This Summer, I have the privilege of being a Visiting Professor with the Religion und Politik Exzellenzcluster at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. I'll be giving a couple of talks on my research and also leading a doctoral seminar. The last of these is what I need help with. The topic of this seminar is (tentatively) titled "The Language of Holy War in Contemporary American Discourse." As you, dear reader, may well know, this is a subject I've tackled here on a number of occasions.
Anyway, I need to give the students a reading list for said seminar. I have a preliminary bibliography -- some good stuff there -- but I want to be sure there's not some interesting stuff that I'm just not missing. The internet's a big place after all and, despite my best efforts to not do any teaching, service, or any other research (just joking, dear administrator), I can't read everything.
So, can you all think of anything that I might want to include? Please use the comments below to add your thoughts and spread the word. Any and all suggestions are MOST welcome...
5 comments:
I recently read sociologist John R. Hall's book Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), and he has quite a bit to say about apocalyptic rhetoric in terms of holy war--esp. for post-9/11 views on both sides, American and Muslim (as well as Crusades and Reformation). May be worth checking out.
I haven't seen this whole book, but it seems that it would provide a great example of how language of war enters at the ground level, and into popular culture via the soldiers. Wars always give us new words.
http://store.pamphleteerpress.com/06.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7458809
This is pretty good, in case you don;t know it:
Daniel GUTWEIN and Sophia MENACHE, “Just War, Crusade and Jihad: Conflicting Propaganda Strategies During the Gulf Crisis (1990-1991)”, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Historie, vol. 80, 2002, p. 385-400
Thanks, all. Good stuff. Keep them coming...
Sounds like a great seminar. I imagine you are already familiar with Bruce Holsinger's _Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism and the War on Terror_ (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007) - it's a great book that I have found appeals to students (probably because it is pocket-sized).
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