R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Kripal, Jeffrey J."

Browsing by Author "Kripal, Jeffrey J."

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A happy pull of Athene: An experiential reading of the Plotinian henosis in the “Enneads” and its significance for the comparative s tudy of religion
(2008) Seong, Hae Young; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
In this dissertation, I focus on the Plotinian henosis , which is defined as a unitive experience with the One. I argue that Plotinus attained his first henosis , expressed as "a happy pull of Athene" unexpectedly when he was twenty-eight years old. So he started studying philosophy to understand it. In the process, he developed a mystical philosophy that is individualistic. For my argument, I reconstruct the Plotinian Henosis based on the textual analysis of the Enneads . Based on the phenomenological reconstruction, I argue that many aspects of Plotinus' life, such as the characteristics of his community, the style of his lectures and writing, his indifference to traditional religion and religious practices, his free spirit and courage of inquiry, and his emphasis on wonder and perplexity concerning the One can be understood better. I claim that these characteristics also make us rethink the relationship between religious experience and its interpretation. Especially, an experiential reading of the Enneads forces us to consider that the Plotinian henosis might function as a valid epistemological ground that can weaken the claims of complete constructivism. In addition, the modern research of religious experiences reveals a close affinity between the Plotinian concept of the human soul ( psyche ) and the extended concept of consciousness, which is claimed by various schools of modern psychology such as Jamesian psychology, depth psychology, and transpersonal psychology. In this regard, the Plotinian henosis can be fruitfully analyzed as an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Finally, for this reason, I argue that Plotinus developed an early form of an "unchurched mysticism" or a "religion of no religion." Thus we can find the seeds of a radical spiritual or mystical individualism in Plotinus, which he succinctly presented as "the flight of the alone to the Alone." The seeds will later develop in the history of Western mysticism and esotericism into more and more individualist expression. Furthermore, his experiential individualism outside of traditional and institutional religions helps explain for me his popularity in the present as well as in the past.
Better Horrors: From Terror to Communion in Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987)
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) Kripal, Jeffrey J.
Trauma, Trick, and Transcendence in the Life of a Horror Writer: The Case of Whitley Strieber. This essay treats the theorization of horror in Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987). It also pushes us to consider more honestly and forthrightly the question of “real monsters,” that is, the phenomenology of encounters with fantastic presences routinely experienced in the environment. Historical contextualization of Strieber's abduction experiences in the Hudson Valley region and theories of other species from Charles Fort to William James are invoked to radicalize the question further.
Closets and Walls: Practices of Heterodoxy among Gay Mormons and Stencilistas in Santigao, Chile
(2010) Adair-Kriz, Michael; Faubion, James D.; Tyler, Stephen A.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
This dissertation compares the heterodoxic practices of gay Mormons and stencil street artists (Stencilistas) in Santiago, Chile, recorded during twenty-two months of fieldwork. The dissertation is divided in two distinct sections: one text-based and the
Crushed pearls: The revival and transformation of the Buddhist nuns' order in Taiwan
(2010) Lin, Hua-Chen Jenny; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
This dissertation examines the impacts of religious movements through a multi-layered study of the Buddhist renaissance that emerged in Taiwan in the 1980s. By examining this historically important development, I clarify the process by which movements transform social structures and the constraints that the movements encounter. This dissertation includes a recent history of rapid political liberalization and economic growth, the legalization of abortion and the expansion of women's rights, campaigns against human trafficking and prostitution, and the formation of the first lesbian group in Taiwan. I use two major research strategies: (1) a historical analysis of data and (2) a Hakka case study. Data have been collected from archives, interviews, newspapers, and published reports. This dissertation challenges the argument that movements are inconsequential, and that the courts, economic elites, or political parties are the main propelling agents causing institutional change. In general, these groups respond to the demands of movements, particularly the leverage brought to bear by feminist and religious movements. The Buddhist renaissance movement in Taiwan attempted to reestablish the broken lineages of nuns to confront challenges of inequality and injustice. By pressing for changes in traditions, the Buddhist movement has improved the Taiwanese legal culture and system, as well as the status of women in Taiwan.
