University of Notre Dame Press London Book Fair 2025 Rights Catalog

9780268201944

Pub Date: 4/1/2022

$25.00

Discount Code: s Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W

158 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

You Are Gods On Nature and Supernature

David Bentley Hart

Summary

David Bentley Hart offers an intense and thorough reflection upon the issue of the supernatural in Christian theology and doctrine.

In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart’s You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as well as an argument in favor of a model of nature and supernature at once more Eastern and patristic, and also more in keeping with the healthier currents of mediaeval and modern Catholic thought. In its more constructive and confessedly radical aspects, the book makes a vigorous case for the all-but-complete eradication of every qualitative, ontological, or logical distinction between the natural and the supernatural in the life of spiritual creatures. It advances a radically monistic vision of Christian metaphysics but does so wholly on the basis of credal orthodoxy.

Hart, one of the most widely read theologians in America today, presents a bold gesture of resistance to the recent revival of what used to be called “two-tier Thomism,” especially in the Anglophone theological world. In this astute exercise in classical Christian orthodoxy, Hart takes the metaphysics of participation, high Trinitarianism, Christology, and the soteriological language of theosis to their inevitable logical conclusions. You Are Gods will provoke many readers interested in theological metaphysics. The book also offers a vision of Christian thought that draws on traditions (such as Vedanta) from which Christian philosophers and theologians, biblical scholars, and religious studies scholars still have a great deal to learn.

Contributor Bio

David Bentley Hart is a writer, religious studies scholar, philosopher, and cultural commentator.

9780268107185

Pub Date: 4/15/2020

$29.00

Discount Code: s Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

414 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Theological Territories

A David Bentley Hart Digest

David Bentley Hart

Summary

Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion 2020

Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year Award, Religion

In Theological Territories, David Bentley Hart, one of America's most eminent contemporary writers on religion, reflects on the state of theology "at the borders" of other fields of discourse—metaphysics, philosophy of mind, science, the arts, ethics, and biblical hermeneutics in particular. The book advances many of Hart's larger theological projects, developing and deepening numerous dimensions of his previous work. Theological Territories constitutes something of a manifesto regarding the manner in which theology should engage other fields of concern and scholarship.

The essays are divided into five sections on the nature of theology, the relations between theology and science, the connections between gospel and culture, literary representations of and engagements with transcendence, and the New Testament. Hart responds to influential books, theologians, philosophers, and poets, including Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, Tomáš Halík, Sergei Bulgakov, Jennifer Newsome Martin, and David Jones, among others. The twenty-six chapters are drawn from live addresses delivered in various settings. Most of the material has never been printed before, and those parts that have appear here in expanded form. Throughout, these essays show how Hart's mind works with the academic veneer of more formal pieces stripped away. The book will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers interested in the place of theology in the modern world.

Contributor Bio

David Bentley Hart is a writer, religious studies scholar, philosopher, and cultural commentator. He is the author and translator of twenty-three books, including the award-winning You Are Gods

9780268208448

Pub Date: 7/1/2024

$25.00

Discount Code: t

Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

208 Pages

Fiction / Christian

Prisms, Veils

A Book of Fables

David Bentley Hart

Summary

From one of the most-read religious and philosophical scholars in the United States comes a collection of creative, thought-provoking fables.

Alongside David Bentley Hart’s widely read work in philosophy, theology, and religious studies there has always been the other side of his writing—the fiction, poetry, and literary essays—which has often enjoyed a separate, if equally appreciative, readership. In this, his most recent book, these two worlds draw near to one another in a new way.

In Prisms, Veils: A Book of Fables, Hart explores the elusive nature of dreams and the enduring power of mythologies. Moving over themes ranging from the beauty of the natural world to the very nature of consciousness itself, each narrative is threaded through with Hart’s deep religious, cultural, and historical knowledge, drawing readers into an expertly woven tapestry of diverse allusions and deep meaning.

Prisms, Veils will appeal to fans of Hart’s work, philosophers, theologians, and general readers of fiction. The collection affords a special opportunity to engage with the creative side of Hart, its pages sparkling with bright gems of short fiction that are enchanting, thought-provoking, and imbued with spiritual truth.

Contributor Bio

David Bentley Hart is a writer, religious studies scholar, philosopher, and cultural commentator. He is the author and translator of twenty-three books, including the award-winning You Are Gods

9780268208677

Pub Date: 9/1/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: s Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

416 Pages

Religion / Religion, Politics & State

Ending Persecution

Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom

H.Knox Thames

Summary

Building on his extensive experience in the U.S. government and as an international human rights lawyer, H. Knox Thames provides fresh, decisive strategies to advance religious freedom for all.

Today, a scourge of religious persecution is impacting every faith community around the globe. In Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom, author H. Knox Thames takes readers to some of the world's most repressive countries in the Middle East and Asia, exposing the harsh reality of religious repression. Thames breaks down the devastating litany of human rights abuses faced by religious groups in these countries into four major types of persecution: terrorism in the Middle East, government-sponsored genocides in China and Burma, cultural changes due to extremism in Pakistan, and tyrannical democracy in Nepal and India.

Ending Persecution recounts the range of tools and policies that the U.S. government has used to encourage reform in repressive governments, leverage U.S. influence for the oppressed, and to reflect the best of American values of diversity, minority rights, and religious freedom. To help the persecuted in the twenty-first century, Thames argues, the United States must revitalize its approach and recommit to ending oppression by supporting coalition building and interfaith tolerance.

Contributor Bio

H.Knox Thames is an international human rights lawyer and advocate who served for twenty years in the U.S. government across multiple administrations, most recently in the Obama and Trump administrations as a State Department special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South/Central Asia. He is currently a senior fellow at Pepperdine University.

9780268209223

Pub Date: 4/15/2025

$55.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

280 Pages

Religion / Christianity

Women in the Orthodox Tradition

Feminism, Theology, and Equality

Ashley Marie Purpura

Summary

Women in the Orthodox Tradition brings feminist insights into dialogue with Orthodox Christianity to theologically identify and respond to challenges of gender equality.

Orthodox Christianity places great importance upon tradition, from doctrinal formulas and sainted teachings to festal commemorations and a hymnic liturgy. But what does this mean for women who are often missing, misrepresented, or outnumbered in the androcentric historical tradition? Women in the Orthodox Tradition engages with feminist insights to argue that ignoring this bias in Christian tradition is theologically problematic for Orthodox faith. By critically examining the spiritual values that shape Orthodoxy, the commemorations of women saints within it, and liturgical and doctrinal expressions that shape it, author Ashley Marie Purpura makes the case that it is theologically necessary to unsay the patriarchal limits of tradition and seek a more inclusive interpretation instead.

In acknowledging the messy entanglement between tradition, theology, and historical patriarchal values, Women in the Orthodox Tradition advocates for women’s voices, contributions, and diverse humanity within the church.

Contributor Bio

Ashley Marie Purpura is an associate professor of religion in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. She is the author of God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium, and co-editor of Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality and Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity.

9780268208554

Pub Date: 10/15/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

344 Pages

1 chart

Religion / Christian Theology

Theology of Horror

The Hidden Depths of Popular Films

Ryan G. Duns SJ

Summary

Theology of Horror explores the dark reaches of popular horror films, bringing to light their implicit theological and philosophical themes.

Horror films scare and entertain us, but there’s more to be found in their narratives than simple thrills. Within their shadows, an attentive viewer can glimpse unexpected flashes of orthodox Christian belief. In Theology of Horror, Ryan G. Duns, SJ, invites readers to undertake an unconventional pilgrimage in search of these buried theological insights.

Duns uses fifteen classic and contemporary horror films—including The Blair Witch Project, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Candyman, and The Purge—as doorways to deeper reflection. Each chapter focuses on a single film, teasing out its implicit philosophical and theological themes. As the reader journeys through the text, a surprisingly robust theological worldview begins to take shape as glimmers of divine light emerge from the darkness. Engaging and accessible, Theology of Horror proves that, rather than being the domain of nihilists or atheists, the horror film genre can be an opportunity for reflecting on “things visible and invisible,” as Christians profess in the Nicene Creed.

Contributor Bio

Ryan G. Duns, SJ, is an associate professor of theology at Marquette University. In addition to many articles and book chapters, he is the author of Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age: Desmond and the Quest for God

9780268209186

Pub Date: 4/1/2025

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9.2 in H | 6.1 in W

496 Pages

34 color illustrations, 2 tables

Religion / Christianity

The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art

Jonathan A. Anderson

Summary

The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art offers a critical guide for rereading and rethinking religion in the histories of modern and contemporary art.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a marked increase in attention to religion and spirituality in contemporary art among artists and scholars alike, but the resulting scholarship tends to be dispersed, disjointed, and underdeveloped, lacking a sustained discourse that holds up as both scholarship of art and as scholarship of religion. The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art is both a critical study of this situation and an adjustment to it, offering a much-needed field guide to the current discourse of contemporary art and religion. By connecting the work of leading art historians, theologians, philosophers, and sociologists, Jonathan A. Anderson uncovers the gaps and reveals opportunities for scholars to engage more fully with the theological grammars, histories, and concepts at play in modern and contemporary art.

By addressing the religious blind spots in existing scholarship, Anderson opens new lines of inquiry and invites deeper dialogue among religious studies, theology, and art history and criticism.

Contributor Bio

Jonathan A. Anderson is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College. He is the co-author of the book Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism.

9780268203108

Pub Date: 2/15/2024

$24.00

Discount Code: s Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

264 Pages

Religion / Christian Living

Agrarian Spirit

Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land

Norman Wirzba

Summary

This refreshing work offers a distinctly agrarian reframing of spiritual practices to address today’s most pressing social and ecological concerns.

For thousands of years most human beings drew their daily living from, and made sense of their lives in reference to, the land. Growing and finding food, along with the multiple practices of home maintenance and the cultivations of communities, were the abiding concerns that shaped what people understood about and expected from life. In Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba demonstrates how agrarianism is of vital and continuing significance for spiritual life today. Far from being the exclusive concern of a dwindling number of farmers, this book shows how agrarian practices are an important corrective to the political and economic policies that are doing so much harm to our society and habitats. It is an invitation to the personal transformation that equips all people to live peaceably and beautifully with each other and the land.

