Fall, 2020
Listening to African American Call Narratives
Guest Edited by: Andre E. Johnson
While still an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Religion and African American Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary, I taught a week-long intensive immersion class titled the “Ferguson Fiasco.” Instead of offering the course in Memphis, I felt we needed to be present in Ferguson to better understand the context, surroundings, and environment. After we arrived, we quickly met with activists and protesters for dinner at the Ferguson Brewery. As I have shared before, we wanted to “hear stories and reflections from people who were there the first days and nights after the killing of Mike Brown.”1 I personally wanted to know from those who were there in the early days of the resistance what brought them to the movement? When they began to share their stories they all sounded familiar. They sounded familiar because not only have I heard them before but I, too, have shared stories like these before. As I noted in a short essay on my time teaching in Ferguson, the stories I heard were “personal ‘call stories.’”2 When asked what brought them to the movement, each person answered as if they felt “called,” “pulled,” or as if “something moved me in that direction.”3
When Amanda Nell Edgar and I began to research for our book that examined Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter4 we quickly noted that “when we interviewed BLM activists, we discovered that the role of spirituality undergirded participant’s understandings of their activism.”5 Drawing from an understanding of “Pentecostal Piety” or of the “role of the Holy Spirit in political action,” we heard several “call stories” from the participants in the BLM movement.6 They, too, sounded familiar, and they helped shape participants’ belief in what they were doing both online and in the street.
As I began to reflect on these and other call stories, I became more interested in call narratives. I became interested in looking at them again, their shape, their makeup, and, of course, their rhetorical underpinnings. What struck me was the sense that while I saw these call stories as authentic call narratives maybe others would not. That is perhaps because we have regulated the call narrative to a religious call to preach or to that which only ministers can engage. Indeed, the few scholarly treatments of call narratives overwhelmingly place the call narrative within the purview of religious discourse and tend to center on ministers’ call to ministry or to preach. While that is important to examine, my experience with the early activists in the Ferguson uprising and with activists in the BLM movement suggests that call narratives do not reside exclusively within an ecclesiological context. Folks are pushed, pulled, prodded, and picked at in many ways to do things that they did not think they would ever do or to serve in ways they could not previously imagineWith this special issue of Listening, we wanted to examine African American call narratives. While literature in the field of communication on call narratives is scant, research becomes even more negligible when focused on African Americans. This is surprising because if one is to study the African American rhetorical tradition in any serious way, one will come across many accounts of call narratives. Enslavement narratives, nineteenth century African American women preacher narratives, African American biographical treatments, and a host of other writings all have elements of call in them. While scholars have acknowledged these call narratives, they have not studied them rhetorically. Therefore, this issue asks and explores: What are the rhetorical effects of call narratives? What do they propose to do and how do they in and of themselves function as pieces of rhetoric?
One scholar who has done work on African American call narratives is William H. Myers. Myers published two books that centered the African American call narrative as a genre worthy of study. In his first book, The Irresistible Urge to Preach: A Collection of African American “Call Stories,” he sought to “collect and transcribe a variety of these (call) oral narratives in one place for future study.”7 In the second one, God’s Yes Was Louder than My No, Myers wanted to “describe and analyze the content and structure of the narratives.”8 What makes Myers's work so valuable is that he not only highlights that the call narrative is a text worthy of study, but offers six stages of the call: “early religious exposure, call experience, struggle, search, support, and surrender.”9 He argues that if the call narrative is to be recognized with its own textual integrity, it must be lifted from the biographical and autobiographical treatments where we most find them. Up until Myers there had not been any published work that collected, described, analyzed, or interpreted a corpus of African American call narratives.
However, while we want to build on Myers’s scholarship, we also want to expand the concept of call narrative. For instance, in my essay I examine the role of listening in prophetic speech. While many studies of prophetic rhetoric center on speech, I wanted to know the prophet’s preparation before the proclamation. In other words: How does the prophet know what the prophet declares? I argue that the prophet must do work before the prophet speaks or offers a prophetic? witness. In this creation of call, the prophet must engage in what Elizabeth O’Connor calls the “inward journey.”10
Thomas Fuerst examines the “first and final accounts of Dr. King’s kitchen table experience, the first from his 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom, and the final from his 1967 sermon, “‘Why Did Jesus Call a Man a Fool?’” Grounded in the concept of prophetic listening, Fuerst “compare[s] and contrast[s] these accounts, nearly ten years apart, to demonstrate how King utilizes the kitchen table story” for rhetorical benefit. By examining both call narratives, Fuerst also demonstrates how King moves toward adopting a prophetic persona of a pessimistic prophet.
Xavier Johnson examines “what it means to be called to leadership as an African-American clergy person in the twenty-first century.” Grounded in the “prophetic work of leadership,” Johnson argues that while “African-American clergy persons have historically been a pool of leadership in the African-American community, times have changed.” He calls for African American clergy persons standing at the “intersection of call and identity” to “listen carefully and rethink, reimagine, and redefine their understanding of their role as leaders both in and outside of the context of the Black Church.”
