Category Archives: Human Sciences

Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith

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Originally, enslaved Africans in Saint Domingue (renamed Haiti) brought with them religious practices and traditions that blended with the Catholicism of French colonists to form Vodou. Later, Protestantism was introduced and spread by white and black missionaries. Today, all three religions are practiced in Haiti. According to Terry Rey, co-author of Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion in Miami, Haitians share a similar religious orientation influenced by Vodou and the alleged spiritual power of Haiti, whether they self-identify as Catholic, Protestant, or Vodouist. The heavy denigration and stereotyping of Vodou in large measure began during the U.S. occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934, as soldiers and administrators misunderstood and misinterpreted the religious and social practices they witnessed on Haiti. (Popular usage of the word “zombie” spiked during this period.) These distortions, so entrenched in Hollywood films and popular literature, must be overcome in order to gain a real understanding of Haitian religion.

Temple religion professor Terry Rey and Alex Stepick, director of the Immigration and Ethnicity Institute at Florida International University, have produced a history and ethnography of Haitian religion in Miami. By surveying the religious institutions in Miami’s Little Haiti and surrounding areas, interviewing community members, and investigating the primary and secondary literatures, Rey and Stepick explain what happened to Haitian religion when it “crossed the water” to the shores of Florida. They describe Notre Dame de Haiti Catholic Church, the epicenter of support for Haitian immigrants, the shrines in and around Miami that Haitians visit for spiritual sustainance, and the annual festivals that bring the Haitian community together in celebration.  Protestant churches small and large, both storefront operations and established denominations, have filled in around Notre Dame de Haiti, along with the less prevalent Vodou botanicas, to create a religious marketplace for Haitian Americans in search of salvation goods.

Unlike the Africans who originally came to Saint Domingue, Miami’s Haitian residents stay in frequent contact with their place of birth, through modern communications and transportation technologies. I spoke with Terry Rey on January 13, 2014.

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—Fred Rowland

The Digital Rights Movement

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Hector Postigo is the author of The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright, in which he presents three case studies of a broad group of loosely knit organizations and individuals that address issues concerning fair use, free speech, privacy, and innovation in the digital environment. None of these concerns are new but the digital medium has changed the social, legal, and economic configuration in which the stakeholders operate. Users are no longer simply passive receivers of content but producers as well. Anyone with a computer can generate new and original online content, or can reuse and remix content in creative ways. This is a real watershed for creation and innovation and the digital rights movement is motivated by a vision of culture as shared and participatory. Expanded conceptions of fair use and free speech are essential to facilitate this vision. Individuals, organizations, and businesses that “own” content through government-granted copyrights have an interest in maintaining control in their works, for commercial and other reasons. The lines dividing users, creators, and content owners are very fluid, so much of this story is about the evolution of legal rules – government regulation – with regards to copyright and digital technology.

By looking at three different cases in which the nascent digital rights movement struggled with the owners and producers of technology and commercial media over the meaning of fair use, free speech, and cultural production, Hector Postigo provides a unique perspective on the profound changes that digital technology has set in motion for cultures, economies, and polities.

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—Fred Rowland

Box Score: An Autobiography

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Introducin’ Kevine Varrone, baseball bardster over iTunes way   five and a quarter ounces avoirdupois   leaving his ancestral home: Goodin, Strawberry, Casey Stengall       amazing  a walk is as good as a hit    we used to say   that’ll be a rope in the boxscore   Pete Gray Nanticoke brief bloom back to cobblestone streets   city of hills & stars & sky & all of it falling or held in the firmament somewhere beyond the outfield fence  Center City rises up as the light fades waiting, sea gulls, plastic bags   the eephus turns instinct on its ear (1-3) a country life & estate Penn wrote to his wife   Sacrificing, converting, teaching, mixing, blending, bleeding   it seems odd don’t you think that we run the bases clockwise & inconceivable to do so   my sister is a Red Sox fan  a glove should feel like an extension of yr hand   my dad used to say    an experimental poet, everyone reads even the kids   Bill Lee, Mark Fidrych, Harry O’Neill  rewriting history is is pretty much what baseball is all about   in 1964 the mets began playing at shea stadium   walking through the Italian Market Paul stunned it was light   in 1945 a throw by athletics outfielder hal peck hit a pigeon flying over fenway park   does my sister know this, how could she   our world is just a hanging curveball   bill lee sd   the eephus is a quaker pitch   read, listen, extras, subplots edgar alllan poe   in most reckonings the world begins in thinking   & action is a derivative miracle   Kevin Varrone made history when he spoke to Fred Rowland   & then god said when did it become night

[bolded italics by Kevin Varrone, plain print by Fred Rowland]

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—Fred Rowland

 

Bury Me In My Jersey

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Writer Tom McAllister

 

 

 

 

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In 2010, Tom McAllister published a memoir entitled Bury Me in My Jersey: A Memoir of My Father, Football, and Philly (Villard Books) in which he describes the critical role that the Philadelphia Eagles football team played in the shaping of his young years. Like many who spend Sundays watching football, this ritual helped him to cement bonds with family and friends. Unlike many, it become an obsession that, as I was to learn, took many years and one book to untangle. The fateful 39th Super Bowl plays a central role in his narrative, an event that few Philadelphia sports fans will ever forget. (It was February 6, 2005, and we were finally going to win what had been denied to us for so long…) In addition to leading us through his career as an Eagles fan, Tom also reflects on the role that his father played in his life, sometimes but not always tied to their mutual devotion to the Eagles. Bury Me in My Jersey is full of very funny, unlikely, and sometimes disturbing stories, as well as thoughtful meditations on the search for identity.

