Michael Penn
Biographic Data
| ID | 3786928 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Penn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Penn |
| SIGNATURE | PENN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mount Holyoke College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8606-9065 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Identity Trap
Review of The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, by Yascha Mounk. 416 pages. Penguin Books Ltd., 2023
Social Network Analysis and Medieval Literature
This article explores the ninth-century Book of Governors by East Syrian bishop Thomas of Marga, a text notorious for its sprawling and disjointed narrative structure. Through the lens of network analysis, the study seeks to untangle the dense web of 622 characters and their interactions within this work, which remains one of the richest sources of information on the medieval Church of the East. The analysis reveals that the Book of Governors is …
A New Tool for Computer Assisted Paleography
Over the last nine years, a forty-seven-person digital humanities project has explored the feasibility of computer assisted paleography for Syriac. That is, could one use big data, visual analytics, and recent advances in the digital analysis of handwriting to better understand Syriac manuscripts and Syriac manuscript culture? Last June we launched the public-facing part of our project titled the “Digital Analysis of Syriac Handwriting” or DASH (…
Why Constructive Resilience
I was born in a small house that had been built by my uncles on a rocky and barren piece of land that my grandmother acquired by saving the meager wages that she earned cleaning White folks’ houses in North Carolina. Since the land was not fertile, we could not grow upon it anything to eat. In addition, because the land was not yet connected to the city, there was no running water, no electricity, and no inside toilet. We went to the bathroom in …
The contours of contemporary English football
This paper examines the main contours of change in contemporary English football since the inception of the Premier League in 1992 through a wide range of empirical material. It explores these changes through the conceptual prisms of cultural intensification, globalisation and post-modernism. The Premier League became more popular during this era: attendances doubled between 1992 and 2017, despite rising ticket prices. It also became more 'civili…
The Legacy of Japan's GSDF in Samawa
Kyodo News on March 29 produced a follow-up piece on GSDF reconstruction projects in Samawa. For the entire period that the GSDF was stationed in its base near Samawa, the Koizumi Administration and its camp followers repeatedly insisted that their presence was needed there in order to carry out 'humanitarian and reconstruction support activities.'It is not easy to evaluate clearly the degree to which the local community in Samawa benefited from …
Japan On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War
We have recently crossed the five-year mark since the American invasion of Iraq. President George W. Bush used the occasion to triumphantly declare that, due to his decision to invade, 'the world is better, and the United States of America is safer.'In Japan, the Asahi Shinbun appears virtually alone in using this occasion to reflect upon the Iraq War. For all its pro-war cheerleading, the Yomiuri Shinbun did not even see fit to produce an Englis…
When Christians First Met Muslims
The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not re…
Envisioning Islam
The earliest and largest corpus of Christian writings on Islam was written in the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Envisioning Islam shows how these previously neglected texts problematize modern perceptions of an exclusively hostile Christian reaction to Islam and revolutionize our understanding of the early Islamic world.
The Yomiuri Shinbun Takes Pride in Its Shame
The Yomiuri Shinbun stunned the world in late November with a highly unusual apology. The paper announced that it had found dozens of articles in past issues of the English-language Daily Yomiuri (now called The Japan News) between February 1992 and January 2013 that used the expression "sex slave" to refer to wartime comfort women
Japan and the War on Terror
The role of the Far East is becoming increasingly important in global geopolitics. Japan's economic might and sphere of geographical influence, between China, North Korea and the US, means it has the potential to be a major ally in the War on Terror. While Japan's constitution does not allow for militarism or acts of war, in the post 9/11 world the use of the Japanese nation's 'Self-Defence Force' has become increasingly normal - a result of the …
Imperial Japan's Islamic Policies and Anti-Westernism
The disciplines of “area studies” (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's inte…
Japan Grapples with the Rise of Hate Groups (Video)
Grassroots conservative groups led by Gambare Nippon began marching in the streets of Japanese cities beginning in 2010, but this year rightwing activism has notably intensified, coinciding with the establishment of the second Abe administration. Gaining the most notoriety is a group called the Zaitokukai or "The Citizen's Association That Will Not Permit Special Privileges for Resident Koreans
