These critical essays apply new perspectives, methodologies and viewpoints to understand ancient writings and events. Chronologically by the antiquity of their sources, Dr. Keenan Baca-Winters examines
the Histories of Agathias, focusing on Agathias’s emotional trauma as he processed these wars, battles, wins and losses. Dr. Jordan Lavender examines the complex linguistic problems involved in reading 
one of the Christian Gospels, noting the historical Jesus “was a multilingual person in a multilingual society.” In "Titus and Other Jesus Missionaries on Crete: Encountering the Legacy of the Goddess,” Dr. Valerie Abrahamsen adds to her pioneering work on Goddess figures within early Christianity by examining Titus as an example of an early missionary of the Jesus movement. Dr. James Magrini studies the cut-and-paste Christian Bible assembled by Thomas Jefferson to arrive at Jefferson’s version of Christian ethics. Jefferson aimed to remove all references to the supernatural, especially miracles. What, then, was the ethical program of a Deist?

CRITICAL ESSAYS:

Keenan Baca-Winters. "Where the Line is Drawn: Trauma and Narrative in the Histories of Agathias."

James M. Magrini. "Reading the Jefferson Bible: Elucidating the Ethics of Jesus of Nazareth."

Jordan Lavender. "The Hebrew Gospel in the Hebrew Script: Fourth Century Interpretation of Ἑβραΐδι Διαλέκτῳ as Alphabet."

Valerie A. Abrahamsen. "Titus and Other Jesus Missionaries on Crete: Encountering the Legacy of the Goddess."

2022 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE:

Winner: Gianncarlo Muschi. "U.S.-Peruvian Business Relations and Their Effects on the Pioneer Migration of Peruvians to Paterson, New Jersey 1920–1950." First published in The Latin Americanist, Volume 65, Number 2, June 2021, pp. 286-311.

Runner-up: Vanessa Mongey. "Protecting Foreigners: The Refugee Crisis on the Belize–Yucatán Border, 1847–71." First published in Law and History Review, February 2021, Vol. 39, No. 1.
 

OBITUARY:

Joanne Lafler 

BOOK REVIEWS for this issue are accessible here

CRITICAL ESSAYS: 

Helen Ross. "Educating Post COVID-19: Moving on From Pandemic Pedagogy." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 5-22. 

Mary Ellen Nourse. "Registered Apprenticeships and Youth Apprenticeships in Catholic Archdiocesan, Diocesan- and Parish-Affiliated High Schools in the United States: A Descriptive Snapshot." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 23-39.

Valerie Abrahamsen. "St. Paul and Goddesses along the Via Egnatia: Paganism and the Early Jesus Movement in Ancient Macedonia." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 40-55.
 

2021 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE:

Joint winners:

Janet Smith. "Crossing the Border of Citizenship: Helen Taylor, the Independent Radical Democrat Candidate for Camberwell North, 1885." First published in Open Library of Humanities 6(2) (2020), 19. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.540. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 57-73.

Phillip Frank Reid. "Conveyance and Commodity: The Ordinary Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800." First published in Cultural Economies in the Atlantic World: Objects and Capital in the Transatlantic Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003025436. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp.74-85.

Runner-up:

Evan Dutmer. "Teaching as Consolatio: Re-imagining the Teacher-Student Dynamic in Times of Emergency.” Teaching Classical Languages 11(2) (2020): 15-32. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 86-96.
 

OBITUARIES:

Paul G. Schneider (1945-2022)

Jeffrey Babcock Perry (1946-2022)

BOOK REVIEWS for this issue are accessible here

CRITICAL ESSAYS: 

Eric Olson. "Backyard Archaeology and Integrity at Residential Sites in Northeast Ohio."

Douglas A. Dixon. "Improving History Instruction in Twenty-First-Century Language-Enriched Classrooms."

Jordan Lavender. "The Jews of Ecuador: Established and Emerging Communities."

Amanda J. Haste. "Using Translation as a Pedagogical Tool in Teaching English for Musicians and Musicologists."

2020 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE - WINNING ESSAY:

Winner: Kempe Ronald Hope Sr. "Peace, Justice and Inclusive Institutions: Overcoming Challenges to the Implementation of  Sustainable Development Goal 16." (Originally published in Global Change, Peace & Security, 32:1, 57-77 (2019).

Runner-up: Sarah Hardstaff.  "Money and the Gift in the Novels of Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voigt." (Originally published in Barnboken Journal of Children’s Literature Research, 42 (2019). Reprinted with kind permission of the author and publisher.)