Tom is also the non-fiction editor of Barrelhouse magazine and the co-host, with Mike Ingram, of the podcast Book Fight: Tough Love for Literature.

I interviewed Tom McAllister on October 23, 2013.

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 —Fred Rowland

Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities

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Maia Cucchiara’s new book, Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities (University of Chicago Press, 2013), is a very timely intervention into the current debate about the troubled Philadelphia public school system. Most of the research for this book took place between 2004 and 2007 as part of her doctoral dissertation during the Philadelphia Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI), which sought to market and promote Center City public schools in an effort to retain middle and upper middle class Center City families from fleeing to the suburbs in search of better schools. She shines a light on this initiative by focusing on one school and one neighborhood, which she pseudonymously names “Grant Elementary School” and “Cobble Square”. In the course of her research, she interviewed parents, administrators, teachers, and local civic and business leaders, as well as participated in many events at Grant Elementary School.

One of the most important and illuminating aspects of Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities is the way it highlights the tensions between an urban area’s economic and civic space as citizens are increasingly seen as customers and consumers. What rights and duties do we have as citizens and how are those rights and duties constrained or enhanced when they are interpreted from a narrow economic perspective? On the one hand, retaining Center City families grows the tax base and potentially benefits all Philadelphia schools, given that schools are financed primarily through real estate taxes. On the other hand, how does one justify directing additional resources to Center City schools at a time when there are so many disadvantaged schools in the outlying neighborhoods? The tensions that Maia Cucchiara investigates in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities are still very much with us today and make this book a “must read” for anyone interested in Philadelphia public schools and the future of public education.

I spoke with Maia Cucchiara on September 19, 2013.

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—Fred Rowland

 

 

 

Samuel and the Shaping of Tradition

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The deuteronomistic (or deuteronomic) history is a scholarly theory about the way in which Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel (1 and 2), and Kings (1 and 2) were redacted into a narrative describing the rise of Israel from a loose grouping of tribes and cults into a monarchy. The biblical figure Samuel plays a significant role in this story, from his early priestly training in the temple of Shiloh to his later, profound influence on the kingships of Saul and David. Temple University religion professor Mark Leuchter has recently published a work on Samuel entitled Samuel and the Shaping of Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2013), in which he examines Samuel’s “liminality” in his different roles as priest, prophet, and judge. In the course of discussing his own theories and perspectives on Samuel, Professor Leuchter also explains the deuteronomistic history, redaction, liminality, and the chronology of ancient Israel.

I spoke with Mark Leuchter on September 12, 2013.

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—Fred Rowland

 

 

Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy

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I spoke to David Wolfsdorf on June 12, 2013 on his new book, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2013).  He is an associate professor of philosophy at Temple University specializing in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. This new work examines the views of Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, the Old Stoics, and the Cyrenaics with regards to pleasure. At the end of this work, he also touches on modern treatments of pleasure in philosophy. For the ancient Greeks an understanding of pleasure was a necessary part of appreciating what constituted the “good life”, an important focus of their ethical and moral theorizing. Professor Wolfsdorf’s previous work includes Trials of Reason: Plato and the Crafting of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2008) and many articles in leading classics and ancient philosophy journals.

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—Fred Rowland

Empire of Sacrifice

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Jon Pahl is the Peter Paul and Elizabeth Hagan Professor in the History of Christianity at the Lutheran Theological Seminary and an adjunct professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University. He stopped by my office on May 22, 2013 to discuss his 2009 book, Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence, from New York University Press. Throughout his career Jon Pahl has been interested in the intersection of religion, violence, and peacemaking. In this work, he describes the religiously-oriented sacrificial logic behind much of the violence in America. He uses case studies on youth, race, gender, and capital punishment to show how violent sacrifice is made normative in our culture. One of the hallmarks of Jon Pahl’s pedagogy and this book is his use of film to illustrate important themes. On finishing Empire of Sacrifice, I realized that I need to pay far more attention to the role that film plays in shaping our culture.

In a future book, provisionally entitled The Coming Religious Peace, Jon Pahl will analyze the role that religions play in peacemaking. I look forward to inviting him back to discuss this new work.

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—Fred Rowland

Library Prize Interviews, 2013

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Here are the interviews with this year’s three winners of the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and their faculty sponsors. Take some time to listen to these three accomplished undergraduate scholars discussing the road to the Library Prize.

Eamonn Connor, “Miasma and the Formation of Greek Cities”
GRC 4182: Independent Study (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Sydnor Roy

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Emily Simpson, “”Represion!” Punk Resistance and the Culture of Silence in the Southern Cone, 1978-1990”
History 4997: Honors Thesis Seminar (Spring 2013)
Faculty Sponsor: Beth Bailey

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Nicole Wolverton, “The Murder at Cherry Hill”
English 3020: Detective Novel and the City (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Priya Joshi

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—Fred Rowland