While many may think that the schedule is quite relaxed for academics during the summer, many of the Ansari Institute’s faculty fellows are quite busy with research, conferences, and teaching. Here are some updates:
Liang Cai, professor of history, is traveling to Changsha, China to examine archaeologically excavated legal manuscripts and to Chengdu, China to visit the Sanxingdui site. She will also spend some time in Chongqing, a municipality in China where a Han tomb was recently excavated (catch Cai talking about this discovery on NBC here). Finally, Cai will go to Hong Kong for a workshop entitled “History and Archaeologically Excavated Manuscripts of the Qin and Han Empires.”
Peter Cajka, assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in the department of American Studies, received a fellowship from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and is spending a portion of his summer in New Haven, CT. The month-long A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship will support Cajka’s research in special collections repositories in the Yale Library for his project; The Catholic Sexual Moderns. His research looks specifically at three American Catholic moderns: historian John Boswell, ethicist Margaret Farley, and psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg, all of whose papers are stored at Yale.
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, professor of American Studies, is helping to lead the Rome Archive Seminar in Rome designed to introduce Ph.D. students from across disciplines in the humanities to the city’s archives and libraries, focusing on primary sources produced from 1100-2020. She was also interviewed by NBC, the New York Times, and CBC’s The Current about the miracles attributed to 15-year-old Carlo Acutis, who died in 2006 and would, if canonized, be the first saint from the millenial generation. He is already being referred to as “the patron saint of the internet.”
Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, professor of theology and peace studies, traveled to Rome to participate in the Keough School’s Embracing Integral Human Develop symposium before going on to Uganda. He is teaching a study abroad course Religion, Peace, and Development in Uganda before leading the inaugural Sowing Hope Ecological Pilgrimage for the Bethany Land Institute, the non-profit organization he helped to co-found in his home country of Uganda. The pilgrimage offers “an interdisciplinary workshop with scholars, researchers, policymakers, students, and activists to learn about the socio-economic, religious, political, and ecological trends in sub-Saharan Africa” and includes visits to historical, religious, and cultural sites.
Fr. Paul Kollman, CSC, also a professor of theology, is traveling to Kenya and Tanzania in order to visit some universities; he is also visiting Notre Dame University of Bangladesh, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Timothy Matovina, professor of theology, is convening a national Vocation Summit in Chicago for young leaders of Latine Catholic communities, as part of the Haciendo Caminos project, for which he serves as a co-principle investigator. The Haciendo Caminos is a new initiative and a “partnership of 18 Catholic graduate schools of theology that seeks to identify and form the next generation of pastoral leaders to accompany and serve Catholics while rooted in the best of the U.S. Latino experience.” This summer he will also prepare to give the annual Theotokos Lecture at Marquette University, which is scheduled for October.
Mahan Mirza, executive director of the Ansari Institute, participated in the Keough School’s Embracing Human Development symposium. Mirza then stayed in Rome as part of the steering committee for the Rome Summer Seminar on Religion and Global Politics and participated in a colloquium organized in part by the Embassy of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the Holy See. Mirza also offer the public keynote at the annual Building Bridges seminar convened by Georgetown University’s Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. In July, he will participate in Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Summit before heading to Chautauqua, NY for the Chautauqua Institution, where he will present a lecture on the theme of World Religion and a Shifting Population. Finally in early August, Mirza will participate in the Oxford Workshop on Abrahamic Faiths: Interfaith Partnerships of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford University. Mirza will also serve as a “living bridge” between the University of Notre Dame and American Islamic College, where he has been appointed as their Visiting Vice President for Academic Affairs for the 2024-2025 academic year. He will continue to actively serve as the Ansari Institute’s executive director.
Margie Pfeil, associate teaching professor of theology, is planning and speaking at a conference “Teresa of Avila and Peacemaking in a Nuclear Age," taking place July 15 through 18th at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN. She will also attend the annual Bridgefolk gathering at St. John's Abbey July 25-28. Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics. Pfeil and her husband will also spend a week on retreat at St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers, MI. Finally, Pfeil is facilitating a non-credit Catholic Social Teaching and Philanthropy Course for FADICA (May-July), for the staff of Catholic foundations.
Daniel Philpott, professor of political science, will begin his sabbatical year with the goal of writing his book, Resurrecting Justice. This book will focus on the Christian meaning of justice.
Emilia Justyna Powell, professor of political science and concurrent professor of law, is teaching an undergraduate course International Law and the Holocaust in her home country of Poland. After this, she will travel to Oman to research the history of the maritime regime with particular focus on Oman's contribution to the law of the sea. According to Powell, Oman is a “major maritime power in the history of international commerce and expansion has contributed immensely to the development of the maritime and law of the sea regimes.”
Gerard Powers, Director of Catholic Peacebuilding Studies in the Kroc Institute for International Peace, is attending several conferences in Rome, including Notre Dame’s Rome Summer Seminars on Religion and Global Politics and the Religious Freedom and Integral Human Development conference, hosted by the Knights of Malta (hosted in person on June 4th and virtually June 18th). He is also teaching an undergraduate course on Catholic peacebuilding at Notre Dame Rome in July. Powers has also been invited to present a paper on Catholic ethics and nuclear disarmament at the Alva Myrdal Center for Nuclear Disarmament at Upsalla University in Sweden in mid-June.