Agrarian Spirit begins with a clear and concise affirmation of creaturely life. Wirzba shows that a human life is inextricably entangled with the lives of fellow animals and plants, and that individual flourishing must always include the flourishing of the habitats that nourish and sustain our life together. The book explores how agrarian sensibilities and responsibilities transform the practices of prayer, perception, mystical union, humility, gratitude, and hope. Wirzba provides an elegant and compelling account of spiritual life that is both attuned to ancient scriptural sources and keyed to addressing the pressing social and ecological concerns of today. Scholars and students of theology, ecotheology, and spirituality, as well as readers interested in agrarian and environmental studies, will gain much from this book.

Contributor Bio

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, and Director of Research for Climate and Sustainability at Duke University. He is the author and editor of sixteen books, including This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World

9780268207892

Pub Date: 3/1/2024

$32.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

194 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

The Catholic

Case against War A Brief Guide

David Carroll Cochran

Summary

The Catholic Case against War demonstrates how the Catholic mantra “Never again war!” reflects a set of powerfully realistic teachings on war and peace.

Over the last five decades, the Catholic Church has emerged as a powerful critic of war and as an advocate for its alternatives. At the same time, researchers of armed conflict have produced a considerable body of scholarship on war and its prevention. The Catholic Case against War compares these seemingly disparate lines of thought and finds a remarkable harmony between the two.

Drawing on years of Vatican documents and papal statements, political scientist David Carroll Cochran clearly presents the key elements of the Church’s case against war. Far from a naïve, optimistic call for peace, these teachings are consistent with the empirical research on the realities of contemporary warfare. The result is a look not only at the explicit moral case against war developed by the Vatican but also at its remarkable realism and relevance to world conflict today.

Contributor Bio

David Carroll Cochran is professor of politics and co-director of the peace and justice minor at Loras College. He is the author or editor of five previous books, most recently The Catholic Church in Ireland Today and Catholic Realism and the Abolition of War.

9780268207359

Pub Date: 11/15/2023

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

530 Pages

Religion / Islam

Political Theology and Islam

From the Birth of Empire to the Modern State

Paul L. Heck

Summary

Paul L. Heck’s Political Theology and Islam offers a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of sovereignty in Islamic society, beginning with the origins of Islam and extending to the present.

This wide-ranging study sets out to answer an unassumingly tricky question: What is politics in Islam? Paul L. Heck’s answer takes the form of a close analysis of sovereignty across Islamic history, approaching this concept from the perspective of political theology. As he illustrates, the history of politics in Islam is best understood as an ongoing struggle for a moral order between those who occupy positions of rulership and religious voices that communicate the ethics of Islam and educate the public in their religious and moral devotions. In this sense, sovereignty in Islam is split between ruling powers and pious communities, whose interactions range from close cooperation to outright competition. Heck shows that it is precisely through these interactions that Islamic conceptions of sovereignty are constructed and negotiated.

Political Theology and Islam’s first section spells out the concepts and methods for the study of politics in Islam as a struggle for a moral order, one not only involving varied claims to sovereignty but also a general determination to realize the righteousness of Islam that stands at the heart of the message that the Prophet Muhammad conveyed to his society in seventh-century Arabia. The following sections demonstrate, through examples from both the past and today’s worldwide Muslim community, the diverse ways in which the umma, the community of Muslims, has struggled for a moral order that recalls its prophetic message. Deftly moving in various political theaters and through a wide range of intellectual traditions, Heck’s book will emerge as a touchstone of scholarship in the field of Muslim politics and intellectual thought.

Contributor Bio

Paul L. Heck is professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University and founding director of the Study of Religions Across Civilizations (SORAC) project. He is author of Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion (2013) and Common Ground: Islam, Christianity, and Religious Pluralism (2009).

9780268205263

Pub Date: 5/15/2023

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

244 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Series: Notre Dame Studies in African Theology

The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal

Practice

Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein

Summary

This illuminating study explores African theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye’s constructive initiative to include African women’s experiences and voices within Christian theological discourse.

Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a renowned Ghanaian Methodist theologian, has worked for decades to address issues of poverty, women’s rights, and global unrest. She is one of the founders of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, a pan-African ecumenical organization that mentors the next generation of African women theologians to counter the dearth of academic theological literature written by African women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of Oduyoye’s life and work, providing a much-needed corrective to Eurocentric, colonial, and patriarchal theologies by centering the experiences of African women as a starting point from which theological reflection might begin.

Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein’s study begins by narrating the story of Mercy Oduyoye’s life, focusing on her early years, which led to her eventual interest in women’s equality and African women’s theology. At the heart of the book is a close analysis of Oduyoye’s theological thought, exploring her unique approach to four issues: the doctrine of God, Christology, theological anthropology, and ecclesiology. Through the course of these examinations, Oredein shows how Oduyoye’s life story and theological output are intimately intertwined. Stories of gender formation, racial ideas, and cultural foundations teem throughout Oduyoye’s construction of a Christian theological story. Oduyoye shows that one’s theology does not leave particularity behind but rather becomes the locus in which the fullness of divinity might be known.

Contributor

Bio

Oluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein is an assistant professor in Black religious traditions, constructive theology, and ethics at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.

9780268203535

Pub Date: 1/15/2024

$38.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

338 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

The Difference

Nothing Makes Creation, Christ, Contemplation

Brian D. Robinette

Summary

This book explores the doctrinal, social, and spiritual significance of a central yet insufficiently understood tenet in Christian theology: creation “from nothing.”

In this original study, Brian D. Robinette offers an extended meditation on the idea of creation out of nothing as it applies not only to the problem of God but also to questions of Christology, soteriology, and ecology. His basic argument is that creatio ex nihilo is not a speculative doctrine referring to cosmic origins but rather a foundational insight into the very nature of the God-world relation, one whose implications extend throughout the full spectrum of Christian imagination and practice. In this sense it serves a grammatical role: it gives orientation and scope to all Christian speech about the God-world relation.

In part 1, Robinette takes up several objections to creatio ex nihilo and defends the doctrine as providing crucial insights into the gifted character of creation. Chapter 2 underscores the contemplative dimensions of a theological inquiry that proceeds by way of “unknowing.” Part 2 draws from the field of mimetic theory in order to explore the creative and destructive potential of human desire. Part 3 draws upon the Christian contemplative tradition to show how the “dark night of faith” is a spiritually patient and discerning way to engage the sense of divine absence that many experience in our post-religious, post-secular age. The final chapter highlights creatio ex nihilo as an expression of divine love—God’s love for finitude, for manifestation, for relationship. Throughout, Robinette engages with biblical, patristic, and contemporary theological and philosophical sources, including, among others, René Girard, Karl Rahner, and Sergius Bulgakov.

Contributor Bio

Brian D. Robinette is an associate professor of theology at Boston College. He is the author of Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence.

9780268203481

Pub Date: 1/15/2024

$35.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

384 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

The Whole Mystery of Christ Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor

Jordan Daniel Wood

Summary

A thoroughgoing examination of Maximus Confessor’s singular theological vision through the prism of Christ’s cosmic and historical Incarnation.

Jordan Daniel Wood changes the trajectory of patristic scholarship with this comprehensive historical and systematic study of one of the most creative and profound thinkers of the patristic era: Maximus Confessor (560–662 CE). Wood's panoramic vantage on Maximus’s thought emulates the theological depth of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy while also serving as a corrective to that classic text.

Maximus's theological vision may be summed up in his enigmatic assertion that “the Word of God, very God, wills always and in all things to actualize the mystery of his Incarnation.” The Whole Mystery of Christ sets out to explicate this claim. Attentive to the various contexts in which Maximus thought and wrote—including the wisdom of earlier church fathers, conciliar developments in Christological and Trinitarian doctrine, monastic and ascetic ways of life, and prominent contemporary philosophical traditions—the book explores the relations between God’s act of creation and the Word’s historical Incarnation, between the analogy of being and Christology, and between history and the Fall, in addition to treating such topics as grace, deification, theological predication, and the ontology of nature versus personhood. Perhaps uniquely among Christian thinkers, Wood argues, Maximus envisions creatio ex nihilo as creatio ex Deo in the event of the Word’s kenosis: the mystery of Christ is the revealed identity of the Word’s historical and cosmic Incarnation. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of patristics, historical theology, systematic theology, and Byzantine studies.

Contributor Bio

Jordan Daniel Wood is assistant professor of theology at Belmont University.

9780268205621

Pub Date: 8/15/2023

$45.00

Discount Code: x

Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

208 Pages

4 color illustrations

Religion / Christianity

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

A Theology of Creation

Ecology, Art, and Laudato

Si'

Thomas S. Hibbs

Summary

This book provides the first sustained philosophical treatment of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ and articulates a theology of creation to recover our place within the cosmos.

In the encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis discerns beneath the imminent threat of ecological catastrophe an existential affliction of the human person, who is lost in the cosmos, increasingly alienated from self, others, nature, and God. Pope Francis suggests that one must reimagine humanity’s place in the created cosmos. In this ambitious and distinctive contribution to theological aesthetics, Thomas S. Hibbs provides the basis for just such a recovery, working from Laudato Si' to develop a philosophical and theological diagnosis of our ecological dislocation, a narrative account of the sources of the crisis, and a vision of the way forward.

Through a critical engagement with the artistic theory of Jacques Maritain, Hibbs shows how certain strains of modern art both capture our alienation and anticipate visions of recovered harmony among persons, nature, and God. In the second half of the book, in an attempt to fulfill Pope Francis’s plea for an “aesthetic education” and to apply and test Maritain’s theory, Hibbs examines the work of poets and painters. He analyzes the work of poets Robinson Jeffers and William Everson, and considers painters Georges Roualt, a friend to Maritain, and Makoto Fujimura, whose notion of “culture care” overlaps in suggestive ways with Francis’s notion of integral ecology.

Throughout this tour de force, Hibbs calls for a commitment to an “ecological poetics,” a project that responds to the crisis of our times by taking poets and painters as seriously as philosophers and theologians.

Contributor Bio

Thomas S. Hibbs is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where he is also dean emeritus, having served sixteen years as dean of the Honors College and distinguished professor of ethics and culture. He is the author and editor of eight books, including Wagering on an Ironic God: Pascal on Faith and Philosophy

9780268207014

Pub Date: 10/15/2023

$60.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9.2 in H | 6.1 in W

520 Pages

63 color illustrations, 2 b&w illustrations

Philosophy / Aesthetics

Beautiful Ugliness

Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts

Mark William Roche

Summary

This book probes the intersection of the beautiful and the ugly, offering a systematic framework to understand, interpret, and evaluate how ugliness can contribute to beautiful art.

