Peter Iver Kaufman
Biographic Data
| ID | 992881 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Iver Kaufman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter Iver |
| FAMILY NAME | Kaufman |
| SIGNATURE | KAUFMAN P I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Richmond |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6446-1506 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 254 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Lucy Moffat Kaufman. A People’s Reformation
What Might Agamben Learn from Augustine
Giorgio Agamben’s references to a ‘coming community’ keep readers hunting for its characteristics, specifically for prescriptions that would signal how its political culture might be developed and maintained. His ambivalence toward Augustine prevents him, as well as readers, from discovering contributions the prelate’s preferences for compassionate collectives – which especially mark his polemical treatises, correspondence, and sermons – might ma…
Killjoy? Augustine on Pageantry
Augustine's position on civic spectacles should be evaluated in connection with his fears about a resurgence of paganism in late Roman North Africa. Notwithstanding contemporary claims that those fears were cover for early fifth-century prelatical efforts to manage commercial and political culture, evidence suggests that paganism in North Africa survived and was seductive
Hopefully, Augustine
When Augustine wrote about having discovered a hope (diuersa spes) different from the political ambitions that drew him to Rome then Milan (spes saeculi), he referred to Christians’ hopes for celestial reward. But several colleagues suggest that he also harbored hopes for a kinder political culture. Discussions of Augustine’s hopes have enlivened the study of political theory and political theology for several generations. During the twenty-first…
Augustine's Punishments
During Augustine's life, government authorities were generally friendly to the Christianity he came to adopt and defend. His correspondence mentions one imperial magistrate in Africa, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, a pagan vicar of Africa who seemed partial to Donatist Christians whom Augustine considered secessionists. Otherwise, from the 390s to 430, assorted proconsuls, vicars, and tribunes sent from the imperial chancery and asked to maintain o…
Double Blind Peer-Review in Religions
Pre-publication peer-review forms the basis for how scholarly journals assess whether an article is suitable for publication. [...]
Deposito Diademate
To assist colleagues from other disciplines who teach Augustine's texts in their core courses, this contribution to the Lilly Colloquium discusses Augustine's assessments of Emperors Constantine and Theodosius. His presentations of their tenure in office and their virtues suggest that his position on political leadership corresponds with his general skepticism about political platforms and platitudes. Yet careful reading of his revision of Ambros…
Parliament
The Godly, Godlier and Godliest in Elizabethan England - 1
The Godly, Godlier and Godliest in Elizabethan England
Family and Household - 1
A Sociology of No-Self
Although fraught with complexity, the self is a central phenomenon of discussion and analysis within sociology. This article contributes to this discourse by introducing the Buddhist ideas ofanatta(no-self) andprattyasamutpāda(interdependence) as analytic frameworks to deconstruct and rethink the self within sociology. We argue that the sociological self, most clearly articulated by symbolic interactionism, is premised on a self-other dualism. Th…
Leadership and Elizabethan Culture
Scribo Ergo Cogito
This article builds on the concept of “writing as thinking” by describing an in-class, cumulative, peer-writing exercise that helps foster reflexivity. Reflexivity is understood as a process of seeing and a process of being. To be reflexive means that we are fully conscious of the lenses through which we view the world. It suggests that we understand both our situationality and our positionality. In this sense, reflexivity is an essential compone…
Humility, civility, and vitality
Pope Gregory I’s reconstruction of the church’s presence in Rome, and reassertion of Rome’s influence in Italy make his pontificate (590–604) significant for the history of Italian leadership. His correspondence with rivals, counsel for friends, and deployment of relics furnish historians with an opportunity to reassess what leadership theorists depict as “the humility factor” as well as what theorists identify as the roles of “disruption” and “d…
From the Renaissance to the Modern World-Introduction
On November 11 and 12, 2011, a symposium held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill honored John M. Headley, Emeritus Professor of History. The organizers, Professor Melissa Bullard-Headley's colleague in the department of history at that university-along with Professors Paul Grendler (University of Toronto) and James Weiss (Boston College), as well as Nancy Gray Schoonmaker, coordinator of the Program in Medieval and Early Modern St…
Augustine on Manichaeism and Charisma
Augustine was suspicious of charismatics' claims to superior righteousness, which supposedly authorized them to relay truths about creation and redemption. What follows finds the origins of that suspicion in his disenchantment with celebrities on whom Manichees relied, specialists whose impeccable behavior and intellectual virtuosity were taken as signs that they possessed insight into the meaning of Christianity's sacred texts. Augustine's strug…
Hamlet's Religions
