Inside the Core We Are Celebrating Faculty Achievements

Inside the Core we are happy about three developments regarding faculty achievements. And, though we usually don’t have regular posts in summer, I wanted to let the Seton Hall community know about them.

First, Core Fellow Roger Alfani, Ph.D., was cited in an article about migrants in the Seattle Times. This area of study has been an important component of Roger’s scholarship, as it relates to his book, Religious Peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Religion and Society in Africa) and more directly to his research conducted under the National Endowment of the Humanities grant he received last year. In the research sponsored by this grant, Alfani and Nicole Eggers, Ph.D., (of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville), interviewed refugees in several countries in Africa (specifically, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya), as well as others who have left the camps — either to be repatriated to Congo, or to be resettled in the United States. The two researchers focused on the lived experience of the refugees interviewed. He has also presented on the topic at conferences, such as his recent presentation in Kinshasha. It is no surprise, though gratifying to us in the Core, that his work caused him to be highlighted in this recent publication. When our faculty are cited in publications from across the country, reaching the general public, not even simply an academic audience, it is a clear indication of the importance of their work.

Our next item to celebrate is a very recent publication by Angela Weisl, Ph.D., chair of the English Department and long-standing friend of the University Core. Angela serves on the Core Advisory Board (CAB) and the Signature Course Curriculum Committee (SCCC), as well as serving as one of the two coordinators for the Core Proficiencies (along with Mary Balkun, Ph.D., also of English). Angela and her husband, Robert Squillace, Ph.D., of NYU, have published an edited volume entitled Medievalisms in a Global Age (D.S. Brewer, 2024), available here. Her course Medieval Literature is a Core III cross-list.

Finally, recent English MA graduate, Frank Hunter and I have published a book together, entitled The Passion Narratives of Saints Perpetua, Felicitas, and their Fellow Martyrs (Lexington Press, 2024), now available here. This book is near to my heart for several reasons. First, Perpetua is one of my favorite authors in the Core. Her prison journal, supplemented by an anonymous redactor in the early third century, is the earliest writing we have by a Christian woman. Frank Hunter read Perpetua’s Passion as an undergraduate in Core II (and I met him in my Core III class, an English/Core III cross-list). After graduation, he enrolled as a graduate student in the English Department. Because he loved Perpetua’s Passion so much, he translated it from the Latin, along with the two accompanying Acta, which came out slightly later in the third century. He and I edited the translations, and the book also offers eight commentaries written by Frank, myself, and six other scholars from a variety of disciplines. Three of the others are from Seton Hall and teach in the Core: Father Joseph Laracy of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology; Todd Stockdale, Ph.D., Core Fellow and Coordinator of Core II (the course in which we teach Perpetua’s Passion); and Sister Mary John Bosco Amakwe, Ph.D., Core faculty member. The book truly is a labor of love, reflecting the richness of this text and the inter-disciplinarity and spiritual depth of the Core. Frank also, newly hired to teach English full-time at Seton Hall Prep, will be teaching for us as an adjunct in the Core this fall.

I am very grateful for all these developments as well as for all the individual faculty members represented in these various achievements. We are fortunate to have them working in our program, and I feel blessed to be working with them all.

Categories: Alumni, Faith and Service