Many great artworks include elements of ugliness: repugnant content, disproportionate forms, unresolved dissonance, and unintegrated parts. Mark William Roche’s authoritative monograph Beautiful Ugliness: Christianity, Modernity, and the Arts challenges current practices of the dominant aesthetic schools by exploring the role of ugliness in art and literature. Roche offers a comprehensive and unique framework that integrates philosophical and theological reflection, intellectual-historical analysis, and interpretations of a large number of works from the arts. The study is driven by the recognition that, though ugliness is usually understood as the opposite of beauty, ugliness nonetheless contributes significantly to the beauty of many artworks.

Roche’s analysis unfolds in three parts. The first offers a refreshing conceptual analysis of ugliness in art. The second considers the history of ugliness in art and literature, with special attention to its role in Christian art and its central place in modern and contemporary art. The third synthesizes earlier material, offering a taxonomy of beautiful ugliness derived from Hegelian philosophical categories. Roche mesmerizes the reader with an extraordinary range of literary scholarship and expertise, with a particular focus on English, Latin, and German literature, and with a broad range of analyzed phenomena, including fine arts, architecture, and music.

Including 63 color illustrations, Beautiful Ugliness will draw in readers from multiple disciplines as well as those from beyond the academy who wish to make sense of today’s complex art world.

Contributor Bio

Mark William Roche is the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of German Language and Literature, concurrent professor of philosophy, and former dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of many books, including Realizing the Distinctive University (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017) and Why Choose the Liberal Arts? (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), which won the Frederic W. Ness Book Award.

9780268203184

Pub Date: 1/15/2025

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

432 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Renewing Theology

Ignatian Spirituality and Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis

J.Matthew Ashley

Summary

This comprehensive study investigates the role that Ignatian spirituality has played in the renewal of academic theology using three prominent Jesuits as case studies.

Over several centuries, spirituality has come to define a field of concerns and themes increasingly treated separately from those of academic theology, as if the latter had little relation to the former. This raises the question for us today: How is spirituality related to the practice of theology? In Renewing Theology, J. Matthew Ashley provides an answer by turning to Ignatian spirituality and three prominent twentieth-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—that is, Pope Francis.

Ashley begins his investigation by considering the historical origins of the widening separation between spirituality and academic theology in the Christian West. He provides an initial overview of Ignatian spirituality, focusing on the openness and multidimensionality of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, presented here as a text in which the conditions of modernity that defined its author’s world are present, at least incipiently. Ashley then offers three case studies in order to show how each Jesuit —Rahner, Ellacuría, and Pope Francis—responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality. Their theologies, Ashley suggests, evince a particular clarity and force when the Ignatian spirituality that animates them is foregrounded. Providing new and productive avenues into understanding the theologies of these three individuals, this sophisticated and enlightening book will interest scholars and students of systematic theology, as well as readers who are interested in the future of theology and spirituality in a fragmented age.

Contributor Bio

J.Matthew Ashley is professor of Christian spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University and the book review editor for Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality. Having already translated a number of Metz's most important essays, he is currently completing a re-ranslation of Metz's seminal work from the 1970's, Faith in History and Society. He has published articles on political and liberation theology in Horizons, Theological Studies and the Revista Latinoamericana de Teología. He is presently completing a work on the impact of Ignatian spirituality on the theologies of Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría and Bernard Lonergan.

9780268206451

Pub Date: 1/15/2025

$40.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

264 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Pope Francis and Mercy

A Dynamic Theological Hermeneutic

Gill

K. Goulding CJ

Summary

This theological study examines how Pope Francis lives out mercy in his own Petrine ministry and calls for it to be lived out by the people of God.

The centerpiece of Pope Francis’s pontificate from the very first days has been his proclamation of the importance of the mercy of God. While facing global problems of climate change, terror, political destabilization, refugees, and dire poverty, the Holy Father has articulated the mission of the Church through mercy, love, and forgiveness to reveal the compassion of God for all and particularly for those most vulnerable existing on the margins of society. In this compelling study, Gill Goulding, CJ, examines for the first time the critical and determinative role of mercy in Francis’s papacy using his homilies, allocutions, encyclicals, and addresses as primary sources. Goulding traces the theme of mercy in Francis’s thought, attending to its Ignatian foundations and its Christological, Trinitarian, and ecclesiological significance for the Church today, particularly the impact of his reappropriation and elevation of the discourse of mercy on the work of the Curia in Rome.

Goulding enters into dialogue with other theologians, including Romano Guardini, Walter Kasper, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, to demonstrate a continuity between Francis and his predecessors, especially Benedict XVI, in this area of mercy. In addition, Goulding argues that the influence of St. Ignatius Loyola, in particular his Spiritual Exercises, needs to be taken into account, paying special attention to Francis’s call for the practice of discernment. Throughout Pope Francis and Mercy, Goulding lays the groundwork for future research and suggests a wider appreciation of the necessary tools to enable an engagement with mercy in our contemporary world.

Contributor Bio

Gill K. Goulding, CJ, is professor of systematic theology at Regis College and author of A Church of Passion and Hope: The Formation of an Ecclesial Disposition from Ignatius Loyola to Pope Francis and the New Evangelization

9780268201104

Pub Date: 2/15/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

228 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues

Angela McKay Knobel

Summary

This study locates Aquinas’s theory of infused and acquired virtue in his foundational understanding of nature and grace.

Aquinas holds that all the virtues are bestowed on humans by God along with the gift of sanctifying grace. Since he also holds, with Aristotle, that we can create virtuous dispositions in ourselves through our own repeated good acts, a question arises: How are we to understand the relationship between the virtues God infuses at the moment of grace and virtues that are gradually acquired over time? In this important book, Angela McKay Knobel provides a detailed examination of Aquinas’s theory of infused moral virtue, with special attention to the question of how the infused and acquired moral virtues are related. Part 1 examines Aquinas’s own explicit remarks about the infused and acquired virtues and considers whether and to what extent a coherent “theory” of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues can be found in Aquinas. Knobel argues that while Aquinas says almost nothing about how the infused and acquired virtues are related, he clearly does believe that the “structure” of the infused virtues mirrors that of the acquired in important ways. Part 2 uses that structure to evaluate existing interpretations of Aquinas and argues that no existing account adequately captures Aquinas’s most fundamental commitments. Knobel ultimately argues that the correct account lies somewhere between the two most commonly advocated theories. Written primarily for students and scholars of moral philosophy and theology, the book will also appeal to readers interested in understanding Aquinas’s theory of virtue.

Contributor Bio

Angela McKay Knobel is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas. She is co-editor of Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology.

9780268208639

Pub Date: 3/15/2025

$65.00

Discount Code: x

Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

340 Pages

1 b&w illustration

Religion / Christian Theology

An Analogy of Grace

Henry

Shea S.J.

Summary

An Analogy of Grace proposes a deeply grounded investigation of grace and a robustly balanced impetus for advancing the gospel in the twenty-first century.

Amid the present decline in religious affiliation, a pervasive question for many is “why bother” with faith and its practices. An Analogy of Grace engages this question in the context of grace, or our participation in the life and love of God, and investigates the difference made by the diverse ways in which the self-communication of God is received and participated. Shea begins with the contrasting models provided by twentieth-century theologians Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Rahner focused on how grace is universally accessible within the heart, while Balthasar envisioned grace as found principally through an encounter with the incarnate Word. Henry Shea charts a course within and beyond this difference, bolstered by fresh and insightful analysis of the work of Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, and other major theologians.

An Analogy of Grace posits that grace is best understood as a moving Trinitarian analogy that begins in the heart and advances through the incarnate Word in the Spirit toward the whole Christ. This new analogy of grace is radically universal and inclusive while also wholly informed by the distinct form of Jesus Christ.

Contributor Bio

Henry Shea, S.J., is assistant professor of theology at Boston College.

9780268209124

Pub Date: 2/15/2025

$70.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

390 Pages

Religion / Christianity

Series: Liu Institute Series in Chinese Christianities

Translingual Catholics

Chinese Theologians before Vatican II

Jin Lu

Summary

Translingual Catholics explores the life experiences and theological writings of twentieth-century Chinese Catholic intellectuals and their impact on global Catholic theology.

Weaving together archival resources in Chinese, French, and English, Translingual Catholics examines the preconciliar theological contribution of Republican-Era Chinese Catholics to global Catholicism and to the dialogue between Christianity and Chinese spiritual traditions. Author Jin Lu sheds light on generations of multilingual Chinese Catholic intellectuals who participated in the elaboration of Catholic theology leading up to the Second Vatican Council. This book situates the lives and works of these theologians in the intersecting global Catholic networks of the time, especially the Jesuit enclave of Xujiahui in Shanghai, the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-André in Bruges, Belgium, the Jesuit Theologate in Lyon-Fourvière, and the ecumenical Cercle SaintJean-Baptiste in Paris. By studying the interconnectedness of Chinese Catholic theologians working in multiple languages, Lu demonstrates that inculturation is necessarily a translingual process.

Through its groundbreaking archival research, Translingual Catholics tells the story of these underappreciated intellectuals and uncovers significant contributions to Chinese and global Catholic theology.

Contributor Bio

Jin Lu is a professor of French at Purdue University Northwest. She is the author of Éléments d’une enquête sur l’usage d’un mot au siècle des Lumières.

9780268102623

Pub Date: 8/31/2019

$40.00

Discount Code: x Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W 496 Pages

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

Freedom from Reality

The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty

D.C. Schindler

Summary

It is commonly observed that behind many of the political and cultural issues that we face today there are impoverished conceptions of freedom, which, according to D. C. Schindler, we have inherited from the classical liberal tradition without a sufficient awareness of its implications. Freedom from Reality presents a critique of the deceptive and ultimately self-subverting character of the modern notion of freedom, retrieving an alternative view through a new interpretation of the ancient tradition. While many have critiqued the inadequacy of identifying freedom with arbitrary choice, this book seeks to penetrate to the metaphysical roots of the modern conception by going back, through an etymological study, to the original sense of freedom.

