Collection preserves books by current and former faculty and staff.
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Hydrology and Its Discontents: Contemplations on the Innate Paradoxes of Water Research
John T. Van Stan, Cleveland State University and Jack Simmons, Georgia Southern University
2024
This book examines the intricate web linking water science and society using diverse philosophical lenses. Highlighting the tensions within the threads of this web, we spotlight major conceptual tightropes that water researchers tread daily. To effectively navigate these delicate threads, a 'healthy' tension in the encompassing web is necessary. Drawing inspiration from Freud's examination of tensions in "Society and Its Discontents," we illuminate the tension-filled paradoxes inherent to water science, emphasizing the challenges in keeping these paradoxical threads taut enough to ensure a navigable and sustainable bond with society.
Central to our narrative is the escalating societal urge to quantify ... Read more
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Going Low: How Profane Politics Challenges American Democracy
Finbarr Curtis, Georgia Southern University
7-5-2022
Liberalism puts its trust in civil discourse and rational argument. Today, its opponents enthusiastically flout these norms, making a show of defying so-called political correctness. In the Trump era and beyond, right-wing figures delight in sheer offensiveness. What is at stake in breaking the rules of civility to “own the libs”? Going Low examines how the offensive style of contemporary politics challenges liberal democratic institutions. Considering the rise of illiberal politics and debates about the limits of free speech, Finbarr Curtis draws on the insights of religious studies to rethink provocation and transgression. He argues that the spectacle of brazenly ... Read more
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Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt's Thought
Karin Fry, Georgia Southern University
2022
Philosophy typically ignores biographical, historical, and cultural aspects of theorists' lives in an attempt to take a supposedly abstract and objective view of their work. This book makes some new conclusions about Arendt’s theory by emphasizing how her experience of the world as displayed in her archival materials impacted her thought. Some aspects of Arendt’s life have been examined in detail before, including the fact she was stateless as well as her affair with Heidegger. Instead, this work explores different topics including the biographical and narrative moments of Arendt's own work, the role of archiving in her thought, pivotal events ... Read more
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The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies
D. Jason Slone, Georgia Southern University and William W. McCorkle Jr., Masaryk University
1-10-2019
The Cognitive Science of Religion introduces students to key empirical studies conducted over the past 25 years in this new and rapidly expanding field. In these studies, cognitive scientists of religion have applied the theories, findings and research tools of the cognitive sciences to understanding religious thought, behaviour and social dynamics. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar, and summarizes in non-technical language the original empirical study conducted by the scholar. No prior or statistical knowledge is presumed, and studies included range from the classic to the more recent and innovative cases.
Students will learn about the theories that ... Read more -
Memory in a Time of Prose: Studies in Epistemology, Hebrew Scribalism, and the Biblical Past
Daniel Pioske, Georgia Southern University
9-2018
Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? To address this question, the following study focuses on matters pertaining to epistemology, or the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. The investigation that unfolds with these interests in mind consists of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175–830 BCE) with a wider constellation ... Read more
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Three Dashes Bitters
Jack Simmons, Georgia Southern University
7-13-2018
When Tim Schmidt returns to New Orleans to attend his sister’s debutante ball, he finds that nothing has changed during his three-year hiatus in Boston.
He is still in love with Jane, a hard-drinking iconoclast, too well bred to join the ranks of the Generation X slackers, yet unable to accept the standards of her high society upbringing. Happily, it seems Jane might still harbor feelings for him.
But over drinks at The Columns Hotel, things get messy, and Tim’s grand return to the city of his birth soon unravels—the very sort of thing that inspired Tim to leave NOLA ... Read more
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The Production of American Religious Freedom
Finbarr Curtis, Georgia Southern University
8-2016
Americans love religious freedom. Few agree, however, about what they mean by either "religion" or "freedom." Rather than resolve these debates, Finbarr Curtis argues that there is no such thing as religious freedom. Lacking any consistent content, religious freedom is a shifting and malleable rhetoric employed for a variety of purposes. While Americans often think of freedom as the right to be left alone, the free exercise of religion works to produce, challenge, distribute, and regulate different forms of social power. The book traces shifts in the notion of religious freedom in America from The Second Great Awakening, to the ... Read more