Pastoral challenges prompted pietists among Elizabethan Catholics and Calvinists to commend what historians now call an inward turn whereby the faithful, in a sense, become their own confessors. This article suggests that spiritual exercises or soliloquies Shakespeare scripted for his Hamlet (and, less so, for Angelo in Measure for Measure) compare favorably with the devotional literature that underscored the importance of self-analysis, intra-ps…
Dis-Manteling More
Although the sixteenth century Protestant construction of the reign of King John is a familiar one – John reconfigured into a heroic-victim of the Papacy, providing evidence of England’s pre-Reformation Protestant past – what has received no attention is a further transformation of John that occurs in the last major sixteenth century text to consider his reign. Shakespeare’s King John makes full recourse to earlier Protestant reconstructions of J…
Christian Realism and Augustinian (?) Liberalism
Augustine's ontology, ecclesiology, and soteriology have recently been mined to help Christian realists and liberals respond to the problems that pluralism and conflict create for democratic societies. The results challenge those secularists who object to the late antique prelate's “moralizing” as well as others who insist that “public reason”—not religious traditions—makes for more meaningful political conversations and for collaboration “across…
The Lowering of Higher Education in America
Welcome to Religions, a New Open Access, Multidisciplinary and Comprehensive Online Journal
We always seem to be in the wake of some current event or controversy that reminds us just how important scholarly interest in religions has been, is, and will be. Fortunately, new sources for religious movements-even sources that illumine those movements' origins-keep turning up, and many sources, long considered critical, are now accessible online. Furthermore, fresh developments in the disciplines that consistently make significant contributio…
Playing and Protesting
Despite the fact that athletic activism is nonnormative behavior, there is still a long, albeit small, tradition of individuals who use the playing field to advocate for political and social justice. This article examines such individuals who, while in their role as athletes, engage in social or political activism to foster progressive social change. Using data from 21 in-depth interviews conducted with athletes who have been involved in activism…
Last But Not Least
Although much has been written in the past 50 years about the pedagogical value of The Sociological Imagination, one section of Mills's book has been underutilized for far too long. Namely, the essay in the appendix, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” has been rarely invoked by sociologists discussing the significance of The Sociological Imagination for teaching and learning. Given that the appendix is explicitly about doing research and engaging i…
“To Assyst the Ordynaryes”
Revisionists’ explanations for Thomas More’s willingness to serve as Chancellor have him scheming to support the Aragonese faction at Court--or conspiring with Hapsburg agents to revive papal influence in England in the wake of Campeggio’s departure and Wolsey’s “fall.” In late 1529, More was obviously concerned with lay disaffection, troubled by the prospect that sectarian dissidents might capitalize on it to reform the church recklessly, and co…
Boos, Bans, and other Backlash
Athletes today are often criticized for their aberrant and deviant behavior; however, when activist athletes act with integrity and sincerity by promoting social and political justice, they often face a hate-filled backlash of scorn and contempt. In this paper I explore the negative consequences of being an activist athlete. Using in-depth interview data and secondary accounts, I examine reactions to athletes who engaged in social or political pr…
Critical Pedagogy in the Sociology Classroom
Although critical pedagogy has been discussed in the Teaching Sociology literature for nearly twenty years, dialogues about the difficulties in practicing and implementing critical pedagogical strategies in everyday classroom life are less common. In this note, we discuss a predominant theme of our workshop: challenges and concerns that may arise when one attempts to do critical pedagogy. We focus on both challenges and potential solutions for le…
Playing and Protesting
Despite the fact that athletic activism is nonnormative behavior, there is still a long, albeit small, tradition of individuals who use the playing field to advocate for political and social justice. This article examines such individuals who, while in their role as athletes, engage in social or political activism to foster progressive social change. Using data from 21 in-depth interviews conducted with athletes who have been involved in activism…
Fitting In and Fighting Back
Using data collected during a four-year ethnographic study, this article examines the stigma management strategies of kids who are homeless in the San Francisco Bay area. We focus specifically on strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Strategies of inclusion are attempts by homeless kids to establish harmonious relationships with both peers and strangers. The most common are forging friendships, passing, and covering. Strategies of exclusion are …
Critical Pedagogy in the Sociology Classroom
Although critical pedagogy has been discussed in the Teaching Sociology literature for nearly twenty years, dialogues about the difficulties in practicing and implementing critical pedagogical strategies in everyday classroom life are less common. In this note, we discuss a predominant theme of our workshop: challenges and concerns that may arise when one attempts to do critical pedagogy. We focus on both challenges and potential solutions for le…
