Department of History

This paper is focused primarily on our ethical relationship to nature, but my concern here is that the success of any environmental or earth ethic must be grounded in spirituality. The main operating premise of the paper is that to address this spiritual grounding we need more than just religion to guide us especially as religions become more antagonistic toward

In his essay, "The Unsettling of America," Wendell Berry suggests that instead of understanding our current ecological predicaments in terms of "conquerors and victims," we shift our language to "exploiters and nurturers." Berry argues that this subtle but important shift allows us to understand the current ideological divide, not only in terms of a division among people, but also in terms of a division of a person. A critical point of critique for our essay is how the fragmentation of Appalachia results in a fragmented citizenry that is divorced from sustaining ideas of stewardship, once held central to the ideals of Christianity—at both the individual and communal levels. Our paper asks what would it mean for churches, and other religious organizations generally, to return to a revitalized concept of stewardship by utilizing Berry's terminology—terminology that is laden with deeply theological meaning—in order to navigate the crisis generated by the coal industry in Appalachia. In particular, we examine the current rhetoric utilized by proponents of coal mining to contrive a context in which coal mining is environmentally, economically, and morally justifiable. This is especially pertinent in exposing "Friends of Coal," a public advocacy group that has been the primary organization driving the rhetorical context of Appalachian lives as more and more people outside Appalachia seek alternatives to coal for our country's energy needs. By applying Berry's terminology to this crisis, we contend that instead of understanding the crisis of coal production in terms of efficiency, numbers, quantities, and data, this crisis is better understood in terms of care, character, condition, quality, and kind.

This reissue of Shelley Tremain’s vital collection of essays continues to focus on the importance of disability studies and while it has all the weight and significance of the original publication it also extends and builds upon those original essays. Tremain, rightly and accurately, characterizes the anniversary volume, like the original, as “a classic text in…critical disability theory and research”  (9). It is, quite simply, a must read.

Contents: Introduction, Clint Jones and Cameron Ellis. Part I Contextualizing the Individual and Utopia: The individual's place in paradise: the limits, promise, and role of reason in modern conceptions of utopia, Charles Joshua Horn Fundamental oppositions: utopia and the individual, Mark Jendrysik The individual and the city: abstract and concrete, Nathaniel Coleman 'Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma': Aldous Huxley's selection of Peter Kropotkin over T.H. Huxley for the savage's 'third alternative' in a revised Brave New World, Clifford T. Manlove Owenite architecture and urban rationality: notes and reflections on class and utopia, Jose Ramon Alvarez Layna, Andres Maidana Legal and Ivan Velez Cipriano Mrs Atwood and the utopian tradition: a nineteenth-century alchemist as utopian theorist, Kerry E. Koitzsch. Part II Mind, Body, Soul, and the Utopian Individual: The empathetic turn: the relationship of empathy to the utopian im...

This essay is an investigation of the relationship between homosexual interpretations of Jesus Christ and artistic explorations of the meaning of Christ to the LGBTQ community.  I begin with an analysis of the public backlash to Enrique Chagoya’s 2010 lithograph The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals which features a depiction of Christ in a homoerotic situation. My analysis focuses both on Chagoya’s place in the historical canon of artists that create religious art that challenges heteronormative interpretations of Jesus and also the resulting destruction of Chagoya’s work.  My analysis examines the cultural importance of homosexual interpretations of Christ in the on-going debates about homosexuality as well as the biblical justifications for such interpretations.  More, I argue that the public backlash to art that challenges traditionally held beliefs about Christ creates a cultural force for further marginalizing the LGBTQ community.  I argue that traditional power structur...

In his essay, "The Unsettling of America," Wendell Berry suggests that instead of understanding our current ecological predicaments in terms of "conquerors and victims," we shift our language to "exploiters and nurturers." Berry argues that this subtle but important shift allows us to understand the current ideological divide, not only in terms of a division among people, but also in terms of a division of a person. A critical point of critique for our essay is how the fragmentation of Appalachia results in a fragmented citizenry that is divorced from sustaining ideas of stewardship, once held central to the ideals of Christianity-- at both the individual and communal levels. Our paper asks what would it mean for churches, and other religious organizations generally, to return to a revitalized concept of stewardship by utilizing Berry’s terminology--terminology that is laden with deeply theological meaning--in order to navigate the crisis generated by t...