REL Honors Theses
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This collection contains the scholarship of the W&L Dept. of Religion's students.
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Recent Submissions
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Fools for Christ's Sake: The Intent to Edify found in the Writing of Leontius and Flannery O'Connor (thesis)
(2020)The Life of Symeon is classified as Christian hagiography, capturing a saint's journey of practicing ascetism in both the desert and city. Leontius of Neapolis wrote this text with the main intent to edify his audience. ... -
Heaven in a Wild Flower: William Blake's Spirituality of Imagination, Mysticism, and Apocalypse (thesis)
(2020)The following paper is interested in the spirituality and religious beliefs of the 18th-19th c. poet and artist William Blake. It is composed of three chapters: an introduction to Blake and the historical and thematic ... -
How to Save a World: Examining Heidegger's Poet with Marion's Discourse of Praise (thesis)
(2018)In our modern world, there exists the sentiment that poetry is useless. Philosopher Martin Heidegger rejects such a notion. He states that modern man has closed himself off from the world through self-assertive production, ... -
The Comic and the Sacred in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (thesis)
(2018)This paper is motivated in response to Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly’s exposition of David Foster Wallace in their book All Things Shining. In refuting their claims that Wallace’s canon does not harbor the resources ... -
The Art of Living: Vital Modes of Being and Their Religious Significance in Thoreau (thesis)
(2018)The following paper is interested in the predisposition to profound boredom and its potential to arouse despair. In light of such, it explores three modes of being – perceiving, walking, and writing – to illustrate a ... -
Reclaiming Responsibility: Theological Resources for Criminal Justice Reform (thesis)
(2018)The United States incarcerates more individuals than any other country in the world. The anthropological viewpoint that allows these injustices to persist sees incarcerated individuals as existentially different than ... -
Rāvaṇa Reclaimed: The South Indian Dravidian Movement's Reclamation of Identity Through the Rāmāyaṇa (thesis)
(2018)The Rāmāyaṇa proves itself to be an inimitable and lasting artifact of cultural measurement. The variety of interpretations, filled with intertextual complexity and culturally-specific commentary as well as surrounding ... -
Arvo Pärt: Transcendence in the Heart of Secularity (thesis)
(2015)To make the most accurate statements about the sacrality within Pärt’s music, we must focus both on the intrinsic and on the extrinsic values of the music and the context surrounding its inception and reception. As Jeremy ... -
The Mystical Experience: A Re-Interpretation Through Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment (thesis)
(2015)Our bodies allow us to be in the world and form opinions about our experiences through perception and movement. However, this quality goes unnoticed by most becausethe body is considered a natural and normal part of ... -
'Pure Dew' on the Garden of Nations: Unearthing Johann Gottfried Herder's Religious Vision of German Nationalism (thesis)
(2013)This paper seeks to investigate and provide renewed clarity to the ways Johann Gottfried Herder's (1744-1803) theory of nationalism is contested by using more modern theories of 'nation' and 'religion.' Using Benedict ... -
She Closes Her Eyes to Herself: Nietzsche, Feminism, and Christianity (thesis)
(2013)This paper works to examine the lives and arguments of early Christian female ascetics and modern feminist Christians through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche. The arguments against orthodox Christianity presented in Nietzsche ... -
Approaches to engagement : American Catholicism in the public sphere (thesis)
(2012)Using history and contemporary sociology, this paper seeks to understand the relationship of the Catholic Church and the public square in the present-day United States of America, critically examining the ways by which ... -
The evolution of redemption : an analysis of the ideologies of redemption of Rabbi Abraham, Isaac Kokk, Rabbi Tzvi, Yehuda Kook, and Gush Emunim (thesis)
(2012)The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, his son Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and the contemporary Israeli settlement group Gush Emunim, for the purpose of tracing the evolution ... -
Medieval fasting and anorexia nervosa as goal-oriented ascetic practices (thesis)
(2011)This paper analyzes various theories of asceticism and the body and assesses those theories in the context of two behaviors typically considered to have ascetic components: medieval female fasting and modem anorexia nervosa ... -
Ain't no drownin' the spirit : the New Orleans civil religion and its role in Hurricane Katrina (thesis)
(2011)Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in the early hours of August 29, 2005, causing the levees surrounding the city of New Orleans to rupture. As flood water rushed into the city, many people questioned the justice of God. ... -
The Muslim brotherhood and defining the community : an evolution from the universal to the particular (thesis)
(2010)The definition of the umma/(community) has evolved considerably over the existence of the Muslim Brotherhood. The evolution of this concept can be traced by following the ideological leadership of this organization from ...
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