The Portal to Jesuit Studies

The Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies welcomes applications for its 2020-21 in-residence fellowships. The one- and two-semester appointments seek to facilitate the completion and/or publication of academic work related to the Society of Jesus. Applications are now welcomed from scholars in the fields of history, spirituality, and pedagogy, among others. The submission deadline is January 15, 2020.

The Institute offers two types of in-residence fellowships: Institute Fellowships, a year-long appointment (September-May), and Senior Research Fellowships, a semester-long appointment.

The year-long fellowship includes a stipend of $20,000, while the semester-long fellowship offers a stipend of $12,000. Additional support for research-related travel during the residency may be available. The Institute also provides furnished housing as part of both fellowships. Please contact the Institute with any questions, and please indicate in your application’s statement of purpose if you would require special arrangements for your housing.

Fellowships include personal office space at the Institute and access to the collections in the University’s libraries and those of the colleges and universities in the Boston consortium. Candidates are encouraged to consult the extensive listings of Jesuitica holdings at Boston College prior to submitting their applications. Preference will be given to applicants in the final stages of writing or revising substantive scholarly work. Please indicate in your statement of purpose if you have a preferred publisher or have already signed a contract with one.

While in residence at the Institute, fellows will make one presentation of their work each semester. They are encouraged to collaborate with the Institute’s initiatives and programming and with the Institute’s Research Scholars. They are also expected to engage with the wider academic community by attending events and meeting with the University’s faculty members and other visiting scholars. The fellowships are not academic appointments and have no teaching responsibilities.

In addition to a completed application, candidates should email the following materials to iajs@bc.edu (please include in the subject line: “fellowship”):

• Curriculum vitae
• A sample of scholarly work of no more than 30 pages (in English, please)
• Statement of Purpose of 1,500-2,000 words. This statement should describe the project, its scholastic contributions, and how it relates to existing works (with authors, titles, and dates). Also, it should explain the ways in which the fellowship and being in residence at the Institute would assist with the project. Please indicate if you would require special housing accommodations and if your project already has a publisher.
• Official transcript (for applicants enrolled in school)
• Lastly, two letters in support of an application should be emailed directly to the Institute by the recommenders.

If necessary, application materials may be mailed to:

Boston College
Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies
Simboli Hall
Attn: Fellowship Programs
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

Applications are due January 15, 2020, and candidates will be notified of decisions by January 31, 2020. Questions can be directed to the Institute (iajs@bc.edu, with “fellowship” as the subject). More information is available at the Institute’s website (bc.edu/iajs).

The Università degli Studi di Padova hosts a two-day conference with scholarly presentations considering vocations to the Society of Jesus in the early modern period.  The event is sponsored by the Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Giuridiche e Studi Internazionali.

The conference considers the theme of “vocation”–and in particular the “religious vocation” in its historical, religious, cultural, political and social nature. A full program for the two-day event appears below. A copy is also available for download here.

25-26 NOVEMBRE 2019 – SEMINARIO DI STUDIO
Vocazione e scelta di vita nella prima età moderna. Il caso della Compagnia di Gesù (XVI-XVII secolo)

Aula Seminari 2 Palazzo Wollemborg, via del Santo 28, Padova

Lunedì 25 Novembre

9.30-13.00
Vocazione e identità gesuitica tra i generalati di Mercuriano e Acquaviva

Presiede
E. Colombo, DePaul University, Chicago

Presentazione del Seminario
P. Giovannucci, Università di Padova

Racconti autobiografici di vocazione dalla provincia di Polonia (1574-1580)
M. Turrini, Università di Pavia

Identità gesuitica e racconti di vocazione
G. Mongini, Università di Padova

Tra elezione divina e superamento della natura umana: la vocazione come specchio
dell’antropologia gesuitica
M. Rochini, Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College

15.00-19.00
“Buona morte”, martirio, dimissione. La vocazione e i suoi esiti

Presiede
L. Billanovich

La scena pubblica della morte. L’istante ultimo e il compimento della vocazione gesuitica
M. Catto, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Vocazione e destinazione al martirio nelle Vocationes illustres
P.A. Fabre, EHESS, Paris

Vocazioni fallite: il problema dei dimessi attraverso le Vocationes illustres
I. Gaddo, Università del Piemonte Orientale – Vercelli

Martedì 26 Novembre

9.30-13.00
Geografie della vocazione

Presiede
P.A. Fabre (EHESS, Paris),

Ecrire les vocations jésuites des pays germaniques au tournant du XVIe entre thèmes
généraux et variations locales
D. Aeby, Université de Fribourg

Vocazioni da ‘sapere’. Barbara Borromeo, Antonio Valentino e la casa di probazione di
Novellara
M. Giuliani, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano

Indipetae e racconti di vocazione
E. Colombo, DePaul University, Chicago

Discussione conclusiva

Proposals are now welcomed for a conference hosted at the National Library of Latvia from October 8-10, 2020 on the theme of  “Sacred Books, Looted Books: Formation, Transfiguration and Replacement of the Northern European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c.1500-c.1650) and their Afterlife.”

The deadline for proposals is December 1, 2019.

The full call for papers appears below. More information is available at https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-41119.

“Sacred Books, Looted Books: Formation, Transfiguration and Replacement of the Northern European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c.1500-c.1650) and their Afterlife”

National Library of Latvia, Mūkusalas iela 3, Rīga

October 8-10, 2020

Spiritual orders and other religious institutions controlled the vast majority of libraries in Northern Europe at the beginning of the early modern era. As confessional politics and allegiances became ever more intricate, libraries could suddenly turn into pawns in power struggles and conflict resolution.

The aim of our conference will be to explore how libraries fared in a rapidly changing early modern world. What role libraries played in late medieval and early modern culture? Were they primarily bastions of continuity and tradition? Or are they of importance primarily for the unparalleled window which they provide into the upheavals and transformations of this tumultuous age? How did libraries adapt to all these changes? When were they kept intact and used as war booty? When were they disbanded and broken up? In which situations were the libraries themselves agents of change? How the removed libraries have been reconstructed during the 20th and 21st centuries?

The erstwhile Jesuit College Library in Riga (1583-1621) will serve as a backdrop for our conference on the varying fates of libraries in the confessional age. Itself a conglomerate of disparate book collections, it underwent several transformations before assuming its recognised form in the inventory lists prepared after its transport as war booty to Sweden in 1621. The conference will take place to direct attention to the efforts of the National Library of Latvia in compiling a new modern inventory list and to bring this collection (now part of the Uppsala University Library) into the digital age.

Though at the centre of attention, the aim of the conference is look beyond the Jesuit College Library in Riga and to explore as the histories of Northern European libraries in general during the confessional age. The topics of the papers may feature:

– book collections of late medieval religious institutions and their fate during the Reformation;
– Jesuit libraries – their formation, use and role in the networks within the Society of Jesus (in Northern Europe and beyond);
– Catholic libraries in the Protestant environments;
– libraries and books as early modern war booties and their fate after the removal;
– digital repatriation of libraries once removed from their initial locations.

The keynote speaker of the conference will be Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews).

Please consider that after the conference we have planned to publish a conference volume.

Working language: English

The abstracts (max. 350 words) have to be emailed to gustavs.strenga@lnb.lv until 1 December, 2019.