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- ItemTension Between Promotion & Description of Mindfulness: Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Attempts to Secularize Mindfulness & The Losses Associated with It(2024) Merriam, Marissa; McGuire, Anne MarieJon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the well-studied and popular Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, promotes mindfulness as non-spiritual and only related to Buddhism in origin. This message is reflected in some of what he writes in his bestselling books, Wherever You Go There You Are and Meditation Is Not What You Think. However, close reading of these two texts reveals both the Buddhist and spiritual elements of mindfulness as conceived by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Therefore, a tension exists between mindfulness as Kabat-Zinn promotes it and the picture one comes to have of mindfulness from reading his works. This tension is directly related to his goals of spreading mindfulness to a skeptical American community and his need for credibility within the scientific community. When Kabat-Zinn first wrote Wherever You Go in 1994, it would have been a great danger to his goals of spreading mindfulness to highlight either the Buddhist or spiritual elements. However, while there are still skeptics reluctant to include any mention of religion or spirituality, the scientific community is now more accepting of such topics than it once was. This gradual shift in the scientific community paired with the great popularity of mindfulness practices means that it is now a loss and not a risk for Kabat-Zinn to continue to try to separate mindfulness from Buddhism and spirituality in his representations of mindfulness to secular Americans and the scientific community.
- ItemThe Plight of the Agunah in America: An Examination of the Institution of Orthodox Jewish Marriage and Its Repercussions(2022) Wolfer, Hannah; Guangtian, HaI came to this topic of the agunah ("chained woman") after grappling with my own connection to religion and whether there is only one path to experiencing the divine. I turned to Orthodox Judaism because of my own personal connection to the religion and my sense that the insularity suggested that there was a lack of understanding as I saw it. Orthodox Judaism straddles the line between embracing modernity and maintaining the integrity of religious traditions, which is where the problem of the agunah comes into focus. In exploring the insularity of Orthodox Judaism, it has been made clear why the agunah issue is not widely known. In this thesis, my aim is to shed light on this topic in order to initiate a conversation to a wider audience. My methods for exploring this topic were researching the foundation of Orthodox Judaism, which led me to a conversation with the rabbi of my synagogue, investigating the personal stories of agunah, as well as these women's activism in creating a platform and gaining support to free themselves from their dead marriages. What I found through my research and writing of this thesis was how the power of the rabbinical court strips women of their decision-making capacity especially when it comes to exiting marriage. I also discovered how activism around the agunah issue is on the rise, which led me to ascertain that this is a conversation that should be normalized outside the Jewish community. My hope is that with the opening up of the conversation, that the agunah issue will someday come to be resolved and women will be unshackled from these religious restraints.
- ItemWalking in the Footprints of the Past: Embodied Experience at the Jewish Museum Berlin(2022) Stern, Trevor; Ghosh, PikaIn October 2021, I visited the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) while on a research trip. My experience in the museum's belowground section, in a set of hallways known as "axes," made me feel as if I was adopting the identity and emotional state of a Holocaust victim through a bodily interaction with spatial and sensorial stimuli. In particular, I felt connected to my German Jewish ancestors who were forced into exile and killed by the Nazi regime. I use the term "embodiment" for this visceral and poignant phenomenon. Adopting an autoethnographic approach, I highlight my own family history during the Holocaust. This contributes to my narrative of my embodied experience while moving through the various parts of the museum axes. In particular, I discuss the way that various architectural and curatorial choices led to sensory and physical engagement that heightened my sense of embodiment. Through examining various pilgrimages which feature similar embodied elements, I raise questions about the role of physical location in cultivating the experience. Similarly, an analysis of embodiment in the Passover Seder leads to discussion of who can participate in such an encounter at the JMB. I conclude by giving voice to others who discuss the morality of personal engagement with the Holocaust, and the implications of their ideas with regard to my embodied experience.
- ItemBecoming Social Justice Activists in Church: An Account of Resources that Lead to Heightened Mobilization for Progressive Causes Among White Suburban Protestant Congregations(2021) Coen Gilbert, Dexter; Wiley, TerranceOften unseen, faith-based institutions and organizations in the United States today mobilize for progressive causes in ways that vitally contribute to grassroots democracy. Most scholars approaching the topic of congregational mobilization do so through analyzing how clergy, outside organizations, or lay members push their church to act for a given cause. This thesis, alternatively, examines the role of specific resources in predicting a heightened level of mobilization for progressive causes among white suburban Protestant congregations. Through interviews with members of four churches in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I identify four resources (personal and collective identity, connections, and clergy tenure) that have an impact on the level of mobilization a church is likely to achieve for progressive causes. This mobilization occurs through what I label personal and political mobilization, both of which are of great value in fighting against inequality in the United States.
- Item"May God Continue to Bless the United States of America": Christian Logics in Rhetorical Justifications for Humanitarian Military Missions(2021) Schmidt, Sonia E.; Farneth, Molly B.Wars require rhetorical justification, and this justification often comes from the mouths of politicians. Humanitarian military missions– wars conducted with the expressed intentions of helping or saving the people who are being invaded – require particular justification. In the case of the United States, when analyzing these justifications, it becomes clear that U.S. politicians rely on Christian ideas and logics – that is, logical justifications based on Christian theological concepts – in order to give their arguments rhetorical might, even when these logics are couched in apparently secular terms. In this thesis, I contend that Christian logics have remained pervasive as parts of justification for humanitarian military missions, though their articulation has transformed through time from overt calls for the conversion of others to Christianity, to a conversion to the values of Human Rights. I focus on three Christian logics at work in these justifications: conversion through a type of loving violence, calls on the dignity of humans, and a paradigm of good and evil, wherein whomever the United States is working against is evil, and the United States is good. To demonstrate how these logics work in practice, I analyze the rhetoric surrounding two different humanitarian military missions conducted by the United States, one hundred years apart: the annexation of the Philippines, and the war in Afghanistan. Ultimately, acknowledging the pervasiveness of these Christian logics must encourage thought about the ethical validity of these types of military missions.