Joint PhD in Religion

In 1896 Ethiopians defeated the Italian military and defended their border. That made Ethiopia the only black nation that defended its border in the era of colonization. 1 However, protecting their land/border was not enough for Ethiopians to be a free nation. Their bodies and souls became abused and colonized by the Western discourses. In his book, Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon employs the psychoanalytical method to show the colonized mentality of the black man in which he becomes alienated from his cultural and social identity. Fanon wants to address both the inferiority complex of the black man and the superiority complex of the white man. The inferiority complex of the black man comes from the superiority complex of the white man that wants to create only the world of white men. Fanon writes, The black man wants to be white. The white man is desperately trying to achieve the rank of man. This essay will attempt to understand the Black-White relationship. The white man is locked in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness. 2 Fanon exposes this created identity through his psychoanalytical method. If the white man eliminates the world of a black man, the only destiny that the black man has is whiteness. 3 The 1896 Adwa victory, however, shows that the black man has the power to defend his culture, identity, and language. Fanon's psychological analysis cannot address the ideological, discourse, and image colonization of Ethiopians. Fanon cannot describe this kind of colonization Ethiopians because he is describing the people who are struggling due to land and cultural colonization. However, Ethiopians' colonization is not only psychological but also metaphorical and ideological.

The literary representation of Goddess Kali in Bankim Chandra Chatterji's <em>Kapalakundala</em> (1866) presents a paradoxical image of a blood thirsty yet maternal goddess, which is foregrounded along with the trope of human sacrifice. While this theme of sacrifice highlights the larger gender politics of the novel, it also allows us to study the tension between the contending constituencies of Kali worshippers. The plot of Chatterji's novel revolves around the tragic fate of Kapalakundalaat the hands of her adoptive "kapalika" father who sets out to punish his daughter's betrayal for she obstructs the ritual of human sacrifice. She rescues the captured Nabakumar and eventually escapes with him from the island after a brief marriage ritual. The kapalika's revenge is finally realized when due to a chain of events Nabakumar suspects his wife of committing adultery and proceeds to kill her under his father-in-law's instructions. Even though Na...

The worship of the martial goddesses especially that of Durga and Kali, has been central to the belief system of Shaktism which is based on the celebration of the cosmic, feminine energy or 'Shakti.' Scholars of religion and cultural critics tend to interpret Kali within a binary spectrum of a radical/submissive, proto-femininst/patriarchal goddess. However, the plural, ambivalent and paradoxical nature of Kali's femininity challenge simplistic reading as her trajectory can be mapped across scriptural, visual, mythological, devotional and literary narratives. This paper purports to examine the portrayal of goddess Kali in the Hindu scriptural tradition with special reference to the Devi Mahatmya and the Kalika Purana, the two crucial scriptures that mark the textualization of Kali in the corpus of Hindu religious narratives. There is a remarkable shift in the textual representation of Kali in the concerned scriptures where the portrayal of Kali as an independent, demon d...

This thesis proposes that Mark had in mind a motif of the relationship between - and the interchange and development of - Jesus' identity and authority as His identity was increasingly revealed to the disciples. This study takes into account Christology (particularly Markan) and its development in scholarship, the concept of the Messianic Secret, Markan literary structure, and the history of and varying views regarding the passage that might be considered 'turning point' in Mark's narrative. This latter is explored because I propose here that when viewed through the lens of Christ's Identity and Authority, the turning point of Mark should be placed at the Mount of Transfiguration rather than the preceding (and most commonly held) pericope of Peter's confession of faith.

Tracing a thread through Plato's realms and Forms, a renaissance of Aristotelian thought within Medieval Scholasticism, and the turn away from viewing nature through the metaphysical via the Nominalist movement of Roscelin of Compiègne and William of Ockham, I lay a groundwork for the understanding the encounter of the transcendent through the material within the Christian tradition by way of examining iconoclasm. This traced thread is for the purpose of drawing an outline of historical Christian thought regarding veneration of material objects, and from there developing a proper understanding of veneration in relation to how the immaterial is reflected in the material, particularly in Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions.

An Exegetical Examination of Deuteronomy 7:16-26 in which Moses commands the people to remember God's past faithfulness, to take courage, and to destroy the idols of the land. This includes an examination of God's promises and responsibilities and of man's response and responsibilities, moving from a promised fulfillment by God, to a cooperative fulfillment, to a final imperative of the nations' requirement in fulfillment. The paper closes with synthesis, interpretation, and application.