Earth Matters: Religion, Nature, and Science in the Ecologies of Contemporary America
(2013-09-16) Levine, Daniel; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Faubion, James D.; Stroup, John M.
Earth Matters examines the relationships between alternative religion in North America and the natural world through the twin lenses of the history of religions and cultural anthropology. Throughout, nature remains a contested ground, defined simultaneously the limits of cultural activity and by an increasing expansion of claims to knowledge by scientific discourses. Less a historical review than a series of fugues of thought, Earth Matters engages with figures like the French vitalist, Georges Canguilhem, the American environmentalist, John Muir; the founder of Deep Ecology, Arne Næss; the collaborators on Gaia Theory, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis; the physicist and New Age scientist, Fritjof Capra; and the Wiccan writer and activist, Starhawk. These subjects move in spirals throughout the thesis: Canguilhem opens the question of vitalism, the search for a source of being beyond the explanations of the emerging sciences. As rationalism expands its dominance across the scientific landscape, this animating force moves into the natural world, to that protean space between the city and the wild and in the environmental thinkers who initially moved along those boundaries. As the twentieth century moves towards a close, mechanistic thinking simultaneously reaches heights of success previously unimagined and collapses under the demand for complexity posed by quantum physics, by research in genetic interactions, by the continued elusive relationship of mind to health. This allows the wild to return inside through the internalization of consciousness sparked by the American New Age, but also provides a new model to understand the natural world as complex zone open to a wide variety of strategies, including the multiplicities of understanding offered through contemporary neopaganisms. Earth Matters argues for the necessity of the notion of ecology, both as an environmental concern but also as an organizing principle for human thought and behavior. Ecologies are by their nature complex and multi-variegated things dependent upon the surprising and unpredictable interaction of radically different organisms, and it is through this model that we are best able to understand not only ourselves but also our communities and our efforts to make sense of the external world.
Enlightenment After the Enlightenment: American Transformations of Asian Contemplative Traditions
(2011) Gleig, Ann Louise; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
My dissertation traces the contemporary American assimilation of Asian enlightenment traditions and discourses. Through a close reading of three communities, I consider how Asian traditions and ideas have been refracted through the psychological, political, and economic lenses of American culture. One of my chapters, for example, discusses how the American Insight community has attempted to integrate the enlightenment teachings of Theravada Buddhism with the humanistic, democratic, and pluralistic values of the European Enlightenment. A second chapter traces the American gum Andrew Cohen's transformation from a Neo-Advaita teacher to a leading proponent of "evolutionary enlightenment," a teaching that places traditional Indian understandings of nonduality in an evolutionary context. Cohen's early period shows the further deinstitutionalization of traditional Advaita Vedanta within the radically decontextualized Neo-Advaitin network, and evolutionary enlightenment engages and popularizes another less-known but influential Hindu lineage, namely that of Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga. a A third chapter examines contemporary psychospiritual attempts to incorporate psychoanalytic theory into Asian philosophy in order to reconcile American concerns with individual development with Asian mystical goals of self-transcendence. In conclusion, I argue that the contemporary American assimilation of Asian enlightenment traditions is marked by a number of trends including: (I) a move away from the rhetoric and privileging of experience that scholars such as Robert Sharf have shown to be characteristic of the modem Western understanding of Asian mysticism; and (2) an embrace of world-affirming Tantric forms of Asian spirituality over world-negating renouncer traditions such as Theravada Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I also reflect on how the cultural shift from the modem to postmodern has affected East-West integrative spiritualities.
Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation
(2018-04-17) Prophet, Erin; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
The esoteric appropriation of evolution in the sense of self-improvement or personal transformation can be better understood by combining a historical approach with conceptual metaphor theory. The dissertation first evaluates the esoteric appropriation historically as a type of religious response to Darwin. It works backwards from the twentieth-century counterculture (as identified by Theodore Roszak in 1975), to show that esoteric “evolution” had its roots in the late nineteenth-century intersection of spiritualism, Theosophy, and psychical research, with particular emphasis on Hermetic traditions. The historical analysis centers on a fine-grained evaluation of the evolutionary thought of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and a comparison of her system with that of F.W.H. Myers, an important contributor to both psychical research and early psychology. It evaluates their positions with regard to Blavatsky and Myers nineteenth-century spiritualism and debates about materialism within the scientific and religious communities, particularly as it related to the phenomena of spiritualism. It demonstrates that Blavatsky had at least an indirect influence on some components of Myers’s system through his acquaintance the Theosophist A.P. Sinnett. The dissertation uses original archival work on the Myers papers. These insights are combined with fresh interpretations of the history of the Theosophical Society and the interactions of psychical researchers, spiritualists, and the scientific community (including Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection). A primary area of focus is the rhetorical connection of evolution with evidence of psychic ability and the recovery of lost (vestigial) or potential talents. The primary thesis of the dissertation is that, as demonstrated by Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (particularly as it incorporates Fauconnier and Turner’s cognitive blending theory), esotericized evolution today, while it often presents itself as “scientific,” is an imaginative blend of elements from multiple domains, including religious salvation, spiritualist and esoteric forms of divinization, psychotherapy, nineteenth-century biology, and Asian religions filtered through a Western lens—all informed by reference to the great chain of being metaphor. Though esotericized evolution owes something to each of these elements, it cannot be reduced to any of them, which is why it persists as a popular code word for modern (partially) secularized salvation and conceptions of therapy as salvation. Blending theory also explains why elements of these nineteenth-century systems were discarded as the concept was adapted in the twentieth century.
Extraordinary Healing and The Hermeneutics of Privilege: the Healer Valentine Greatrakes (1629–1683), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), and Equivocating about the Miraculous in Early Modern Scientific Medicine
(2015-04-20) Brochstein, Benjamin; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Stroup, John M.; Ecklund, Elaine H.
This dissertation presents three basic theoretical ideas: the hermeneutic of privilege, how allegorical symbolism and esotericism protect elite privilege, and the socio-political utility of anti-dogmatism. Alchemical casuistry is this study’s modern analytical concept that combines aspects of these themes to show how elites cultivated anti-dogmatic perspectives to reconcile themselves with opposing and divisive dogmatic political positions. The ultimate expressions of alchemical casuistry were found in courtly favor, diplomacy, and statecraft; but it also served as a foundation of social suppression—concealing special knowledge. The earliest alchemical texts contained recipes for imitating substances like emeralds and gold—recipes whose value depended on both secrecy and lies. Over time, the systems of allegorical and linguistic contrivance that originally served to protect and preserve the secrets of imitations would extend to cover other things—like miracles. The concept of miracles was divisive after the reformation—characterizing phenomena as “miraculous” could have serious political consequences. Alchemical casuistry explains how members of the nascent Royal Society viewed Valentine Greatrakes (1629–1683) and his practically miraculous healing treatments. Because the term “miracle” was central to religious debates, these alchemical casuists carefully avoided using the word “miracle” and equivocated Greatrakes’ extraordinary effects (that had no mechanistic explanation). Greatrakes is the first instance of early modern science wrestling with what we call today the placebo effect and his witnesses were the product of an elite alchemical tradition that saw itself extending back to ancient Greece. Alchemical linguistic contrivance was an integral aspect of social privilege and education and protected one of society’s most dangerous secrets: how shifting political and philosophical paradigms related to economic disparity. Building on the momentum of the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment was a philosophical assault on the notion of mediated divinity that created a vacuum of institutional credibility. Trust in the both the Church of England and the monarchy suffered when the 1649 regicide challenged their claims to divine authority. Greatrakes’ “miraculous” effects simultaneously negated monarchal claims of divine authority (based on similar healing touch) and the Church of England’s position that miracles had ceased. When the Royal Society became the official institution of early modern science, it extended its influence and credibility by initiating organized Freemasonry as a polarizing device to direct the considerable political potential of lesser elites. The Royal Society’s assault on divinity placed it in the role of mediating truth claims, thereby usurping the social functions of divinity previously administered by the church and monarch. Given what we know about the placebo effect today, it is difficult to doubt that at least some of the Greatrakes narratives described authentic cures. The only consistent explanation for them (from Francis Bacon, to Robert Boyle, to Benjamin Franklin, and to today) has been the power of the imagination to heal. Through alchemical casuistry effective techniques like hypnosis, acupuncture, Reiki, and many others are marginalized for the economic benefit of medical elites whose pills and procedures have less value when the secret elixir of the imagination is widely known.
