Neutrality in the Study of Religion

The Archive is a feature of the Bulletin in which previous publications are reprinted to reinforce the modern relevance of archived arguments. “Neutrality in the Study of Religion,” originally published in 1981, comes from Dr. John H. Whittaker (1945-2019), who was the Department Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University until 2006. This article is relevant 30 years after its original publication, as it explores an ongoing debate in the field: the limits of objectivity in religious studies. Whittaker critiques a claim made by sociologist Robert Bellah in order to argue that religion can and should be taught from what he terms a “neutral” standpoint that encourages critical inquiry. The role of the scholar of religion as a researcher, observer, and teacher is one that remains contended across the field of religious studies today.

Identity Politics and the Politics of Learning

How can faculty assist and equip students to become more “critical consumers” of the information they receive in a culture and climate of alternative facts and multiple truths? With increasing differences in political views informing “truth perspectives,” the shift in what is quickly becoming normalized as a form of appropriate discourse has fostered a culture of entitlement that lends support to voicing critique without critical inquiry. In this article, we examine the multiple and intersecting systems of power and privilege. The recognition of contradictory subjective locations occupied by all the participants in the classroom, including the instructor, are discussed. As practitioners seeking more effective forms of dialogue and engagement, we challenge conventional hegemonic discourses of difference and stereotypical representations within learning by questioning identity politics within the politics of learning and by examining the clashes between discourse and policy in the university classroom.

One Text, Many Literary Traditions: The Multidimensionality of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

Death and the King’s Horseman, published in 1975, is undoubtedly Wole Soyinka’s most acclaimed play. When awarding the playwright the Nobel Prize in Literature in October 1986, the Committee specifically cited it as a “drama of existence”. Many literary critics have written about the play from multifarious perspectives. However, the dramatic text is still open to multidimensional interpretations that can further illuminate the rich texture of this canonical work. My study contextualises this dramatic masterpiece as yielding to a form of critical inquiry that makes it cohere with definitions of various literary traditions. It can be interrogated as Yoruba/Nigerian national literature, African literature, postcolonial literature, and world literature. It is, therefore, in this effort to use many approaches to see the play as a holistic text that I have chosen to interrogate it as “one text, many literary traditions”.

The Prospects for Socialist Politics in South Africa

Our article endeavours to critically examine the prospects for socialist parties and socialist policy reform in South Africa. Firstly, we seek to provide an appraisal of modern socialist politics and policies globally. Secondly, we attempt to diagnose why South Africa has been as yet unable to fashion a suitable socialist workers’ party during the democratic epoch. In this, the article discusses the prospects of socialist parties and policy reform in South Africa after examining the failure of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party (SRWP) to make an impact at the 2019 polls. Using a combination of comparative methodology and critical inquiry, our study presents not only that socialist politics and policies are valuable to democratic systems, but also that socialist politics should have a more viable vehicle in South Africa. The prospects for deepened ideological development, particularly the formation of a successful socialist or workers’ party, remains quite weak in South Africa but there is considerable evidence to suggest that civil society both requires and desires a more vibrant relationship with modern socialism.

A Critical Inquiry into the Character Strengths of Alexandra Bergman in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!

The paper focuses on the strengths and virtues of Alexandra Bergson, the central character of Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneers! (1913). The novel deals with the harsh life of immigrants in America at the turn of the 20th century and describes the ways by which the pioneers sought to establish their existence and cope with their life’s tragedies. Using the VIA-IS (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths) classification, the paper attempts to show how Alexandra Bergson’s character strengths contribute to the value-based paradigm represented in the novel.

Trump’s Base! You Can Say That Again!! An Optimistic Deconstruction of Base Politics

An expansion of a presentation given at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for American Studies in Montreal in 2019, prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US election, this paper playfully challenges the rhetorical idea of Donald Trump’s base political support (as unconditional and foundational) through Derridean-styled deconstruction, a line of critical inquiry that repeatedly keeps riffing and looping back on itself to undermine the authority and foundations of base support by playing with the homophonic significations of base/bass/ baise in an assortment of psychosexual, pop-cultural, and satirically philosophical ways.

