This paper focuses on two elements of the Passover Seder ritual and their connection to Piagetian education theory. After outlining Piaget’s theory of genetic epistemology and its implications for education theory, it focuses on Sigel’s distancing theory, which touts question asking as a tool for presenting information to students. This paper arg…[Read more]

In comics: how ancient rabbis upend “traditional” ideas of reproduction, gender, and humanity. A blog post commissioned by UC Press Blog about the book When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species.

Link: htt…[Read more]

Glossing was an important element of medieval western manuscript culture. However, glosses are notoriously difficult to analyze because of their triviality, fluid nature, heterogeneity of origin, complex transmission histories, and anonymity. Traditional scholarly approaches such as close reading and the genealogical method often do not produce…[Read more]

From 40 years of experience it is clear that spirituality has become entangled in abstractions: powers, perfection, supernatural, unreal, limitless knowledge, crystal ball perceptions, etc.
Dr Stephen Farra agreed with that – and went one better. Dr Farra stated “Our models are out reality. But our models are not reality. That coincides with the…[Read more]

This paper presents an analysis of data derived from thousands of publicly available photographs showing life on the International Space Station (ISS) between 2000 and 2020. Our analysis uses crew and locational information from the photographs’ metadata to identify the distribution of different population groups—by gender, nationality, and spa…[Read more]

The Norse poem Atlakviða shows an irregular metre which is difficult to classify. This makes it a useful test case for comparing the explanatory abilities of two major theoretical frameworks of Germanic alliterative verse: the positional theory and the word-foot theory. I argue that the word-foot theory is more successful, especially in deriving…[Read more]

Historical Synergy: Mannheim holds that historical and political thought is determined by the socio-historical location of the thinker and the political aspirations and material ambitions of the group or groups to which he belongs.
2. Prehistoric Artic Hunter-Gatherer Synergy of Beliefs in Animal Spirits w/ Economic-Political Realities Erica Hill…[Read more]

During the Neo-Assyrian period (approximately 934-612 BCE, based in modern Iraq) the annals and royal inscriptions of several kings mention women with a curious title: ‘Queen of the Arabs’. These women have been included in previous discussions regarding Assyrian interaction with the ‘Arabs’, but a full investigation into their roles as rulers…[Read more]

The Hebrew word “ruach” – the word connected to the idea-symbol of “spirit” translates alternately as “wind,” “breathe,” or “spirit.” In Arabic, there are two words for the words: spirit, soul or self – namely, ruH (spirit, soul) & nafs (spirit, soul, self). Both of these Arabic words are also connected to the ideas of breath or wind (e.g. ruH is…[Read more]

In 2023, a new museum opened in Tbilisi, at the Writer’s House of Georgia that previously house the Soviet Writers’ Union: The Museum of Repressed Writers. The museum honours the executed poets from Georgia’s Soviet past, poets whose identities Soviet authorities tried to destroy. This article examines the story the museum tells about Soviet l…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

Este libro indaga en diferentes temas de la vida humana personal y social a la luz de Cristo. Su punto de partida es el acontecimiento de Jesús de Nazaret, y despliega sus implicaciones culturales, espirituales, sociales, éticas, políticas. Es original en la medida en que se dirige al mundo universitario, sin aceptar de antemano las re…[Read more]

The essay is the second of a projected series of essays collectively entitled ‘The Uesugi: a study of a Japanese warrior family’s political and military involvement in eastern Japan, 1252-1455’. It examines the Uesugi family’s military activities during the first fourteen years of the conflict that broke out between Emperor Godaigo and the Ash…[Read more]

The trend of Carolingian royal advice literature, Fürstenspiegel, or specula principum offers advice to kings on how to rule well and examples of ruling poorly. Interpretations of these texts have often focused on traditional ideas of the Carolingian reforms, for example the focus on classical models of rule in Sedulius Scottus’ De rectoribus ch…[Read more]

The role of the internet in fomenting male supremacist ideology must be understood within the larger cultural context that undergirds and naturalizes such rhetoric. Traditional conservative (TradCon) sections of the manosphere valorize a patriarchal social order centering traditional gender roles. According to TradCon reasoning, men, under attack…[Read more]

The Issue of Free Will – Stephen Cave points out that the Free Will “research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.” (There’s No Such Thing as Fr…[Read more]

यह मणिपुर में 2023 में हुई हिंसा पर केंद्रित प्रमोद रंजन के रिपोर्ताजों का पहला भाग है।

प्रमोद रंजन इसमें पूर्वोत्तर भारत के इतिहास, संस्कृति और समाज में आ रहे परिवर्तनों को चिन्हित किया है तथा उसका संवेदनशील, मर्मस्पर्शी और विचारोत्तेजक चित्र प्रस्तुत किया है।

उन्होंने इस रिपोर्ताज में यह भी बताया है कि हिंसा के दौरान मैतेई महिलाओं के…[Read more]

Thijs Porck, “I can read Hollandsch very fairly. The Correspondence between James Murray (1837-1915) and Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899)”, in Language Use, Usage Guides, and Linguistic Norms, ed. Luisella Caon, Marion Elenbaas & Janet Grijzenhout (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), 107-129.