Inside the Core: We Celebrate Faculty Scholars

Inside the Core this week, we celebrate faculty scholarship. On Tuesday, October 24, Core faculty member, Sister Mary John Bosco Ebere Amakwe gave a talk about her recently published chapter, entitled "African Catholicism and the Place of Women: Research and Advocacy," which appears in the Handbook of African Catholicism, edited by Stan Chu Ho (Orbis Books, 2022). Her talk, held in the Core Center in Mooney Hall, was well attended. Sister Bosco and this publication were featured in “Inside the Core” on Sept. 22, 2022.

Also our Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, in which faculty members typically discuss on TEAMS their book publications, will begin for this semester with our co-sponsoring of an in-person event. William Connell, Professor of History, will present on his recently published translation of the first history of the Catholic Church written by a layperson, an unpublished manuscript that he found in an antique shop in Amalfi. This fascinating presentation will occur on Monday evening, October 30, at 6 p.m.

Prof. Connell, Professor of history and the LaMotta Chair, will discuss “The Description of the Discovery of the Amalfi Manuscript and its Message of Reform”; he will be joined by Monsignor Thomas Guarino, STD, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology, speaking about his “Response: Tendencies in Church Reform in the 20th and 21st Century.”

We will also hold two other solely virtual, as usual, Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition events, though both will be held on Tuesday instead of Wednesday (due to other competing events). On Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 4 pm, Core Fellow Jason Scully will discuss his book Isaac of Nineveh’s Ascetical Eschatology (Oxford University Press 2017). Prof. Scully, who holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University has also published several articles on East-Syriac mysticism. It promises to be an interesting and rich discussion of this text. Join us on Teams>>

Finally, for our last Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition of the semester, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, also at 4 p.m., Ines Murzaku, Ph.D., Chair of the Catholic Studies Department, will discuss her very important book, Catholicism, Culture and Conversion: The History of the Jesuits in Albania (1841-1946) (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Pontifical Oriental Institute 2006) which was recently translated and published in Albanian, Historia e Jezuiteve ne Shqiperi (1841-1946) published by Shoqata e Jezuiteve with a foreword by Pope Francis (2023). In fact, Prof. Murzaku had an audience with Pope Francis this summer as a result of this publication. 

Prof. Murzaku has published many other scholarly works, Mother Teresa: The Saint of the Peripheries (Paulist Press, 2021); Life of St Neilos of Rossano (1004) (Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University Press 2018); Italo-Greek Monasticism from St Neilos to Bessarion (Ashagte-Routledge 2018); Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics (Routledge 2016); Monastic Tradition in Eastern Christianity and the Outside World a Call for Dialogue (Peeters University of Leuven 2013); Returning Home to Rome? The Monks of Grottaferrata in Albania (Analekta Kryptopherres 2009); Quo Vadis Eastern Europe? Religion, State and Society after Communism (Longo, University of Bologna 2009). She was also the co-editor of a recent special edition of the scholarly journal Religions, “Religions and Human Rights in Post-communism” (summer 2023). Her Scholars’ Forum talk promises to be an inspiring and meaningful event, appropriately occurring just at the beginning of Advent. 

We in the Core and, for the Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition joining with our co-sponsors (the Catholic Studies Department, the Catholic Studies Center, and Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology), in celebrating the wonderful scholarship of our faculty, particularly as it links with Mission, as it does in all these cases. Sister Bosco’s presentation, which was recorded, will soon be available on the Core website, and please join us for those yet to come.

Categories: Faith and Service