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Visitors from Marquette and John Carroll
Aside from international visiting fellows, who are profiled in this edition of the Woodstock Report on page 10, Woodstock also invites scholars from within the United States to advance special research projects as visiting fellows.
This academic year, Woodstock is sponsoring such work by two Jesuit fellows. They are Philip J. Rossi, S.J., a philosopher and theologian at Marquette University in Milwaukee, and Thomas L. Schubeck, S.J., a professor of religious studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
Father Rossi's project addresses what he sees as a gap in efforts by Jesuit colleges and universities to promote the three central concerns of Jesuit mission, including the relationship between faith and justice, the relationship between faith and culture, and inter-religious dialogue.
These initiatives have tended to focus on integrating the Jesuit mission in school curriculum, teaching methods, student life and campus culture. But there has been far less attention to making this mission a subject of sustained cross-disciplinary research, Father Rossi said.
As he explains it, the driving question behind his visiting fellowship is, "How can faculty at Jesuit colleges and universities be systematically encouraged to place the focal concerns of the Jesuit mission within the horizons that shape the focus and the direction their research?"
As part of his work at Woodstock, Father Rossi will develop a proposal for a three-year research seminar involving 12-16 faculty members from different disciplines who hold full-time appointments at Jesuit colleges and universities. Father Rossi said this seminar would serve as a pilot project for an "organizational structure" of ongoing research seminars aimed at fostering research on topics related to Jesuit mission. These topics would include health policies and the AIDS pandemic, justice and global trade, peacemaking and religious conflict, and family concerns, among others. His target date for the first pilot seminar is fall 2006.
For his part, Father Schubeck is devoting his time at Woodstock to writing a social ethics textbook, tentatively entitled, "Love and Justice in the Judeo-Christian Tradition." He is gearing the text to student readers, particularly upper-division-level undergraduates as well as graduates at the M.A. level.
"The book investigates how certain biblical writers and theologians define and use the concepts of love and justice to address moral issues," said Father Schubeck, who teaches classes in social justice including one on justice and economics (team-taught with an economist) at John Carroll.
The book begins with Deuteronomy, Paul's Letter to the Romans, and the Gospel of Luke, focusing on concern for the poor and love of enemies. Father Schubeck is also taking up St. Augustine's just-war principles and St. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of capital punishment, among other topics addressed by other great thinkers.
Both Fathers Schubeck and Rossi will be at Woodstock until June 2005.