Givenness and explanation: A phenomenological response to naturalist accounts in religious studies
(2009) Schunke, Matthew Paul; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Crowell, Steven Galt
This dissertation contributes to ongoing scholarship regarding the phenomenology of religion by engaging it with debates in Religious Studies between naturalist methodologies, which reduce religious experience to social-scientific terms, and descriptive methodologies, which argue religious experience cannot be explained in nonreligious terms lest we lose that which is religious about the experience. I propose that in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion, specifically in his phenomenology of revelation, we find a methodology that avoids the reductionism of the naturalist method while still explaining religion in a manner that avoids the apologetics associated with descriptive accounts of religion.
Gospel of Liberty: Antislavery and American Salvation
(2014-04-14) Wright, Benjamin; Boles, John B.; McDaniel, W. Caleb; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Goetz, Rebecca A.
Americans understood and sought to solve the problem of slavery in terms strongly colored by understandings of religious conversion. In the early-eighteenth century, Great Awakening revivals fueled a new belief in the transformative nature of religious conversion. By the antebellum era, theological changes – coupled with democratization and sectionalism – prompted greater direct confrontation with social reform. Historians have chronicled the role of religion in motivating antislavery thought, but by privileging political action over religious sentiment, earlier work misses non-political manifestations of early antislavery. If we take religious belief seriously and seek to understand antislavery motivations, the question is not whether reformers were gradualist or immediatist in political action, but whether or not they ascribed to the expectations of conversionist or purificationist causation. While conversionists sought to destroy slavery through the millennial expansion of salvation, other Christians looked within, laboring to purify their own communities through coercive action. Imperatives of conversion drove ministers to consolidate religious authority in new national denominational bodies. Forming these bodies had the unintended side effect of pushing denominationalists toward social reform. This process added organized social reform as an additional religious solution, alongside that of conversionist millennialism, to the era’s social problems. In the early 1830s, the conversionist consensus cracked, and a new coercive, sectionalist antislavery took its place. Conversionist appeals continued, but the antislavery of men and, increasingly, women challenged the causation of conversion and began to look to political agitation as a means of reform. Each stage of this progression shaped the worlds of American antislavery. By foregrounding conceptions of religious conversion, we can begin to understand the problem of human bondage and its potential solutions as did the men and women whose lives entangled daily with the reality of a slaveholding republic.
History, Material Culture and Auspicious Events at the Purple Cloud: Buddhist Monasticism at Quanzhou Kaiyuan
(2011) Nichols, Brian J.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Klein, Anne C.
Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery is an important Buddhist monastery on the Southeast coast of China, in Fujian. It was founded in the seventh century and survives with artifacts from every imperial dynasty stretching back more than one thousand years. Today it is the home of more than eighty monks and the site of a vibrant tradition of devotional life. The following chapters examine Kaiyuan monastery from multiple points of view (time, space, inhabitants and activities, discourse and relations with the state) in order to produce a multi-dimensional portrait considering the contributions of each element to the religious and institutional life of the monastery. In shedding light on monastic Buddhism in contemporary China, this study contributes to a small but growing body of knowledge on the revival of religion in post-Mao China. The study begins with a historical survey of the monastery providing the context in which to understand the current recovery. Subsequent chapters chronicle the dual interplay of secular and non-secular forces that contribute to the monastery's identity as a place of religious practice for monastics, laypersons and worshipers and a site of tourism and leisure for a steady stream of visitors. I survey the stages of recovery following the Cultural Revolution (chapter four) as well as the religious life of the monastery today (chapter five). Other chapters examine how material culture (chapter six) and memorials to auspicious events and eminent monks (chapter seven) contribute to the identity of the monastery. Chapters eight and nine consider how Kaiyuan balances demands to accommodate tourists while remaining a place of religious practice.
