Patricia  Fara. An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment. (Revolutions in Science.). 177 pp., illus., bibl., notes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. $19.50 (cloth).Jeff  Hughes. The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atom Bomb. (Revolutions in Science.) 170 pp., illus., bibl. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. $19.50 (cloth).John  Waller. The Discovery of the Germ: Twenty Years That Transformed the Way We Think about Disease. (Revolutions in Science.) 197 pp., illus., bibl. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. $19.50 (cloth).

Isis ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 546-547
Author(s):  
Marjorie C. Malley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Manhattan Project ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Big Science ◽  
Atom Bomb ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Way

scholarly journals Muslim Women's Studies

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-570
Author(s):  
Mohja Kahf
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
The Way

Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of Aisha hint Abi Bakr.By D. A. Spellberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, 243 pp.Qur'an and Woman. By Amina Wadud-Muhsin. Kuala Lumpur: FajarBakti, 1992, 118 pp.Denise Spellberg's survey of the legacy of 'A'ishah and AminaWadud-Muhsin's exegesis of the Qur'anic exposition of gender are foraysin the field of Muslim women's studies. Both works study the place ofMuslim women in the textual heritage of the community, but their pointsof departure are different. Spellberg proposes that 'A'ishah's legacy, aproduct of exclusively male writings in texts from the classical Islamiccenturies, is a reflection of Muslim men's interpretations of early Islamichistory and their opinions about the proper place of women in their owntime. Such interpretations, Spellberg shows, are charged with the politicaltensions of their contemporary societies. Yet 'A'ishah 's "legacy alonedefied idealization as completely as it denied comfortable categorization"by the Muslim men whose texts represent and construct her, Spellbergasserts (p. 190).Wadud-Muhsin acknowledges the way in which another copiousIslamic scholarship emerged, motivated by the need to understand theQur'anic utterances about women. Her focus is not, however, on thoseinterpretive texts of men that form an authoritative tradition explaining themeaning of the Qur'an. Wadud-Muhsin argues that the question ofwoman in the Qur'an must be reconnected directly to the primary text.She proposes approaching the Qur'anic text without the assumptions aboutgender of the classical interpreters, whose work constitutes the Islamic traditionof exegesis, but also without the assumptions that undergird contemporaryfeminist readings of the Qur'an. She offers a herrneneuticalmethod for understanding the place and meaning of gender in the Qur'an,based on the consistencies of the Qur'an itself: its contexts, language, andthe worldview of its texts as a whole. The effect of this, Wadud-Muhsinsuggests, would be to transcend the gender biases of narrower readingmethods and arrive at a fuller appreciation of the text's guidance for menand women.Both works began as dissertations, Spellberg's in history, WadudMuhsin'sin religious studies. Each brings to Muslim women's studies anode of questions about the process of textual interpretation. The ...

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 967-968
Author(s):  
Simone Chambers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Men ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The People ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Red Flag ◽  
Radical Engagement ◽  
Progressive Potential

Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement, Stephen Eric Bronner, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. xiii, 181.I am very sympathetic to the project that Stephen Eric Bronner undertakes in this book. As someone inspired by the progressive potential of the Enlightenment, I find myself constantly on the defensive in a world deeply suspicious of the dead white men of eighteenth-century Europe. So I welcome a vigorous and uncompromising defence of those men and the ideals and values they stood for. For those of us who already see ourselves as working to further that tradition, this book is an inspiring call to keep up the good work. But for those who have been hesitant in their enthusiasm for the Enlightenment, this book will be more like a red flag waved in their face, confirming many of their suspicions of Western rationalism. Theorists of recognition, identity, post-colonialism, post-modernism, republicanism, communitarianism, post-secularism and multiple-modernities, are just some of the people who will not find this book very congenial. Ultimately, Bronner's uncompromising defence of the Enlightenment is less successful than it might have been.

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