Jane Addams; African American activists Reverdy Ransom and Ida B. Wells; Norwegian American writers Ole E. Rølvaag and Waldemar Ager; and intellectuals Randolph Bourne and John Dewey. Tracing how Kallen’s interaction with these figures and his regional experience expanded his vision and added the final touch and crucial spatial dimension to his theory, Horace M. Kallen in the Heartland enhances our understanding of cultural pluralism. The book has direct bearing on the present, as once again denunciation of diversity and mass migration challenge the tenets and advocates of pluralism.
Author : Ari Mermelstein
Publisher : Quid Pro Books
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 36,94 MB
Release : 2014-06-10
Category : Law
ISBN : 1610272285
Jews are a people of law, and law defines who the Jewish people are and what they believe. This anthology engages with the growing complexity of what it is to be Jewish — and, more problematically, what it means to be at once Jewish and participate in secular legal systems as lawyers, judges, legal thinkers, civil rights advocates, and teachers. The essays in this book trace the history and chart the sociology of the Jewish legal profession over time, revealing new stories and dimensions of this significant aspect of the American Jewish experience and at the same time exploring the impact of Jewish lawyers and law firms on American legal practice. “This superb collection reveals what an older focus on assimilation obscured. Jewish lawyers wanted to ‘make it,’ but they also wanted to make law and the legal profession different and better. These fascinating essays show how, despite considerable obstacles, they succeeded.” — Daniel R. Ernst Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center Author of Tocqueville’s Nightmare: The Administrative State Emerges in America, 1900-1940 “This fascinating collection of essays by distinguished scholars illuminates the distinctive and intricate relationship between Jews and law. Exploring the various roles of Jewish lawyers in the United States, Germany, and Israel, they reveal how the practice of law has variously expressed, reinforced, or muted Jewish identity as lawyers demonstrated their commitments to the public interest, social justice, Jewish tradition, or personal ambition. Any student of law, lawyers, or Jewish values will be engaged by the questions asked and answered.” — Jerold S. Auerbach Professor Emeritus of History, Wellesley College Author of Unequal Justice and Rabbis and Lawyers
Author : Klaus J. Milich
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 35,34 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781571811639
Given German history and Germany's current substantial non-citizenship population, it is hardly surprising that multiculturalism with its treatment of "the other" is as controversial there as in the US. Sixteen papers derived from an unspecified conference co-hosted by the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown U., Berlin's Humboldt U., and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation address: theorizing comparisons; gender and race; American studies in Germany; German studies in America; and multiculturalism in the transatlantic sphere. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author : Sebastian Lecourt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 21,17 MB
Release : 2018-04-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0192540580
This book explores how a group of Victorian liberal writers that included George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Matthew Arnold became attracted to new theories of religion as a function of race and ethnicity. Since the early modern period, British liberals had typically constructed religion as a zone of personal belief that defined modern individuality and interiority. During the 1860s, however, Eliot, Arnold, and other literary liberals began to claim that religion could actually do the most for the modern self when it came as a kind of involuntary inheritance. Stimulated by the emerging science of anthropology, they imagined that religious experiences embedded in race or ethnicity could render the self heterogeneous, while the individual who insisted upon selecting his or her own beliefs would become narrow and parochial. By rethinking the grounds of religion, this book argues, these writers were ultimately trying to shift liberal individualism away from a classical Protestant liberalism that celebrated interiority and agency and toward one that valorized eclecticism and the capacity to keep multiple values in play. More broadly, their work offers us a new picture of secularization, not as a process of religious decline, but as the reinscription of religion as an ordinary feature of human life—like art, or politics, or sex—whose function could be debated.
Author : John D. Buenker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 1412 pages
File Size : 14,97 MB
Release : 2021-04-14
Category : History
ISBN : 1317471687
Spanning the era from the end of Reconstruction (1877) to 1920, the entries of this reference were chosen with attention to the people, events, inventions, political developments, organizations, and other forces that led to significant changes in the U.S. in that era. Seventeen initial stand-alone essays describe as many themes.