MUSINGS:

Fannie Peczenik, "Winning the Wager: What Faust Could Have Learned from Physics."

TRIBUTES:

A Tribute to Georgia Sommers Wright, by Tisa Anders

A Tribute to Sociologist and NCIS Stalwart David Sonnenschein

Volume 7 features critical essays engaging with the theme "Connections and Challenges", expanded from communications given at the NCIS Conference held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in June 2019 on the twin themes of "Making Connections, Meeting Challenges." This issue also contains book reviews, and an extended book review/commentary on higher education present and future. 

Darnella Davis, "Widening the Road for Independent Scholarship and Personal Narratives."

Jordan Lavender, "Address Forms in Ecuadorian Spanish: An Analysis of Pronominal and Nominal Forms in Facebook Messenger Data."

Susan Roth Breitzer. "Together and Apart: The Changing Relationship between Independent Scholars and Learned Societies."

Review essay and authors' response: Yvonne Groseil. "Beyond Crisis: Higher Education Today and Tomorrow."

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 6 (February 2020) features critical essays engaging with the theme "Meeting Challenges, expanded from communications given at the NCIS Conference held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in June 2019 on the twin themes of "Making Connections, Meeting Challenges." This issue also contains book reviews, and reprints of both the winner and runner-up of the 2019 Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize.

Peer-reviewed articles:

Karima Amer. "Historiographic Challenges in Understanding the Development of Psychoanalysis: Connecting Flournoy, Freud, Jung and the Creative Unconscious."

Renée Elizabeth Neely. “Navigating Freedom, Creating Sustainability: Marronage in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina (Ca 1800 – 1850).”

Amanda J. Haste. "The British Colony in Marseille: Meeting the Challenges of Migrant Life, 1850-1915."

Annie Rehill. "Writing and Art in Activist Collaboration: A Métis Story of Resistance and Change."

Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2019

Winner: Boria Sax. "When Adam and Eve Were Monkeys: Anthropomorphism, Zoomorphism and Other Ways of Looking at Animals." Originally published in The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History,ed. Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 273-297. Reprinted with kind permission of the author and publishers.

Runner-up : Stephanie Harp. "Stories of a Lynching: Accounts of John Carter, 1927." Originally published in Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840-1950, ed. Guy Lancaster. (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), pp. 195-221. 

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 5 (August 2019) is a general issue in which authors from the USA, France and Australia respectively explore the contemporary use of pronominal forms of address in Ecuador; the role of Théodore Flournoy in the history of psychoanalysis; and the influence of Australian activists on the early-20C American women's labor movement. This issue also contains six book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of one of the 2018 Eisenstein Prize-winning essays.

Peer-reviewed articles:

 Jordan Lavender. "The Social Values of Tú, Vos, and Usted in Ecuadorian Spanish: An Ethnographic Account of Usage in Azogues.” 

 Karima Amer. “The Contribution Of Théodore Flournoy to the Discovery of the Unconscious Mind.”

 Patricia Clarke. "Australian Influence on the American Women's Labor Movement." 

Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2018:

The jury awarded the Prize jointly to Amanda Haste, for "Conflict and Reparation: The Agency of Music in Modern Monastic Community Dynamics," Music & Arts in Action 5.2 (2016): 39-51; and Janet Smith for “Helen Taylor’s work for land nationalisation in Great Britain and Ireland 1879–1907: Women’s political agency in the British Victorian land movement,” Women's History Review Vol. 27 (Aug. 2018): 778-798. DOI:10.1080/09612025.2017.1366968 https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1366968. Although Taylor & Francis declined Dr Smith’s request to reprint her paywalled article, Dr Haste’s article was published in an open access journal, and we are delighted to be able to reprint her winning essay here with her permission.

"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:

Katalin Kadar Lynn. "Strange Partnership: Lord Rothermere, Stephanie von Hohenlohe and the Hungarian Revisionist Movement."

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 4 (December 2018) is a themed issue on “Gender and Society” in which three authors explore the activism of Helen Taylor in 19th-century London, serialized novels aimed at immigrant Jewish women in early 20th-century New York, and the gender issues in academia and the resulting founding of NCIS in the late 20th century. This issue also contains three book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of one of the 2017 Eisenstein Prize-winning essays.

Peer-reviewed articles:

Janet Smith. "She Fought for the People: Helen Taylor’s Work for the Advancement of Socialism and Feminism on the London School Board, 1876-85." 

Shelby Shapiro. "Another Guest at the Wedding, or Continuing Dilemmas: Problems of Acculturation in Three Yiddish Serialized Novels."

