Scholars of Daoism in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) have paid particular attention to the interaction between the court and certain Daoist priests and to the political results of such interaction; the focus has been on either emperors or Daoist masters. Yet in the Ming era a special group of people patronized Daoism and Daoist establishments: these were the members of the imperial clan, who were enfeoffed as princes. In addition to personal belief and self-cultivation, a prince had other reasons to patronize Daoism. As the regional overlords, the Ming princes like other local elites saw financing and organizing temple affairs and rituals, patronizing Daoist priests, or collecting and producing Daoist books as a chance to maintain their influence and show off their power. The prosperity of Daoist institutions, which attracted many worshippers, also demonstrated the princes’ political success. Locally the Ming princes played an important cultural role as well by promoting the development of local religions. This book is the first to explore the interaction between Ming princes as religious patrons and local Daoism. Barred by imperial law from any serious political or military engagement, the Ming princes were ex officio managers of state rituals at the local level, with Daoist priests as key performers, and for this reason they became very closely involved in Daoist clerical and liturgical life. By illuminating the role the Ming princes played in local religion, Richard Wang demonstrates in The Ming Prince and Daoism that the princedom served to mediate between official religious policy and the commoners’ interests.

Buy direct from publisher
Buy from Amazon UK

Ming Erotic Novellas: Genre, Consumption, and Religiosity in Cultural Practice
Chinese University Press
ISBN: 978-962-996-458-0 Hardback, 336 pages

Richard Wang’s Ming Erotic Novellas is path breaking in its attention to a virtually ignored body of literature that certainly influenced the writing of the Jin Ping Mei, the Sanyan vernacular stories, and most likely Li Yu’s fiction. Compared to other titles in the field, this is the first scholarly monograph in any language to contextualize the erotic novellas of late imperial China. Moreover, existing studies in this area have tended to concentrate on a limited number of works of Chinese erotic fiction, or have only brushed up against these works tangentially during more general discussion of Ming and Qing literature. Ming Erotic Novellas adopts a provocative approach to fiction, moving beyond the traditional textual analyses of gender politics and the qing cult, and examining these erotic novellas as a new genre within the contexts of print culture, readership, consumption patterns, as well as religious dimensions.

Ming Erotic Novellas focuses on a group of mid to late Ming literary (wenyan) novellas, which are all stories of erotic romance. These novellas include a profusion of poems mixed with prose narratives that are characterized by “simple” literary Chinese, with a tendency toward the vernacular. Their plots are complex, with some running 20,000 characters or more, allowing for nuanced character development, rich dialogue, and psychological description.

Circulated widely during the Ming, the novellas had a significant impact on later erotic and “scholar-beauty” (caizi jiaren) novels. This particular group of novellas was of great importance in the development of Chinese fiction, functioning as a transitional link between the classical tale to the vernacular novel. By approaching these works through the lens of a cultural study, Wang is able to explore the social functions of the novellas as well as their significance in the development of Chinese fiction in the Ming cultural context.

Buy direct from publisher
Buy from Amazon UK

Book announcements are published based on information provided by ISRLC members, and do not constitute an endorsement on the part of the Society. If you would like to announce your most recent publication (monograph, edited collection, or substantial and scholarly web-based output), please e-mail alana.vincent@gmail.com

“In The Sacred Community, Jasper demonstrates how the Christian community plays a significant role in God’s plan for human salvation. Both informative and contemplative, Jasper’s imagination is truly universal in its breadth, drawing from western and eastern traditions, philosophy, and the arts and sciences. He has a poet’s ear for language.”
– Thomas Scirghi, Associate Professor of Theology, Fordham University

“Intensely reflective and deeply moving. Ranging widely over the landscape of ancient and modern theology, literature, and history alike, this rich and rewarding work explores the grace of a self-emptying God and the gift of sacred community.”
– Roger Lundin, author of Believing Again: Doubt and Faith in a Secular Age

Buy direct from publisher
Buy from Amazon UK

Book announcements are published based on information provided by ISRLC members, and do not constitute an endorsement on the part of the Society. If you would like to announce your most recent publication (monograph, edited collection, or substantial and scholarly web-based output), please e-mail alana.vincent@gmail.com

.

