*Indicates a student co-author.
Chung-Kim, Esther. “Organized Efforts to Education and Elevate.” Awakening to Justice:
Faithful Voices from the Abolitionist Past, by Estrelda Y. Alexander, Esther Chung-Kim, David D. Daniels III, Sègbégnon Mathieu Gnonhossou, Diane Leclerc, Albert G. Miller, Christopher P. Momany, R. Matthew Sigler, Douglas M. Strong, and Jemar Tisby. InterVarsity Press, 2024.
Abstract: One of the most significant movements in 19th century America was the abolitionist movement in the pre-Civil War era. With the recent recovery of a young abolitionist David Ingraham's memoir, this project is part of a larger endeavor to provide a refreshing new analysis, not just of one abolitionist, but rather an extensive network of black and white abolitionists who were active in the social movements for racial justice in the early to mid-19th century. The importance of this project is to examine how past leaders, activists, and communities sought to create a more just society to help our current generation think of creative ways to move forward on contentious race relations. This chapter focuses on financial aid among abolitionists through the network of Christian abolitionists in the northern states. More specifically, this chapter examines the charitable funding among abolitionists to assist in the education, land acquisition, and job training for emancipated slaves. Two key figures who contributed greatly to the antislavery cause were New York businessmen, Lewis Tappan and his older brother, Arthur Tappan. The more vocal Lewis Tappan organized the legal defense for the Africans of the mutinied slave ship in the Amistad trials of 1841 and financed their journeys back to Africa. The papers of Lewis Tappan included letters to John Quincy Adams, Frederick Douglas, and William Lloyd Garrison. In response to the Second Great Awakening that called for a renewal of ethical living, abolitionists such as David Ingraham (white missionary), Lewis Tappan (white businessman), James Bradley (emancipated black) and Nancy Prince (freeborn black) expressed their religious ethic in the realm of social justice and sought to reform society by abolishing slavery, providing temporary aid to other abolitionists, and seeking to improve the economic status of newly emancipated people.
External Grant: Chung-Kim, Esther. “Democratization of Medicine: Access to Health Care in Early Modern Europe.” Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 2024.
Abstract: Religion and medicine are sometimes considered opposing fields, yet historical examples of early modern healers reveal a longstanding connection. This project examines the contributions of religious and social reformers, physicians, and lay healers in the democratization of medicine in early modern Europe in order to understand how their responses to disease and healing resulted in greater access to medical knowledge and a renewed vigor for scientific inquiry. Vernacular translations made the Bible and its stories of healing more readily available and accessible to the general public. Subsequently, from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century, physicians began turning to the Bible as a source of knowledge for studying disease and developing new treatments. Medicine in the Bible began appearing with increasing popularity as literacy rates improved and printing allowed affordability of books. Moreover, the publication of medical manuals, and home remedy books increased significantly to match the growing interest in diseases and treatments. Many physicians and lay healers alike also cited the religious imperative of caring for one's neighbor, especially those in need, as the main reason for their services and the dispensing of medications. In particular, the dissemination and circulation of medical knowledge was rife with religious motivations and often presented as an act of charity. The religious value of charity inspired changes in medical care, such as hiring a physician for the poor, hospital reform, and price limits on common medications.
Gilbert, Gary. “What Acre can teach US student protesters.” The Times of Israel, July 1, 2024.
Abstract: An analysis of the relations between Jews and Israeli Arabs in the city of Akko, and how the city and the relation between its peoples could be model for American university campuses.
Gilbert, Gary. “Approaching the Academic Year With Apprehension.” Inside Higher Ed, August 13, 2024.
Abstract: A description of the current hostility toward Zionist and many Jewish faculty and students on American university campuses, and a suggested set of values that can create a climate of constructive disagreement.
Martinez, Chloe. Review of Mirabai: The Making of a Saint by Nancy M. Martin. The Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Fall 2024.
Martinez, Chloe, translator. “Mirabai: Five Poems.” Tupelo Quarterly 33¸ Fall 2024.
Abstract: Five translations from the Braj Bhasha.