Kimberly P. Johnson examines call by examining the “feminist and womanist characteristics embedded in Jarena Lee’s autobiography and her 1807 sermon…Jarena Lee’s Apologetic for Female Preachers.” By doing so, Johnson brings our attention to the “feminist and womanist discourse” grounded in Lee’s call, which confronts “divisive structures of her religious denomination and the dominant power structures of social oppression,” and to “how [Lee] breaks down, resists, and transcends religious patriarchy and social oppression.” Johnson argues that the “autobiography and sermon seem to reveal an innate feminist and womanist ethic that gives Lee a voice in the battle to prove her humanity in her fight for spiritual equality.”
JoAnna Boudreaux examines the call narrative of religious scholar Amina Wadud. Drawing from Rosetta Haynes’ “Radical Spiritual Motherhood,” Boudreaux argues that in understanding her call Wadud draws “upon familiar tropes of motherhood to fashion empowered subjectivities despite gendered and racial oppression” within Islam. Throughout the essay, Boudreaux seeks to “amplify Wadud’s scholarly voice as one offering an invaluable and necessary contribution to contemporary conversations about Islam in America.”
Nicole McDonald offers a close reading of the call narrative of Julia A. J. Foote. In so doing, she not only provides a methodological approach to understand call narratives but also argues that an understanding of Foote’s call will lead to a broader understanding of what it means to preach. For McDonald, “African American call narrative tradition is more than a ‘call to preach;’” it is a call to serve wherever the Spirit leads.
Finally, in the second part of this issue, Annette Madlock Gatison and Lionnell “Badu” Smith write about their own call experiences as they relate to being both a person of faith and a professor in higher education.
In closing, I would like to first thank Janie Harden Fritz, the editor of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture, for giving us space to share these essays. It was indeed a pleasure to work with her and her staff. Second, I would like to thank my Graduate Assistant Ayo Morton for her valuable assistance with this issue. Finally, I appreciate the contributors for trusting us with your work.
NOTES
1 Andre E. Johnson, “Teaching in Ferguson: A Rhetorical Autoethnography from a Scholar/Activist,” Southern Communication Journal 81, no. 4 (2016): 268.
2 Ibid., 268
3 Ibid., 268
4 Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson, The Struggle Over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018).
5 Andre E. Johnson, “Embodied Solidarity, Incarnation and the Spirituality of the BLM Movement,” in Proceedings: Sixth Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture, Indianapolis, Indiana, Date, delivered June 8, 2019, 44.
6 Edgar and Johnson, The Struggle Over Black Lives Matter, See Chapter 3.
7 William H. Myers, The Irresistible Urge to Preach: A Collection of African American “Call Stories” (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015), xv.
8 William H. Myers, God’s Yes Was Louder Than My No: Rethinking the African American Call to Ministry (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1994), 2.
9 Ibid.,8.
10 Elizabeth O’Conner. Inward Journey Outward Journey. Harper and Row Washington, DC., 1975.
Listening to African American Call Narratives
Guest Edited by: Andre E. Johnson
While still an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Religion and African American Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary, I taught a week-long intensive immersion class titled the “Ferguson Fiasco.” Instead of offering the course in Memphis, I felt we needed to be present in Ferguson to better understand the context, surroundings, and environment. After we arrived, we quickly met with activists and protesters for dinner at the Ferguson Brewery. As I have shared before, we wanted to “hear stories and reflections from people who were there the first days and nights after the killing of Mike Brown.”1 I personally wanted to know from those who were there in the early days of the resistance what brought them to the movement? When they began to share their stories they all sounded familiar. They sounded familiar because not only have I heard them before but I, too, have shared stories like these before. As I noted in a short essay on my time teaching in Ferguson, the stories I heard were “personal ‘call stories.’”2 When asked what brought them to the movement, each person answered as if they felt “called,” “pulled,” or as if “something moved me in that direction.”3
When Amanda Nell Edgar and I began to research for our book that examined Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter4 we quickly noted that “when we interviewed BLM activists, we discovered that the role of spirituality undergirded participant’s understandings of their activism.”5 Drawing from an understanding of “Pentecostal Piety” or of the “role of the Holy Spirit in political action,” we heard several “call stories” from the participants in the BLM movement.6 They, too, sounded familiar, and they helped shape participants’ belief in what they were doing both online and in the street.
As I began to reflect on these and other call stories, I became more interested in call narratives. I became interested in looking at them again, their shape, their makeup, and, of course, their rhetorical underpinnings. What struck me was the sense that while I saw these call stories as authentic call narratives maybe others would not. That is perhaps because we have regulated the call narrative to a religious call to preach or to that which only ministers can engage. Indeed, the few scholarly treatments of call narratives overwhelmingly place the call narrative within the purview of religious discourse and tend to center on ministers’ call to ministry or to preach. While that is important to examine, my experience with the early activists in the Ferguson uprising and with activists in the BLM movement suggests that call narratives do not reside exclusively within an ecclesiological context. Folks are pushed, pulled, prodded, and picked at in many ways to do things that they did not think they would ever do or to serve in ways they could not previously imagineWith this special issue of Listening, we wanted to examine African American call narratives. While literature in the field of communication on call narratives is scant, research becomes even more negligible when focused on African Americans. This is surprising because if one is to study the African American rhetorical tradition in any serious way, one will come across many accounts of call narratives. Enslavement narratives, nineteenth century African American women preacher narratives, African American biographical treatments, and a host of other writings all have elements of call in them. While scholars have acknowledged these call narratives, they have not studied them rhetorically. Therefore, this issue asks and explores: What are the rhetorical effects of call narratives? What do they propose to do and how do they in and of themselves function as pieces of rhetoric?
