UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    "Their object is to strengthen the Moslem and repress the Christian": Henry Jessup and the Presbyterian Mission to Syria under Abdul Hamid II
    (2008-08-19) Hays, Evan Lattea Rogers; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Henry Jessup and the American Presbyterian Mission to Syria faced a new challenge in 1885 when the Ottoman authorities closed various American schools there. Jessup, the Secretary of the American mission, responded with a rhetorical campaign against the Ottoman impositions that portrayed the policies of Abdul Hamid II's administration as new, pro-Muslim, anti-Christian, and designed to replace American missionary institutions in Syria with Muslim institutions backed by Ottoman force. While some of Jessup's writing while in Syria from 1856 to 1910 was polemical, his writing surrounding the school controversy in the 1880s rather reflected the historical context of local and foreign educational competition in Syria that now included Ottoman initiatives against foreign institutions who presented a threat to Ottoman-Islamic imperial discipline. This thesis seeks to contextualize Jessup's writing to portray 1885 as a watershed in the history of a mission whose evangelistic efforts were then successfully limited by Ottoman reforms.
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    Performing Christian Female Identity in Roman Alexandria
    (2008-05-05) Juliussen-Stevenson, Heather Ann; Holum, Kenneth; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The Christian women of Roman Alexandria are something of a mystery, but they were integral to the transformation of religion. They Christianized the space they occupied, their bodies becoming houses for sanctity. While it is difficult to verify the accuracy of male representations of female subjects, discourse exposes the underlying assumptions upon which gender was understood. Reformed prostitutes, women who traveled to the shrine at Menouthis, collectors of pilgrim flasks from Abu Menas who sat in front of the Virgin Mary fresco at Kom el-Dikka, and virgins who shut themselves away--none of these women may have thought of themselves as men suggested. Yet when men referenced the feminine, they introduced alterity, indicating resistance to a master discourse or even competition among rival discourses. This negotiation, combined with a daily expression of agency through the use of space, reveals how women must have asserted their rights to salvation.
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    American Initiative in the Modern Catechetical Movement: From the Release of the Baltimore Catechism in 1885 to the Publication of the General Catechetical Directory in 1971
    (2006-12-11) Ingold, Matt D; Gilbert, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The twentieth century has been a dynamic era for Catholic catechesis in the United States. Since the Protestant Reformation, catechesis had revolved around the Catechism as the primary text and memorization as the fundamental method for imparting Christian doctrine. In the late nineteenth century, progressive American catechists, both lay and religious, endeavored to introduce modern pedagogical standards to the realm of Catholic religious education. Traditional historiography credits this transition to European initiatives. Assessing the evolution of American catechesis through modern catechetical programs and textbooks developed between 1885 and 1971, however, demonstrates that American initiative in modernizing catechesis was ongoing during the twentieth century in the United States. Pedagogical advances in religious education were taking place mainly at the classroom level by the ingenuity of progressive catechists. This thesis endeavors to illustrate the American contribution to the modernization of Catholic religious education in the United States.
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    Autocephaly as a Function of Institutional Stability and Organizational Change in the Eastern Orthodox Church
    (2005-02-01) Sanderson, Charles; Pearson, Margaret; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The ecclesiastical organization uniquely characteristic of the Christian East is the autocephalous ("self-headed," or self-governing) church, which in the modern states of Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Balkans are truly national churches, whose boundaries, administrative structures, and identities closely mirror those of the state. Conventional wisdom attributes autocephaly to nationalism: Christianity inevitably becomes closely associated with national identity in those states whose churches are of Byzantine political patrimony, and autocephaly is the organizational manifestation of that association. This study argues that a better explanation for the prevalence of autocephaly lies with the church's institutional framework. Formal and informal institutions, or "rules of the game," structure the relationships between groups of local churches and provide incentives to observe constraints upon actions that restructure those relationships. A restructuring of ecclesiastical relationships implies that an alteration in incentives changed the equilibrium. In the Christian East, enforcement of the equilibrium historically has been carried out by the state. This study explores the institutional framework of the Orthodox Church, outlining the formal (canon law) and informal (conventions and tradition) rules governing organizational change. These rules are then examined in light of historical evidence of how autocephalous churches have come into being throughout the two millennia of the church's existence. The study concludes that the institutional framework of the Orthodox Church, formed within the political context of the Roman and later East Roman (Byzantine) Empire, became increasingly incongruent both with the changing political geography of Eastern Europe and with the enforcing role afforded to secular political authority as imperial structures gave way to modern nation-states. Since the formal institutional rules have proved resistant to change and unable to keep pace with the changing political geography, the Orthodox Church has relied increasingly upon flexible informal rules which has resulted in a proliferation of autocephalous churches. In addition to locating a more compelling explanation for autocephaly within institutional theory, this study argues that the Orthodox Church provides a compelling area for exploration of some of the more vexing analytical problems in institutional theory, such as why institutions change slowly or even appear not to change at all.
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    Building the Stained Glass Prism: The Development of the Polish Catholic Church's Electronic Media Properties 1989-2003
    (2004-11-24) Burns, David Paul; Hiebert, Ray E.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation investigates the Polish political, economic, and social transition from 1989 to 2003 from communism to capitalism, specifically its impact on a powerful Polish institution the Roman Catholic Church - and by extension, the Church's electronic media properties. As Poland changed from an eastern-looking collectivist society to a more western individualist society, its conservative Catholic Church likewise moved from a more autocratic, cohesive force towards a more liberal, Post-Vatican II approach to worship supported by the first Polish pontiff, John Paul II. Various Catholic religious orders with political viewpoints ranging from liberal to ultra-conservative managed the Church's radio, television and Internet properties and shaped the Church's mediated messages along their own religious ideology. This divisiveness was similarly reflected in fragmentation within the Church hierarchy, with individual Polish bishops supporting the media properties that most closely espoused their viewpoint.
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    Baptized by Fire: Collected Memories of Little Zion Baptist Church
    (2003-11-25) O'Foran, Shelly Ann; Pearson, Barry; Flieger, Verlyn; Logan, Shirley; Parks, Sheri; English Language and Literature
    This dissertation explores oral narratives collected at Little Zion Baptist Church after the small, rural African American church's destruction by probable arson in 1996, and its subsequent rebuilding. As a construction volunteer, I realized the church could not be contained by its building. Rather, Little Zion lives in its people's inherited traditions, which they practice and teach to their children today to ensure the church's continued vitality tomorrow. I conceived of this folklore studies project to trace the outlines of a structure that exists beyond the building, built solid of another kind of material vulnerable perhaps to the passage of time and process of forgetting, but not to fire. This dissertation also examines Little Zion's place in a pattern of African American church burnings in the late 1990s, and documents efforts to make sense of the violence. But the focus moves immediately inward, constructing a history of more than a century of activity at Little Zion told primarily through the voices of church members. As a white outsider, I examine my own biases and subordinate my opinions to those of church members throughout the project. Finally, this dissertation joins a debate among folklife scholars about the politics of collection and uses a self-reflexive method of presentation that allows an outsider such as me to move toward an insider's view of the Little Zion culture. Chapter II considers memories of the church's role in Greene County, Alabama, from the Depression, through the Civil Rights Movement, to a largely segregated present. Chapter IV looks at church practices and events such as services, weddings and funerals. Chapter V documents personal religious beliefs and experiences, from conversion to baptism to the call to preach. Chapters III and VI present uninterrupted narratives by two church members, attempting to remove as much as possible the filter of my perspective. The Little Zion community generously embraced this project, and I conducted fieldwork from 1996-2003 to record the approximately 75 hours of interviews and church events that shape this dissertation.