Schindler begins by uncovering a contradiction in John Locke’s seminal account of human freedom. Rather than dismissing it as a mere “academic” problem, Schindler takes this contradiction as a key to understanding the strange paradoxes that abound in the contemporary values and institutions founded on the modern notion of liberty: the very mechanisms that intend to protect modern freedom render it empty and ineffectual. In this respect, modern liberty is “diabolical”—a word that means, at its roots, that which “drives apart” and so subverts. This is contrasted with the “symbolical” (a “joining-together”), which, he suggests, most basically characterizes the premodern sense of reality. This book will appeal to students and scholars of political philosophy (especially political theorists), philosophers in the continental or historical traditions, and cultural critics with a philosophical bent.

Contributor Bio

D. C. Schindler is professor of metaphysics and anthropology at the John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC.

9780268203719

Pub Date: 7/15/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

550 Pages

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

Retrieving Freedom

The Christian Appropriation of Classical Tradition

D.C. Schindler

Summary

Retrieving Freedom is a provocative, big-picture book, taking a long view of the “rise and fall” of the classical understanding of freedom.

In response to the evident shortcomings of the notion of freedom that dominates contemporary discourse, Retrieving Freedom seeks to return to the sources of the Western tradition to recover a more adequate understanding. This book begins by setting forth the ancient Greek conception—summarized from the conclusion of D. C. Schindler’s previous tour de force of political and moral reasoning, Freedom from Reality—and the ancient Hebrew conception, arguing that at the heart of the Christian vision of humanity is a novel synthesis of the apparently opposed views of the Greeks and Jews. This synthesis is then taken as a measure that guides an in-depth exploration of landmark figures framing the history of the Christian appropriation of the classical tradition. Schindler conducts his investigation through five different historical periods, focusing in each case on a polarity, a pair of figures who represent the spectrum of views from that time: Plotinus and Augustine from late antiquity, Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor from the patristic period, Anselm and Bernard from the early middle ages, Bonaventure and Aquinas from the high middle ages, and, finally, Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus from the late middle ages. In the end, we rediscover dimensions of freedom that have gone missing in contemporary discourse, and thereby identify tasks that remain to be accomplished. Schindler’s masterful study will interest philosophers, political theorists, and students and scholars of intellectual history, especially those who seek an alternative to contemporary philosophical understandings of freedom.

Contributor Bio

D.C. Schindler is professor of metaphysics and anthropology at the John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty

9780268209261

Pub Date: 3/1/2025

$40.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

232 Pages 1 table

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law Principles for Human Flourishing

Melissa Moschella, Russell Hittinger

Summary

A rigorous but accessible overview of the new natural law account of ethics and political philosophy.

The foundational principles of ethics and politics are principles that guide us to respect and promote human flourishing. In Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law Melissa Moschella provides an accessible explanation and development of the new natural law account of these principles while clarifying common misconceptions.

As a commonsense ethical theory, natural law grounds ethics in the fundamental dimensions of human flourishing. Moschella lays out the basic principles of natural law, their relationship to the virtues, and their social and political implications. Highlighting the importance of communities for flourishing, Moschella explains how this should shape our understanding of justice and the common good, and shows how natural law principles support limited government and civil liberties. She also considers the relationship between morality and God, and how natural law relates to Christian revelation. This fresh and compelling account of new natural law is the go-to resource to understand this important and influential theory.

Contributor Bio

Melissa Moschella is a professor of the practice in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. She is the author of To Whom Do Children Belong? Parental Rights, Civic Education, and Children’s Autonomy

Russell Hittinger is the Executive Director of the Institute for Human Ecology and co-founder of the Program on Catholic Political Thought at the Catholic University of America.

9780268209155

Pub Date: 4/15/2025

$38.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

256 Pages

Political Science / Religion, Politics & State

Series: The Beginning and the Beyond of Politics

The Controversial Thomas More Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings

Travis Curtright

Summary

The Controversial Thomas More offers an original and critical intervention on the writings of Thomas More and his opposition to King Henry VIII.

Thomas More is known for refusing the oath of succession and remaining silent about his reasons for doing so. His prison literature, however, tells a different story. Under the threat of execution, More waged an astonishingly prolific and often coded writing campaign in rebuke of King Henry VIII’s claim to be supreme head of the Church in England. Travis Curtright’s groundbreaking book shows how William Rastell, More’s nephew and printer, fashioned a historically inaccurate depiction of More, one that persists to this day. He asserted while imprisoned in the Tower of London, More stopped his polemical writing and turned his mind exclusively toward heaven. In contrast, Curtright proves that More’s prison writings are not just devotional literature but also a powerful defense of a united Church under the pope, reestablishing More as a key political and religious thinker, defiant of King Henry VIII.

Most scholars restrict More’s political thought to his Utopia, but The Controversial Thomas More shows how his prison writings best reveal his ideas of political unity and authority, and is a reconsideration of More’s legacy and place in the history of the Henrician Reformation.

Contributor Bio

Travis Curtright is professor of humanities and literature at Ave Maria University. He is the author or editor of four previous books, including The One Thomas More, and is the editor-in-chief of Moreana: Thomas More and Renaissance Studies.

9780268206918

Pub Date: 10/15/2023

$55.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

286 Pages

Political Science / History & Theory

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity

Steven D. Smith

Summary

This book considers how the modern concept of “conscience” turns the historic commitment on its head, in a way that underlies the decadence of modern society.

Steven D. Smith’s books are always anticipated with great interest by scholars, jurists, and citizens who see his work on foundational questions surrounding law and religion as shaping the debate in profound ways. Now, in The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity, Smith takes as his starting point Jacques Barzun’s provocative assertion that “the modern era” is coming to an end. Smith considers the question of decline by focusing on a single theme—conscience—that has been central to much of what has happened in Western politics, law, and religion over the past half-millennium. Rather than attempting to follow that theme step-by-step through five hundred years, the book adopts an episodic and dramatic approach by focusing on three main figures and particularly portentous episodes: first, Thomas More’s execution for his conscientious refusal to take an oath mandated by Henry VIII; second, James Madison’s contribution to Virginia law in removing the proposed requirement of religious toleration in favor of freedom of conscience; and, third, William Brennan’s pledge to separate his religious faith from his performance as a Supreme Court justice. These three episodes, Smith suggests, reflect in microcosm decisive turning points at which Western civilization changed from what it had been in premodern times to what it is today. A commitment to conscience, Smith argues, has been a central and in some ways defining feature of modern Western civilization, and yet in a crucial sense conscience in the time of Brennan and today has come to mean almost the opposite of what it meant to Thomas More. By scrutinizing these men and episodes, the book seeks to illuminate subtle but transformative changes in the commitment to conscience —changes that helped to bring Thomas More’s world to an end and that may also be contributing to the disintegration of (per Barzun) “the modern era.”

Contributor Bio

Steven D. Smith, winner of the 2022 Religious Liberty Initiative Scholarship Award, is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Religion, and the co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is the author of numerous books including Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021).

9780268201203

Pub Date: 9/15/2021

$40.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

290 Pages

Law / Natural Law

Series: Catholic Ideas for a Secular World

Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law

Steven D. Smith

Summary

Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law discusses legal, political, and cultural difficulties that arise from the crisis of authority in the modern world.

Is there any connection linking some of the maladies of modern life—“cancel culture,” the climate of mendacity in public and academic life, fierce conflicts over the Constitution, disputes over presidential authority? Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law argues that these diverse problems are all a consequence of what Hannah Arendt described as the disappearance of authority in the modern world. In this perceptive study, Steven D. Smith offers a diagnosis explaining how authority today is based in pervasive fictions and how this situation can amount to, as Arendt put it, “the loss of the groundwork of the world.”

Fictions, Lies, and the Authority of Law considers a variety of problems posed by the paradoxical ubiquity and absence of authority in the modern world. Some of these problems are jurisprudential or philosophical in character; others are more practical and lawyerly—problems of presidential powers and statutory and constitutional interpretation; still others might be called existential. Smith’s use of fictions as his purchase for thinking about authority has the potential to bring together the descriptive and the normative and to think about authority as a useful hypothesis that helps us to make sense of the empirical world. This strikingly original book shows that theoretical issues of authority have important practical implications for the kinds of everyday issues confronted by judges, lawyers, and other members of society. The book is aimed at scholars and students of law, political science, and philosophy, but many of the topics it addresses will be of interest to politically engaged citizens.

Contributor Bio

Steven D. Smith, winner of the 2022 Religious Liberty Initiative Scholarship Award, is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Religion, and the co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego.

9780268205461

Pub Date: 2/15/2025

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W 356 Pages

Political Science / Religion, Politics & State

Aristotle's

Discovery of the Human Piety and Politics in the "Nicomachean Ethics"

Mary P. Nichols

Summary

Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human offers a fresh, illuminating, and accessible analysis of one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most important texts.

In Aristotle’s Discovery of the Human, noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols explores the ways in which Aristotle brings the gods and the divine into his “philosophizing about human affairs” in his Nicomachean Ethics. Her analysis shows that, for Aristotle, both piety and politics are central to a flourishing human life. Aristotle argues that piety provides us not only an awareness of our kinship to the divine, and hence elevates human life, but also an awareness of a divinity that we cannot entirely assimilate or fathom. Piety therefore supports a politics that strives for excellence at the same time that it checks excess through a recognition of human limitation.

Proceeding through each of the ten books of the Ethics, Nichols shows that this prequel to Aristotle’s Politics is as theoretical as it is practical. Its goal of improving political life and educating citizens and statesmen is inseparable from its pursuit of the truth about human beings and their relation to the divine. In the final chapter, which turns to contemporary political debate, Nichols’s suggestion of the possibility of supplementing and deepening liberalism on Aristotelian grounds is supported by the account of human nature, virtue, friendship, and community developed throughout her study of the Ethics.

Contributor Bio

Mary P. Nichols is professor emerita in the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. She is the author of seven books, including Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom

9780268207427

Pub Date: 12/1/2023

$55.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

314 Pages

Political Science / History & Theory

The Wisdom of Our Ancestors

Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition

Graham James McAleer, Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubul, Daniel J. Mahoney

Summary

In The Wisdom of Our Ancestors, the authors mount a powerful defense of Western civilization, sketching a fresh vision of conservatism in the present age.