Buy from Amazon UK
Buy direct from publisher
Use Promotional Code C12HCH20 for a 20% discount between now and 28 February 2013

Book announcements are published based on information provided by ISRLC members, and do not constitute an endorsement on the part of the Society. If you would like to announce your most recent publication (monograph, edited collection, or substantial and scholarly web-based output), please e-mail alana.vincent@gmail.com

“In a manner that is both scholarly and deeply engaging Alison Jasper offers her own radical re-interpretation of the creative genius of women. Her work draws our attention to the fact that women have been the ‘ingenious’ shapers of spiritual knowledge as well as prophetic authors of secular criticism. Contemporary feminists are thus challenged to re-examine what counts as a feminist tradition and what we can learn from women’s distinctive interventions in discourses of the divine.”
– Heather Walton, Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow

Buy direct from publisher
Buy from Amazon UK

Book announcements are published based on information provided by ISRLC members, and do not constitute an endorsement on the part of the Society. If you would like to announce your most recent publication (monograph, edited collection, or substantial and scholarly web-based output), please e-mail alana.vincent@gmail.com

Buy direct from publisher
Buy from Amazon

Given its natural affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in relation to religion. In his exploration of this “textual intimacy,” Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to tell others who you are and how one’s self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identificaiton. He then provides a critical analysis of texts by nine living American writers, including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Mary Gordon, who give religion a positive place in their accounts. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort structures his personal account with a meditation on several meanings of the single word “assumption.”

The book is a volume in the series, “Studies in Religion and Culture.”

John D. Barbour says:

“Textual Intimacy is a fine book. It weaves together in a unique and creative way theories of religion and life writing, criticism of recent memoirs and autobiographies, and the author’s narrative of his still-evolving religious identity.”

Giles Gunn says:

“In this humane and gracious study, Wesley Kort writes with an unusual and attractive openness, not to say candor, that invites his reader into the processes of his own deliberations and evaluations. This is a splendid book.”

Book announcements are published based on information provided by ISRLC members, and do not constitute an endorsement on the part of the Society. If you would like to announce your most recent publication (monograph, edited collection, or substantial and scholarly web-based output), please e-mail alana.vincent@gmail.com

April 19-21, 2013
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

As English becomes progressively more multimodal and destandardized and as we look to a future where by 2050 Chinese “will have nearly triple the numbers of speakers that English has” (Ostler, 2003) it is important to explore how English can respond to the challenges and opportunities of this multilingual age. Whether we see English as a tool to “win friends and influence people,” as a lingua franca, or as a language whose use is now more symbolic than communicative, its possibilities remain endless. Now that English looks to a new stage in its history in this globalized “Asian century” it is timely that the future of English is explored from an Asian perspective.
If Hong Kong can provide us with an acid test for the possibilities that lie ahead for English in Asia, then recent events that point to a change in attitude to English in Hong Kong can be revealing of broader trends. It is important that the dimensions of this shift in perspective are examined so that the relevant disciplines (Linguistics, ESL, Literary Studies, World Englishes, English Education, to name but a selection) can adapt accordingly. In linguistics alone there has been a great deal of research on Hong Kong English (HKE) by Deterding, Kirkpatrick and others. It has been argued that English language benchmarks in HKE are often based on exonormative (usually RP English) models of English which may not represent the English actually spoken in Hong Kong (Kirkpatrick, 2007). This has informed recent debates in Hong Kong society on the relative merits of multilingual teachers and native English teachers for secondary schools. This conference sets out to explore how such issues are transforming English language teaching and learning in university curriculums across Asia.
English literary studies is another important element of English in Asia. Literary studies offers a valuable outlet and resource for English language students. Literary education fosters literacy and intercultural education as well as enabling imaginative and creative learning. It offers a broader approach to learning than one grounded solely on critical thinking. In a recent article on education in Hong Kong, Anthony Cheung Bing-leung points to the promise subjects such as literary studies can hold for education in general. Cheung Bing-leung argues that education in Hong Kong is in danger of becoming “commodity” education. He warns against what Harry Lewis, a former dean of Harvard, called “excellence without a soul”. He suggests we should offer a system of education where the “new generation” should “be able to display imagination and creativity unbounded by conventional wisdom and mainstream thinking”. In the current academic curriculum in Hong Kong, English literary studies (ELS) and the important local tradition of Hong Kong literature in English provide a valuable resource for such imaginative and creative learning.
This conference will explore various dimensions of English in Asia. The debates on the “role of English” in Hong Kong mediate broader political and social issues and these are relevant for English language teaching and learning in universities across Asia. This conference also examines English language publishing groups (both academic and non-academic) in Asia that are bringing together the different perspectives and different voices on English language teaching, learning and writing. Topics include, but are not restricted to:

