What are the mechanisms of change and adaptation in Islam, regarded as a living organism, and how do they work? How did these mechanisms preserve the integrity of Muslim civilization through the innumerable hazards, divisions and devastations of time? From the perspective of history and intellectual history, this book focuses on a significant, though still largely under studied, aspect of this immense issue, namely, the role of mystical and messianic ferment in the construction and re-construction of religious authority in Islam. Sixteen scholars address this topic with a variety of approaches, providing a fresh outlook on the trends underlying the evolution of Muslim societies and, in particular, the emergence and consolidation of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires. Contributors include: Abbas Amanat, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Paul Ballanfat, Shahzad Bashir, Ilker Evrim Binbaş, Daniel De Smet, Devin DeWeese, Armin Eschraghi, Omid Ghaemmaghami, Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Todd Lawson, Pierre Lory, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, A. Azfar Moin, William F. Tucker.

The authors discuss the intricate relationships between interfaith activities and religious identity, nationalism, violence, and peacemaking in four very different settings: Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. They interview the whole cross-section of local Interfaith Dialogue workers: not only clerics and "dialoguing" professionals but also laypersons, who are often more eloquent than any scholar at expressing the realities, hopes, and frustrations of Interfaith Dialogue within their home countries. They take on the perennial dilemma faced by Interfaith Dialogue proponents: avoid politics and risk irrelevance, or take up the political questions and risk "politicizing" the dialogue, with all the disruptive effects this implies. Above all, this important book demonstrates the desire for interfaith dialogue in these polarized societies, and the extent to which, against strong odds, religious communities are connecting with each other. (Back cover).

In Unity in Diversity, Randall J. Pederson critiques current trends in the study of Puritanism, and proposes a different path for defining Puritanism, centered on unitas and diversitas, by looking at John Downame, Francis Rous, and Tobias Crisp.

‘Who am I?’ The answer to this question is one of the most important issues a human being has to address in life. This is a question about possessing the continuous self, about the internal concept of oneself as an individual. The self-defining process, the discovery of the self takes place in the context of culture and society. The impact of social experience is felt across the whole life-span. Socialization exerted by parents, family and friends, acculturation to stereotypes and limited and limiting roles, inheritance of local identity and cultural myths, acknowledgement of the legacy of history contribute to the formation of poly-identity comprised of personal, racial, national, group or gender identities. Unity in Diversity. Cultural Paradigm and Personal Identity is a collection of essays by scholars of multicultural experience who, by employing different interpretative strategies indicative of their different backgrounds and interests, explore the issues of difference and otherness, inclusion/exclusion and of multiple ethnic, cultural, gender, and national identities. Offering literary, cultural, social, and historical perspectives the collection will be of interest to readers studying contemporary literature, (popular) culture, gender studies, sociology, and history.

Philip Morgan's selection of cutting-edge essays by leading historians represents the extraordinary vitality of recent historical literature on early America. The book opens up previously unexplored areas such as cultural diversity, ethnicity, and gender, and reveals the importance of new methods such as anthropology, and historical demography to the study of early America.

Translation studies as a discipline has grown enormously in recent decades. Contributions to the discipline have come from a variety of fields, including machine translation, history, literature, philosophy, linguistics, terminology, signed language interpreting, screen translation, translation pedagogy, software localization and lexicography. There is evidently great diversity in translation studies, but is there much unity? Have the different branches of translation studies become so specialized that they can no longer talk to each other? Would translation studies be strengthened or weakened by the search for or the existence of unifying principles? This volume brings together contributions from feminist theory, screen translation, terminology, interpreting, computer-assisted translation, advertising, literature, linguistics, and translation pedagogy in order to counter the tendency to partition or exclude in translation studies. Machine translation specialists and literary translators should be found between the same book covers, if only because the nomadic journeying of concepts is often the key to intellectual discovery and renewal. Celebrating our differences does not mean ignoring what we have in common. Unity in Diversity offers a valuable overview of the current state of translation studies from both theoretical and practical perspectives and makes an important contribution to debates on the future direction of translation studies.