This study examines how the concept of conversion and specifically the legacy of the doctrine of preparation, as articulated in Puritan Reform theology as transplanted to the Massachusetts Bay colony, remained a vital cultural force shaping developments in American literature and philosophy. It begins by discussing the testimonies of conversion collected by the Puritan minister Thomas Shepard, which reveal an active pursuit of belief by prospective church members occurring at the intersection of experience, perception, doctrine, affections, and intellect. This pursuit of belief, codified in the morphology of conversion, and originally undertaken by the Puritans as a way to conceptualize redemption in a fallen state, established the epistemological contours for what Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James would theorize as a conductive imaginary-consciousness imagined as a space organized or that self-organizes around the dynamics and tensions between abstract truth and concrete realities, certainty and uncertainty, and perception and objects perceived. Each writer offers a picture of consciousness as both a receptive and active force responsible for translating the effects of experience and generating original relations with self, community, and God. This study demonstrates that each writer "ministered" to their audiences by articulating a method or habit of mind in order to foster an individual's continual efforts at regeneration, conceived by all the subjects of this study as a matter of converting semantics, that is, a dedicated willingness to seeking out personal and cultural renewal through the continual process of attaching new meaning and value to ordinary contexts.

This study examines how the concept of conversion and the legacy of the doctrine of preparation, as articulated in Puritan Reformed theology and transplanted to the Massachusetts Bay colony, remained a vital cultural force shaping developments in American literature, theology, and in philosophy in the form of pragmatism.

This book attempts to identify a central problem within the North American evangelical imagination around the issue of religious experience and its relationship to the basic hermeneutical stance of biblical and theological interpretation. The relatively recent emergence of the academic discipline of Christian spirituality offers a new set of methodological insights that may help to mediate the theological impasse between more conservative and progressive perspectives concerning the appropriate role of human experience for evangelical thought and practice. Specifically, we will explore the experience of religious conversion that lies at the center of evangelical spirituality in critical dialogue with the challenges and opportunities brought about by recent philosophical discourse and the postmodern turn, variously understood.

In Cormac McCarthy and the Writing of American Spaces Andrew Estes examines ideas about the land as they emerge in the later fiction of this important contemporary author. McCarthy's texts are shown to be part of larger narratives about American environments. Against the backdrop of the emerging discipline of environmental criticism, Estes investigates the way space has been constructed in U.S. American writing. Cormac McCarthy is found to be heir to diametrically opposed concepts of space: as something Americans embraced as either overwhelmingly positive and reinvigorating or as rather negative and threatening. McCarthy's texts both replicate this binary thinking about American environments and challenge readers to reconceive traditional ways of seeing space. Breaking new ground as to how literary landscapes and spaces are critically assessed this study seeks to examine the many detailed descriptions of the physical world in McCarthy on their own terms. Adding to so-called 'second wave' environmental criticism, it reaches beyond an earlier, limited understanding of the environment as 'nature' to consider both natural landscapes and built environments. Chapter one discusses the field of environmental criticism in reference to McCarthy while chapter two offers a brief narrative of conceptions of space in the U.S. Chapter three highlights trends in McCarthy criticism. Chapters four through eight provide close readings of McCarthy's later novels, from Blood Meridian to The Road.

"This is a delightful book, a small gem replete with insightful, provocative pieces about both American culture and Jewish life. I think that Stephen Whitfield is one of the most original essayists on these two topics. Few other scholars combine the density of his knowledge with the verve of his prose". -- Hasia R. Diner, New York University

Space and Conversion in Global Perspective examines experiences of conversion as they intersect with physical location, mobility, and interiority. The volume’s innovative approach is global and encompasses multiple religious traditions. Conversion emerges as a powerful force in early modern globalization. In thirteen essays, the book ranges from the urban settings of Granada and Cuzco to mission stations in Latin America and South India; from villages in Ottoman Palestine and Middle-Volga Russia to Italian hospitals and city squares; and from Atlantic slave ships to the inner life of a Muslim turned Jesuit. Drawing on extensive archival and iconographic materials, this collection invites scholars to rethink conversion in light of the spatial turn. Contributors are: Paolo Aranha, Emanuele Colombo, Irene Fosi, Mercedes García-Arenal, Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Aliocha Maldavsky, Giuseppe Marcocci, Susana Bastos Mateus, Adriano Prosperi, Gabriela Ramos, Rocco Sacconaghi, Felicita Tramontana, Guillermo Wilde, and Oxana Zemtsova.