Books by Robert Pierce Forbes
Papers by Robert Pierce Forbes
Urim v'Tumim: A Student Quarterly of Yale's Jewish Community, 1991
An American convert to Judaism reflects on the place of modern Israel in history and the conflict... more An American convert to Judaism reflects on the place of modern Israel in history and the conflicted relationship of American Jews to Israel and to God.
Cross Currents, 1986
This paper explores the understanding of history in the works of the Romanian historian of religi... more This paper explores the understanding of history in the works of the Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade and in James Joyce's Ulysses. Both authors assert, Eliade directly and Joyce implicitly, that the terror of history can only be overcome by love.
This essay argues that British evangelical abolitionists of the 18th and early 19th centuries did... more This essay argues that British evangelical abolitionists of the 18th and early 19th centuries did not view Africans within a racial paradigm. After examining the intellectual and religious context of British abolitionism, it looks at the careers of Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce to understand the religious imperative of abolition and the abolitionists' view of Africans, and concludes with an examination of the decline of Evangelical attitudes during the 19th century and the coming of a secular world view.
Connecticut History, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Fall 2013)
Giacomo Meyerbeer was the most popular composer of the 19th century, and the most reviled of the ... more Giacomo Meyerbeer was the most popular composer of the 19th century, and the most reviled of the 20th. Revisiting the massive cultural transformation following the European revolutions of 1830, this essay examines the politics of taste in the period of the bourgeoisie's ascension over the aristocracy. Meyerbeer remained unapologetically tied to the bourgeoisie, and ignored the Romantics' strategies for transcending it. For this he could not be forgiven.
James II, hell-bent on imposing absolutist rule on Britain, sought to subvert one of Oxford's mos... more James II, hell-bent on imposing absolutist rule on Britain, sought to subvert one of Oxford's most storied colleges--igniting campus protests (including teach-ins) that culminated in a revolution.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
It is a truism that evangelical Christianity and enlightenment liberalism have constituted two of... more It is a truism that evangelical Christianity and enlightenment liberalism have constituted two of the most influential movements in America. For much of the nation's history, the two forces have existed in a state of tension or outright conflict, each checking the most extreme tendencies and thwarting the ultimate goals of the other. To many participants, American history itself has been viewed as a struggle between these two poles-interpreted as the clash between righteousness and infidelity, in the eyes of one set of combatants; between the growth of knowledge and the persistence of ignorance and superstition, in the perception of the other.
It is obvious to every unprejudiced observer-and even to many prejudiced ones 1 -that the legacy ... more It is obvious to every unprejudiced observer-and even to many prejudiced ones 1 -that the legacy of racial slavery persists on many levels. A growing movement in the United States and elsewhere is calling for reparations to compensate the descendants of slaves for the economic and other damages inflicted upon them by slavery. A wide range of studies has linked the continuing disparity in levels of health, economic well-being, and educational attainments between Americans of African ancestry and other Americans to factors originating in slavery, though whether the factor of enslavement is causative of the problem or secondary-i.e. the result of persisting stigmatization-is unclear.
It's early in the morning on the Fifth of July, 1843, and the steamship wharf and train station o... more It's early in the morning on the Fifth of July, 1843, and the steamship wharf and train station of the Hudson River town of Stuyvesant is beginning to fill with black men, traveling in groups, all well dressed, most wearing top hats and cotton armbands. In each group, a pair of men unfurl a colorful banner, and its members gather around it. A relay of coaches to the village of Kinderhook, five miles to the east, transport the elderly and infirm, while the rest assemble in ranks behind their banners under the efficient direction of a squadron of marshals, and march to the village in near-military order. 1
American Nineteenth Century History, Jan 1, 2012
Race is routinely defined as ‘‘socially constructed,’’ from which it follows that there was a tim... more Race is routinely defined as ‘‘socially constructed,’’ from which it follows that there was a time before its construction. What that time looked like, and how Africans were then viewed by white Americans, is difficult to perceive from a vantage point within the paradigm of race. This essay considers important but neglected cultural referents to argue that a binary distinction between black and white did not emerge on theoretical grounds until the 1780s, when Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia shrewdly redirected growing challenges to slavery into quasi-metaphysical reflections on the gulf between whites and blacks.
The American dilemma is encapsulated in five words: -All men are created equal.‖ As a Virginia sl... more The American dilemma is encapsulated in five words: -All men are created equal.‖ As a Virginia slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson had reason to fear the currents of freedom set loose by the American Revolution; as the author of the Declaration of Independence, he faced a more personally existential dilemma. As long as the American narrative of liberty encompassed -all men,‖ two options existed: either Jefferson's words must be read as championing the destruction of slavery, and with it his livelihood and the privileged existence of the entire class of Southern slaveholders, or they were hollow and empty, condoning the persistence of the supreme injustice of slavery, and revealing slaveholding Americans to be infinitely worse tyrants than George III, and Jefferson himself to be perhaps history's greatest hypocrite.
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Books by Robert Pierce Forbes
Papers by Robert Pierce Forbes
Robert Egleston
Roslyn Hamilton
Vernon Simpson