Martinez, Chloe, translator. “Mirabai: Eight Songs.” The Hopkins Review, vol. 17, issue 1, Winter 2024.
Abstract: Eight translations from the Braj Bhasha.
Martinez, Chloe. “The Open Door.” Poem. Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, no. 41, May 28, 2024.
Martinez, Chloe. “Rationale.” Poem. Southern Humanities Review, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 2024.
Martinez, Chloe. “In love.” Poem. SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami) Every Day. March 18, 2024.
Martinez, Chloe. “Couplets.” Poem. The Missouri Review, February 12, 2024.
Martinez, Chloe. Review of You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limón. Milkweed Editions, 2024.
Michon, Daniel. “Spaces of Dis/Harmony in Colonial Goa. Lefebvre’s Spatial Dynamics and the Convent of Santa Mónica, 1606-1740.” Ler Historia, vol. 84, June 2024, pp. 135-157.
Abstract: his paper explores the interplay of Henri Lefebvre’s conceived, perceived, and lived spaces in the Real Convento de Santa Mónica, a nunnery located at the heart of the Portuguese Asian empire, in Goa, India. The sense of harmony produced by the conceived and perceived spaces, frameworks that produced a particular habitus among the nuns, which in turn facilitated congenial lived spaces that aligned with the nuns’ aspirations, was significantly disrupted by an external authority, the Archbishop of Goa Ignácio de Santa Teresa, in the early eighteenth century. The archbishop’s desire to curb the power of the Orders and elevate the local Goan ecclesiastical institutions had an unintended effect: it introduced a state of disharmony into the lived space of the nuns, and thus the dialectic between habitus and space led many nuns to experience the convent not as a place of calm and refuge, but rather as a prison. This article is part of the special theme section on Women, Children, and Enslaved People in the Portuguese Empire in Asia, 16th-18th Centuries, guest-edited by Rozely Vigas and Rômulo Ehalt.
Moore, Tanner. “Covid-19, the Eucharist and spreading disease through Christianity’s holiest rite.” Theology, vol. 127, issue 6, 2024.
Abstract: During the Covid-19 pandemic in the USA, churches were faced with a question of medical and metaphysical importance: can Christianity’s rite of Holy Communion spread Covid-19? This article examines Christian responses to Covid-19 through a case study of five of Christianity’s multifaceted Covid eucharistic policies, arguing that the responses of churches in times of crisis reflect a nuanced understanding of the metaphysical theories surrounding the Eucharist. The goal of this article is to serve as a primer on the relationships between beliefs of the Eucharist and Covid-19 in American churches, seeking to provide an overview and facilitate further inquiry into modern concerns of Christianity’s holiest rite and the spread of disease.
Moore, Tanner. “Explanations of the Real Presence and Richard Allestree’s Heresy of Impanation in Early Modern England, 1534-1681: Finding God in the Bread.” Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. 93, no. 4, December 2024, pp. 715-740.
Abstract: This essay proposes that Richard Allestree's (1619/21?-1681) theology on the Eucharist provided a new perspective on the medieval heresy of impanation to reconcile the Church's relationship with its Roman Catholic heritage and to affirm a view of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist predominate by the time of his writing during the Restoration. Allestree solves the rhetorical and theological concerns raised by the potentially ambiguous language of the 1662 prayer book. The 1662 prayer book seemingly adopts a position of Christ's Real Presence but is unclear in how the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ. Allestree uses the medieval heresy of impanation to understand the Real Presence of Christ without the transubstantial language of Roman Catholic metaphysics that the Church of England condemned. In reviving the theory on impanation, Allestree argues that the position of Christ's presence is backed by scripture, tradition, and reason, removing the Church of England from dependence upon Roman Catholic theology to explain Christ's Presence and the benefit consuming Christ confers through the adoption of a twelfth-century heresy. This essay first examines the theory of the heresy of impanation, then addresses the theory of impanation in the context of, and its possible connection to the Church of England's evolving doctrine of the Eucharist, and ultimately explores the theology of impanation espoused by Richard Allestree, arguing for the position of impanation to solve the dilemma of the Real Presence of Christ without the usage of transubstantiation.