Love in the Time of Cinema: The Global Tracks of Hindi Film/Songs
(2014-04-25) Sunya, Samhita; Joseph, Betty; Ostherr, Kirsten; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Radhakrishnan, Ratheesh
The stylized, romantic song sequence -- or the form(ula) of "song-dance-romance" -- has remained the most visible, audible, and mobile aspect of Hindi popular cinema. Studies of Hindi film songs have taken the shape of either extended ethnographies of production practices or edited collections that hold together a number of case studies of the songs' circulation through various contemporary locations (two are titled GLOBAL BOLLYWOOD, for example). My sustained analysis of the work of Hindi film songs through various periods of the post-sound era instead looks at poetic expressions of romance as arguments, within contests over national culture, (world) cinema, and the modern pleasures of the popular. My first chapter focuses on PADOSAN (1968), an exceptionally self-referential film that stages a zealous -- but easily missed -- argument upholding the romantic enchantments of Hindi popular cinema. I show that the fixity of an authorial voice is destabilized by the songs' form, as voice and body are rent asunder through the practice of playback that in turn lends itself to practices of repetition, recombination, and reimagination. My second chapter zooms out to consider a longer genealogy of the "City of Love," a trope that emerged in the radical poetry attributed to medieval saint-mystics, but very quickly became synonymous with the seductive artifices of popular cinema upon repeated invocations within film songs. I argue that the cinematic City of Love delineates what is at once a public domain as well as an intimate space of engagement with popular cinema-as-modernity. My third chapter moves from the cinematic city to world cinema in the postwar, post-independence decades. I historicize the emergence of world cinema amidst questions of cinematic form and translation, and I track the movements of romantic Hindi film/songs in projects of cinematic diplomacy through instances of Indo-Soviet and Indo-Iranian coproduction. My final chapter cuts to an analysis of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, by which I establish the stakes of my project in the discrepancy between the visibility of globalized media among Anglophone audiences, i.e., the subtexts of Bollywood in SLUMDOG, and the extent to which this visibility has necessarily driven critical, historical understandings of such forms.
Open Secret: Henry Corbin, Elliot Wolfson, and the Mystical Poetics of Deification
(2020-03-10) Perron, Gregory; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
This dissertation seeks to answer two fundamental questions. First, what is theosis or deification? And second, given that mystics in the three Abrahamic faiths have written experientially of deification, what might be some of the phenomenological and anthropological lessons that we can learn today from their insights into the nature of reality and from those of the scholars who study them? To answer these questions, a working definition of theosis or deification from the Christian tradition is offered that is then refracted through the lens of what is essentially a history of religions or reflexively comparative approach to a deep reading of the same theme in some representative texts of two major authors in the modern study of Islamic and Jewish mysticism, namely, Henry Corbin and Elliot Wolfson, respectively. This exploration is done in the service of gaining greater insight into the phenomenological and anthropological significance of the specific mystical category of deification via the “academic esotericism” (to borrow Jeffrey Kripal’s designation) of these two authors. The goal of undertaking such a dialogical study of each author’s treatment of deification is to journey toward a more mystical, poetic, and, hence, constructive understanding of what it means to be human. The fundamental argument of the dissertation is that, when viewed in the dialogical light of Corbin’s and Wolfson’s esoteric works, deification can be seen to be pointing to a relatively common cross-cultural mystical experience that bears witness to the essential and paradoxical oneness of humanity and divinity.