Boos, Bans, and other Backlash
Athletes today are often criticized for their aberrant and deviant behavior; however, when activist athletes act with integrity and sincerity by promoting social and political justice, they often face a hate-filled backlash of scorn and contempt. In this paper I explore the negative consequences of being an activist athlete. Using in-depth interview data and secondary accounts, I examine reactions to athletes who engaged in social or political pr…
Michael Jordan Meets C. Wright Mills
L'A. presente une experience pedagogique, menee, aux Etats-Unis, dans le cadre d'un cours de sociologie, afin de developper l'imagination sociologique. Il affirme que l'analyse et l'etude d'objets appartenant a la vie quotidienne peut constituer un exercice fondamental en ce domaine. Il montre comment les etudiants sont invites a decrire ce type d'objet, a puis analyser leur signification a un niveau local, global puis historique. Il s'efforce d'…
Sociology as Pedagogy
As a discipline, sociology has produced a rich understanding of social processes, and yet the pedagogical implications of this scholarship remain largely untapped. In this paper, we employ a framework of sociology as pedagogy to show how sociology can enhance and inform teaching and learning. We select examples from a range of classical and contemporary social thought to highlight the connection between sociological theory and the practices of te…
Middle-Class Social Reproduction
Learning to Not Labor
This article examines the micro-analytical strategies of identity formation among individuals attempting to transform their ascribed social-class position into an achieved social-class position. The interpersonal strategies discussed include associational embracement, associational distancing, and presentations of self. Data come from forty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with college seniors (twenty men and twenty women) from a large northe…
A Sociology of No-Self
Although fraught with complexity, the self is a central phenomenon of discussion and analysis within sociology. This article contributes to this discourse by introducing the Buddhist ideas ofanatta(no-self) andprattyasamutpāda(interdependence) as analytic frameworks to deconstruct and rethink the self within sociology. We argue that the sociological self, most clearly articulated by symbolic interactionism, is premised on a self-other dualism. Th…
The Forest and the Trees
Introduction 1. The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing 2. Culture: Symbols, Ideas, and the Stuff of Life 3. The Structures of Social Life 4. Population and Human Ecology: People, Space, and Place 5. Us, It, and Social Interaction 6. Living the Practice and the Promise Notes Index
Scribo Ergo Cogito
This article builds on the concept of “writing as thinking” by describing an in-class, cumulative, peer-writing exercise that helps foster reflexivity. Reflexivity is understood as a process of seeing and a process of being. To be reflexive means that we are fully conscious of the lenses through which we view the world. It suggests that we understand both our situationality and our positionality. In this sense, reflexivity is an essential compone…
All the News Not Fit to Print
SINCE 1976, Project Censored has provided an annual list of their top censored news stories. The work of sociologist Carl Jensen and his Project Censored staff at Sonoma State University has been instrumental in identifying news stories that fail to find their way into major media outlets. The intent of Project Censored is to provide an alternative perspective to a mainstream press that some have denounced as biased. Accusations
Hamlet's Religions
Pastoral challenges prompted pietists among Elizabethan Catholics and Calvinists to commend what historians now call an inward turn whereby the faithful, in a sense, become their own confessors. This article suggests that spiritual exercises or soliloquies Shakespeare scripted for his Hamlet (and, less so, for Angelo in Measure for Measure) compare favorably with the devotional literature that underscored the importance of self-analysis, intra-ps…
Augustine on Manichaeism and Charisma
Augustine was suspicious of charismatics' claims to superior righteousness, which supposedly authorized them to relay truths about creation and redemption. What follows finds the origins of that suspicion in his disenchantment with celebrities on whom Manichees relied, specialists whose impeccable behavior and intellectual virtuosity were taken as signs that they possessed insight into the meaning of Christianity's sacred texts. Augustine's strug…
Last But Not Least
Although much has been written in the past 50 years about the pedagogical value of The Sociological Imagination, one section of Mills's book has been underutilized for far too long. Namely, the essay in the appendix, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” has been rarely invoked by sociologists discussing the significance of The Sociological Imagination for teaching and learning. Given that the appendix is explicitly about doing research and engaging i…
Patience and/or Politics
Few scholars would quarrel with Ernst Dassmann's observation that early Christian reserve toward the political cultures of antiquity-a mixture of deference and indifference, which only occasionally gave way to hostilityturned Christians' outcast status into something of a virtue.1 Still fewer are likely to dispute the assertion that influential fourth-century Christians unreservedly welcomed the changes that came with Constantine and anticipated …