One scholar who has done work on African American call narratives is William H. Myers. Myers published two books that centered the African American call narrative as a genre worthy of study. In his first book, The Irresistible Urge to Preach: A Collection of African American “Call Stories,” he sought to “collect and transcribe a variety of these (call) oral narratives in one place for future study.”7 In the second one, God’s Yes Was Louder than My No, Myers wanted to “describe and analyze the content and structure of the narratives.”8 What makes Myers's work so valuable is that he not only highlights that the call narrative is a text worthy of study, but offers six stages of the call: “early religious exposure, call experience, struggle, search, support, and surrender.”9 He argues that if the call narrative is to be recognized with its own textual integrity, it must be lifted from the biographical and autobiographical treatments where we most find them. Up until Myers there had not been any published work that collected, described, analyzed, or interpreted a corpus of African American call narratives.
However, while we want to build on Myers’s scholarship, we also want to expand the concept of call narrative. For instance, in my essay I examine the role of listening in prophetic speech. While many studies of prophetic rhetoric center on speech, I wanted to know the prophet’s preparation before the proclamation. In other words: How does the prophet know what the prophet declares? I argue that the prophet must do work before the prophet speaks or offers a prophetic? witness. In this creation of call, the prophet must engage in what Elizabeth O’Connor calls the “inward journey.”10
Thomas Fuerst examines the “first and final accounts of Dr. King’s kitchen table experience, the first from his 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom, and the final from his 1967 sermon, “‘Why Did Jesus Call a Man a Fool?’” Grounded in the concept of prophetic listening, Fuerst “compare[s] and contrast[s] these accounts, nearly ten years apart, to demonstrate how King utilizes the kitchen table story” for rhetorical benefit. By examining both call narratives, Fuerst also demonstrates how King moves toward adopting a prophetic persona of a pessimistic prophet.
Xavier Johnson examines “what it means to be called to leadership as an African-American clergy person in the twenty-first century.” Grounded in the “prophetic work of leadership,” Johnson argues that while “African-American clergy persons have historically been a pool of leadership in the African-American community, times have changed.” He calls for African American clergy persons standing at the “intersection of call and identity” to “listen carefully and rethink, reimagine, and redefine their understanding of their role as leaders both in and outside of the context of the Black Church.”
Kimberly P. Johnson examines call by examining the “feminist and womanist characteristics embedded in Jarena Lee’s autobiography and her 1807 sermon…Jarena Lee’s Apologetic for Female Preachers.” By doing so, Johnson brings our attention to the “feminist and womanist discourse” grounded in Lee’s call, which confronts “divisive structures of her religious denomination and the dominant power structures of social oppression,” and to “how [Lee] breaks down, resists, and transcends religious patriarchy and social oppression.” Johnson argues that the “autobiography and sermon seem to reveal an innate feminist and womanist ethic that gives Lee a voice in the battle to prove her humanity in her fight for spiritual equality.”
JoAnna Boudreaux examines the call narrative of religious scholar Amina Wadud. Drawing from Rosetta Haynes’ “Radical Spiritual Motherhood,” Boudreaux argues that in understanding her call Wadud draws “upon familiar tropes of motherhood to fashion empowered subjectivities despite gendered and racial oppression” within Islam. Throughout the essay, Boudreaux seeks to “amplify Wadud’s scholarly voice as one offering an invaluable and necessary contribution to contemporary conversations about Islam in America.”
Nicole McDonald offers a close reading of the call narrative of Julia A. J. Foote. In so doing, she not only provides a methodological approach to understand call narratives but also argues that an understanding of Foote’s call will lead to a broader understanding of what it means to preach. For McDonald, “African American call narrative tradition is more than a ‘call to preach;’” it is a call to serve wherever the Spirit leads.
Finally, in the second part of this issue, Annette Madlock Gatison and Lionnell “Badu” Smith write about their own call experiences as they relate to being both a person of faith and a professor in higher education.
In closing, I would like to first thank Janie Harden Fritz, the editor of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture, for giving us space to share these essays. It was indeed a pleasure to work with her and her staff. Second, I would like to thank my Graduate Assistant Ayo Morton for her valuable assistance with this issue. Finally, I appreciate the contributors for trusting us with your work.
NOTES
1 Andre E. Johnson, “Teaching in Ferguson: A Rhetorical Autoethnography from a Scholar/Activist,” Southern Communication Journal 81, no. 4 (2016): 268.
2 Ibid., 268
3 Ibid., 268
4 Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson, The Struggle Over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018).
5 Andre E. Johnson, “Embodied Solidarity, Incarnation and the Spirituality of the BLM Movement,” in Proceedings: Sixth Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture, Indianapolis, Indiana, Date, delivered June 8, 2019, 44.
6 Edgar and Johnson, The Struggle Over Black Lives Matter, See Chapter 3.
7 William H. Myers, The Irresistible Urge to Preach: A Collection of African American “Call Stories” (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015), xv.