Out of the In-Between: Moses Mendelssohn and Martin Buber's German Jewish Philosophy of Encounter, Singularity, and Aesthetics
(2013-10-04) Atlas, Dustin; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Stroup, John M.; Engelhardt, H. Tristram, Jr.; Wolfson, Elliot R
This dissertation seeks to clarify and articulate a trajectory in Germanic Jewish thought, beginning with the work of Moses Mendelssohn and ending with Martin Buber; the two concepts mapped by this trajectory are the in-between [zwischen] and singularity [die Singularität]. These ideas are developed in light of their philosophical context, and brought into dialogue with contemporary thought. Singularities are individuals that are not particulars, meaning: not particular instantiations of either a general or universal concept. Singularities cannot be grasped in terms of their differences and similarities to other things. Singularity is what makes something what it is, independent of its predicates or containment in a universal. The in-between is the ontological space that allows for an encounter between singularities, such that this encounter helps constitute the singularities meeting. In this sense, the in-between is the chief conceptual support of the idea of singularity. Because singularities are autonomous and cannot be defined by their differences from other singularities, the space where singularities encounter each other cannot be thought of as a container without transforming the singulars into particulars. This dissertation takes the modest goal of formalizing and clarifying these concepts, preparing the concepts of the in-between and singularity such that they can one day be used in the study of religion. I suggest that these concepts are useful insofar as they allow us to take a middle path between theology and reductive analysis, viewing the transcendent claims of religions in a manner that is at once sympathetic and critical.
(Re)growing the Tree: Early Christian Mysticism, Angelomorphic Identity, and the Shepherd of Hermas
(2014-04-08) Trammell, Franklin; DeConick, April D.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Mackie, Hilary
This study analyzes the Shepherd of Hermas with a focus on those elements within the text that relate to the transformation of the righteous into the androgynous embodied divine glory. In so doing, Hermas is placed within the larger context of early Jewish and Christian mysticism and its specific traditions are traced back to the Jerusalem tradition evinced in the sayings source Q. Hermas is therefore shown to preserve a very old form of Christianity and an early form of Christian mysticism. It is argued that since Hermas’ revelatory visions of the Angel of the Lord and the divine House represent the object into which his community is being transformed, already in the present, and he provides a democratized praxis which facilitates their transformation and angelomorphic identity, he is operating within the realm of early Christian mysticism. Hermas’ implicit identification of the Ecclesia with Wisdom, along with his imaging of the righteous in terms of a vine and a Tree who are in exile and whose task it is to grow the Tree, is shown to have its earlier precedent in the Q source wherein Jesus and his followers take on an angelomorphic identity with the female Wisdom of the Temple and facilitate her restoration. Hermas’ tradition of the glory as a union of the Son of God and Wisdom is also shown to have its most direct contact with the Q source, in which Wisdom and the Son are understood to be eschatologically united in the transformation of the people of God. Included are two sections on how Hermas describes this union to occur presently within the bodies of the righteous through moral purity, adherence to the commandments, and baptism. The last chapter focuses on the continuity between Q source and the Shepherd of Hermas, along with overlaps between James, Q, and Hermas. It is concluded that Hermas is transmitting a tradition that can be substantially traced back to the Jerusalem church.
'Sikhing' a husband: Bridal imagery and gender in Sikh scripture
(2003) Clary, Randi Lynn; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
Bridal imagery is found in many religions, following the pattern of the soul, gendered female, longing for the male divine Beloved. Rich examples of this imagery are found in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture. Even though Sikhism is generally labeled as belonging to the nirguna school of devotional religion, the scriptures are full of passages describing a male Divine who enjoys his soul-bride, showing Sikhism's close connection to the saguna strand of devotion. Because all the poets canonized were men, any deviation from the pattern of a male devotee longing for a male Divine was rejected from the canon, as the case of Mirabai's inclusion and subsequent exclusion from the Sikh canon shows. I critique Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh's theory that bridal imagery is empowering to women, and apply John Stratton Hawley's theory about the reasons for the fixed genders of longing in bhakti poetry to Sikh bridal imagery.
