News in Jesuit Studies
The following are notices of significant events related to the field of Jesuit Studies.
The notices appear chronologically, and all entries are indexed into the Portal’s search capabilities.
To contribute news of significant publications and events, both recent and forthcoming, please contact the Portal’s editors (jesuitportal@bc.edu)
The Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies has issued a called for papers for its 2022 International Symposium on Jesuit Studies. The theme of the symposium is “The Jesuits and the Church in History.” The event takes place August 1–4 at Boston College. Submissions are due December 6, 2021. More information appears below.
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON JESUIT STUDIES
The Jesuits and the Church in History
Boston College | August 1–4, 2022
The Roman Catholic Church is the principal milieu within which the Society of Jesus has operated over the course of its history. In order to effectively manage their interactions with the rest of the world, the Jesuits first had to establish, clarify, and cultivate their relations with this wider Catholic environment. This involved different strategies, such as initiating and maintaining good relationships with the hierarchy; collaborating, competing, or interacting with other religious orders and the diocesan clergy; establishing, running, or promoting Catholic institutions and operations. Managing these forms of relationship has proven to be complex. The history of the Society includes moments of success and positive collaboration with the Church; it also contains moments of difficulty, crisis, and even termination, as in the order’s suppression in 1773.
This International Symposium on Jesuit Studies will explore the many aspects of the Society’s relations to the Church, all within the global contexts in which the Jesuit mission grew and operated. This event will be held at Boston College between two other major gatherings of global scope, one being that of the International Federation of Catholic Universities and the second that of the International Association of Jesuit Universities.
The symposium welcomes the submission of paper proposals from across a wide range of themes, periods, and disciplines. Presentations might address such questions as: How has the special vow to the pope influenced the work of the Society at the service of the Church and contributed to the creation of different images of the Society itself? What has the relationship of the hierarchy to the Society revealed about the role of the Jesuits in the Church? What functions did the Society play in the Church’s global mission and how did the Jesuits both cooperate and compete with other religious orders in mission territories? How did politics affect the relationship between the Jesuits and the Church? How have various ecclesially established Jesuit-directed cultural initiatives (including schools, observatories, popular media, research institutes and journals) influenced this relationship? What do educational initiatives of the Society and its intellectual contributions reveal about Jesuit influence on Catholic culture over the course of history? What can we gather about the relationship of Jesuits and the Church from the lives and works of Jesuit saints and luminaries?
Proposals and a narrative CV (together no more than 500 words) are due before the end of Monday, December 6, 2021, with decisions communicated before the end of the year. Proposals for individual papers or panels are accepted. Selected papers may be peer reviewed and published in open access following the event. For further information and to submit proposals, contact the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at iajs@bc.edu.
On December 3, the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu hosts an event to consider the importance of the recent restoration of several documents from the founding of the Society of Jesus. The event starts at 2:00 p.m. in Rome, in the Aula of the Jesuit General Curia. Remote attendance will be available as well via https://link.jesuit.media/arsi-zoom (password: 088495).
“Ancient documents … restored to serve the people of today” will feature remarks by Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus and others. There will also be a session led by Professor Melania Zanetti regarding on her work in restoring the manuscripts. All remarks will be simultaneously translated into English, Spanish and French. A full list of participants and the announcement from ARSI appear below.
Announcement
The original manuscripts of the Society’s founding documents (some in St Ignatius’ own hand) — the Spiritual Exercises, the Spiritual Diary of St Ignatius and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus — have been fully restored. How can this, today, inspire all of us the members of the extended “Ignatian family”? With simultaneous translation into English, Spanish and French.
Participants:
• Rev. Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus
• Guillermo Barandiarán, Gondra Barandiarán Foundation
• Melania Zanetti, restorer
• Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, Academic Director of ARSI
• José García de Castro SJ, specialist in Ignatian spirituality
• Denis Dobbelstein, CLC World President
• Sr Ghislaine Pauquet, Congregation Our Lady of the Cenacle
On October 20, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) hosts a seminar with Anthony E. Clarke, of Whitworth University. The title of Clarke’s presentation is “The Theater of Canonization: The Making of Jesuit Saints in Late Imperial China.” The hybrid event is free and open to the public.
Clarke will consider how the Society of Jesus manufactured “the West’s imagination of ‘China’ from popularizing the Western neologism for Zhonguo in the sixteenth century to the production of Jesuit drama in China that wished to refashion, indeed canonize, Chinese culture both within and beyond the Great Wall.” More information appears below.
The IASH, established in 1969 at the University of Edinburgh, promotes interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Learn more about the institute at: https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/about
Wednesday 20 October
Time: 13:00
An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Professor Anthony E. Clark (Combe Trust Fellowship 2021; Whitworth University):
The Theater of Canonization: The Making of Jesuit Saints in Late Imperial China
Abstract:
The word “China” is a sixteenth-century Western neologism derived from the name of China’s first imperial dynasty – the Qin 秦, which was commonly Latinized in Jesuit epistolary exchange as “China.” Chinese refer to their own nation as 中國, transliterated as Zhongguo, or the “Middle Kingdom,” and thus the division between how China and the West view the “Middle Kingdom” begins with the fundamental nomenclature self-identification. The Jesuit enterprise during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties (re)presented China to the West in contours that engendered a romanticized “China” exalted by Enlightenment literati who helped inaugurate the Chinoiserie movement and new modes of intellectual discourse. By the mid-nineteenth century the West’s intellectual and aesthetic admiration for China transmuted into an arrogant disdain, and after the Opium War (1839-1840) Jesuits set themselves once again to (re)presenting China in a fashion that would “redeem” it from the pejorative assessment then dominant in the West. This work-in-progress seminar considers how the Society of Jesus served to manufacture the West’s imagination of “China” from popularizing the Western neologism for Zhonguo in the sixteenth century to the production of Jesuit drama in China that wished to refashion, indeed canonize, Chinese culture both within and beyond the Great Wall.
A small number of seats are available for Fellows in the seminar room, as this talk will be delivered in person. For all other Fellows and guests, please click the link below to join the webinar: https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722 ; Passcode: Vr8f3ew2