8 William H. Myers, God’s Yes Was Louder Than My No: Rethinking the African American Call to Ministry (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1994), 2.
9 Ibid.,8.
10 Elizabeth O’Conner. Inward Journey Outward Journey. Harper and Row Washington, DC., 1975.
Spring, 2020
Communication Ethics in Dispute
Guest Edited by: Susan Mancino
This special issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture emerged from the 15th National Communication Ethics conference held June 6–8, 2018. The conference, which was hosted by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University, focused on the theme of “Communication Ethics in Dispute.” The contributing authors to this volume offered plenary or keynote addresses at the conference.
The volume begins with Kenneth E. Andersen, to whom this issue is dedicated. Andersen differentiates persuasive argumentation from argumentativeness. He contends that, in an era of conflicting understandings of the good, critical thinking, learning, and reasoning contribute to ethical quandary in the 21st-century public domain, moving in a constructive direction contra the problematics of mere argumentativeness. We are forever grateful for Dr. Andersen’s contributions and his work in establishing a national platform for communication ethics inquiry.
The remaining contributors include Augusto Ponzio, Patrick Lee Plaisance, Joe Cruz, and Susan Petrilli. Ponzio recounts responsibility to the other within the framework of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy. Specifically, Ponzio draws upon Levinas’s distinction of ethics and justice to respond to one’s responsibility to the irreducible and irreplaceable face in front of one’s self. Plaisance and Cruz comment on the era of hyper-individualism emergent in response to big data by promoting a communitarian turn that emphasizes the public good within digital communities. Finally, Petrilli articulates a semioethical approach to the semiotics of identity within contexts of conflict. From this semioethical approach, the question posed becomes not “Who am I?”, but “Is it me?”—a move that decenters the I to become re-situated within a multifaceted and polylogical community.
Together, these essays address the theme of “Communication Ethics in Dispute” situated within contexts of the public domain. These essays work from a recognition that communication ethics prompts dispute and conflict, implicating relationships of self and other. Their work provides meaningful commentary depicting our contemporary moment and offers innovative possibilities for response. I am thankful to the authors for contributing their work and to Dr. Janie Harden Fritz and the Listening editorial team for providing a platform to discuss these important questions.
Communication Ethics in Dispute
Guest Edited by: Susan Mancino
This special issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture emerged from the 15th National Communication Ethics conference held June 6–8, 2018. The conference, which was hosted by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University, focused on the theme of “Communication Ethics in Dispute.” The contributing authors to this volume offered plenary or keynote addresses at the conference.
The volume begins with Kenneth E. Andersen, to whom this issue is dedicated. Andersen differentiates persuasive argumentation from argumentativeness. He contends that, in an era of conflicting understandings of the good, critical thinking, learning, and reasoning contribute to ethical quandary in the 21st-century public domain, moving in a constructive direction contra the problematics of mere argumentativeness. We are forever grateful for Dr. Andersen’s contributions and his work in establishing a national platform for communication ethics inquiry.
The remaining contributors include Augusto Ponzio, Patrick Lee Plaisance, Joe Cruz, and Susan Petrilli. Ponzio recounts responsibility to the other within the framework of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy. Specifically, Ponzio draws upon Levinas’s distinction of ethics and justice to respond to one’s responsibility to the irreducible and irreplaceable face in front of one’s self. Plaisance and Cruz comment on the era of hyper-individualism emergent in response to big data by promoting a communitarian turn that emphasizes the public good within digital communities. Finally, Petrilli articulates a semioethical approach to the semiotics of identity within contexts of conflict. From this semioethical approach, the question posed becomes not “Who am I?”, but “Is it me?”—a move that decenters the I to become re-situated within a multifaceted and polylogical community.
Together, these essays address the theme of “Communication Ethics in Dispute” situated within contexts of the public domain. These essays work from a recognition that communication ethics prompts dispute and conflict, implicating relationships of self and other. Their work provides meaningful commentary depicting our contemporary moment and offers innovative possibilities for response. I am thankful to the authors for contributing their work and to Dr. Janie Harden Fritz and the Listening editorial team for providing a platform to discuss these important questions.
Winter, 2020
Listening to our Limits
Guest Edited by: M. J. Eberhardinger
In this issue, our invited authors explore the theme of limits in various contemporary contexts. In Katherine Rogers’s article, by focusing on Michael Hyde’s theoretical framework, she confronts the issue of limits in healthcare coverage for plastic versus reconstructive surgery. Rogers opens up public dialogue for considering new reasons for who may qualify for types of coverage. In Michael Kearney’s article, also centering on Hyde’s work, explores the relationship between “know-how” and limits in argumentation in our current public sphere, specifically raising how topoi, too, have limits in how they are known and shared. David Errera’s article focuses on Hyde’s work and addresses limits in medical pathology, pointing to the relationship between these limits and the legitimization of post-modern diseases. In M. J. Eberhardinger’s article, the concept of limits in Levinas’s work and the challenges they bring when considering the everyday responsibilities to the Other are offered.
