According to Charles Taylor, faith in a secular age is cross-pressured; that is, it is contested by the presence of multiple accounts of belief and unbelief in contemporary Western culture. According to Taylor, these multiple accounts fragilize our own accounts of faith. This fragilization is what nurtures the conditions for believing today and…[Read more]

A study of mental disease in Cakrapāṇidatta’s commentary on the Carakasaṃhitā.

Encyclopedia entry on Āyurveda.

Encyclopedia entry on Āyurveda.

This chapter explores the roles of narrative in the development of knowledge about, and rationalization for, conditioning the human body in the classical Indian medical system of Ayurveda.

A study of pravṛtti and nivṛtti in the Sanskrit allegory, Jīvānandanam (“The Joy of Life”).

The new economic realities that arose from the Spanish presence in America produced a lively debate as part of the Indian Controversies of the sixteenth century. Two important theoreticians, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) and the Jesuit José de Acosta (1540-1600) differed from one another in important ways, but n…[Read more]

An examination of the discursive interplay about politics, religion, and medicine in a 17th-18th cent. Sanskrit allegory, Jivanandanam (“The Joy of Life”).

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” (1843) and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) encourage critical thinking about science and scientific research as forms of social power. In this collaborative activity, students work in small groups to discuss the ways in which these stories address questions of human experimentation, gender, man…[Read more]

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories “The Rejected Blessing” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” dramatize ideological com-petition among doctors and clergymen from Renaissance Italy to colonial Boston over care of the body. In the context of Hawthorne’s life, these stories show his foresighted theorizing of medical hegemony and its dangers to public and in…[Read more]

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories “The Rejected Blessing” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” dramatize ideological com-petition among doctors and clergymen from Renaissance Italy to colonial Boston over care of the body. In the context of Hawthorne’s life, these stories show his foresighted theorizing of medical hegemony and its dangers to public and in…[Read more]

Review of a book by Giuseppe Marcocci on politics and culture in the Portuguese Empire in the long 15th century.

This chapter explores the survival of a Portuguese presence in Mylapore (today a suburb of Chennai, South India) after the loss of its political and military autonomy. Notions of sovereignty and the boundaries between a pre-colonial and a fully colonial dimension are here questioned on the basis of a little known case study.

Norbert Bar-Le-Duc (1697- 1769), also known as Abbé Jacques Platel, Pierre Parisot, Pierre Curel, traversed identities and continents, making a career out of controversy, becoming knowns as “le fameux Père Norbert”. He worked in South India as a missionary in 1736-1739 and thereafter played a pivotal role in the Malabar Rites controversy. Back…[Read more]

This chapter challenges the idea tha Roberto Nobili was a pioneer of interreligious dialogue and inculturation. On the contrary, it suggests that his interest for our times is rather his theology of religions. A man of the Counter-Reformation, Nobili made propositions as daring as the ones of today’s “Asian theology”.

This article is an archival contribution to the reassessment of the concrete phases of Roberto Nobili’s education. Here I demonstrate that, contrary to what previous historians repeated, Nobili’s involvement with the College Romano was very short. Moreover, I have discovered that, before joining the Society of Jesus, he studied at the Seminario…[Read more]

The Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, praised for adapting Christianity to the cultures of Japan and China, did not support a similar strategy for India and Africa. He theorized racial hierarchies in which a darker skin was associated with ignorance and vice, whereas the similarity to European physical features implied a higher degree of…[Read more]