A Temporarily Resurrected Dog and Other Wonders
In the mid-ninth century, the east Syrian bishop Thomas of Margā composed a lenghy monatic history now known as The Book Of Governors. Amidst Thomas’s numerous anecdotes concerning the exploits of Christian holy men, appear over a dozen stories involving Muslim characters. A critical examination of these tales focusing on issues of word choice, characterization, and narrative assumptions provides important data for the development of Christian de…
Somali Pirates and Political Winds Drive Japan to the Gate of Tears [Updated]
In late October 2007 an odd story appeared in the press. A Japanese-owned chemical tanker called the Golden Nori was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. There were no Japanese nationals on board, but the East Asian nation had become entangled, quite unusually, in an East African affair. Unforeseen at that time was that this curious incident would eventually become one of the top foreign policy issues in Tokyo: Somali piracy has emerged as a potent…
Public Faces and Private Spaces
This essay examines Japanese views and attitudes toward Muslims living in Japan and the implications of Japanese perspectives for U.S. policy and other matters
The Slaying of Ito Kazuya
On the morning of August 26, 2008, aid worker Ito Kazuya arrived at work as usual. Four armed men suddenly appeared and abducted him. Local people witnessed the abduction, and a force of policemen and villagers gave chase into the mountains above north of the village of Bodyalai near Dara-e-Noor, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The result was a tragedy: Ito was shot three times in the leg and once in the left thigh. On the morning following the …
Imperial Japan's Islamic Policies and Anti-Westernism
The disciplines of "area studies" (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's inte…
Is There a Japan-Iraq Strategic Partnership
In March 2007 the Japanese Foreign Ministry began speaking of a "long-term and strategic partnership" between Japan and Iraq. The terminology was new: Japan had previously described its policy in post-Saddam Iraq in terms of "reconstruction activities" but not as a "strategic partnership." What accounts for this shift in language? What does the new policy entail? What does it overlook?On July 19, 2006, the final elements of the Ground Self-Defens…
Oil and Power
The story of how Japan gained, and then lost, the development rights to one of the richest oil fields in the world has been treated rather casually in the international media despite the fact that it will strongly affect Japan's relations with Iran and other countries for many years to come. The issue of the Japanese involvement in the Azadegan oil field was divisive from the start, but became more and more so as the political situation in the Pe…
Kissing Christians
Kissing was one of the most widely practiced early Christian rituals. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of how ancient controversies concerning this rite became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of ancient Christian communities and their relations with outsiders
The Roots of the Japanese Oil Victory in Libya
In February 2000, Japan began the new century on a sour note when it lost its rights to the Khafji oil field in the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone. Japan's Arabian Oil Company had held exploration rights in that zone since 1957, and the loss of such a long-term investment was keenly felt
The Battle of Azadegan
After the election of moderate President Khatami in Iran in 1997, and the lack of any change in Washington's hardline policies toward that country in the months and years that followed, Tokyo began to grow more and more uncomfortable with the American line. As a result, by about 1999 the Japanese government began to seek closer relations with Teheran. This was symbolized by Foreign Minister Komura Masahiko's visit to Iran in August 1999, and the …
First contact
This short paper examines a forgotten episode in the early 1870s when a steamship flying under the flag of the Bey of Tunis unexpectedly arrived in the port of Yokohama. This steamship, the Zadkia, immediately became involved in a legal dispute regarding the debts of its owner and the status of the ship itself as a vessel from a non-Treaty Power. The Zadkia story was significant in several respects. First, it revises our understanding of when and…
Ritual Kissing, Heresy and the Emergence of Early Christian Orthodoxy
Amidst the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, the ritual kiss often played an important role in trying to distinguish orthodox from heretical Christians. For early Christian leaders such as Rufinus, Jerome, Augustine and Paulinus of Nola, the kiss became a means to malign an opponent while simultaneously reinforcing one's own claims to theological legitimacy. The kiss's connection to a wide range of symbolic systems made…
The contours of contemporary English football
This paper examines the main contours of change in contemporary English football since the inception of the Premier League in 1992 through a wide range of empirical material. It explores these changes through the conceptual prisms of cultural intensification, globalisation and post-modernism. The Premier League became more popular during this era: attendances doubled between 1992 and 2017, despite rising ticket prices. It also became more 'civili…