Listening to our Limits
Guest Edited by: M. J. Eberhardinger
In this issue, our invited authors explore the theme of limits in various contemporary contexts. In Katherine Rogers’s article, by focusing on Michael Hyde’s theoretical framework, she confronts the issue of limits in healthcare coverage for plastic versus reconstructive surgery. Rogers opens up public dialogue for considering new reasons for who may qualify for types of coverage. In Michael Kearney’s article, also centering on Hyde’s work, explores the relationship between “know-how” and limits in argumentation in our current public sphere, specifically raising how topoi, too, have limits in how they are known and shared. David Errera’s article focuses on Hyde’s work and addresses limits in medical pathology, pointing to the relationship between these limits and the legitimization of post-modern diseases. In M. J. Eberhardinger’s article, the concept of limits in Levinas’s work and the challenges they bring when considering the everyday responsibilities to the Other are offered.
Fall, 2019
Catholic Art After Christendom
Guest Edited by: Timothy Matthew Collins
“The Constantinian era has given us the magnificent success of a ‘Christendom’; but Christendom is not the Church. This is certainly a delicate distinction to apply in its doctrinal and institutional frontiers. But such an application is utterly indispensable for a world whose human dimensions extend far beyond the Christianized world of Constantine.”
—Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P.1
Catholic art witnesses the glory of God, the exquisite love that overcomes every estrangement. Although “beauty is the visible form of the good,”2 it cannot be achieved without love, and loving Christ, the supremely beautiful one, also risks the ugliness of the Cross. If our labors genuinely respond to “God’s rule, his living power over the world,”3 rather than formulaic patterns, we can retain all that is good and noble in our tradition while remaining free to experiment; encountering new forms and opportunities in the world redeemed by Christ.
Many beautiful representations of moral worth and reasoning have been produced throughout the Church’s history, but the core of artistic aspiration is not simply catechetical clarity; it is the mystery of existence seen with the eyes of faith. God’s perfect, universal love—intermingled amongst the very tissue of the Trinity—mysteriously touches each precious, precarious, and unrepeatable moment, even amongst the dilapidation of sin. If we fail to grasp this, we miss the true glory of the Incarnation: that fragile and delicate masterpiece born to Mary over two thousand years ago. This child Jesus is also our heavenly Father’s beautiful boy, innocent yet mutilated and put to death. The resurrection makes Jesus whole again and exalts him through this same Father’s love. This is the true pattern of all art as “[l]ove wants everything to be raised up to the same level.”4
The contemporary conversation about Catholic art, however, tends to focus on re-storing beauty or re-claiming the aesthetic traditions of Christendom, rather than the theological merits of art itself. Many venerable traditions have arisen from Christendom, and it is right to preserve and protect them, but the Church is not confined exclusively to any one historical epoch or culture.5 Without the “living past” of tradition, no new forms capturing our encounter with the Lord would be possible, but “the glorious traditions of Catholicism should not limit the universality of the church’s language.”6 Any cursory survey of the nearly two thousand year history of Catholic art clearly shows that the Church’s aesthetic language is a perpetual “revolution” of new forms and techniques.7
Working “backwards” from our divine Father’s unfathomable and unconquerable love, consummated in our divine brother Christ, and in-dwelling among us through the Holy Spirit, Catholic artists exercise their vocation “in the world as a kind of leaven.”8 By identifying the marginalized or ignored territories in our age that surreptitiously communicate with the traditions of the Church, a liminal space is created—beyond the historical forms of Christendom, but drawing strength from its lessons—where we can encounter our ancient living creed, often obscured by the patina of comfortable routine. Such art does not seek to eliminate elements that appear anachronistic or untimely, which also properly belong to the Church’s form, but rather strives for “an increase of fidelity to her own calling.”9
This is accomplished through the incarnational potential of sound, letter, movement, shape, and color, immersed in the particularities of physical reality. “Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world's salvation.”10 Indeed, the task of Catholic artists is “to render visible”11 this “yes” to all matter through Christ, emerging out of the mystery of God’s love for the world.
The full panoply of artistic techniques—from literary and musical to less conventional forms of dance, cinema, and installation arts—can express our perennial faith and thereby “add their weight to the play of the philosophers and theologians, and act as mediators of invaluable experiences, structures, contents, forms and materials.”12 Rather than measuring the value of such art exclusively through stylistic or juridical criteria, a truly ecumenical reception of Catholic art will “discern the spiritual truths latent in the artists’ own struggles.”13
The call to continual conversion is not only intended for the culture, but for the Church herself in cultivating and expanding our encounter with the divine. Authentic Catholic art can contribute to this process by challenging the bureaucracy of the altar: that God can only be encountered through a specific liturgical formula. The sacraments are indispensable to the faithful and a conduit of exceptional grace, but Catholic art becomes possible precisely where we encounter the Trinitarian disclosure of reality out in the world and the studio as well as upon the altar. In this sense, “[t]heological reflection on art does not begin with abstract concepts like ‘beauty,’ but in the tall and dangerous grass of the studio, in the anxiety and pressure of the technical and vocational decisions that confront the artist moment by moment.”14
This anthology contains diverse textual voices from thinkers, practicing artists, and priests—all friends who grapple with the profound loveliness and mystery of the Catholic faith as it transforms our understanding of the arts. To organize these rich discussions, three thematic categories have been introduced: After Christendom, Beyond Evangelization, and Extraliturgical Art, each accompanied by an explanatory quotation. We pray that the contributions herein be guided by the Holy Spirit and not the egos of clever minds; and may Christ lead us to pick the ripened fruit.
