Chapter Two examines the notions of “becoming” and “being” Qizilbash, contextualizing the Ottoman Qizilbash within the broader literature on belonging while revealing the multitude of factors influencing this choice of adherence, as perceived by both the ruler and the ruled. More specifically it examines the motivations behind Qizilbash belonging in Ottoman lands through a framework that scrutinizes their lived experience under two major modes: belonging rooted in spiritual conviction and belonging driven by social, economic, and political compulsion. Within this framework, the chapter aims to illustrate that belonging took on diverse forms and that a shift in sectarian affiliation did not always entail the complete abandonment of previously held beliefs; instead, it often occurred within a larger interplay of politics and morality, as well as personal and material needs.

Chapter Three provides a thorough exploration of the multifaceted experience of being Qizilbash within the Ottoman realm and the consequential implications of such an identity within the intricate Ottoman–Safavid geopolitical landscape. By scrutinizing a diverse array of Qizilbash texts, artifacts, and ceremonial practices, the chapter elucidates the complex processes entailed in shaping and perpetuating a collective sense of belonging. Additionally, this chapter seeks to integrate a discussion of the Ottoman state’s surveillance strategies into the analysis of Qizilbash subjecthood formation within the empire.

In 1943, on his way back to Chile, after having finished his stint as Consul General to Mexico, Pablo Neruda stopped in Peru and visited Machu Picchu. While written before he became a card-carrying member of the Party, “Alturas de Macchu Picchu” (“Heights of Macchu Picchu”) can be read not only as expressing his reactions to the physical beauty of the place, but also as depicting in poetic terms his evolution from the vanguardista of the first two volumes of Residencia en la tierra (1933, 1935) to a politically engaged writer. However, in addition to reflecting this political conversion, one can see in “Alturas de Macchu Picchu” a successful attempt at writing a left-wing poetry that builds on the achievements of the vanguardia and avoids the dogmatic pitfalls of the then mandatory socialist realism.

Chapter 3 looks at the various ways Muslims in the early Islamic centuries constructed a variety of idealised communities engaging with dialogues between universal ideas and more particularist ones, an endeavour that can be seen in a number of different scholarly fields. The first half of the chapter looks at debates in the fields of theology (specifically prophetology), law and politics (and political theology); the second half considers ideas about attachment to territory and the existence of a united Muslim world, before ending with a brief consideration of the social significance of gradual processes of conversion to Islam. One of the key arguments of this book is that local history-writing was one way for certain elites to deal with the dialogue between universal and more particular concerns as they envisioned and created their communities. Chapter 3 lays the groundwork for this by exploring that dialogue in fields ranging beyond history alone.

Chapter 4 examines how Augustine’s theology of the righteousness of faith also becomes more Christological, that is, uniquely shaped by having Christ as its object. This chapter begins with the fundamental contrast between pride and humility. Augustine sees pride as the love of the delusional thought that one is the center of reality, and faith in Christ as the healing remedy which restores the soul’s relationship to God, the true center. Returning to confessiones (Confessions), Augustine understands faith in Christ as more than just an ascent to God. Instead, it initiates a double movement in which the soul is first humbled by its recognition in faith of Christ’s humble humanity and then exalted by its reception of his divinity. Finally, the chapter turns to de trinitate (The Trinity), in which Augustine explains how, because sacraments present eternal realities through temporal signs, Christ as sacrament makes the humility of God accessible to faith.

This chapter explores Augustine’s intellectual formation and conversion to Christianity in the context of late antiquity’s philosophical, religious, and political transformations. Tracing his journey through Manichaean dualism, Neoplatonism, and finally Pauline Christianity, the chapter highlights Augustine’s struggles with the nature of evil, the limits of human will, and the role of divine grace. Drawing on the Confessions, it examines Augustine’s dialogue with Platonism, particularly Plotinus, whose hierarchy of being and emphasis on inner ascent deeply influenced him – but could not resolve the question of the incarnation. Augustine’s embrace of Christ as both divine and human offered a radically new model of wisdom grounded in humility and love (caritas), unavailable in pagan philosophical traditions. The chapter contextualizes Augustine’s thought within Roman imperial history, the codification of Christian scripture, and the evolving notion of philosophy as a way of life. Ultimately, it shows how Augustine’s life and writings forged a new intellectual synthesis, in which classical reason and biblical faith coalesced into a powerful vision of human transformation, one that would shape Christian anthropology, literary practice, and theological reflection for centuries.

Historians of early twentieth-century British and American literary modernism have often portrayed the public sphere as a space that facilitates mass deception. Indeed, the Freudian psychoanalytic model upon which such arguments depend dominates accounts of modernist responses to advertising, propaganda, and mass media. Such representations overlook the significance of William James as a theorizer of a pluralistic public sphere. Based on an understanding of the self as a distributed aggregate of competing “selves” and private and public allegiances, James and an American modernist cohort saw the public sphere as likewise composed of plural, distributed entities. Confronted by a culture of group-think, crowd contagion, and global fascism, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Walter Lippmann, and Katherine Anne Porter deployed a Jamesian variety of civic modernism based upon an ethics of estrangement, in which the internally conflicted “sick soul” is the means of both psychic and civic regeneration.