In this book, Graham McAleer and Alexander Rosenthal-Pubul offer a renewed vision of conservatism for the twenty-first century. Taking their inspiration from the late Roger Scruton, the authors begin with a simple question: What, after all, is the meaning of conservatism? In reply, they make a case for a political orientation that they call “conservative humanism,” which threads a middle way between liberal universalism and its ideological alternatives. This vision of conservatism is rooted in the humanist tradition (that is, classical humanism, Christian humanism, and secular humanism), which the authors take to be the hallmark of Western civilizational identity. At its core, conservative humanism attempts to reconcile universal moral values (rooted in natural law) with local, particularist loyalties. In articulating this position, the authors show that the West—contra various contemporary critics—does, in fact, have a great deal of wisdom to offer.

The authors begin with an overview of the conservative thought world, situating their proposal relative to two major poles: liberalism and nationalism. They move on to show that conservatism must fundamentally take the form of a defense of humanism, the “master idea of our civilization.” The ensuing chapters articulate various aspects of conservative humanism, including its metaphysical, institutional, legal, philosophical, and economic dimensions. Largely rooted in the Anglo-Continental conservative tradition, the work offers fresh perspectives for North American conservatism.

Contributor Bio

Graham James McAleer is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Maryland and the author of a number of books, including Erich Przywara and Postmodern Natural Law: A History of the Metaphysics of Morals (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019).

Alexander S. Rosenthal-Pubùl is lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Data Analytics, Policy, and Government and director of the Petrarch Centre, LTD. He is author of The Theoretic Life: A Classical Ideal and Its Modern Fate.

Daniel J. Mahoney is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus at Assumption University.

9780268208219

Pub Date: 8/15/2024

$55.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W

404 Pages

Philosophy / Political

The Nature of Law Authority, Obligation, and the Common Good

Daniel Mark

Summary

Challenging the prevailing understanding of the authority of law, Daniel Mark offers a theory of moral obligation that is rooted both in command and in the law’s orientation to the common good.

When and why do we have an obligation to obey the law? Prevailing theories in the philosophy of law, starting with the work of H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz, fail to provide definitive answers regarding the nature of legal obligation. In this highly original and effective new work, Daniel Mark argues that there is a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law simply because it is the law. In Mark’s view, the best concept of law—one that allows for the possibility of justified authority and obligation—defines law as a set of commands oriented to the common good. Legal obligation, he proposes, shares defining features with moral obligation and with religious obligation while aligning wholly with neither.

This philosophically coherent view of legal obligation offers a viable framework for analyzing important and seemingly paradoxical puzzles about the law, such as why civil disobedience is punished as lawbreaking or why war-crimes trials for legal but immoral acts present a moral quandary.

By reconciling the concept of law as command with the role of law in promoting the common good, The Nature of Law provides an original and important scholarly contribution to the fields of legal philosophy and political thought.

Contributor Bio

Daniel Mark is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University. He is formerly the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

9780268207809

Pub Date: 2/15/2024

$70.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

386 Pages

Philosophy / Political

The Political Thought of David Hume

The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination

Aaron Alexander Zubia

Summary

Aaron Alexander Zubia argues that the Epicurean roots of David Hume’s philosophy gave rise to liberalism’s unrelenting grip on the modern political imagination.

Eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume has had an outsized impact on the political thinkers who came after him, from the nineteenth-century British Utilitarians to modern American social contract theorists. In this thorough and thoughtful new work, Aaron Alexander Zubia examines the forces that shaped Hume’s thinking within the broad context of intellectual history, with particular focus on the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and the skeptical tradition.

Zubia argues that through Hume’s influence, Epicureanism—which elevates utility over moral truth—became the foundation of liberal political philosophy, which continues to dominate and limit political discourse today.

Contributor Bio

Aaron Alexander Zubia is assistant professor of humanities at the University of Florida. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, and Law & Liberty.

9780268208974

Pub Date: 3/15/2025

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

302 Pages

3 tables

Political Science / Political Economy

The Price of the Common Good Markets, Corporations, and Political Economy

Mark Hoipkemier

Summary

The Price of the Common Good offers a fresh perspective on economic prosperity and solidarity that emphasizes communal interests.

There is more at stake in market economies than self-interest or making money. Lying just below the surface, there are shared projects answering the deepest political questions of how we live together and who we become. The Price of the Common Good exposes the inadequacies of the prevailing individualistic vision of markets and firms and develops an incisive new framework for analyzing the shared goods that are always in play. To get a purchase on the full moral architecture of markets and firms, Mark Hoipkemier recovers the classical idiom of the “common good” for today’s economy.

Hoipkemier argues not that economic institutions should ideally embody communal purposes, but that they already do. Engaging with leading political economists, he shows the centrality of common goods in real-world institutions with examples such as Uber, corporation law, and globalized auto manufacturing. The Price of the Common Good offers both the defenders and critics of the market a richer way of deliberating about the shared concerns in markets and firms as they are and as they should be.

Contributor Bio

Mark Hoipkemier is an assistant professor in the program on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the University of Navarra.

9780268108908

Pub Date: 2/15/2023

$32.00

Discount Code: s

Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

480 Pages

26 color illustrations

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Ars Vitae

The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Summary

Despite the flood of self-help guides and our current therapeutic culture, feelings of alienation and spiritual longing continue to grip modern society. In this book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn offers a fresh solution: a return to classic philosophy and the cultivation of an inner life.

The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that philosophy is ars vitae, the art of living. Today, signs of stress and duress point to a full-fledged crisis for individuals and communities while current modes of making sense of our lives prove inadequate. Yet, in this time of alienation and spiritual longing, we can glimpse signs of a renewed interest in ancient approaches to the art of living.

In this ambitious and timely book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn engages both general readers and scholars on the topic of well-being. She examines the reappearance of ancient philosophical thought in contemporary American culture, probing whether new stirrings of Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism present a true alternative to our current therapeutic culture of self-help and consumerism, which elevates the self’s needs and desires yet fails to deliver on its promises of happiness and healing. Do the ancient philosophies represent a counter-tradition to today’s culture, auguring a new cultural vibrancy, or do they merely solidify a modern way of life that has little use for inwardness—the cultivation of an inner life—stemming from those older traditions? Tracing the contours of this cultural resurgence and exploring a range of sources, from scholarship to self-help manuals, films, and other artifacts of popular culture, this book sees the different schools as organically interrelated and asks whether, taken together, they can point us in important new directions.

Ars Vitae sounds a clarion call to take back philosophy as part of our everyday lives. It proposes a way to do so, sifting through the ruins of long-forgotten and recent history alike for any shards helpful in piecing together the coherence of a moral framework that allows us ways to move forward toward the life we want and need.

Contributor Bio

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn is professor of history at Syracuse University. She is the author of a number of essays and books, including Black Neighbors (winner of the Berkshire prize) and Race Experts

9780268209056

Pub Date: 10/1/2024

$40.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W 210 Pages

Medical / Ethics

Series: Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics and Bioethics

The Ethics of Precision Medicine

The

Problems of Prevention in Healthcare

Paul Scherz

Summary

Paul Scherz explores the ethical challenges raised by precision medicine and its focus on medical risk as opposed to current disease.

Genetic technologies and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the landscape of medical practice and patient care. In the emerging field of precision medicine, a patient’s risk factors—especially genetic risk factors—are incorporated into an all-encompassing plan to prevent future disease. But identifying at-risk individuals through technologies such as wearable devices and direct-to-consumer genetic sequencing can undermine the overall experience of health. The potential for overdiagnosis and overtreatment grows as patients are prescribed medications and receive prophylactic surgeries that carry inherent risks. Also, as the medical industry shifts its attention from individuals to trends in the general population, the one-to-one practitioner-patient relationship becomes strained.

Using the lens of virtue ethics and theological bioethics, The Ethics of Precision Medicine offers suggestions for better implementing precision medicine to treat those currently suffering from or at high risk of disease, while also recognizing that effectively preventing disease depends, ultimately, on addressing the social determinants of health. The book provides a new perspective on the problems of contemporary healthcare, proposing practical steps that individuals and institutions can take to ensure that the advanced technologies of precision medicine can be used to promote human flourishing.

Contributor Bio

Paul Scherz is the Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well

9780268208417

Pub Date: 8/15/2024

$50.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

228 Pages

Religion / Christian Theology

Burdened Agency

Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics

Travis Pickell

Summary

Travis Pickell explores the paradoxes of choice in modern dying and the ways Christian theology can aid in navigating the relationship between moral agency and dignity at the end of life.

Burdened Agency addresses the problem of death and dying through Christian theology and ethics. In previous centuries, death was something that simply “happened” to us. To choose how or when one died was the exception, not the rule. However, due to advances in modern medicine, individuals are increasingly required to make concrete choices about the nature and timing of death. Modernity, with its emphasis on individualism, complicates this further because we are increasingly bereft of cultural and religious guidance regarding death. This gives rise to the phenomenon of “burdened agency”: the predicament of having to make such difficult choices with so little to help us.

This engaging book offers a historical and philosophical account of the origins of our situation of burdened agency, as well as a Christian solution to the problems that it raises. Looking to theologians such as Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Stanley Hauerwas, Pickell devises a radically countercultural approach to death and dying rooted in Christian theological commitments and enacted in the practices of baptism, Eucharist, and prayer.

Contributor Bio

Travis Pickell is an assistant professor of theology and ethics at George Fox University, where he also directs the Character Virtue Initiative and the Cornerstone Core curriculum.

9780268208295

Pub Date: 8/15/2024

$55.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W 344 Pages

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Series: Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics and Bioethics

Bioethics after God

Morality, Culture, and Medicine

Mark J. Cherry

Summary

Bioethics after God explores the relationship between morality and medicine in a society that has denied the existence of God.

Medicine and bioethics are going through profound changes in the Western world. Practices that prior generations would have recognized as morally impermissible, such as abortion, eugenics, and euthanasia, are becoming central components of modern health care. Bioethics after God argues that in the process of rejecting its Christian roots, the Western world has upended traditional understandings of truth that are central to both scientific and moral judgment. The effect is felt throughout medicine as health care professionals increasingly work without the context and guidance provided by traditional Christian ethics.

Cherry uses the conceptual framework of “weak bioethics”—bioethics solely informed by the stark limits of secular morality—to delve into shifting concepts of health and disease, the active embrace of ethically fraught practices, and technological developments such as brain transplantation and humanoid robots designed for sexual activity. The implications of a bioethics after God are wide-ranging and profound, and Cherry challenges us to consider the repercussions of pushing forward in medicine without the support of a solid ethical foundation.