NOTES
1 M.-D. Chenu, O.P., “End of the Constantinian Era,” Listening 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1967): 180.
2 John Paul II, Letter to Artists (April 4, 1999), sec. 3, Vatican website, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists.html, accessed June 28, 2019.
3 Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 26.
4 Fr. Thomas Holahan, C.S.P., Lecture on the Sacraments of Initiation, the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York City, April 20, 2013.
5 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), sec. 58, in Vatican II: The Essential Texts, ed. Norman Tanner, S.J. (New York: Image Books, 2012), 256–257.
6 Massimo Faggioli, Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017), 129.
7 “Revolution” is here understood both in the colloquial sense of radical innovation and as the perpetual re-volving of Catholic art around the central tenets of the faith. See for example Rolf Toman, ed., Ars Sacra: Christian Art and Architecture of the Western World from the very beginning up until today (Potsdam, Germany: H.F.Ullmann, 2010), 22–795.
8 Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem (November 18, 1965), sec. 2, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J., trans. ed. Joseph Gallagher (New York: America Press, 1966), 492.
9 Second Vatican Council, Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964), sec. 6, in Decree on Ecumenism (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1964), 9.
10 John Paul II, Orientale Lumen (May 2, 1995), sec. 11, Vatican website, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19950502_orientale-lumen.html, accessed June 28, 2019.
11 For this translation of Paul Klee’s aphorism, “Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar,” see Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 48. Originally published as Paul Klee, “Schöpferische Konfession,” in Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit: Eine Schriftensammlung, Vol. 13, ed. Kasimir Edschmid (Berlin: Erich Reiß, 1920).
12 Friedrich Heer, The Intellectual History of Europe: Volume I, From the Beginnings of Western Thought to Luther, trans. Jonathan Steinberg (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1968), xi.
13 This insight comes from the work of the Openings Artist Collective, a project of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle (“The Paulist Fathers”). See Timothy Matthew Collins, “Contemporary art in the Catholic Church,” Paulist Fathers, October 11, 2015, https://www.paulist.org/the-conversation/contemporary-art-in-the-catholic-church/, accessed August 24, 2019.
14 Daniel A. Siedell, Who’s Afraid of Modern Art? Essays on Modern Art & Theology in Conversation (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 35.
Catholic Art After Christendom
Guest Edited by: Timothy Matthew Collins
“The Constantinian era has given us the magnificent success of a ‘Christendom’; but Christendom is not the Church. This is certainly a delicate distinction to apply in its doctrinal and institutional frontiers. But such an application is utterly indispensable for a world whose human dimensions extend far beyond the Christianized world of Constantine.”
—Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P.1
Catholic art witnesses the glory of God, the exquisite love that overcomes every estrangement. Although “beauty is the visible form of the good,”2 it cannot be achieved without love, and loving Christ, the supremely beautiful one, also risks the ugliness of the Cross. If our labors genuinely respond to “God’s rule, his living power over the world,”3 rather than formulaic patterns, we can retain all that is good and noble in our tradition while remaining free to experiment; encountering new forms and opportunities in the world redeemed by Christ.
Many beautiful representations of moral worth and reasoning have been produced throughout the Church’s history, but the core of artistic aspiration is not simply catechetical clarity; it is the mystery of existence seen with the eyes of faith. God’s perfect, universal love—intermingled amongst the very tissue of the Trinity—mysteriously touches each precious, precarious, and unrepeatable moment, even amongst the dilapidation of sin. If we fail to grasp this, we miss the true glory of the Incarnation: that fragile and delicate masterpiece born to Mary over two thousand years ago. This child Jesus is also our heavenly Father’s beautiful boy, innocent yet mutilated and put to death. The resurrection makes Jesus whole again and exalts him through this same Father’s love. This is the true pattern of all art as “[l]ove wants everything to be raised up to the same level.”4
The contemporary conversation about Catholic art, however, tends to focus on re-storing beauty or re-claiming the aesthetic traditions of Christendom, rather than the theological merits of art itself. Many venerable traditions have arisen from Christendom, and it is right to preserve and protect them, but the Church is not confined exclusively to any one historical epoch or culture.5 Without the “living past” of tradition, no new forms capturing our encounter with the Lord would be possible, but “the glorious traditions of Catholicism should not limit the universality of the church’s language.”6 Any cursory survey of the nearly two thousand year history of Catholic art clearly shows that the Church’s aesthetic language is a perpetual “revolution” of new forms and techniques.7
Working “backwards” from our divine Father’s unfathomable and unconquerable love, consummated in our divine brother Christ, and in-dwelling among us through the Holy Spirit, Catholic artists exercise their vocation “in the world as a kind of leaven.”8 By identifying the marginalized or ignored territories in our age that surreptitiously communicate with the traditions of the Church, a liminal space is created—beyond the historical forms of Christendom, but drawing strength from its lessons—where we can encounter our ancient living creed, often obscured by the patina of comfortable routine. Such art does not seek to eliminate elements that appear anachronistic or untimely, which also properly belong to the Church’s form, but rather strives for “an increase of fidelity to her own calling.”9
This is accomplished through the incarnational potential of sound, letter, movement, shape, and color, immersed in the particularities of physical reality. “Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world's salvation.”10 Indeed, the task of Catholic artists is “to render visible”11 this “yes” to all matter through Christ, emerging out of the mystery of God’s love for the world.