The Contrasting Orientations toward Work and Family between Female and Male College Students
This paper presents the contrasting orientations toward work and family between female and male college students. The data come from interviews with 30 female and 30 male seniors. The majority of women sampled reject the traditional female role of caretaker and articulate a desire to be professional and autonomous individuals who do not have to rely on a man for support — whether it be financial, domestic or emotional. This contrasts sharply with…
Much in Prayer
Tertullian on Heresy, History, and the Reappropriation of Revelation
Tertullian understood the apostle Paul to have suggested there would always be heretics (1 Cor. 11:19), and he presumed God had supplied scripture for their use. Without sacred literature heretics would have nothing of consequence to misread. Without contests over critical passages, there could be no winners, no losers-no heretics.1 The difficulty, Tertullian acknowledged, was that heretics were the poorest of losers; they never conceded defeat. …
John Calvin
Henry VII and Sanctuary
The association of the early Tudors with the elimination of ecclesiastical prerogatives and immunities has achieved a conspicuous respectability. Most attention is lavished justifiably upon Henry VIII, but the plural is stubborn. Henry VII has been paired with his more combative son, and his reign (1485-1509) is commonly credited as an important phase in the evolution of anticlerical prohibitions. Scholars seem convinced that he and his council "…
John Colet’s Opus de sacramentis and Clerical Anticlericalism
“I wilnot give my dogge that bred that some prestes doth minister at the Alter when thei be not in clene lyff.” (statement attributed to Elisabeth Sampson, 1509) How subversively anticlerical was late medieval Catholic reform in England? Were Elisabeth Sampson or perhaps John Wyclif the reformer or malcontent at hand, one might expect scholars rapidly to identify reform with subversion. But if John Colet's name is dropped in the conversation, “re…
John Colet and Erasmus' Enchiridion
In the autumn of 1495 Desiderius Erasmus began his theological studies in Paris and during the next four years sampled the wares of Scotists lecturing at the University. From the Augustinian monastery at Steyn, where Erasmus pursued his own studies in secular literature under the disapproving eye of his abbot, the University of Paris must have seemed like a bank of resplendent lights drawing the Christian scholar into the company of learned and e…
John Colet and Erasmus' Enchiridion
In the autumn of 1495 Desiderius Erasmus began his theological studies in Paris and during the next four years sampled the wares of Scotists lecturing at the University. From the Augustinian monastery at Steyn, where Erasmus pursued his own studies in secular literature under the disapproving eye of his abbot, the University of Paris must have seemed like a bank of resplendent lights drawing the Christian scholar into the company of learned and e…
Piety and Proprietary Rights
John Colet’s Opus de sacramentis and Clerical Anticlericalism
“I wilnot give my dogge that bred that some prestes doth minister at the Alter when thei be not in clene lyff.” (statement attributed to Elisabeth Sampson, 1509) How subversively anticlerical was late medieval Catholic reform in England? Were Elisabeth Sampson or perhaps John Wyclif the reformer or malcontent at hand, one might expect scholars rapidly to identify reform with subversion. But if John Colet's name is dropped in the conversation, “re…
Luther's 'Scholastic Phase' Revisited
By 1516 Luther charged that the Schoolmen had grotesquely inflated the significance of natural virtues. Thereafter, he increasingly was provoked by the suggestion that human effort-touched only lightly, if at all, by grace-could accomplish more healing than harm. But it is commonly supposed that opinions Luther then condemned were opinions he had condoned in his earliest works, in which he is said to have assumed God's willingness to accept the b…
Henry VII and Sanctuary
The association of the early Tudors with the elimination of ecclesiastical prerogatives and immunities has achieved a conspicuous respectability. Most attention is lavished justifiably upon Henry VIII, but the plural is stubborn. Henry VII has been paired with his more combative son, and his reign (1485-1509) is commonly credited as an important phase in the evolution of anticlerical prohibitions. Scholars seem convinced that he and his council "…
Christianity and World Religions
Humanist Spirituality and Ecclesial Reaction
Do you want to see new marvels (monstra)? Do you want to see strange ways of life, to find the sources of virtue or the causes of all evil; to sense the vast emptiness that commonly goes unnoticed?"Cornelius Grapheus was responsible for this sales promotion. Along with other prefatory material, it introduced Thomas More's Utopia to readers in 1516. More's friend, Erasmus of Rotterdam, had collected endorsement, and either he or Peter Giles had ap…
Social History, Psychohistory, and the Prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism
Absolute Margaret
This article suggests that Margaret More Roper's 1534 letter to Alice Alington is an important witness to Tudor ideas of patriarchy and the history of gender identity. In 1557 William Rastell was the first of many to question not only Margaret's authorship of the letter, but also her acquiescence to authorities and opposition to her father. Evidence suggests, however, that Margaret was a part of Erasmus's humanist network of friendship, remained …