صحتِ روایتِ ابن لہیعہ بطریق عبادلہ اور امام أبو حاتم كا منہج ایك تنقیدی جائزہ

Hadith is a primary source of Islamic teachings only next to Quran therefore Muslim scholarship has taken scrutiny of the veracity of Hadith along with its reference sources as vital. Important. They have taken up the critical inquiry of authenticity of Hadith minutely in their scholarly dissertations on the narrators of Hadith to the extent that the scholars have written books after books on the narrators of Hadith. Likewise Abd Allah b. Laeeaa’s reported hadith have been scrutinized by various scholars like Abdul Ghani b. Saeed who is often cited to have said about Laeeaa that if the three famed Abadila have reported from him then his narrations are authentic. Likewise when Imam Abdur Rahman b. Abi Hatim asked about the said narrations from his father, Abu Hatim, he rejected them altogether despite the fact that they were reported by the three Abadila. In this article, Imam Abu Hatim’s viewpoint shall be investigated as to whether any other leading hadith scholar agreed with him or it was his peculiar stance. It shall also be focussed as to on what grounds Imam Abu Hatim considers these narrations as unauthentic or weak in tradition.

Modesty in the Anthropocene

This chapter argues that modesty offers an alternative, legitimate model of critical engagement with a world defined by limited human agency and perpetual crisis in which we are irrevocably implicated. This argument is situated in the context of the profound changes in worldview entailed by what I call “Anthropocene thinking.” With this phrase, I signal a departure from solely environmental approaches to the Anthropocene, instead focusing on how the era unsettles conventional habits of aesthetic expression and critical inquiry. The second section offers a defence of “modesty” as opposed to other possible key terms (such as humility or generosity) by showing how critical modesty has a precursor in the style of William James’s pragmatism. The chapter offers a reading of literary and narrative form in the writing of Bruno Latour. Despite Latour’s growing popularity in literary studies, critics have tended to overlook the crucial function of form, style, and technique in his writing. Attending to Latour’s writing at a more granular level illustrates how a work can be formally modest about its position with respect to what it studies while also being critical, insofar as any redescription offers a contrasting account of the world. The chapter’s literary approach allows that the Latourian style of inquiry and novelistic discourse are up to the same kind of thing: attempting to make sharable a process of thinking that opens up conversation about the composition of our world.

Ways of Knowing Nursing: A Discussion Forum Rubric for Distance Education

Distance education by its very nature implies physical separation and lack of connectedness among participants. Presented is a Discussion Forum Rubric that captures the multidimensionality of the study of nursing knowledge through participation expectations. This discussion rubric is designed to guide the dialogue of learners with faculty mentors to interpret nursing as an art and science with a theory-based foundation of: disciplinary knowing through critical inquiry; intentional knowing with genuine presence and attentiveness; dialogical knowing focusing on contextual learning within nursing situations; professional knowing through introspection and past experiences; and expressive knowing with articulation of ideas, thoughts, positions, and standards.

Conclusion

This chapter steps back from the critical discussions of the previous chapters to contemplate the bigger picture of Melville’s wisdom project as a response to the condition of modernity. It intersperses brief excursions on Clarel and “The Apple-Tree Table” to show that Melville deemed the spiritual crisis of his day an inescapable conflict, but one that could be weathered while holding on to at least some kind of spiritual belief. Wisdom represented for Melville the best strategic guide to surviving this crisis, and the wisdom books, this chapter contends, helped Melville engage the Bible constructively rather than antagonistically. Literature for Melville is a space in which religious doubt, critical inquiry, and biblical language and philosophy may be juxtaposed, contemplated, and moderated, so as to avoid radical suspicion and skepticism.