What is an Arab? Though many in the West would answer that question with simplistic stereotypes, the reality is far more complex and interesting. Arabs themselves have been debating Arab identity since pre-Islamic times, coming to a variety of conclusions about the nature and extent of their “Arabness.” Likewise, Westerners and others have attempted to analyze Arab identity, reaching mostly negative conclusions about Arab culture and capacity for self-government.

To bring new perspectives to the question of Arab identity, Iraqi-born scholar Nissim Rejwan has assembled this fascinating collection of writings by Arab and Western intellectuals, who try to define what it means to be Arab. He begins with pre-Islamic times and continues to the last decades of the twentieth century, quoting thinkers ranging from Ibn Khaldun to modern writers such as al-Ansari, Haykal, Ahmad Amin, al-'Azm, and Said. Through their works, Rejwan shows how Arabs have grappled with such significant issues as the influence of Islam, the rise of nationalism, the quest for democracy, women's status, the younger generation, Egypt's place in the Arab world, Israel's role in Middle Eastern conflict, and the West's "cultural invasion."

By letting Arabs speak for themselves, Arabs in the Mirror refutes a prominent Western stereotype—that Arabs are incapable of self-reflection or self-government. On the contrary, it reveals a rich tradition of self-criticism and self-knowledge in the Arab world.

According to the vast majority of recent Trinitarian theologians, to believe in the Trinity is to believe that God is Love: it is to believe in three divine Persons who know each other, love each other, and give themselves to each other. St. Thomas Aquinas is rarely invoked as a patron of such a social approach to the Trinity. Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology, after all, revolves around the immanent processions of a Word and Love within the unity of the divine essence. Many have assumed that this “psychological analogy” is removed from—or even incompatible with—interpersonal knowledge, love, and self-giving. Some have concluded that Aquinas is therefore unable to accommodate a social Trinity. Others have argued that he is open to a social Trinity, but that his psychological categories need to be complemented by a more overtly social framework. This study, however, shows that these psychological categories themselves are shot through with interpersonal knowledge, love, and self-giving. More specifically, Aquinas’s psychological analogy is often accused of emphasizing the unity of the divine essence at the expense of the distinction of the divine Persons. In fact, it emphasizes distinction just as basically as it emphasizes unity, and it ensures that the distinction between the divine Persons is a radical one. Similarly, it is criticized for being a matter of self-knowledge instead of interpersonal knowledge, self-love instead of interpersonal love, and self-regard instead of self-giving. In fact, it is a matter of self-knowledge as interpersonal knowledge, self-love as interpersonal love, and self-regard as self-giving: it ensures that there can be no self-knowledge or self-love in God that is not just as basically interpersonal knowledge, interpersonal love, and interpersonal self-giving. Aquinas’s psychological analogy, then, does not shut down the possibility of interpersonal Trinity. Nor does it need to be complemented from the outside by an interpersonal Trinity. Instead, it contains within itself an intensely interpersonal Trinity.

This new biography reveals Marion Greenwood's central place in the pantheon of history’s remarkable women artists.

Marion Greenwood: Portrait and Self-Portrait—A Biography brings to life a woman who blazed through the twentieth-century art world. Born in Brooklyn in 1909, Greenwood thrived at storied institutions and arts centers such as the Art Students League, the studio of German modernist Winold Reiss, the Woodstock Colony, and Yaddo. In 1933, she catapulted to international fame as the first woman to paint a public mural in Mexico. Diego Rivera celebrated Greenwood as one of “the world’s greatest living women mural painters.” She traveled the globe to create award-winning portraits of people from diverse backgrounds, crossing racial, cultural, and class lines to reflect her vision for a more just world.

This biography, the first about Greenwood, is based on a decade of research and interviews. Author Joanne B. Mulcahy integrates the artist’s adventuresome personal life with her journey to artistic glory. Greenwood comes alive as a notable and spirited part of the heady art scenes of 1920s and 1930s Mexico, New York City, and Paris, and as one of two women artist-correspondents during World War II. After social realism and portraiture fell from favor, Greenwood doggedly stuck with what she called “the human thing” in art. Her freewheeling romantic life and independent spirit defied expectations for women, and she dismissed sexist critics who mixed acclaim for her work with commentary on her stunning beauty.

A feminist pioneer, Greenwood made a living as an artist in a time when few women could. In following Greenwood’s maverick path and artistic achievements, this book reveals her central place in the pantheon of history’s remarkable women artists.