Religion, 1946-2025

In this thesis, I read Les Mis alongside Augustine to assess the musical’s theology of love. I will show that the two male leads, Jean Valjean and Javert, follow Augustinian ideas about the need to love God and the neighbor in order to get to Heaven. However, two of the main female characters who will reach Heaven undermine Augustine’s arguments. Their cases show us that love of one’s neighbor without an explicit love of God is, in Les Mis’ world, sufficient for entrance to heaven. In other words, Les Mis promises a pathway to Heaven based solely on terrestrial relations. It draws upon Augustinian theology but then develops it in a new direction, one that treats human relations as the sole arbiter of virtue.

Biodynamic Agriculture is a spiritual farming technique that has been practiced all over the earth over 100 years. It invites gardeners and farmers alike to connect with a world beyond material sciences, embracing cosmic influences and tossing out pesticides while meeting fairies, gnomes, and angels in the garden. In addition to being an increasingly popular land management technique, Biodynamics is the staple farming method used across a network of intentional communities known as Camphills. In this thesis, I explore what it means to know, belong, and eat according to contemporary Biodynamic farmers, historic figures, and scholars within the Biodynamic Movement. Bolstered by 10 weeks of ethnographic field work across 4 countries, I argue that Biodynamic Agriculture as it is performed in Camphill communities appeals to a multi-tiered knowledge system that 1) is systematic and distinct from other forms of agriculture, 2) promotes belonging that entitles people with different ideological connections to Biodynamics to work alongside one another, and 3) describes nutrition as a spiritual issue, promoting morally flexible vegetarianism but not mandating the consumption of Biodynamic food. As one learns to consider science to be more than what meets the eye, so too they learn to believe more strongly in the capacity of their disabled neighbors and reflect more carefully on what they eat.

An audiovisual version of this thesis is available here, in line with my project's methodological commitment to accessible scholarship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOUkXB0wsxY

This thesis discusses documents from the Cairo Geniza. It explores Jewish Women's Religious lives through an analysis of both literary and documentary Geniza sources. The thesis has two sections. First, the thesis explores elegies. Second, the thesis explores prayer. The thesis argues that women's personal religiosity significant to society at large through the trade system. This scholarship challenges previous notions of female participation in society and modes of scholarly analysis. The appendix the scholar's own transcriptions and translations of primary sources of both Hebrew and Judeo Arabic.