The full panoply of artistic techniques—from literary and musical to less conventional forms of dance, cinema, and installation arts—can express our perennial faith and thereby “add their weight to the play of the philosophers and theologians, and act as mediators of invaluable experiences, structures, contents, forms and materials.”12 Rather than measuring the value of such art exclusively through stylistic or juridical criteria, a truly ecumenical reception of Catholic art will “discern the spiritual truths latent in the artists’ own struggles.”13
The call to continual conversion is not only intended for the culture, but for the Church herself in cultivating and expanding our encounter with the divine. Authentic Catholic art can contribute to this process by challenging the bureaucracy of the altar: that God can only be encountered through a specific liturgical formula. The sacraments are indispensable to the faithful and a conduit of exceptional grace, but Catholic art becomes possible precisely where we encounter the Trinitarian disclosure of reality out in the world and the studio as well as upon the altar. In this sense, “[t]heological reflection on art does not begin with abstract concepts like ‘beauty,’ but in the tall and dangerous grass of the studio, in the anxiety and pressure of the technical and vocational decisions that confront the artist moment by moment.”14
This anthology contains diverse textual voices from thinkers, practicing artists, and priests—all friends who grapple with the profound loveliness and mystery of the Catholic faith as it transforms our understanding of the arts. To organize these rich discussions, three thematic categories have been introduced: After Christendom, Beyond Evangelization, and Extraliturgical Art, each accompanied by an explanatory quotation. We pray that the contributions herein be guided by the Holy Spirit and not the egos of clever minds; and may Christ lead us to pick the ripened fruit.
NOTES
1 M.-D. Chenu, O.P., “End of the Constantinian Era,” Listening 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1967): 180.
2 John Paul II, Letter to Artists (April 4, 1999), sec. 3, Vatican website, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists.html, accessed June 28, 2019.
3 Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 26.
4 Fr. Thomas Holahan, C.S.P., Lecture on the Sacraments of Initiation, the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York City, April 20, 2013.
5 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), sec. 58, in Vatican II: The Essential Texts, ed. Norman Tanner, S.J. (New York: Image Books, 2012), 256–257.
6 Massimo Faggioli, Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017), 129.
7 “Revolution” is here understood both in the colloquial sense of radical innovation and as the perpetual re-volving of Catholic art around the central tenets of the faith. See for example Rolf Toman, ed., Ars Sacra: Christian Art and Architecture of the Western World from the very beginning up until today (Potsdam, Germany: H.F.Ullmann, 2010), 22–795.
8 Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem (November 18, 1965), sec. 2, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J., trans. ed. Joseph Gallagher (New York: America Press, 1966), 492.
9 Second Vatican Council, Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964), sec. 6, in Decree on Ecumenism (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1964), 9.
10 John Paul II, Orientale Lumen (May 2, 1995), sec. 11, Vatican website, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19950502_orientale-lumen.html, accessed June 28, 2019.
11 For this translation of Paul Klee’s aphorism, “Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar,” see Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 48. Originally published as Paul Klee, “Schöpferische Konfession,” in Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit: Eine Schriftensammlung, Vol. 13, ed. Kasimir Edschmid (Berlin: Erich Reiß, 1920).
12 Friedrich Heer, The Intellectual History of Europe: Volume I, From the Beginnings of Western Thought to Luther, trans. Jonathan Steinberg (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1968), xi.
13 This insight comes from the work of the Openings Artist Collective, a project of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle (“The Paulist Fathers”). See Timothy Matthew Collins, “Contemporary art in the Catholic Church,” Paulist Fathers, October 11, 2015, https://www.paulist.org/the-conversation/contemporary-art-in-the-catholic-church/, accessed August 24, 2019.
14 Daniel A. Siedell, Who’s Afraid of Modern Art? Essays on Modern Art & Theology in Conversation (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 35.
Spring, 2019
The Continued Relevance of the Moral Imagination
Guest Edited by: Justin N. Bonanno
Great minds oft coin new words or phrases that gain currency beyond their immediate historical contexts. For example, we can thank Cicero for giving the Latin equivalents of "quality, individual, vacuum, moral, property, induction, element, definition, difference, notion, comprehension, infinity, appetite, instance, science, image, species." Likewise, we can thank Edmund Burke for the phrase "moral imagination," which appeared in Burke's 1970 Reflections on the Revolution in France, a pamphlet written in response to Enlightenment rationalism. Burke, a figure commonly associated with the conservative tradition, sought to articulate how morals tacitly guide practical reasoning within a culture. Burke's approach to morality was otherwise than the French Revolutionists, who were quick to worship cold, abstract Reason.
