Curtis J. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195328189
- eISBN:
- 9780199870028
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328189.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This book is about the crucial role that black religion has played in the United States as an imagined community or a united nation. The book argues that cultural images and interpretations of ...
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This book is about the crucial role that black religion has played in the United States as an imagined community or a united nation. The book argues that cultural images and interpretations of African American religion placed an enormous burden on black religious capacities as the source for black contributions to American culture until the 1940s. Attention to black religion as the chief bearer of meaning for black life was also a result of longstanding debates about what constituted the “human person” and an implicit assertion of the intellectual inferiority of peoples of African descent. Intellectual and religious capacities were reshaped and reconceptualized in various crucial historical moments in American history because of real world debates about blacks' place in the nation and continuing discussions about what it meant to be fully human. Only within the last half century has this older paradigm of black religion (and the concomitant assumption of a genetic deficiency in “intelligence”) been challenged with any degree of cultural authority. Black innate religiosity had to be denied before sufficient attention could be paid to actual proposals about black equal participation in the nation, though this should not be interpreted as a call for insufficient attention to the role of religion in the lives of African Americans and other ethnic groups.Less
This book is about the crucial role that black religion has played in the United States as an imagined community or a united nation. The book argues that cultural images and interpretations of African American religion placed an enormous burden on black religious capacities as the source for black contributions to American culture until the 1940s. Attention to black religion as the chief bearer of meaning for black life was also a result of longstanding debates about what constituted the “human person” and an implicit assertion of the intellectual inferiority of peoples of African descent. Intellectual and religious capacities were reshaped and reconceptualized in various crucial historical moments in American history because of real world debates about blacks' place in the nation and continuing discussions about what it meant to be fully human. Only within the last half century has this older paradigm of black religion (and the concomitant assumption of a genetic deficiency in “intelligence”) been challenged with any degree of cultural authority. Black innate religiosity had to be denied before sufficient attention could be paid to actual proposals about black equal participation in the nation, though this should not be interpreted as a call for insufficient attention to the role of religion in the lives of African Americans and other ethnic groups.
Curtis J. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195328189
- eISBN:
- 9780199870028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328189.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in ...
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This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in the American nation focused on their religion. The chapter examines the crucial connection between denials of African intellectual capacity and assertions of the uniqueness of slave religious expression. Romantic racialists like Harriet Beecher Stowe asserted that black slaves were naturally or peculiarly religious and their explanation of black religion as feeling or emotion became the dominant paradigm for understandings of black cultural contributions to the United States. Yet there was an inherent tension in this view of black religion because it linked black uniqueness to Africa and painted a rather hazy picture about the specific nature of black participation in America, if slavery were to be abolished. Romantic racialists left their legatees with a conflicted notion of intellectually inferior Africans in their midst with alleged special religious qualities as the locus of their potential contribution of an ambiguous “spiritual softness” to American culture.Less
This chapter explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British North American colonies to Christianity became an object of analysis and how debates about the role that blacks would play in the American nation focused on their religion. The chapter examines the crucial connection between denials of African intellectual capacity and assertions of the uniqueness of slave religious expression. Romantic racialists like Harriet Beecher Stowe asserted that black slaves were naturally or peculiarly religious and their explanation of black religion as feeling or emotion became the dominant paradigm for understandings of black cultural contributions to the United States. Yet there was an inherent tension in this view of black religion because it linked black uniqueness to Africa and painted a rather hazy picture about the specific nature of black participation in America, if slavery were to be abolished. Romantic racialists left their legatees with a conflicted notion of intellectually inferior Africans in their midst with alleged special religious qualities as the locus of their potential contribution of an ambiguous “spiritual softness” to American culture.
Paula J. Caplan and Jeremy B. Caplan
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195112917
- eISBN:
- 9780199846900
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112917.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter discusses the serious concerns about the motives behind the whole project of seeking to find gender differences in cognition. The various scenarios of what can happen in the relatively ...
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This chapter discusses the serious concerns about the motives behind the whole project of seeking to find gender differences in cognition. The various scenarios of what can happen in the relatively rare case when research on sex differences is carefully designed and executed are considered. The principles and problems in research on sex differences are also reported. Basic questions on the mathematical, spatial, and verbal abilities in relation to sex differences are presented. It is hoped that the findings will highlight the truly shoddy nature of the research that has been used to justify keeping women out of powerful, influential, and often well-paid positions on the grounds that they lack the intellectual capacity to carry out the duties that these positions require is shown.Less
This chapter discusses the serious concerns about the motives behind the whole project of seeking to find gender differences in cognition. The various scenarios of what can happen in the relatively rare case when research on sex differences is carefully designed and executed are considered. The principles and problems in research on sex differences are also reported. Basic questions on the mathematical, spatial, and verbal abilities in relation to sex differences are presented. It is hoped that the findings will highlight the truly shoddy nature of the research that has been used to justify keeping women out of powerful, influential, and often well-paid positions on the grounds that they lack the intellectual capacity to carry out the duties that these positions require is shown.