John Calvin
Wisdom Speaking Copiously”
Journal Article “Wisdom Speaking Copiously”: Renaissance Humanism Revisited Get access Renaissance Humanism. Edited by Albert Rabil, Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 1988 $129.95. Peter Iver Kaufman Peter Iver Kaufman Peter Iver Kaufman is Bowman and Gordon Gray Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. Search for other works by this author on: O…
Foscolo, Dante and the Papacy
(1990). Foscolo, Dante and the Papacy. History of European Ideas: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 211-220
Tertullian on Heresy, History, and the Reappropriation of Revelation
Tertullian understood the apostle Paul to have suggested there would always be heretics (1 Cor. 11:19), and he presumed God had supplied scripture for their use. Without sacred literature heretics would have nothing of consequence to misread. Without contests over critical passages, there could be no winners, no losers-no heretics.1 The difficulty, Tertullian acknowledged, was that heretics were the poorest of losers; they never conceded defeat. …
Redeeming Politics
Peter Iver Kaufman explores how various Christian leaders throughout history have used forms of "political theology" to merge the romance of conquest and empire with hopes for political and religious redemption. His discussion covers such figures as Constantine, Augustine, Charlemagne, Pope Gregory VII, Dante, Zwingli, Calvin, and Cromwell. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to ag…
The Estrangement of the Past
Much in Prayer
Augustine, Martyrs, and Misery
Augustine said that Rome fell frequently, all too often into "utter moral depravity," occasionally into the hands of the city's enemies. Maybe Aeneas was to blame. He had shown poor judgment, hauling to Italy the gods that failed to save Troy. Subsequently, when the Gauls came to Rome's gates, those divine and purportedly vigilant protectors did remarkably little protecting. They later offered no resistance when Nero reduced Rome to rubble. Augus…
Religion on the Run
Reflexions de l'A. sur les conclusions qu'exposent trois ouvrages recents sur la vie religieuse en Angleterre ou en France a la fin du Moyen Age et au debut des temps modernes. 1) C. John Sommerville, «The Secularization of Early Modern England : From Religious Culture to Religious Faith», New York, 1992. 2) J. Stachieniewski, «The Persecutory Imagination : English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair», Oxford, 1991. 3) L. Taylor, «…
Church, Book, and Bishop
Michael Jordan Meets C. Wright Mills
L'A. presente une experience pedagogique, menee, aux Etats-Unis, dans le cadre d'un cours de sociologie, afin de developper l'imagination sociologique. Il affirme que l'analyse et l'etude d'objets appartenant a la vie quotidienne peut constituer un exercice fondamental en ce domaine. Il montre comment les etudiants sont invites a decrire ce type d'objet, a puis analyser leur signification a un niveau local, global puis historique. Il s'efforce d'…
The Forest and the Trees
Introduction 1. The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing 2. Culture: Symbols, Ideas, and the Stuff of Life 3. The Structures of Social Life 4. Population and Human Ecology: People, Space, and Place 5. Us, It, and Social Interaction 6. Living the Practice and the Promise Notes Index
Prayer, Despair, and Drama
Strikingly original and beautifully written....Prayer, Despair, and Drama is an extremely rich, complex study. -- John Corrigan, Arizona State University West Prayer, Despair, and Drama explores the godly sorrow and pious dis-ease, or lack of ease, of Elizabethan Calvinists and finds that what some have characterized as an evangelism of fear functioned more as a kind of religious therapy. In this major contribution to discussions of the relations…
The Contrasting Orientations toward Work and Family between Female and Male College Students
This paper presents the contrasting orientations toward work and family between female and male college students. The data come from interviews with 30 female and 30 male seniors. The majority of women sampled reject the traditional female role of caretaker and articulate a desire to be professional and autonomous individuals who do not have to rely on a man for support — whether it be financial, domestic or emotional. This contrasts sharply with…
Prophesying Again
We know relatively little about prophecies or "exercises" that early Elizabethan reformers devised as in-service training. Nearly all textbooks report that Archbishop Grindal objected to government orders that prophesying be suppressed, for, in 1576, his reservations cost him the queen's and regime's confidence. Yet the suppressed exercises have lately been depicted as tame Elizabethan adaptations of continental practices that featured sermons de…
All the News Not Fit to Print
SINCE 1976, Project Censored has provided an annual list of their top censored news stories. The work of sociologist Carl Jensen and his Project Censored staff at Sonoma State University has been instrumental in identifying news stories that fail to find their way into major media outlets. The intent of Project Censored is to provide an alternative perspective to a mainstream press that some have denounced as biased. Accusations
Philosophy (37 works) · Political science (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · History (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Theology (18 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Art (14 works)