Contributor Bio

Mark J. Cherry is the Dr. Patricia A. Hayes Professor in Applied Ethics and professor of philosophy at St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas. He is author of Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market and Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars

9780268107741

Pub Date: 7/15/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W 422 Pages

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Series: Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics and Bioethics

The Nature of Human Persons

Metaphysics and Bioethics

Jason T. Eberl

Summary

For a human being to exist, does it require an immaterial mind, a physical body, a functioning brain, a soul?

Is there a shared nature common to all human beings? What essential qualities might define this nature? These questions are among the most widely discussed topics in the history of philosophy and remain subjects of perennial interest and controversy. The Nature of Human Persons offers a metaphysical investigation of the composition of the human essence.

Jason Eberl also considers the criterion of identity for a developing human being—that is, what is required for a human being to continue existing as a person despite undergoing physical and psychological changes over time? Eberl places Thomas Aquinas’s account of human nature into direct comparison with several prominent contemporary theories: substance dualism, emergentism, animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism, and embodied mind theory. These theories inform conclusions regarding when human beings first come into existence (at conception, during gestation, or after birth), how we ought to define death for human beings, and whether (and if so how) human beings may survive death. Ultimately, The Nature of Human Persons argues that the Thomistic account of human nature addresses the matters of human nature and survival more holistically than other theories and offers a cohesive portrait of one’s continued existence from conception through life to death and beyond.

Contributor Bio

Jason T. Eberl is professor of health care ethics and director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. He is the author of a number of books, including Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics.

9780268108106

Pub Date: 9/30/2020

$30.00

Discount Code: x Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W 236 Pages

Medical / Ethics

Series: Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics and Bioethics

Disputes in Bioethics

Abortion, Euthanasia, and Other Controversies

Christopher Kaczor

Summary

Disputes in Bioethics tackles some of the most debated questions in contemporary scholarship about the beginning and end of life. This collection of essays takes up questions about the dawn of human life, including: Should we make children with three (or more) parents? Is it better never to have been born? and Why should the baby live? This volume also asks about the dusk of human life: Is "death with dignity" a dangerous euphemism? Should euthanasia be permitted for children? Does assisted suicide harm those who do not choose to die? Still other questions are asked concerning recent views that health care professionals should not have a right to conscientiously object to legal and accepted medical practices. Finally, the book addresses questions about separating conjoined twins as well as the issue of whether the species of an individual makes a difference for the individual’s moral status.

Christopher Kaczor critiques some of the most recent and influential positions in bioethics, while eschewing both consequentialism and principalism. Rooted in the Catholic principle that faith and reason are harmonious, this book shows how Catholic bioethical teaching is rationally defensible in terms that people of good will, secular or religious, can accept. Proceeding from a natural law perspective, Kaczor defends the inherent dignity of all human beings and argues that they merit the protection of their basic human goods because of that inherent dignity. Philosophers interested in applied ethics, as well as students and professors of law, will profit from reading Disputes in Bioethics. The book aims to be both philosophically sophisticated and accessible for students and experienced researchers alike.

Contributor Bio

Christopher Kaczor is professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is author and editor of a number of books, including The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice

9780268208936

Pub Date: 10/1/2024

$38.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

254 Pages

Philosophy / Religious

Christian Apologetics and Philosophy

An Introduction

Paul Herrick

Summary

A highly readable introduction to Christian apologetics that joins contemporary analytic philosophy with modern biblical scholarship.

In this book, Paul Herrick presents the basics of classical Christian apologetics in the form of an inference to the best explanation argument that builds from the book’s first chapter to its last. Drawing on contemporary philosophy, logic, and biblical scholarship, Herrick incorporates thoughts from Socrates, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and C. S. Lewis, as well as scholars such as William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Richard Swinburne, and Craig Blomberg, to present a multifaceted argument for the Christian faith. With sections on the Socratic method, the Christian examination of conscience, the Big Bang, miracles, the historical reliability of the New Testament, the resurrection of Christ, and more, this book promises to be useful intellectually and spiritually for seekers, doubters, and those already in the faith.

Contributor Bio

Paul Herrick is professor of philosophy at Shoreline Community College. He is the author of multiple textbooks in formal logic, critical thinking, and philosophy, including The Many Worlds of Logic, Introduction to Logic, and Think with Socrates: An Introduction to Critical Thinking.

9780268202699

Pub Date: 6/1/2022

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W 474 Pages

Philosophy / Religious

Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith

An Introduction Paul Herrick

Summary

This clear, readable introduction to philosophy presents a traditional theistic view of the existence of God.

There are many fine introductions to philosophy, but few are written for students of faith by a teacher who is sensitive to the intellectual challenges they face studying in an environment that is often hostile to religious belief. Many introductory texts present short, easy-to-refute synopses of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, the soul, free will, and objective moral value rooted in God’s nature, usually followed by strong objections stated as if they are the last word. This formula may make philosophy easier to digest, but it gives many students the impression that there are no longer any good reasons to accept the beliefs just mentioned.

Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith is written for philosophy instructors who want their students to take a deeper look at the classic theistic arguments and who believe that many traditional views can be rigorously defended against the strongest objections. The book is divided into four sections, focusing on philosophy of religion, an introduction to epistemology, philosophy of the human person, and philosophical ethics. The text challenges naturalism, the predominant outlook in the academic world today, while postmodernist relativism and skepticism are also examined and rejected. Students of faith—and students without faith—will deepen their worldviews by thoughtfully examining the philosophical arguments that are presented in this book. Philosophy, Reasoned Belief, and Faith will appeal to Christian teachers, analytic theists, home educators, and general readers interested in the classic arguments supporting a theistic worldview.

Contributor Bio

Paul Herrick is professor of philosophy at Shoreline Community College. He is the author of multiple textbooks in formal logic, critical thinking, and philosophy

9780268207953

Pub Date: 11/15/2024

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

208 Pages

Philosophy / Movements

Thinking the Unknowable

The Essential Louis Dupré

Louis Dupré, Peter J. Casarella

Summary

Written throughout Louis Dupré’s life, Thinking the Unknowable explores the relationship between faith and metaphysics, charting the course for an innovative Christian philosophy of religion.

Louis Dupré’s Thinking the Unknowable offers a sophisticated response to the subjectivist ills of modern philosophy. Drawing on a diverse host of philosophers, theologians, and phenomenologists, Dupré seeks to open up a space for faith in contemporary philosophy of religion by arguing that metaphysics cannot claim authority in the realm of the transcendent. Instead, Dupré shows that philosophers must learn to accommodate mystery in their metaphysical frameworks.

Edited and introduced by Peter J. Casarella, prominent theologian and student of Dupré, the book unfolds in four parts. Dupré establishes the foundations for a new theology of language, drawing inspiration from two sources: humanist theological hermeneutics and deist biblical spirituality. The second part addresses the idea of God in modern philosophy, taking Hegel’s philosophy of religion as its starting point. The third deals with the phenomenology of religion, focusing primarily on the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In the fourth part, Dupré turns to the concept of mysticism, offering a sophisticated reflection on the possibility of acknowledging a transcendent horizon to human knowing in a secular age. Readers of this volume will be guided across the bridge from philosophy to faith and back again, discovering new worlds of meaning and expressions of truth.

Contributor Bio

Louis Dupré was the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor Emeritus in Religious Studies at Yale University. He was the author of Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture and The Quest of the Absolute: Birth and Decline of European Romanticism.

Peter Casarella is a professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of multiple books, including The Whole is Greater than its Parts: Ecumenism and Interreligious Encounters in the Age of Pope Francis

9780268207595

Pub Date: 2/15/2024

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover 9 in H | 6 in W 284 Pages

Philosophy / Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics

Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Spaemann

Arthur Madigan S.J.

Summary

This volume provides a thorough introduction to three of the twentieth century’s most influential proponents of Aristotle’s moral philosophy.

Arthur Madigan’s Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics examines the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Spaemann in the context of twentiethcentury Anglo-American moral philosophy. By surveying the ways in which these three philosophers appropriate Aristotle, Madigan illustrates two important points: first, that the most pressing problems in contemporary moral philosophy can be addressed using the Aristotelian tradition and, second, that the Aristotelian tradition does not speak with one voice. Madigan demonstrates that Aristotelian moral philosophy is divided on important issues, such as the value of liberal modernity, the character and provenance of our current moral landscape, and the role of nature in Aristotle’s ethics.

Through his examination of MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann, Madigan offers a vision for the future of Aristotelian moral philosophy, urging today’s philosophers to set a clear educational agenda, to continue refining their concepts and intuitions, and to engage with new conversation partners from other philosophical traditions.

Contributor Bio

Arthur Madigan, S.J., is professor emeritus of philosophy at Boston College. He is the author and translator of many books and essays about Greek philosophy, including Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Books B and K 1–2

9780268203405

Pub Date: 2/15/2024

$45.00

Discount Code: x Paperback 9 in H | 6 in W 194 Pages

Philosophy / Religious

Series: Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies

Don't Think for Yourself

Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy

Peter Adamson

Summary

How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought.

In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom.

Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlīd, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihād, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a “justified taqlīd,” according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought.

Contributor Bio

Peter Adamson is professor of philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, including A History of Philosophy without Any Gaps: Philosophy in the Islamic World.

9780268208110

Pub Date: 7/15/2024

$70.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

400 Pages

7 color illustrations; 4 b&w tables

Religion / Christianity

The Saint's Life and the Senses of Scripture

Hagiography as Exegesis

Ann W. Astell

Summary

Through close examination of ancient, medieval, and modern Lives of the saints, Ann W. Astell demonstrates how the historical transformation of hagiography as a genre correlates with similar changes in biblical studies.

Christian hagiography flourished from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, illuminating the gospel through the overlapping forms of exempla and vita. Originally, the Lives of the saints were understood as hermeneutical extensions of the Bible—God authors the saint, just as God authors the divinely inspired scriptures. During the medieval period, a sense of dual authorship between God and the cooperating saint developed, paralleling the Scholastic impulse to assign greater agency to the human writers of scripture. Then, in the sixteenth century, powerful new anxieties about historical truth pushed hagiography aside for biography, its successor.

Drawing on her expertise in the history of Christianity and biblical exegesis, Astell convincingly shows how this radical shift in hagiography’s status—the loss of the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses of the Lives—serves as a bellwether for modern biblical reception.