The Making of a Sufi Order Between Heresy and Legitimacy: Bayrami-Malāmis in the Ottoman Empire
(2013-09-16) Yavuz, Fatma; Cook, David B.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Balabanlilar, Lisa; Karamustafa, Ahmet
Revolutionary currents with transformative ideals were part of the Sufi religious identity during the late medieval Islamic period. This dissertation tries to make sense of this phenomenon by focusing on the historical evolution of the Bayrami-Malāmi Sufi order within the Ottoman Empire. The scope of the study extends from the beginnings of the order during the ninth/ fifteenth century until its partial demise by the end of the eleventh/seventeenth century. The Bayrami-Malāmiyya was essentially marked by a reaction towards the established Sufi rituals of the time: its adherents refused to wear Sufi clothes, take part in gatherings of remembrance of God, or rely upon imperial endowments for their livelihood. I suggest in this study that Bayrami-Malāmis carried some of the distinguishing signs of religiosity belonging to the anarchic period between the Mongol attacks and the rise of the powerful Islamic Empires. During that time, many local forms of Sufism, which were tied to charismatic and independent communities that were quite prevalent and powerful in their own domains, had emerged. These communities often held a particular vision regarding the saint, whose persona came to be defined in terms exceeding that of a spiritual master, often taking the form of a community elder or a universal savior. Taking their inspiration from this period, Bayrami-Malāmis reconstructed their teachings and affiliations as the social and political conditions shifted in Anatolia. While several pīrs were executed for being heretics and making messianic claims in the sixteenth century, the Order was able to put together a more prudent vision based on the writings of Ibn Arabi (d. 638/1240) during the seventeenth century. After this, it became a secretive order that attracted the upper classes in the imperial city of Istanbul, and extended its influence to imminent poets, bureaucrats, and political figures. This study is essentially concerned with the dynamics of this evolution. It also tries to conceptualize how the teachings of the Order were rooted in the persona of the saint, who was regarded in divine terms and seen as the culmination point of creation. This worldview had the potential to lead to apocalyptic urges that did not harbor the immediate end of the world, but yearned for the beginning of a new era in which people would understand and experience divinity in its true monistic fashion.
The Metamorphosis of Monsters: Christian Identity in Medieval England and the Life of St Margaret
(2015-03-26) Heyes, Michael Edward; Fanger, Claire; Kripal, Jeffrey J.; Campana, Joseph A.; Clements, Niki K.
This dissertation examines several late medieval Lives of St. Margaret written in England to show that the monsters of the Life offer both a synchronic and diachronic perspective on the construction of Christian sexual identity in both professional religious and lay communities in medieval England. St. Margaret was one of the most popular saints in medieval England, and monsters play a key role in her martyrdom. Throughout her narrative, Margaret is accosted by a demonic prefect, hungry dragon, and loquacious black demon. Having defeated each monster in turn, she is taken to the place of her martyrdom where she prays for supernatural boons for her adherents. As a virgin martyr, Margaret’s resistance to these monstrous aggressors (and the suffering which she undergoes as a result) is the most important aspect of her story: not only does it represent Margaret’s raison d’être, but also the source of the virtus that benefits her cult. Previous scholarship has focused on Margaret’s resistance to Olibrius as a means to understand her impact on the identities of her virginal or maternal adherents, and on Margaret’s speech and deeds as important socio-cultural data which can be used to inform the context of Margaret’s medieval readers. This dissertation also treats each version in question as a source for information on Margaret’s medieval audience, but rather than concentrating upon Margaret’s speech and actions as previous research has, this dissertation instead focuses on the monsters that populate Margaret’s Life. This focus allows a new evaluation of Margaret’s simultaneous appeal to virgins and mothers through the polysemous figure of the dragon, the didactic elements of the black demon’s speech, the competing claims of religious identity in the figure of Olibrius, and the importance and content of the prayers at the end of Margaret’s Life for her maternal adherents. Equally important is that the diachronic focus of the dissertation reveals that while Margaret herself seems to change little over time – showing a slow metamorphosis from demonic adversary to maternal advocatrix – the monsters are more volatile, changing character as needed to create a narrative that constantly exists in the reader’s present.
