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Woodstock International Visiting Fellows from Brazil, China, and Turkey arrive for 2003-4
(from Woodstock Report No. 76, December 2003)
During this academic year, the Woodstock Theological Center is hosting three visiting international fellows whose topics of research will range from the roles of Jesuits in Latin American culture and Catholicism in rural Chinese culture to the development of a "non-metaphysical" theology.
Dr. Beatriz Domingues, a professor in the Department of History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil, will undertake a research project on "The Role of Jesuits in the Hispanic and Luso-American Enlightenment and in the Creation of their Cultural and Political Identity." She describes it as a comparative study that "calls attention to the similarities and differences between the behavior and intellectual production of Mexican and Brazilian Jesuits.. This comparison can be very useful to continue rethinking the work of the Society of Jesus, before and after the prohibition of the order."
Dr. Domingues has degrees in history, psychology, political science, and the history of science, and has been a visiting researcher at Georgetown University since January 2002.
Mr. Zhang Xianqing, who recently received his doctorage from Xiamen University in the People's Republic of China, is completing work on a text concerning the history of Christianity in China.
His project is, "The Diffusion of Catholicism in a Chinese Rural Area and Its Influence on the Development of Local Folk Religion." He plans to focus on "the conflict and accommodation between Christianity and the traditional lineage ethics." His research will also try to "approach the evolution of Catholicism and its rituals in Chinese local society."
Mr. Xianqing has taught history at the Fujian Education College and has received the prize for excellent academic research work there as well.
Dr. Saban Ali Düzgün, an associate professor of systematic theology at Ankara University in Turkey, will research aspects of metaphysics, theology and philosophy in his project, "Non-Metaphysical Theology: A New Approach." Basically, he finds that the critique of metaphysics from within philosophy - and the failure of philosophy to adequately respond to this critique - calls for a theological approach without the aid of metaphysical categories.
As he explains, "The reason why we pursue a theological language and methodology apart from the metaphysical ones is that philosophy couldn't manage to respond [to] linguistic philosophy combined with logical positivism in their objections concerning the metaphysical propositions and their justification."
Dr. Düzgün's publications include Religion, Individual, and Society and Social Theology. He is also an associate editor of the Periodical of Divinity Faculty of Ankara University and the editor-in-chief of an upcoming online theology journal.