Contributor Bio

Ann W. Astell is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of many books, including Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages, and the editor of Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality

9780268205157

Pub Date: 6/15/2023

$115.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

340 Pages

8 color illustrations, 46 b&w illustrations, 1 table

History / Europe

Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain

Materiality and the Flesh of the Word

Tiffany Beechy

Summary

This rich study takes Insular art on its own terms, revealing a distinctive and unorthodox theology that will inevitably change how scholars view the long arc of English piety and the English literary tradition.

Drawing on a wide range of critical methodologies, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain treats this era as a “contact zone” of cultural clash and exchange, where Christianity encountered a rich amalgam of practices and attitudes, particularly regarding the sensible realm. Tiffany Beechy illustrates how local cultures, including the Irish learned tradition, received the “Word that was made flesh,” the central figure of Christian doctrine, in distinctive ways: the Word, for example, was verbal, related to words and signs, and was not at all ineffable. Likewise, the Word was often poetic—an enigma—and its powerful presence was not only hinted at (as St. Augustine would have it) but manifest in the mouth or on the page. Beechy examines how these Insular traditions received and expressed a distinctly iterable Incarnation. Often disavowed and condemned by orthodox authorities, this was in large part an implicit theology, expressed or embodied in form (such as art, compilation, or metaphor) rather than in treatises. Beechy demonstrates how these forms drew on various authorities especially important to Britain—Bede, Gregory the Great, and Isidore most prominent among them.

Beechy’s study provides a prehistory in the English literary tradition for the better-known experimental poetics of Middle English devotion. The book is unusual in the diversity of its primary material, which includes visual art, including the Book of Kells; obscure and often cursorily treated texts such as Adamnán’s De locis sanctis (“On the holy lands”); and the difficult esoterica of the wisdom tradition.

Contributor Bio

Tiffany Beechy is professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of The Poetics of Old English.

9780268205119

Pub Date: 4/15/2023

$75.00

Discount Code: x

Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

408 Pages

25 color illustrations

Literary Criticism / Medieval

Series: ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern

The Medieval Hospital

Literary Culture and Community in England, 1350-1550

Nicole R. Rice

Summary

Nicole Rice’s original study analyzes the role played by late medieval English hospitals as sites of literary production and cultural contestation.

The hospitals of late medieval England defy easy categorization. They were institutions of charity, medical care, and liturgical commemoration. At the same time, hospitals were cultural spaces sponsoring the performance of drama, the composition of medical texts, and the reading of devotional prose and vernacular poetry. Such practices both reflected and connected the disparate groups—regular religious, ill and poor people, well-off retirees—that congregated in hospitals. Nicole Rice’s The Medieval Hospital offers the first book-length study of the place of hospitals in English literary history and cultural practice.

Rice highlights three English hospitals as porous sites whose practices translated into textual engagements with some of urban society’s most pressing concerns: charity, health, devotion, and commerce. Within these institutions, medical compendia treated the alarming bodies of women and religious anthologies translated Augustinian devotional practices for lay readers. Looking outward, religious drama and socially charged poetry publicized and interrogated hospitals’ caring functions within urban charitable economies. Hospitals provided the auspices, audiences, and authors of such disparate literary works, propelling these texts into urban social life. Between ca. 1350 and ca. 1550, English hospitals saw massive changes in their fortunes, from the devastation of the Black Death, to various fifteenth-century reform initiatives, to the creeping dissolutions of religious houses under Henry VIII and Edward VI. This volume investigates how hospitals defined and defended themselves with texts and in some cases reinvented themselves, using literary means to negotiate changed religious landscapes.

Contributor Bio

Nicole R. Rice is associate professor of English at St. John's University. She is the author of Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature and co-author of The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity in Premodern England

9780268206499

Pub Date: 11/15/2023

$65.00

Discount Code: x

Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

528 Pages

19 color illustrations, 2 b&w illustrations

Literary Criticism / European

Series: William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature

Manuscript Poetics

Materiality and Textuality in Medieval Italian Literature

Francesco Marco Aresu

Summary

Manuscript Poetics explores the interrelationship between the material features of textual artifacts and the literary aspects of the medieval Italian texts they preserve.

This original study is both an investigation into the material foundations of literature and a reflection on notions of textuality, writing, and media in late medieval and early modern Italy. Francesco Marco Aresu examines the book-objects of manuscripts and early printed editions, asking questions about the material conditions of production, circulation, and reception of literary works. He invites scholars to reconcile reading with seeing (and with touching) and to challenge contemporary presumptions about technological neutrality and the modes of interfacing and reading. Manuscript Poetics investigates the correspondences between textuality and materiality, content and medium, and visual-verbal messages and their physical support through readings of Dante Alighieri’s Vita nova, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Teseida, and Francesco Petrarca’s canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta). Aresu shows that Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarca evaluated and deployed the tools of scribal culture to shape, signal, or layer meanings beyond those they conveyed in their written texts. Medieval texts, Aresu argues, are uniquely positioned to provide this perspective, and they are foundational to the theoretical understanding of new forms and materials in our media-saturated contemporary world.

Contributor Bio

Francesco Marco Aresu is an assistant professor of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

9780268208387

Pub Date: 12/15/2024

$65.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

490 Pages

232 b&w illustrations, 9 tables

Literary Criticism / Medieval

Series: William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature

The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s "Commedia"

Matthew

Collins

Summary

The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s “Commedia” provides the first systematic overview of the earliest illustrated editions of Dante’s poem, stretching from 1481 through 1596, and features over 230 illustrations.

Developing a series of interdisciplinary methods for studying early printed book illustrations, Matthew Collins explores the visual sources for the first illustrated editions of the Commedia, their narrative qualities, and their influence on Renaissance readers. He traces the visual genealogies that link these images to each other and to renderings of the poem in other media, including illuminated manuscripts and drawings, such as those by Sandro Botticelli. Collins additionally delves into a group of cartographically oriented renderings of Dante’s afterlife, interpreting them in the context of the Age of Exploration. He addresses the utilitarian aspect of the illustrations as well by revealing the multidimensional role that these images played for Renaissance readers, particularly emphasizing their pedagogical and mnemonic uses.

Of value to numerous disciplines, The Early Printed Illustrations of Dante’s “Commedia” fills a gap in Dante studies and will inspire similar investigations into the visual representation of other literary works in the age of early print.

Contributor Bio

Matthew Collins holds a PhD from Harvard University in Romance languages and literatures, a JD from NYU Law, and an MA in the history of art and architecture from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. He is the founding series editor of Reading Dante with Images.

9780268207403

Pub Date: 12/15/2023

$65.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W 518 Pages

Literary Criticism / Medieval

Series: William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature

Dante's "Vita Nova"

A Collaborative Reading

Zygmunt G. Baranski, Heather Webb

Summary

This original volume proposes a novel way of reading Dante’s Vita nova, exemplified in a rich diversity of scholarly approaches to the text.

This groundbreaking volume represents the fruit of a two-year-long series of international seminars aimed at developing a fresh way of reading Dante’s Vita nova By analyzing each of its forty-two chapters individually, focus is concentrated on the Vita nova in its textual and historical context rather than on its relationship to the Divine Comedy. This decoupling has freed the contributors to draw attention to various important literary features of the text, including its rich and complex polysemy, as well as its structural fluidity. The volume likewise offers insights into Dante’s social environment, his relationships with other poets, and Dante’s evolving vision of his poetry’s scope. Using a variety of critical methodologies and hermeneutical approaches, this volume offers scholars an opportunity to reread the Vita nova in a renewed context and from a diversity of literary, cultural, and ideological perspectives.

Contributors: Zygmunt G. Barański, Heather Webb, Claire E. Honess, Brian F. Richardson, Ruth Chester, Federica Pich, Matthew Treherne, Catherine Keen, Jennifer Rushworth, Daragh O’Connell, Sophie V. Fuller, Giulia Gaimari, Emily Kate Price, Manuele Gragnolati, Elena Lombardi, Francesca Southerden, Rebecca Bowen, Nicolò Crisafi, Lachlan Hughes, Franco Costantini, David Bowe, Tristan Kay, Filippo Gianferrari, Simon Gilson, Rebekah Locke, Luca Lombardo, Peter Dent, George Ferzoco, Paola Nasti, Marco Grimaldi, David G. Lummus, Helena Phillips-Robins, Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė, Alessia Carrai, Ryan Pepin, Valentina Mele, Katherine Powlesland, Federica Coluzzi, K. P. Clarke, Nicolò Maldina, Theodore J. Cachey Jr., Chiara Sbordoni, Lorenzo Dell’Oso, and Anne C. Leone.

Contributor Bio

Zygmunt G. Baranski is Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, Emeritus Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of New Hall. He is co-editor of Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition.

Heather Webb is professor of Italian literature and culture at the University of Cambridge and author of Dante, Artist of Gesture.

9780268200343

Pub Date: 7/15/2023

$28.00

Discount Code: s Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

268 Pages

History / Middle East

Stories from Palestine

Narratives of Resilience

Marda Dunsky

Summary

Stories from Palestine profiles Palestinians engaged in creative and productive pursuits in their everyday lives in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Their narratives amplify perspectives and experiences of Palestinians exercising their own constructive agency.

In Stories from Palestine: Narratives of Resilience, Marda Dunsky presents a vivid overview of contemporary Palestinian society in the venues envisioned for a future Palestinian state. Dunsky has interviewed women and men from cities, towns, villages, and refugee camps who are farmers, scientists, writers, cultural innovators, educators, and entrepreneurs. Using their own words, she illuminates their resourcefulness in navigating agriculture, education, and cultural pursuits in the West Bank; persisting in Jerusalem as a sizable minority in the city; and confronting the challenges and uncertainties of life in the Gaza Strip. Based on her in-depth personal interviews, the narratives weave in quantitative data and historical background from a range of primary and secondary sources that contextualize Palestinian life under occupation.

More than a collection of individual stories, Stories from Palestine presents a broad, crosscut view of the tremendous human potential of this particular society. Narratives that emphasize the human dignity of Palestinians pushing forward under extraordinary circumstances include those of an entrepreneur who markets the yields of Palestinian farmers determined to continue cultivating their land, even as the landscape is shrinking; a professor and medical doctor who aims to improve health in local Palestinian communities; and an award-winning primary school teacher who provides her pupils a safe and creative learning environment. In an era of conflict and divisiveness, Palestinian resilience is relatable to people around the world who seek to express themselves, to achieve, to excel, and to be free. Stories from Palestine creates a new space from which to consider Palestinians and peace.

