By Bernard McGinn (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) "Perhaps no mystic in the history of Christianity has been more influential and more controversial than the Dominican Meister Eckhart. Few, if any mystics have been as challenging to modern readers and as resistant to agreed-upon interpretation." So begins McGinn's much lauded introduction to the intriguing preacher and philosopher. … Continued
By Susan Crane (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) Medieval courtiers defined themselves in ceremonies and rituals. Tournaments, Maying, interludes, charivaris, and masking invited the English and French nobility to assert their identities in gesture and costume as well as in speech. These events presumed that performance makes a self, in contrast to the modern belief that identity … Continued
By Richard M. Eaton (NHC Fellow, 1979–80) In all of the South Asian subcontinent, Bengal was the region most receptive to the Islamic faith. This area today is home to the world's second-largest Muslim ethnic population. How and why did such a large Muslim population emerge there? And how does such a religious conversion take … Continued
By Julia W. BondEdited by Adam Fairclough (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) The Star Creek Papers is the never-before-published account of the complex realities of race relations in the rural South in the 1930s. When Horace and Julia Bond moved to Louisiana in 1934, they entered a world where the legacy of slavery was miscegenation, lingering paternalism, and … Continued
By Winifred Breines (NHC Fellow, 2001–02) Inspired by the idealism of the civil rights movement, the women who launched the radical second wave of the feminist movement believed, as a bedrock principle, in universal sisterhood and color-blind democracy. Their hopes, however, were soon dashed. To this day, the failure to create an integrated movement remains … Continued
By J. R. Green (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) In Theatre in Ancient Greek Society the author examines the social setting and function of ancient Greek theatre through the thousand years of its performance history. Instead of using written sources, which were intended only for a small, educated section of the population, he draws most of his evidence from … Continued
By Madeleine Dobie (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) In Trading Places, Madeleine Dobie explores the place of the colonial world in the culture of the French Enlightenment. She shows that until a turning point in the late 1760s questions of colonization and slavery occupied a very marginal position in literature, philosophy, and material and visual culture. In an … Continued
Edited by Donald R. Kelley (NHC Fellow, 1984–85)
By Alan Taylor (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) William Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper, a father and son who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early years of the Republic, are brought to life in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. William Cooper rose from humble origins to become a wealthy land speculator and U.S. congressman in … Continued
By David Simpson (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) Traditionally, Wordsworth’s greatness is founded on his identity as the poet of nature and solitude. The Wordsworthian imagination is seen as an essentially private faculty, its very existence premised on the absence of other people. In this title, first published in 1987, David Simpson challenges this established view of … Continued