Donald N. Levine
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226475530
- eISBN:
- 9780226475783
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226475783.001.0001
- Subject:
- Education, Philosophy and Theory of Education
It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a ...
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It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. This book enriches those resources by proposing fresh ways to think about liberal learning with ideas more suited to our times. It does so by defining basic values of modernity and then considering curricular principles pertinent to them. The principles the book favors are powers of the mind—disciplines understood as fields of study defined not by subject matter but by their embodiment of distinct intellectual capacities. To illustrate, the book draws on a lifetime of teaching and educational leadership, while providing a summary of exemplary educational thinkers at the University of Chicago who continue to inspire. Out of this vital tradition, the book constructs a paradigm for liberal arts today, inclusive of all perspectives and applicable to all settings in the modern world.Less
It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. This book enriches those resources by proposing fresh ways to think about liberal learning with ideas more suited to our times. It does so by defining basic values of modernity and then considering curricular principles pertinent to them. The principles the book favors are powers of the mind—disciplines understood as fields of study defined not by subject matter but by their embodiment of distinct intellectual capacities. To illustrate, the book draws on a lifetime of teaching and educational leadership, while providing a summary of exemplary educational thinkers at the University of Chicago who continue to inspire. Out of this vital tradition, the book constructs a paradigm for liberal arts today, inclusive of all perspectives and applicable to all settings in the modern world.
Nicholas L. Syrett
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469629537
- eISBN:
- 9781469629551
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629537.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
This chapter explains the English common law and colonial legal antecedents to early national marriage law in the extant states. It argues that the common law marriage ages of twelve (for girls) and ...
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This chapter explains the English common law and colonial legal antecedents to early national marriage law in the extant states. It argues that the common law marriage ages of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) are based on presumptions about puberty and intellectual capacity, and that when North American colonial legislatures raised these ages, they did so largely to protect parental interest in their children’s labor and possible fortunes, not as a means to protect youthful people. It also argues that the differential ages of marriage and of majority (in western and midwestern states, where girls’ majority was lowered to eighteen) all had the effect of denying girls the protection of girlhood in the realm of marriage that were being offered to their brothers and to children more generally in legal revisions of the ealry modern period.Less
This chapter explains the English common law and colonial legal antecedents to early national marriage law in the extant states. It argues that the common law marriage ages of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) are based on presumptions about puberty and intellectual capacity, and that when North American colonial legislatures raised these ages, they did so largely to protect parental interest in their children’s labor and possible fortunes, not as a means to protect youthful people. It also argues that the differential ages of marriage and of majority (in western and midwestern states, where girls’ majority was lowered to eighteen) all had the effect of denying girls the protection of girlhood in the realm of marriage that were being offered to their brothers and to children more generally in legal revisions of the ealry modern period.
Héctor Wittwer
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198719502
- eISBN:
- 9780191788604
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719502.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter argues that the concept of worth or value is irrelevant with regard to the question which moral rights human beings should have. It distinguishes a Kantian notion of the absolute moral ...
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This chapter argues that the concept of worth or value is irrelevant with regard to the question which moral rights human beings should have. It distinguishes a Kantian notion of the absolute moral worth of a person from the notion of relative moral worth, and contends that not only does the concept of absolute value involve problems of intelligibility but that it is also hard to see why the mere ability to decide and act morally or immorally should determine what moral rights people have. The chapter argues that the moral rights human beings should be granted by others should not depend on their relative moral worth but on other factors, such as their intellectual capacities (children versus adults), their social position (parents versus childless people), and their actions (an aggressor versus an innocent victim of an attack).Less
This chapter argues that the concept of worth or value is irrelevant with regard to the question which moral rights human beings should have. It distinguishes a Kantian notion of the absolute moral worth of a person from the notion of relative moral worth, and contends that not only does the concept of absolute value involve problems of intelligibility but that it is also hard to see why the mere ability to decide and act morally or immorally should determine what moral rights people have. The chapter argues that the moral rights human beings should be granted by others should not depend on their relative moral worth but on other factors, such as their intellectual capacities (children versus adults), their social position (parents versus childless people), and their actions (an aggressor versus an innocent victim of an attack).