Contributor Bio

Marda Dunsky, assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, is a print journalist and journalism scholar. Her research focuses on underreported aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her teaching focuses on best practices of reporting and writing. She has taught global journalism on the faculty of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and has held editing and reporting positions at the Chicago Tribune and Jerusalem Post. She is the author of Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, among other works.

9780268208073

Pub Date: 7/15/2024

$60.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

346 Pages

24 b&w illustrations, 21 b&w tables

Political Science / Comparative Politics

Series: Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development

The Authoritarian Divide Populism, Propaganda, and Polarization

Orçun Selçuk

Summary

In the context of the global decline of democracy, The Authoritarian Divide analyzes the tactics that populist leaders in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador have used to polarize their countries.

Political polarization is traditionally viewed as the result of competing left/right ideologies. In The Authoritarian Divide, Orçun Selçuk argues that, regardless of ideology, polarization is driven by dominant populist leaders who deliberately divide constituents by cultivating a dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion. This practice, known as affective leader polarization, stymies compromise and undermines the democratic process.

Drawing on multiple qualitative and quantitative methodologies for support, as well as content from propaganda media such as public speeches, Muhtar Meetings, Aló Presidente, and Enlace Ciudadano, Selçuk details and analyzes the tactics used by three well-known populist leaders to fuel affective leader polarization: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Selçuk’s work provides a rubric for a better understanding of—and potential defense against—the rise in polarizing populism across the globe.

Contributor Bio

Orçun Selçuk is an assistant professor of political science and the director of the international studies program at Luther College.

9780268209018

Pub Date: 3/15/2025

$75.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

538 Pages

52 b&w illustrations, 12 tables

Political Science / Political Economy

Series: Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development

The Collapse of Venezuela

Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline, 2012–2020

Francisco Rodríguez

Summary

The Collapse of Venezuela documents Venezuela’s economic implosion as politicians adopted strategies that severely harmed the economy in their struggle for power.

Between 2012 and 2020, Venezuela suffered the largest economic contraction ever documented outside of wartime. This collapse was caused not just by the failure of an economic model but also the deeper failure of its political system to manage the conflicts inherent to a polarized society. The Collapse of Venezuela argues that when the stakes of power are high, politicians have an incentive to adopt political strategies that directly harm the economy. Author Francisco Rodríguez describes these scorched earth strategies and shows how politicians used these methods to target the Venezuelan economy in their fight for power. Ultimately, the conflicting sides have trapped the economy in a catastrophic stalemate that has destroyed the country’s living standards and turned the economy into a political battlefield.

By charting Venezuela’s experience with scorched earth politics, Rodríguez reveals an essential cautionary tale for other democracies around the globe.

Contributor Bio

Francisco Rodríguez is the Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is the co-editor of Venezuela before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse.

9780268207687

Pub Date: 4/15/2024

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

258 Pages

2 b&w illustrations, 22 tables

Political Science / World

Series: Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development

Politics and the Pink Tide A Comparative Analysis of Protest in Latin America

Kathleen Bruhn

Summary

Politics and the Pink Tide investigates the ways in which protest varied across five Latin American countries that elected leftist presidents during the Pink Tide.

Kathleen Bruhn compares the differences in protest that occurred under the new leftist governments to their conservative, neoliberal predecessors, offering a wide-angle view into the complex relationships between neoliberalism, political party structures, and protest.

Using individual and event-level data from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Ecuador, Politics and the Pink Tide shows how economic policy choices and the links between leftist parties and social movements affect patterns of protest. For example, although more orthodox neoliberal approaches did motivate more economic protest, the book demonstrates that neither more radical nor more socially linked leftist governments were better able to contain protest—or to do so without resorting to police violence. Politics and the Pink Tide proposes a sweeping exploration of protest, one that is controlled by economic policy and grievances, the social embeddedness of political parties, and the norms surrounding protest tactics within public life.

Contributor Bio

Kathleen Bruhn is Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Urban Protest in Mexico and Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

9780268207755

Pub Date: 5/15/2024

$65.00

Discount Code: x Hardcover

9 in H | 6 in W

374 Pages

49 b&w illustrations, 10 tables

Political Science / Political Ideologies

Series: Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development

Democratic Quality in Southern Europe

France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain

Tiago Fernandes

Summary

Fueled by new data from the Varieties of Democracy project, Democratic Quality in Southern Europe takes a close look at the democratic trajectories of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain over the past fifty years.

Despite similar beginnings, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have experienced significant variations in the way their democracies have evolved. Covering ground from the protest movements of the late ’60s and early ’70s to the challenges that resulted from the financial crisis of the Great Recession, editor Tiago Fernandes expertly draws together a collection of essays that look beyond the impact of socioeconomic development in these five countries, exploring innovative and nuanced explanations for their diverging paths.

Democratic Quality in Southern Europe combines new data with classical methodologies to create fresh, convincing hypotheses on the development, quality, and depth of democracy in this critical region.

Contributors: Tiago Fernandes, Rui Branco, João Cancela, Edna Costa, Pedro Diniz de Sousa, Pedro T. Magalhães, Edalina Rodrigues Sanches, José Santana-Pereira, Tiago Tibúrcio

Contributor Bio

Tiago Fernandes is associate professor of political science at the University Institute of Lisbon. He is head of the Varieties of Democracy Regional Center for Southern Europe and was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies between 2009 and 2011. He most recently co-authored Memories and Movements: The Legacy of Democratic Transitions in Contemporary Anti-Austerity

9780268207649

Pub Date: 3/15/2024

$35.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

364 Pages

41 tables

Political Science / Religion, Politics & State

Series: Contending Modernities

Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism

Religious Intolerance in Contemporary Indonesia Mun'im Sirry

Summary

Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism offers groundbreaking analysis of religious intolerance and radicalization among high school and university students in modern-day Indonesia.

Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, but also in the complexity of its education system. Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism examines the roots of religious intolerance among young Indonesians and explores the various ways in which educated youth navigate radical ideologies amid growing religious conservatism.

The book presents nuanced explanations as to why one person becomes radicalized while another does not, calling into question the common assumption that religious radicalism is directly connected to terrorism. It problematizes the notion that the university is a significant hub, trigger, or birthplace of radicalization by asking: What makes education attractive for extremist recruitment? What shapes students’ views? Under what circumstances do radicalization and deradicalization processes of educated youth take place? Youth, Education, and Islamic Radicalism identifies a constellation of factors that shape young people’s views of religious diversity in Indonesia, demonstrating the ways in which they become radicalized in the first place, and how, in some cases, they deradicalize themselves.

Contributor Bio

Mun’im Sirry is an associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and author of several books, including The Qur’an with Cross-References.

9780268209315

Pub Date: 5/15/2025

$35.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

246 Pages

2 b&w illustrations, 2 maps, 6 tables

Political Science / World

Series: Contending Modernities

Shari´a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh

Arskal Salim, Moch. Nur Ichwan, Eka Srimulyani, Marzi Afriko

Summary

Shari`a, Citizenship, and identity in Aceh presents both an ethnographic and a sociohistorical account of identity making among both the Muslim majority population and different minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia.

Diverging from previous studies on majority-minority group relations in a predominantly Muslim country that tend to engage solely with one group’s experiences, Shari`a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh argues that the majority and minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia, have interactively and mutually created conceptions of identity and recognition that have significant implications on the experience of citizenship in the region. The authors provide not only a narrative of majority-minority group encounters in a variety of issues, but also a wide-ranging account of struggles from both the Muslim majority and non-Muslim minority groups for recognition of their own identity in the public space. To what extent do minority groups feel that they belong to Aceh’s communal identity, which is mostly Islamic? And what kind of citizenship is in place when minorities feel marginalized living under Aceh’s Islamic rules?

Shari`a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh debunks the concept of citizenship by way of deploying the concept of the politics of recognition against the politics of the dominant culture theory. It looks further at how equal citizenship in a democratic political system has been negotiated and compromised, and how the politics of dominant culture has caused a sense of shared ownership to be largely deficient and vague in Aceh.

Contributor Bio

Arskal Salim is Professor of politics of Islamic Law at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta, Indonesia. He is the author of many books, including Challenging the Secular State: The Islamization of Laws in Modern Indonesia (University of Hawai'i Press 2008) and Contemporary Islamic Law in Indonesia: Sharia and Legal Pluralism (Edinburgh University Press 2015).

9780268202576

Pub Date: 7/15/2023

$35.00

Discount Code: x Paperback

9 in H | 6 in W

244 Pages

12 b&w illustrations, 4 maps, 1 table

Social Science / Cultural & Ethnic Studies

Series: Contending Modernities

Who Are My People?

Love, Violence, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Emmanuel Katongole

Summary

Who Are My People? explores the complex relationship between identity, violence, and Christianity in Africa.

In Who Are My People?, Emmanuel Katongole examines what it means to be both an African and a Christian in a continent that is often riddled with violence. The driving assumption behind the investigation is that the recurring forms of violence in Africa reflect an ongoing crisis of belonging. Katongole traces the crisis through three key markers of identity: ethnicity, religion, and land. He highlights the unique modernity of the crisis of belonging and reveals that its manifestations of ethnic, religious, and ecological violence are not three separate forms of violence but rather modalities of the same crisis. This investigation shows that Christianity can generate and nurture alternative forms of community, nonviolent agency, and ecological possibilities.

The book is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the philosophical and theological issues related to the question of African identity. Part Two includes three chapters, each of which engages a form of violence, locating it within the broader story of modern sub-Saharan Africa. Each chapter includes stories of Christian individuals and communities who not only resist violence but are determined to heal its wounds and the burden of history shaped by Africa’s unique modernity. In doing so, they invent new forms of identity, new communities, and a new relationship with the land. This engaging, interdisciplinary study, combining philosophical analysis and theological exploration, along with theoretical argument and practical resources, will interest scholars and students of theology, peace studies, and African studies.

Contributor Bio

Emmanuel Katongole is professor of theology and peace studies at the Kroc Institute, Keough School of Global Affairs, and Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and Extraordinary Professor of Theology and Ecclesiology at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. He is author of several books, including The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa and Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa

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