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Cedarville University: Defining Legacies
Barbara L. Loach
Cedarville University’s 125th anniversary in 2012 provided an appropriate moment to look back and remember how God has led so many wonderful people to this place and how His hand has guided and kept us over all these years. As the university continues to grow and change, many individuals new to the campus—students, administrators, faculty and staff members alike—may not be aware of all the contributions of those who preceded them. In order to capture those lives before they are lost to history, Dr. Loach set out to record the stories behind some of the faces and names long associated with the university. In addition, she highlights how some of the university's more than 30,000 alumni have served the Lord through various fields of endeavor around the world.
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The Augustinian Theology of W.H. Auden
Stephen J. Schuler
When W.H. Auden returned to Christianity in the early 1940s, he identified himself with what he called an 'existential' method of spiritual and literary inquiry, which the writings of St. Augustine helped him define as a mode of thinking that not only allows for human subjectivity, but emphasizes the hopes, fears, needs, desires, and anxieties of the individual. Augustine thus became for Auden a model of a thinker who seamlessly merged psychological reflection with philosophical speculation and theological insight, and it is this combination of introspection and theoretical investigation that shapes much of Auden's later poetry. The Augustinian Theology of W.H. Auden illustrates that Augustine's thought is a major influence on Auden's postconversion poetry and prose. Auden encountered Augustine both directly, through his reading of the Confessions, and indirectly, through several of Auden's contemporaries, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Charles Norris Cochrane, and Charles Williams. Stephen J. Schuler argues that Augustine provided Auden with the language of privation to describe the nature of moral and social evil, enabling him to make sense of the pervasive anxieties produced by World War II. Augustine's works also offered Auden a rationale for his intuition that the physical world, and especially the human body, is intrinsically good. Auden's struggle to reconcile the implications of his Augustinian theology with his attitudes toward romantic love and sexuality are explained by Schuler, who demonstrates how the Augustinian theology of Reinhold Niebuhr helped shape Auden's ideas about human identity and community, which is defined and maintained by love in all its various forms. Finally, Schuler analyzes Auden's Augustinian view of the ethics of poetry. By examining the presence of Augustinian ideas in Auden's poetry and prose, Schuler establishes the Augustinian origins of several crucial but often misunderstood features of Auden's work as well as the importance of Augustine in shaping and articulating the concerns of Auden's later poetry.
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Staging Luther: Four Plays by Hans Sachs
Annis N. Shaver
The book contains four plays written by Hans Sachs, a troubadour, playwright, shoemaker, and important compatriot and supporter of Martin Luther.
Unlike Sachs' well-known poem "The Wittenberg Nightingale" (also included here in a new translation), the plays have not been translated into English until now and will be a boon for researchers and students who can now read them for the first time.
The plays are full of scriptural references and are generally written as dialogs between a Luther supporter and a Catholic cleric. Inevitably the Luther supporter wins the argument, but not without some name-calling and strong derision towards the Papist discussant!
In addition to the plays, the book provides historical commentary on the importance of Sachs' support of Luther, as well as annotations related to the translation and word choices along with cultural information to support the translations.
It is an important scholarly contribution to the ongoing work of reformation scholarship in the English language.
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The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks
Annis N. Shaver
The central assumption of The Textbook as Discourse is this: interpreted in the flow of history, textbooks can provide important insights into the nature and meaning of a culture and the social and political discourses in which it is engaged. This book is about the social, political and cultural content of elementary and secondary textbooks in American education. It focuses on the nature of the discourses—the content and context—that represent what is included in textbooks. The term "discourse" provides the conceptual framework for the book, drawing on the work of the French social theorist Michel Foucault. The volume includes classic articles and book chapters as well as three original chapters written by the editors. To enhance its usefulness as a course text, each chapter includes an Overview, Key Concepts, and Questions for Reflection.