Intercultural communication
English teaching and technology
Teaching English as a second/foreign language
World Englishes
Globalization and English
The future of English literary studies (ELS) in Asia
Theory in Asia
Hong Kong literature in English
Linguistics and the future of English in Asia
Pedagogy and English in Asia
Twenty-first century literatures in English
Publishing in English in Asia

Please send a 300 word abstract by November 30 to: osullivan@cuhk.edu.hk

Selected papers will be put forward for publication

Contact: Dr. Michael O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, English Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Isabel Moreira and Margaret Toscano, eds. Hell and its Afterlife, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Ashgate: Farnham, Surrey/Burlington, VT 2010 ISBN 9780754667292

Marian F. Sia and Santiago Sia. From Question to Quest: Literary-Philosophical Enquiries into the Challenge of Life. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle 2010 ISBN 9781443821599

Geert Lernout. Help My Unbelief: James Joyce and Religion. Continuum: London/New York 2010 ISBN 9781441194749

Sister Wendy Beckett. Real Presence: In Search of the Earliest Icons. Continuum: London 2010 ISBN 9781441158871

Richard G. Walsh. Three Versions of Judas. Equinox: London 2010 ISBN 9781845537029

Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, eds. Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology. Fordham University Press: New York 2010 ISBN 9780823230730

Jennifer Stevens Historical Jesus and the Literary Imagination, 1860-1920 Liverpool University Press: Liverpool 2010 ISBN 9781846314704

Archana Venkatesan. The Secret Garland: Āņţāļ’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyāar Tirumoļi Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010 ISBN 9780195391756

Charles Talar. Prelude to the Modernist Crisis: The Firmin Articles of Alfred Loisy. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010 ISBN 9780199754571

Joad Raymond. Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010 ISBN 9780199560509

Terryl L. Givens. When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010 ISBN 9780195313901

Daniel W. Hardy with Deborah Hardy, Peter Ochs and David F. Ford. Wording a Radiance: Parting Conversations on God and the Church. SCM Press: London 2010 ISBN 9780334042082

Don Cupitt. Theology’s Strange Return. SCM Press: London 2010 ISBN 9780334043720

Stanley Hauerwas. Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir SCM Press: London 2010 ISBN 9780334043683

Stefanos Geroulanos. An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA 2010 ISBN 9780804762991

Adam Kotsko Politics of Redemption, the Social Logic of Salvation. T&T Clark: London/New York 2010 ISBN 9780567185662

Christopher Hodgkins, ed. George Herbert’s Pastoral: New Essays on the Poet and Priest of Bemerton. University of Delaware Press: Newark, NJ 2010 ISBN 9780874130225

Carole Lynn Stewart. Strange Jeremiahs, Civil Religion and the Literary Imaginations of Jonathan Edwards, Herman Melville and W.E.B. Dubois University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque 2010 ISBN 978082634679

Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo, and Jens Zimmermann, eds. Through A Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory. Wilfrid Laurier University Press: Waterloo, ON 2010 ISBN 9781554581849

The keynote speaker will be Tony Award-winning playwright, David Henry Hwang , who will deliver the 8th annual McBride Lecture for Faith & Literature. Mr. Hwang will also appear, along with members of the editorial board of the journal Ecumenica, on a panel addressing issues of faith in contemporary drama.

Call for Papers: Shakespeare’s famous proclamation that “All the World’s a Stage” is just one among numerous Renaissance assertions of the Theatrum Mundi. In his 1612 Apology for Actors, Thomas Heywood, for instance, argues that

. . . the world a Theater present,
As by the roundnesse it appears most fit,
Built with starre-galleries of hye ascent,
In which Jehove does as spectator sit.

This metaphor gave thinkers in the early modern period and beyond both a means of defending the sacramental value of the stage itself – and of representation more broadly – and a means of conceptualizing God’s relationship to his creation as its author, director, and primary spectator. As we consider this metaphor today, we might consider the implications of the Theatrum Mundi concept for the expanded stage of a global society. Is all the world a stage?

For this conference we seek papers that address questions of representation before the divine. While we are, in keeping with our keynote speaker, especially interested in papers on dramatic literature, faith, and multiculturalism, we are also interested in how non-dramatic texts grapple with God as author, director, and/or audience for the theater of human activity. We will also consider papers more broadly interested in the intersection of Christianity and literature, as well as creative writing dealing with issues of faith.

Email one-paragraph abstracts and session proposals by July 6 to Benjamin Myers.