Susan Roth Breitzer. "Gender, Independent Scholarship, and the Origins of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars."  
 

Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2017:

A strong field resulted in the jury awarding the Prize jointly to Patricia Silver for “Remembering Abuela: Memory, Authenticity and Place in Puerto Rican Orlando,” Latino Studies 13.3: 376–401; and Toni Vogel Carey for “Adam Smith's Invisible Hand: A Brief History,” Adam Smith Review 9 (2017): 88-104. Although the publishers of Latino Studies have not responded to our requests to reprint Dr Silver’s article, we are delighted to be able to reprint Dr Carey’s winning essay here. [Reprinted by permission.]

"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:

Therese Boos Dykeman. "Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912): Activist Scholar Without Borders"  [Reprinted from The Independent Scholar Quarterly 22, 1 (Spring 2008): 8-11]

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 3 (June 2017) is a themed issue on “Identity and Transition” and features peer-reviewed papers which take us to Canada, Africa, India, Israel, France and Poland for an exploration of personal, religious, and ethnic identity. This issue also contains six book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of the winning essays in the strongly contested 2016 Eisenstein Prize.

Peer-reviewed articles:

Monica Colt. "Identity Redefinition Through the Overcoming of Cultural Boundaries in Vassanji’s The Magic Of Saida."

Efrat Sadras-Ron. "[Re]Claiming Secular Jewish Sovereignty Through BINA."

Amanda J. Haste. "Crossing Boundaries: Establishing and Communicating a Cross-Cultural Musician Identity."

Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2016:

As reported in TIS Vol. 2 in September 2016, the winning essay of this prestigious Prize was "The Painted Page: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art” by Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz. However, as this was published in The Independent Scholar Vol. 1 (2016) and easily available to TIS readers, we have chosen to reprint (by kind permission of author and her publisher) the essay which took the runner-up prize, "Clichés Revisited: Poland’s 1949 Łagów Composers’ Conference” by Cindy Bylander [Orginally published in Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny [Polish Musicological Annual] 2015: 15-34].

"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:

Valerie Abrahamsen. "Symbols of the Prehistoric Goddess in Old Europe: Continuity and Significance in the Early Christian Era." [Reprinted from TISQ Vol. 25, No. 1 (February 2012): 16-23.]
 

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 2 (Sept. 2016) is a general issue featuring a wide-ranging set of peer-reviewed papers, complemented by reviews of books written by independent scholars and/or funded by NCIS-administered grants, and in our 'Back in the Day' section you can read a reprint of an essay that first appeared in The Independent Scholar Quarterly (TISQ). Also in this issue is the announcement of the 2016 winners of the Elizabeth Eisenstein Prize for a peer-reviewed article or book chapter published by an NCIS member, and an obituary of the eponmymous Professor Elizabeth Eisenstein who was very supportive of independent scholarship and in whose honor the Eisenstein Prize was established.

Joan Cunningham and Paul A. Lewis. "A Case Report of Therapeutic Massage to Relieve Axillary Web Syndrome, a Restrictive Soft Tissue Condition Caused by Breast Cancer Surgery."

Amanda Haste. "Getting the Message Across: Translating Meaning for an Academic Readership."

Serena Newman. "They Came Here to Fish: Early Massachusetts Fishermen in a Puritan Society."

Boria Sax. "How Experience Becomes History: The Secrets Revealed, and Created, by a File from the FBI."

Back in the Day: - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly: Toni Vogel Carey. "Galileo Linceo."

Obituary: Professor Elizabeth Eisenstein

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.

Volume 1 (Dec. 2015) features papers developed from those presented at the NCIS 25th Anniversary Conference at Yale University in June 2015, with the theme, “Traditions and Transitions: Independent Scholars and the Digital Landscape.” The authors engage with the conference theme in several disciplines and across eras: Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz examine the overlooked imagery of the book in Renaissance Art; Toni Vogel Carey examines town-gown relations in the Scottish Enlightenment; Piri Halasz gives a unique insight into 'Swinging London' of the 1960s; and Yvonne Groseil takes a look at the growing adjunct activism in the 21st century. All are informed by digital media and resources which were not available to previous generations of scholars. As well as these four critical essays, TIS1 contains four reviews of scholarly books.

Piri Halasz. "Transition from Mystery into History: How the Internet Revived My Faith in 'Swinging London'.” 

Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz. "The Painted Page: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art."

Toni Vogel Carey. "Town-Gown Collaboration: The Example of Eighteenth-Century Scotland."

Yvonne Groseil. "A Future for Adjuncts: From Plight to Fight."
 

Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here