The Theology of Reconstruction: White Southern Religious Leaders in the Aftermath of the Civil War
(2013-11-14) Dresser, Zachary; Boles, John B.; McDaniel, W. Caleb; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
The Civil War transformed American life like no event in the nation’s history. Historians are still working to understand the cultural reckoning following the war. This dissertation contributes to that goal by analyzing the response of white southern ministers, mostly evangelical Christians, to Civil War defeat and continued powerlessness during Reconstruction. These religious leaders responded to the spiritual and material needs of their parishioners in trying times by creating public theologies, which took into account both sacred and secular matters. Though they professed an apolitical stance, ministers addressed secular problems in moral terms that allowed them to offer religious guidance without explicit commentary on electoral politics. This theological approach to current events bore close similarity to twentieth-century liberation theology, in its stance that the South was poor and oppressed in relation to the conquering North. Correspondingly, white clergy depicted the South as God’s chosen people, even though they were suffering. By cultivating this relationship with the divine, southern Christians expected deliverance from unjust worldly circumstances. Religious leaders identified common problems standing in the way of southern prosperity—most notably doubt, poverty, and educational inadequacy— but agreed upon no strategies for combating them. Denominationalism, race, and other differences worked against regional religious cohesion, limiting the efficacy of ministerial efforts toward uplift. This failure to cooperate for the benefit of the South demonstrates the relative weakness of lingering Confederate identity in relation to religious belief and church affiliation. Nineteenth-century southerners believed in a world governed by Providence and thus filled both civil and sacred institutions with religious significance. White southern theology incorporated practical as well as metaphysical and doctrinal considerations, responding to the needs of the present while using the wellspring of tradition as a source of hope for a better future.
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Tibetan Life Writings of Adzom Drukpa (1842-1924): Meeting the Lady of the Skies
(2023-11-30) Foote, Learned; Klein, Anne C.; Kripal, Jeffrey J.
This dissertation analyzes the life writings of Adzom Drukpa (1842-1924) including a Tibetan language autobiography by Adzom Drukpa and a biography of Adzom Drukpa written by his son Gyurme Dorje (1895-1959). Comparison of these texts demonstrates they paint distinct yet resonant portraits of Adzom Drukpa, one emphasizing his human limitations and the other portraying him as a Buddhist deity. While many scholars argue such hagiographical and idealizing conventions in Tibetan life writing obscure its historical qualities, this dissertation examines instead how Adzom Drukpa's life writings creatively balance the human and divine, even while providing specific details about circumstances in eastern Tibet during the tumultuous nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The texts feature accounts of political violence and Buddhist institution building. This dissertation's analysis centers the life writings' depictions of Adzom Drukpa meeting a mysterious lady who appears in the sky. She gives Adzom Drukpa instructions that reverberate throughout his life, including advising Adzom Drukpa not to be a celibate monk but rather to find a woman consort. This dissertation contextualizes Adzom Drukpa's life writings through analyses based in gender, sexuality, and women's studies. Considering the lives and writings of women who were Adzom Drukpa's associates such as Sakya Jetsunma (1836-1896) and Sera Khandro (1892-1940) permits deeper engagement with how Adzom Drukpa's own life writings depict particular women's lives and how these narratives depict gender and sexuality in the context of Buddhist practice. The dissertation also considers Adzom Drukpa's conversation with the lady of the skies using analyses based in religious studies, considering how the narratives depict other paranormal encounters with non-human beings, including animals, ghosts, and a range of deities and demons. Many scholars argue the prevalence of such extraordinary accounts in Tibetan life writing renders the narratives unrealistic. However I examine how these texts depict such events as grounded both in everyday life and in Buddhist philosophy and practice. Like the texts' dual depictions of Adzom Drukpa's character as human and divine, Adzom Drukpa's conversations with the lady of the skies show how these life writings take a creative, considerate, and critical approach to humanity, divinity, and revelation.

Browsing by Author "Kripal, Jeffrey J."

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