Before the abolitionist movements of the eighteenth century, a Spanish Capuchin missionary in Havana risked imprisonment to author the first antislavery treatise written in the Americas.Written in 1681 by Spanish missionary Francisco José de Jaca, Resolution on the Freedom of Blacks and Their Descendants offers an unprecedented look into early abolitionist thought. Jaca sharply departs from his contemporaries by demanding the total criminalization of the i...

How New York intellectuals interpreted and wrote about Castro's revolution in the 1960sNew York in the 1960s was a hotbed for progressive causes of every stripe, including women's liberation, civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War—and the Cuban Revolution. Fighting over Fidel brings this turbulent cultural moment to life by telling the story of the New York intellectuals who championed and opposed Castro’s revolution.Setting his narrative agai...

The essays in this collection examine philosophical, religious, and literary or artistic texts using methodologies and insights that have grown out of reflection on literature and art. In them, them phrase “material spirit” becomes a point of departure for considering the continuing spectral effects of religious texts and concerns in ways that do not simply call for, or assume, new orrenewed forms of religiosity.The writers in this collection seek to examine religion beyond traditi...

The imminent philosopher and theologian examines religion in light of science and philosophy in modern society.Originally published more than fifty years ago, The Courage to Be has become a classic of twentieth-century religious and philosophical thought. The great Christian existentialist thinker Paul Tillich describes the dilemma of modern man and points a way to the conquest of the prob-lem of anxiety. This edition includes a new introduction by Harvey Cox that s...

The work of René Girard is hugely influential in literature and cultural studies. But it is in understanding the relationship between religion and violence that his theory has created the greatest impact. Girard’s understanding of mimetic rivalry and conflict and of scapegoating are seen by many to be the key to a completely new understanding of Christianity.Girard’s name evokes curiosity and – often – strong feelings amongst devotees and sceptics. Discovering Girard is the first b...

In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba’s six million citizens. In Visions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what...

This thesis seeks to provide an explanation for the contents of three foreign policy decisions implemented under the government of General Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979). It does so by analyzing the decision-making process which led Brazil: 1) to abstain in the Meetings of Consultation of American Foreign Ministers for voting the lifting of sanctions against Cuba; 2) to restore diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China; and 3) to recognize Angola’s MPLA government. The central h...

Influential scholar Peter L. Berger reveals five signs that point to the supernatural and its place in a modern secular societyAcclaimed scholar and sociologist Peter L. Berger examines religion in twentieth-century Western society, exploring the social nature of knowledge and its effect on religious belief. Using five signs evident in ordinary life—order, play, hope, damnation, and humor—Berger calls for a rediscovery of the supernatural as a crucial, rich dimensi...

In the late 1960s, Brazilian artists forged a watershed cultural movement known as Tropicália. Music inspired by that movement is today enjoying considerable attention at home and abroad. Few new listeners, however, make the connection between this music and the circumstances surrounding its creation, the most violent and repressive days of the military regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. With key manifestations in theater, cinema, visual arts, literature, and especially popular...

Has the passing of the old God paved the way for a new kind of religious project, a more responsible way to seek, sound, and love the things we call divine? Has the suspension of dogmatic certainties and presumptions opened a space in which we can encounter religious wonder anew? Situated at the split between theism and atheism, we now have the opportunity to respond in deeper, freer ways to things we cannot fathom or prove.Distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney calls this condi...

In Redeemers, acclaimed historian Enrique Krauze presents the major ideas that have formed the modern Latin American political mind during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries—and looks closely at how these ideas were expressed in the lives of influential revolutionaries, thinkers, poets, and novelists. Here are the Cuban José Martí; the Argentines Che Guevara and Evita Perón; political thinkers like Mexico’s José Vasconcelos; and the writers José Enrique Rodó, Mario Vargas Llosa, O...

On the fortieth anniversary of revolution and rebellion in Chile, a searching history of the rise and fall of the world's first and only democratically elected Marxist president.On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile was deposed in a violent coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The coup had been in the works for months, even years. Shortly after giving a farewell speech to his people, Allende died of gunshot wounds-whether inflicted by his own ...