Author : James Gilbert
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 21,75 MB
Release : 2008-04-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0226293238
In this intriguing history, James Gilbert examines the confrontation between modern science and religion as these disparate, sometimes hostile modes of thought clashed in the arena of American culture. Beginning in 1925 with the infamous Scopes trial, Gilbert traces nearly forty years of competing attitudes toward science and religion. "Anyone seriously interested in the history of current controversies involving religion and science will find Gilbert's book invaluable."—Peter J. Causton, Boston Book Review "Redeeming Culture provides some fascinating background for understanding the interactions of science and religion in the United States. . . . Intriguing pictures of some of the highlights in this cultural exchange."—George Marsden, Nature "A solid and entertaining account of the obstacles to mutual understanding that science and religion are now warily overcoming."—Catholic News Service "[An] always fascinating look at the conversation between religion and science in America."—Publishers Weekly
Author : Milton Konvitz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 23,86 MB
Release : 2018-04-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 135132666X
The nine American Jews of whom Milton Konvitz writes are philosophers, jurists, or rabbis, widely known and readily accepted as American Jewish thinkers. Their work reflects all essential Jewish values. Each person in his own way has dedicated his work to the betterment of life and the advancement of human ideals. In this sense, their Jewishness is not defined by religion alone. Americanism permeated all they thought and all they did.Konvitz argues that in the complex modern world, secularists often serve God more handsomely than do members of synagogues or churches. For example, when the Supreme Court in 1954 (with Felix Frankfurter playing a key role behind the scenes) agreed to outlaw segregation of the races in public schools, was the Court's action secular or religious? When Congress passed the statute known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring equal treatment of handicapped persons, was the action secular or religious? Is a minimum wage act secular or religious? Is Medicaid a secular or a religious act? Konvitz believes the distinction is not useful, or even possible.The book is divided into three parts, reflecting Konvitz's range of intellectual interests. The nine essays offer concise intellectual biographies of three American Jewish philosophers, three Supreme Court Justices, and three rabbis. The philosophers-Horace M. Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Sidney Hook-are world-renowned. The jurists-Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter-hold prominent places in American legal history. And the three rabbis-Leo Jung, Robert Gordis, and Jacob Agus-are known wherever Jewish thought is studied. By treating with equal seriousness the lives and writings of both religious and secularist thinkers, the author intentionally minimizes the conventional antagonism and frequent conflict between religion and secularism.An unusual feature of the book is the fact that the author was a close friend of six of the persons whose lives and work are examined, allowing him a perceptive insight into their character and thought. Although the book is about serious subjects, its graceful style makes the contents easily accessible to lay persons as well as scholars and students of Judaica.
Author : Peter C. Phan
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 26,7 MB
Release : 2014-08-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1620329433
Our contemporary world is fast becoming religiously diverse in a variety of ways. Thanks to globalization and migration, to mention only two current worldwide trends, people of diverse and sometimes mutually hostile faiths are now sharing neighborhoods and encountering one another's religious traditions on a daily basis. For scholars in religious studies and theology the issue to be examined is whether religious diversity is merely the result of historical development and social interaction, or whether it is inherent in the object of belief--part of the very structure of faith and our attempts to understand and express it. The essays in this volume range from explorations of the impact of religious diversity on religious studies to examples of interfaith encounter and dialogue, and current debates on Christian theology of religion. These essays examine not only the theoretical issues posed by religious pluralism to the study of religion and Christian theology but also concrete cases in which religious pluralism has been a bone of contention. Together, they open up new vistas for further conversation on the nature and development of religious pluralism.
Author : Donald Horowitz
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 508 pages
File Size : 38,93 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0814734790
International migration is often considered a relatively new development in world history. Yet, while there has been a surge in migration since World War II, the worldwide movement of peoples is a longstanding phenomenon. So, too, are the fundamental issues raised by immigration. How do immigrants fit into and affect the polity and society of the country they enter? What changes can or must the receiving state make to accomodate them? What changes in culture and ethnic indentity do immigrants undergo in their new environment? How do they relate to the mix of peoples already present in their new homeland What determines the policies that govern their reception and treatment? In this volume, expertly edited by a leading American political scientist-lawyer and a leading French historian, twenty-one renowned experts on immigration address these questions and a variety of other issues involving the experiences of immigrants in the city, at the workplace, and in schools and churches. Their essays examine the issues of nationality, citizenship, law, and politics that define the life of an immigrant population. Focusing on the United States and France, this voluem is a social history and a legal and public policy study that comprehensively portrays the dilemmas immigrants present and face. Contributors include Sophie Body-Gendrot, Danielle Boyzon-Frader, Andre-Clement Decoufle, Veronique de Rudder, Lawrence H. Fuchs, Nathan Glazer, Philip Gleason, Stanley Lieberson, Lance Liebman, Daniele Lochak, Michel Oriol, Martin A. Schain, Peter H. Schuck, Roxane Silberman, Werner Sollors, Stephan Thernstrom, Maryse Tripier, Maris A. Vinovskis, and Myron Weiner.
