From non-Brahmin priests of the goddess to ascetics of god Mahima Alekha

This article deals with Mahima Dharma a contemporary vernacular ascetic religion of Odisha/Eastern India displaying a rich diversity in its regional configurations. In this paper the author proposes to look at the main protagonists of the religion, the ascetics (babas), as non-Brahmin priests, who have incorporated shakti, the power of local goddesses into their disciplined bodies and in doing so have transformed the feminine element of the Hindu belief into the belief of the indescribable and abstract god Alekha. Mahima Dharma is seen in this contribution as a sort of micro structure on the one hand of popular asceticism in rural India and on the other hand as a recent religious reform movement integrating local non-Brahmin priesthood and the local belief in goddesses into the mainstream of the male Hindu pantheon. This article draws on the author's PhD fieldwork research (1999-2002), published in 2002 as a monograph (Guzy 2002)

Ritual Village Music And Marginalised Musicians Of Western Orissa/odisha, India

This work presents the summarised results of an anthropological and ethno-musicological documentation of hitherto unknown traditions of sacred music performed by marginalised musicians and priest-musicians of the Adivasi (indigenous) Bora Sambar region of western Orissa/Odisha, India. The work is based on more than 30 months of ethnographic research in rural regions of western Orissa/Odisha

Zmiany stawek podatku od towarów

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest zbadanie zale nosci pomiedzy wprowadzonymi zmianami stawek podatku od towarów i usług a realizacja funkcji fiskalnej. Zakłada sie, e wprowadzone zmiany m. in. zmiana stawek podstawowych podatku maja charakter profiskalny i przyczyniaja sie do wzrostu wpływów bud etowych z tego podatku. W wyniku analizy zostało wykazane, i istotnie podniesienie stawki podatku od towarów i usług zwiekszyło wpływy podatkowe do bud etu panstwa, ale tylko na okres jednego roku

Using Issues in Honors Education to Teach Argumentation

Topics and resources from honors education are used to teach argumentation in writing composition. The author discusses efficacies for increasing student awareness of, and reflection on, issues in honors education while engaging first-year students in honors issues that directly affect their lives. In my first-year honors composition course, I frequently use materials and topics from honors education, ranging from National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) publications to local campus honors issues, to demonstrate rhetorical analysis and argumentative genres. Rather than using a composition reader, I pair textbook chapters with relevant websites and selected essays from Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) and Honors in Practice (HIP), thus forming the basis for class discussion and in-class writing exercises for units on causal argument, rebuttal argument, definition argument, and so forth. For example, a textbook chapter on narrative argument pairs well with Bonnie D. Irwin’s 2011 NCHC presidential address, “We Are the Stories We Tell,” published in the 2012 volume of HIP

Research on Honors Composition, 2004–2015

The spring/summer 2004 issue of the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council (JNCHC) was devoted exclusively to research in honors education. The issue was divided into three sections: the introductory Forum on Research in Honors, which revisited three essays published in Forum for Honors in 1984 and included two 2004 responses; Research in Honors; and Research about Honors. After I had revised my dissertation for the 2003 NCHC monograph Honors Composition: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Practices, I incorporated some of my unused dissertation material for two pieces in the issue, one being a response essay in the Forum, “Research in Honors and Composition,” and the other an article in the Research in Honors section, “Faculty Compensation and Course Assessment in Honors Composition,” using material that my dissertation director thought was too political to survive the dissertation defense

AP, Dual Enrollment, and the Survival of Honors Education

At the NCHC annual conferences, in publications, and on the discussion list, honors educators frequently compare admissions criteria for individual programs and colleges, including minimum ACT and SAT scores, high school coursework and GPAs, and AP and IB credits and scores. In light of the seismic issues NCHC has faced over the past two decades—significant restructuring of governance, establishment of a central office, the accreditation debate—matters of admissions criteria and freshmen with incoming credits seem mundane, but a new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum AP and dual enrollment credits that public colleges and universities must accept, and consequently the honors students we have admitted based in part on their willingness to take on challenging coursework such as AP classes are now struggling to find enough liberal-arts-based honors electives to complete an honors program

Faculty as Honors Problem Solvers

Postsecondary honors educators are adept at identifying problems and proposing solutions in honors education, but they may not disseminate their solutions effectively. This essay argues that honors administrators should familiarize themselves with the professional and scholarly resources that NCHC institutional membership affords, and then they should share what they have learned with honors teaching faculty. Rather than simply serving as advisors on administrative and programmatic issues, honors faculty also need the tools and opportunities to be effective honors problem solvers for day-to-day pedagogical issues

Meet the New Boss: An Honors Faculty Member Weathers Administrative Change

The author reflects on the role of honors faculty in effectively responding to short- and long-term administrative change, discussing the value of resistance to deleterious administrative decisions and offering advice for successfully navigating cyclical administrative shifts in honors

Honors Is a Good Fit for Gifted Students— Or Maybe Not

In the field of composition studies, a core pedagogical objective is to familiarize students with types of argumentation strategies, such as causation, evaluation, narration, rebuttal, and definition. Introducing definition arguments in their textbook Good Reasons: Researching and Writing Effective Arguments, Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer state that “[d]efinition arguments set out criteria and then argue whatever is being defined meets or does not meet those criteria. Rarely do you get far into an argument without having to define something” (97). They identify three categories of definition—formal, operational, and by example—and then apply these to sample documents. For my honors composition course, I begin class discussion of definitional argument by writing this thesis statement on the board: “Honors programs are not a good fit for gifted students.” Initially, students are resistant: “Aren’t gifted and honors the same thing?” “Don’t all gifted students go into honors anyway?” I explain that we must examine definitions for gifted and honors to identify the similarities and differences, not only in intellectual ability but in other areas such as motivation and emotionality. I also admit to them that the idea that gifted students might not naturally fit into honors had not occurred to me until I attended Anne N. Rinn’s 2004 NCHC conference session, “Should Gifted Students Join an Honors Program?” Rinn acknowledged a lack of empirical research supporting the premise that gifted students fit well into honors programs and used her dissertation as an occasion to contribute needed empirical support in favor of their joining