Ritual Kissing, Heresy and the Emergence of Early Christian Orthodoxy
Amidst the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, the ritual kiss often played an important role in trying to distinguish orthodox from heretical Christians. For early Christian leaders such as Rufinus, Jerome, Augustine and Paulinus of Nola, the kiss became a means to malign an opponent while simultaneously reinforcing one's own claims to theological legitimacy. The kiss's connection to a wide range of symbolic systems made…
Ritual Kissing, Heresy and the Emergence of Early Christian Orthodoxy
Amidst the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, the ritual kiss often played an important role in trying to distinguish orthodox from heretical Christians. For early Christian leaders such as Rufinus, Jerome, Augustine and Paulinus of Nola, the kiss became a means to malign an opponent while simultaneously reinforcing one's own claims to theological legitimacy. The kiss's connection to a wide range of symbolic systems made…
First contact
This short paper examines a forgotten episode in the early 1870s when a steamship flying under the flag of the Bey of Tunis unexpectedly arrived in the port of Yokohama. This steamship, the Zadkia, immediately became involved in a legal dispute regarding the debts of its owner and the status of the ship itself as a vessel from a non-Treaty Power. The Zadkia story was significant in several respects. First, it revises our understanding of when and…
Kissing Christians
Kissing was one of the most widely practiced early Christian rituals. Kissing Christians presents the first comprehensive study of how ancient controversies concerning this rite became part of larger debates regarding the internal structure of ancient Christian communities and their relations with outsiders
The Roots of the Japanese Oil Victory in Libya
In February 2000, Japan began the new century on a sour note when it lost its rights to the Khafji oil field in the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone. Japan's Arabian Oil Company had held exploration rights in that zone since 1957, and the loss of such a long-term investment was keenly felt
The Battle of Azadegan
After the election of moderate President Khatami in Iran in 1997, and the lack of any change in Washington's hardline policies toward that country in the months and years that followed, Tokyo began to grow more and more uncomfortable with the American line. As a result, by about 1999 the Japanese government began to seek closer relations with Teheran. This was symbolized by Foreign Minister Komura Masahiko's visit to Iran in August 1999, and the …
Oil and Power
The story of how Japan gained, and then lost, the development rights to one of the richest oil fields in the world has been treated rather casually in the international media despite the fact that it will strongly affect Japan's relations with Iran and other countries for many years to come. The issue of the Japanese involvement in the Azadegan oil field was divisive from the start, but became more and more so as the political situation in the Pe…
Imperial Japan's Islamic Policies and Anti-Westernism
The disciplines of "area studies" (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's inte…
Is There a Japan-Iraq Strategic Partnership
In March 2007 the Japanese Foreign Ministry began speaking of a "long-term and strategic partnership" between Japan and Iraq. The terminology was new: Japan had previously described its policy in post-Saddam Iraq in terms of "reconstruction activities" but not as a "strategic partnership." What accounts for this shift in language? What does the new policy entail? What does it overlook?On July 19, 2006, the final elements of the Ground Self-Defens…
Public Faces and Private Spaces
This essay examines Japanese views and attitudes toward Muslims living in Japan and the implications of Japanese perspectives for U.S. policy and other matters
The Slaying of Ito Kazuya
On the morning of August 26, 2008, aid worker Ito Kazuya arrived at work as usual. Four armed men suddenly appeared and abducted him. Local people witnessed the abduction, and a force of policemen and villagers gave chase into the mountains above north of the village of Bodyalai near Dara-e-Noor, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The result was a tragedy: Ito was shot three times in the leg and once in the left thigh. On the morning following the …
Somali Pirates and Political Winds Drive Japan to the Gate of Tears [Updated]
In late October 2007 an odd story appeared in the press. A Japanese-owned chemical tanker called the Golden Nori was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. There were no Japanese nationals on board, but the East Asian nation had become entangled, quite unusually, in an East African affair. Unforeseen at that time was that this curious incident would eventually become one of the top foreign policy issues in Tokyo: Somali piracy has emerged as a potent…
A Temporarily Resurrected Dog and Other Wonders
In the mid-ninth century, the east Syrian bishop Thomas of Margā composed a lenghy monatic history now known as The Book Of Governors. Amidst Thomas’s numerous anecdotes concerning the exploits of Christian holy men, appear over a dozen stories involving Muslim characters. A critical examination of these tales focusing on issues of word choice, characterization, and narrative assumptions provides important data for the development of Christian de…
