Edited by Gastón Espinosa (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Contrary to popular claims, religion played a critical role in Barack Obama’s 2008 election as president of the United States. Religion, race, and gender entered the national and electoral dialogue in an unprecedented manner. What stood out most in the 2008 presidential campaign was not that Republicans reached … Continued
By Sarah Beckwith (NHC Fellow, 1994–95; 2012–13) In Signifying God, Sarah Beckwith explores the most lavish, long-lasting, and complex form of collective theatrical enterprise in English history: the York Corpus Christi plays. First staged as early as 1376, the plays were performed annually until the late 1500s and involved as much as a tenth of the city … Continued
Edited by William W. Hallo (NHC Fellow, 1987–88), Bruce William Jones, and Gerald L. Mattingly Interdisciplinary studies dealing with various aspects of the Hebrew Bible in relation to their literary, cultural, and historical contexts, especially the context of ancient Mesopotamia.
By Robert Bireley (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) Christian princes waged the first pan-European war from 1618 to 1648. Brought about in part by the entrenched passions of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the Thirty Years War inevitably drew in the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, who stood at the vanguard of Catholic Reform. This book investigates … Continued
By Robert L. Kendrick (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) In this book, a follow-up to his 1996 monograph Celestial Sirens, Robert Kendrick examines the cultural contexts of music in early-modern Milan. This book describes the churches and palaces that served as performance spaces in Milan, analyzes the power structures in the city, discusses the devotional rites of the … Continued
By Rafiuddin Ahmed (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) This volume explores what it means to be a Muslim in the context of Bengal, covering the medieval period through the beginning of our times. The essays focus on issues such as conversion and Islamization, structure of social and political authority, revivalism and pan-Islamism, radical-humanist thought, secularism and fundamentalism, … Continued
By Todd Ramón Ochoa (NHC Fellow, 2017–18) A Party for Lazarus is the story of a Cuban family, six generations removed from slavery, struggling to honor its ancestors amid changing fortunes and a crumbling state. This intimate intergenerational account centers on an annual feast celebrating ancestors and orisás—the life-changing spirits at the heart of Black Atlantic … Continued
Edited by Susannah Heschel (NHC Fellow, 1997–98)
By Jaroslav Folda (NHC Fellow, 1988–89; 1998–99; 2006–07) The Crusades began as expeditions called by the Pope to regain the Holy Land and liberate oppressed Christians living there. One of the least-known aspects of the Crusades is the art that was commissioned by Crusaders in the Holy Land from the time they took Jerusalem in … Continued
By Fiona Somerset (NHC Fellow, 2006–07) "Lollard" is the name given to followers of John Wyclif, the English dissident theologian who was dismissed from Oxford University in 1381 for his arguments regarding the eucharist. A forceful and influential critic of the ecclesiastical status quo in the late fourteenth century, Wyclif's thought was condemned at the … Continued