This concluding dialogue seeks to convert James’s discursive ideas about education into scenes of lived encounter – between teachers and students, bodies and minds, thinking and feeling – while honoring the possibilities for surprise that such encounters open. In this endeavor, we are also extending Stephanie Hawkins’s work, which reminds us of how James uses the term conversion – meaning “to turn with” or “turn together” – to describe the process through which we come into transformative relation with someone or something other than ourselves. James’s dialectical, often gradual process of “educational” conversion seems to us to offer useful correctives to many incumbent histories of the discipline that would rely on entrenched and reductive genealogies of authority. By reconnecting James’s understanding of conversion with his commitment to conversation, we aim to give living voice to the cluster of deeply felt relations that constitute the life practices we call “teaching” and “learning.”

This chapter explores the life, conversion, and enduring intellectual impact of Paul of Tarsus, the pivotal figure who redefined the meaning of Christ’s message and helped establish Christianity’s universal reach. Drawing on the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s authentic letters, the chapter recounts Paul’s transformation from persecutor of Christians to their foremost theologian. Key themes include martyrdom (via the stoning of Stephen), Paul’s “vessel of election” status, and his mission to the Gentiles. Special attention is paid to Paul’s rhetorical engagement with Greco-Roman audiences, particularly his speech at the Areopagus in Athens, where he engaged Epicurean and Stoic thought. The chapter also analyzes major theological ideas from his letters – radical equality in Galatians, divine election in Romans, and the centrality of charity (agapē) and the resurrection in 1 Corinthians. Paul’s integration of Platonic and Aristotelian themes into Christian doctrine, especially in his vision of the resurrection and the soul-body union, helped shape the metaphysical and moral architecture of Christian – and western – thought. The chapter concludes by noting Paul’s legacy as a thinker who merged personal transformation with expansive theological vision.

This chapter emphasizes narrative as a vehicle for psychological analysis. It begins by noting the prominence of emotion in the Confessions; Augustine himself tells us in the Reconsiderations that the work is meant to arouse not just the mind but also the heart toward God. It argues that the Confessions contributes to ancient philosophical debates about the character of the emotions and how they should be controlled and moderated. The work presents a “therapy of the emotions” that is sometimes aligned with, and sometimes in critical tension with, the philosophical spiritual exercises proposed by earlier writers. Augustine is, in certain respects, more hopeful about progress in virtue than his philosophical predecessors; he presents his therapy of the soul for everyone, not just those with fortunate natural proclivities. Yet he insists that such progress can be made only by God’s grace. The techniques of ancient philosophy are, in themselves, unavailing for moral transformation.

Taking its cue from passages in the Mendelssohn family’s correspondence concerning aspects of Jewish tradition and Christian conversion, and drawing on the work of modern scholars, the chapter considers from a variety of angles the sense of Jewishness with which Fanny Hensel’s and Felix Mendelssohn’s lives were imbued. With reference to a range of literature on Jewish history, the question of the siblings’ Jewish identity is explored in the wider context of German Jewish social and religious life at the time, as well as its implications within the Mendelssohn family’s private circle, for example, inter-generational tensions. Attention is given to the reception history of the family’s Jewish identity in the context of anti-Jewish attitudes, reflected in a range of sources including the remarks of the siblings’ composition tutor, Carl Friedrich Zelter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the writings of Richard Wagner, while also identifying echoes in modern Mendelssohn scholarship.

This chapter considers Christian converts from Islam who were converted forcibly in the early sixteenth century and known as moriscos. Once Catholic, the moriscos came under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition. For more than a century, Spanish authorities worried about Moriscos adhering to their former religion and being Christian in name only; Spanish inquisitors investigated and prosecuted them for practicing Islam. The number of trials reached a high point in the second half of the sixteenth century, and only dropped when the monarchy expelled the Moriscos from the Spanish kingdoms between 1609 and 1614. This essay examines how the Spanish Inquisition constructed a model of Islamic heresy that encompassed Morisco cultural traditions. It surveys the rise in inquisitorial prosecution of this population across multiple Spanish regions. It also considers Morisco responses to the Inquisition, including strategies of petitioning and financial negotiation. This chapter assesses what Inquisition records can reveal about Morisco histories, as well as methods for reading beyond inquisitorial perspectives.

Chapter 2 portrays the changing legal landscape addressing the legality – or lack thereof – of the cross-border movement and trade of cultural property. It starts by identifying the key features of legal divergence across national legal systems, concerning both private law and public law aspects, and discusses how this disparity poses a challenge for dealing not only with past actions but also with the current features of the global market for cultural objects. It then provides an overview of the evolution of international institutions and legal norms related to cultural property, such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property,

1 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 14, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231

This chapter introduces strategies for building new words from existing pieces in the language. The first section introduces the concept of lexical gaps, some of which may be filled by expanding the lexicon using word-formation processes. The second and third sections discuss the two most common word-formation processes, compounding and derivation. The fourth section introduces conversion and semantic extension, which are methods for expanding a lexicon without creating new word forms. The chapter ends with a discussion on borrowing (though borrowing will not be appropriate for every conlang). By the end of this chapter, you will expand the vocabulary of your conlang to include words that have been derived and/or compounded and will consider how you might expand the definitions of existing words to include new meanings.

After the death of their beloved dog Whym Chow, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who write collectively as Michael Field, underwent a radical spiritual and poetic shift by converting to the Roman Catholic Church. Each partner viewed this shift differently. Bradley focused on the ways in which Whym Chow’s death represented a rupture in their domestic Trinity, while Cooper focused on the sacrificial aspects of euthanising the dog as an act of their own will. Converting to the Roman Catholic Church impacted both Bradley and Cooper’s relationship with one another and their poetic creativity and dominated the final years of their shared life.