Post-Doctoral Fellow in Christianity and Contemporary Culture The University of Manchester Religions & Theology Subject Area Samuel Alexander Building WG19a Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PL, UK 44 (0) 790.662.1551 timothy.stanley@manchester.ac.uk
"Chefs searching for an authentic medieval way to roast a porpoise can now look up the recipe online," the BBC reported yesterday. The John Rylands Library on Deansgate is a stunning cathedral to learning in Manchester. It also holds a number of quirky manuscripts which occasionally gain a bit of media attention. Such was the case with a fifteenth century cookbook compiled by master chefs of King Richard II. It seems the British love affair with "cury" goes back even farther than thought. If you've a way to access it, here's a link to the digitized copy of the book available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online via Gale.
Posted on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 01:15PMin Soundtrack
"Fools" The Dodos"My Mistakes Were Made for You," The Last Shadow Puppets"Time on Your Side," Emily Jane WhiteBillie Holiday's "Speak Low" remixed on Verve3
Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 12:23PMin Theology
In the 19th century, philosophers and theologians clamored over each other to appropriate a true Absolute. From Schleiermacher's feeling of absolute dependence to Thomasius's absolute personality, and from Hegel's absolute infinite substance to Kierkegaard's absolute paradox, the great minds sought an absolute theory of everything. Each, in their own way, would have claimed that their absolute more adequately addressed the great philosophical and theological problems of their day. In brief, their absolute would make the world a better place.
Today, in the 21st century, make of it what you will, we have our own Absolut for a better world.
Posted on Monday, June 1, 2009 at 09:20AMin Life, Scripture
Just caught a brief vimeo from a Gel conference where Ira Glass discusses the nature of good narratives and telling the news on a human scale. It's an interesting reflection on how we inhabit narratives and, how, even though we live in a world saturated with entertainment, good storytelling is still rare. Glass, it seems, is one person working in the news and media business today who has figured out how to tell a story well. His podcast, This American Life, based on his Chicago public radio news show, has one of the largest audience's in America. He has a way of telling ordinarily mundane and often boring news stories and making them captivating if not just short of addictive. In any case, his discussion of Arabian Nights touches on a theme about how we come to really understand the world. Somehow, as the king engages and inhabits Scheherazade's stories, he comes to be more empathetic, more humane, and more sane. In the end, the suspense of Scheherazade's stories, the power of narrative, saves her life. As Glass puts it,
"It's about the power of narrative. How narrative itself is like a back door to a very deep place inside of us. A place where reason doesn't necessarily hold sway. And you know like all of us, when a story gets inside of us it makes us less crazy."
Just as stories cured the king's madness in Arabian Nights, so too Glass's approach to the news brings his audience in touch with the human beings caught up in what is going on in the world today. In any case, here's a short vimeo of Glass doing what he does best.
As an aside, the power of narrative to humanize and foster empathy is one made by commentators of the Christian and Jewish scriptures as well. Burton Visotzky's The Genesis of Ethics comes to mind. There, Visotzky writes about the years of experience he has teaching ethics through the narratives in the book of Genesis. Students' ethical aptitude increased not from learning a list of moral precepts, but through engaging the stories where so many ethical connundrums were faced by vividly depicted human beings like Abraham, Sarah and Jacob.
Friday, June 19, 2009 at 10:34AM in ;)
"Chefs searching for an authentic medieval way to roast a porpoise can now look up the recipe online," the BBC reported yesterday. The John Rylands Library on Deansgate is a stunning cathedral to learning in Manchester. It also holds a number of quirky manuscripts which occasionally gain a bit of media attention. Such was the case with a fifteenth century cookbook compiled by master chefs of King Richard II. It seems the British love affair with "cury" goes back even farther than thought. If you've a way to access it, here's a link to the digitized copy of the book available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online via Gale. 
