Northern Russian Monastic Culture

The breakup of the Soviet Union awoke a renewed fascination in Russian Orthodoxy that reanimated interest in monasticism and its cultural impact on Russian history. Yet the modern period had produced little rigorous research into early Russian Orthodox monasticism as a spiritual way of life. Among other things, the organic quality of Orthodox monastic life requires a discussion of monasteries’ regional contexts and the role of the leader/teacher. Regional context and spiritual leadership reveal differences among similar types of communities (such as differences among various cenobia, or among various sketes) in social make-up, economic function, and even pious forms. Another important direction to pursue is to move away from a focus on one type of text toward the integration of the variety of sources contained in monastic libraries and archives

The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring

Environment, conservation, green, and kindred movements look back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring as a milestone. The impact of the book, including on government, industry, and civil society, was immediate and substantial, and has been extensively described; however, the provenance of the book has been less thoroughly examined. Using Carson’s personal correspondence, this paper reveals that the primary source for Carson’s book was the extensive evidence and contacts compiled by two biodynamic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary T. Richards, of Long Island, New York. Their evidence was compiled for a suite of legal actions (1957-1960) against the U.S. Government and that contested the aerial spraying of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). During Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime, Spock and Richards both studied at Steiner’s Goetheanum, the headquarters of Anthroposophy, located in Dornach, Switzerland. Spock and Richards were prominent U.S. anthroposophists, and established a biodynamic farm under the tutelage of the leading biodynamics exponent of the time, Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. When their property was under threat from a government program of DDT spraying, they brought their case, eventually lost it, in the process spent US$100,000, and compiled the evidence that they then shared with Carson, who used it, and their extensive contacts and the trial transcripts, as the primary input for Silent Spring. Carson attributed to Spock, Richards, and Pfeiffer, no credit whatsoever in her book. As a consequence, the organics movement has not received the recognition, that is its due, as the primary impulse for Silent Spring, and it is, itself, unaware of this provenance

Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture

Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture. Nickolas Lupinin, Donald Ostrowski and Jennifer B. Spock, eds. Columbus, Ohio: Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, The Ohio State University, 2016.https://encompass.eku.edu/fs_books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Christopher Lasch's the culture of narcissism the failure of a critique of psychological politics

Christopher Lasch's bestseller The Culture of Narcissism had, beyond doubt, a significant impact-it was even read in the White House. Today it is not only still frequently taught and referenced, there are also still empirical studies conducted which try to verify Lasch's assertion of the preponderance of the narcissistic personality. This paper re-reads the book as a critique of psychologization processes, and this allows us to discern, besides the flaws in Lasch's approach, a fundamental insight which goes largely unnoticed by both Lasch's opponents and his proponents. Following this, the article will situate subjectivity within the matrix of psychology, science, psychoanalysis, and politics. In this way a critique of contemporary forms of psychologization-psychologization under globalization, as it were-is made possible

The Anchorite and the Cenobium

Abstract Solovki Monastery, founded in the first third of the fifteenth century, merged an idiorrhythmic monastic cell life within the community walls with a communal life of monastic labor, church services, and extensive economic activity by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The pious literature of the monastery’s saints’ lives promoted the ideals of both a life of community obedience to pious spiritual leaders, and of an eremitic life striving for stillness (hesychia). Tension between these two monastic ideals is evidenced in subtle ways in the major works of hagiography regarding the monastery’s founders, Zosima and Savatii, its well-known Hegumen Filipp (Kolychëv) and the life of Hegumen Irinarkh. However, a short, little-known Life of Nikifor highlights both tensions and symbiotic relations between the monks and nearby anchorites.</jats:p

Administrating a Right Life: Secular and Spiritual Guidance at Solovki Monastery in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The spiritual and economic endeavors of Russian monasteries in the pre-modern period have often been studied as separate issues by scholars researching the internal life and/or impact of cloisters in a particular region. However, these two areas of monastic life worked not just in tandem, but were mutually supportive as can be observed in the responsibilities and duties of monastic leaders and officers. Solovki Monastery, with its extensive wealth and strong spiritual leadership in northern Russia, provides an excellent example for exploring the manner in which spiritual leadership and spiritual labor dovetailed with economic responsibilities and labors. A broad variety of economic records as well as pious literature and instructional texts provide evidence for the merged spiritual and temporal/economic roles of the leaders, cellarers, treasurers, bailiffs, and other individuals and groups that had designated duties or titles within the cloister. It can be observed that spiritual power and economic success were considered mutually reinforcing among the monks and the surrounding population of Solovki, and at other monasteries of pre-Petrine Russia.</jats:p