Japan Grapples with the Rise of Hate Groups (Video)
Grassroots conservative groups led by Gambare Nippon began marching in the streets of Japanese cities beginning in 2010, but this year rightwing activism has notably intensified, coinciding with the establishment of the second Abe administration. Gaining the most notoriety is a group called the Zaitokukai or "The Citizen's Association That Will Not Permit Special Privileges for Resident Koreans
Imperial Japan's Islamic Policies and Anti-Westernism
The disciplines of “area studies” (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's inte…
Japan and the War on Terror
The role of the Far East is becoming increasingly important in global geopolitics. Japan's economic might and sphere of geographical influence, between China, North Korea and the US, means it has the potential to be a major ally in the War on Terror. While Japan's constitution does not allow for militarism or acts of war, in the post 9/11 world the use of the Japanese nation's 'Self-Defence Force' has become increasingly normal - a result of the …
When Christians First Met Muslims
The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not re…
Envisioning Islam
The earliest and largest corpus of Christian writings on Islam was written in the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Envisioning Islam shows how these previously neglected texts problematize modern perceptions of an exclusively hostile Christian reaction to Islam and revolutionize our understanding of the early Islamic world.
The Yomiuri Shinbun Takes Pride in Its Shame
The Yomiuri Shinbun stunned the world in late November with a highly unusual apology. The paper announced that it had found dozens of articles in past issues of the English-language Daily Yomiuri (now called The Japan News) between February 1992 and January 2013 that used the expression "sex slave" to refer to wartime comfort women
The Legacy of Japan's GSDF in Samawa
Kyodo News on March 29 produced a follow-up piece on GSDF reconstruction projects in Samawa. For the entire period that the GSDF was stationed in its base near Samawa, the Koizumi Administration and its camp followers repeatedly insisted that their presence was needed there in order to carry out 'humanitarian and reconstruction support activities.'It is not easy to evaluate clearly the degree to which the local community in Samawa benefited from …
Japan On the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War
We have recently crossed the five-year mark since the American invasion of Iraq. President George W. Bush used the occasion to triumphantly declare that, due to his decision to invade, 'the world is better, and the United States of America is safer.'In Japan, the Asahi Shinbun appears virtually alone in using this occasion to reflect upon the Iraq War. For all its pro-war cheerleading, the Yomiuri Shinbun did not even see fit to produce an Englis…
The contours of contemporary English football
This paper examines the main contours of change in contemporary English football since the inception of the Premier League in 1992 through a wide range of empirical material. It explores these changes through the conceptual prisms of cultural intensification, globalisation and post-modernism. The Premier League became more popular during this era: attendances doubled between 1992 and 2017, despite rising ticket prices. It also became more 'civili…
A New Tool for Computer Assisted Paleography
Over the last nine years, a forty-seven-person digital humanities project has explored the feasibility of computer assisted paleography for Syriac. That is, could one use big data, visual analytics, and recent advances in the digital analysis of handwriting to better understand Syriac manuscripts and Syriac manuscript culture? Last June we launched the public-facing part of our project titled the “Digital Analysis of Syriac Handwriting” or DASH (…
Why Constructive Resilience
I was born in a small house that had been built by my uncles on a rocky and barren piece of land that my grandmother acquired by saving the meager wages that she earned cleaning White folks’ houses in North Carolina. Since the land was not fertile, we could not grow upon it anything to eat. In addition, because the land was not yet connected to the city, there was no running water, no electricity, and no inside toilet. We went to the bathroom in …
Identity Trap
Review of The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, by Yascha Mounk. 416 pages. Penguin Books Ltd., 2023
Social Network Analysis and Medieval Literature
This article explores the ninth-century Book of Governors by East Syrian bishop Thomas of Marga, a text notorious for its sprawling and disjointed narrative structure. Through the lens of network analysis, the study seeks to untangle the dense web of 622 characters and their interactions within this work, which remains one of the richest sources of information on the medieval Church of the East. The analysis reveals that the Book of Governors is …
Political science (17 works) · History (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Japanese History and Culture (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Business (4 works) · Islam (4 works) · Law (4 works)