Category: Academic
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Between Psychotherapy and Spirituality: Buddhist Interaction with Freudian Psychoanalysis
Written by Christopher Harding. In the West, Sigmund Freud is thought of as one of the greatest critics of religion that has ever lived. In our own times, we are quite familiar with attempts to integrate psychoanalysis and psychotherapy more broadly with religious traditions including Christianity and Buddhism. The rise of a ‘mindfulness’ culture, which…
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Presidential Campaign 2016: Thoughts from Across the Pond…
Some thoughts on the current Presidential Campaign from Professor George H. Gilliam, UVA. The great philosopher Woody Allen once remarked that 80 per cent of life is just showing up. Most Americans have stopped showing up at political events. This year, only about 9 per cent (fewer than one in ten!) of the population actually…
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Africa’s Haven of Peace? Elections, Politics and Violence in Post-colonial East Africa
As I write, it is the 28 October 2015, and three days have passed since Tanzania went to the polls for the fifth time since the return of multi-party elections in 1995. Elections in Africa are always moments of high tension, and this election is no different. Today, the BBC News Africa page leads with…
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From Oral to Written Folklore: The Evolution and Reception of the Icelandic Saga
The Icelandic Sagas are more than stories about a heroic age of kings, of trolls and witches, and magical phenomenon unseen by our modern eyes. They offer a complex resource of what early settlers of the island deemed important to their heritage. Since the thirteenth century, scholars have attempted to understand the departure from the…
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Fertility in the Early Middle Ages: The Dangers of Folklore
What did an early medieval bishop see when he looked up at the stars? In tenth-century Italy Atto of Vercelli saw divine fingerprints. God had arranged constellations in the heavens, he explained in a sermon, for our benefit on earth. Stars help us to mark the passing of time, to map journeys over sea or…
Retrospect Journal 