Despite the roots of the "moral imagination" in Burke's thought, each author in this volume offers a different reflection on the continued relevance of the moral imagination. Sleasman contends that the introduction of the term "social orphan" into public discourse might serve as a rhetorical interruption to shift attention toward those whose plight has fallen away from public awareness. Sleasman argues that a deliberately cultivated moral imagination must serve others and the greater societal good. Tompkins offers a fascinating perspective on the relationship between reason, emotion, and the imagination in ethical decision-making. The moral imagination involves both reason and emotions when considering ethical issues. Essentially, emotion directs the attention toward what is ethically salient. Drawing upon the works of Bakhtin, Bachelard, Jagoda, and Turkle, Ward investigates how different types of space afford different forms of ethical (or unethical) communication. Cyberspace, for example, lacks shared physical and spatial presence, and thereby enables certain forms of unethical communication. Finally, my essay looks at the work of Irving Babbitt to consider how the idyllic imagination, a sinister alternative to the moral imagination, fueled the rhetoric of secularization. While the moral imagination engenders self-restraint and the cultivation of virtue, the idyllic imagination encourages the expression of unbridled passions.
The Continued Relevance of the Moral Imagination
Guest Edited by: Justin N. Bonanno
Great minds oft coin new words or phrases that gain currency beyond their immediate historical contexts. For example, we can thank Cicero for giving the Latin equivalents of "quality, individual, vacuum, moral, property, induction, element, definition, difference, notion, comprehension, infinity, appetite, instance, science, image, species." Likewise, we can thank Edmund Burke for the phrase "moral imagination," which appeared in Burke's 1970 Reflections on the Revolution in France, a pamphlet written in response to Enlightenment rationalism. Burke, a figure commonly associated with the conservative tradition, sought to articulate how morals tacitly guide practical reasoning within a culture. Burke's approach to morality was otherwise than the French Revolutionists, who were quick to worship cold, abstract Reason.
Despite the roots of the "moral imagination" in Burke's thought, each author in this volume offers a different reflection on the continued relevance of the moral imagination. Sleasman contends that the introduction of the term "social orphan" into public discourse might serve as a rhetorical interruption to shift attention toward those whose plight has fallen away from public awareness. Sleasman argues that a deliberately cultivated moral imagination must serve others and the greater societal good. Tompkins offers a fascinating perspective on the relationship between reason, emotion, and the imagination in ethical decision-making. The moral imagination involves both reason and emotions when considering ethical issues. Essentially, emotion directs the attention toward what is ethically salient. Drawing upon the works of Bakhtin, Bachelard, Jagoda, and Turkle, Ward investigates how different types of space afford different forms of ethical (or unethical) communication. Cyberspace, for example, lacks shared physical and spatial presence, and thereby enables certain forms of unethical communication. Finally, my essay looks at the work of Irving Babbitt to consider how the idyllic imagination, a sinister alternative to the moral imagination, fueled the rhetoric of secularization. While the moral imagination engenders self-restraint and the cultivation of virtue, the idyllic imagination encourages the expression of unbridled passions.
Winter, 2019
Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?
Guest Edited by: Mark McVann, F.S.C.
"Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?", the title of this issue of Listening, is a very slightly provocative, even though, of course, this being a Catholic journal, readers will have guessed the answer would be a "Yes!," even if not always a resounding one. And perhaps some may even frown a bit as the title might suggest that the "bother" can outweigh the "worth." And many readers have reached just that conclusion, sometimes unhappily, sometimes with relief, but hardly ever with satisfaction, the Bible being the huge, indispensable, religious and cultural monument that it is.
Clearly, this issue of Listening doesn't have the key to solving these problems or addressing other complications and challenges of biblical interpretation. It does, however, have some carefully framed questions, very thoughtful, interesting, intellectually responsible, and deeply respectful insights into this puzzling, disquieting, challenging, comforting, consoling, inspiring and inspired book: the Word of God, Holy Writ, Sacred Scripture, the Bible.
Our issue opens with Professor Flanagin's piece on the assumptions of biblical exegesis, that is, the underlying attitudes and intellectual strategies that make biblical interpretation both responsible and intelligible. Professor Michael Barram's contribution follows, in some ways, the line taken by Professor Flanagin. His stress on understanding context, genre, and emphasis on biblical books or passages helps put matters into manageable perspective, especially for first time Bible readers, such as many, probably even most, college students: "Beginning Bible readers--and even many seasoned ones--find it difficult to give adequate attention to the context of the ancient biblical text, a phenomenon that can obscure or even misconstrue the contemporary relevance of what they read." However, there is hope! Teachers especially can help clear the underbrush of expectations that are naïve or are unhelpful or hostile towards reading the Bible. The next title, "The Bible is not a Book," comes as something of a surprise, but Professor Carpenter shows with a deep love for Scripture how its life is drawn from worship, from the liturgical forms from which many of its texts were born, and in and by which they have been sustained for generations. Reading the Bible in a post-colonial context dominated by market rationalism and Eurocentric commitments generate serious problems for legitimate biblical interpretation. Professor Drexler-Dreis draws on some of the major figures in the vital and vibrant Liberation Theology movement, perhaps the most significant revival of theological thought and thinking of the last century. My own contribution to this issue of the journal is to show some connections between the Testaments and I use three examples: the thematic links between the stories of the Patriarch Joseph and Saint Joseph; the sacrifices of Isaac and Jesus; The Tower of Babel and The Pentecost.
We hope that our issue of "Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?" will itself be worth the bother of reading, and that it will afford some challenge, pleasure, reward, as well as a useful resource. We really hope, above all else, that our readers will return with perhaps less bother, but with new questions about, and deeper appreciation for, reading that huge, indispensable, religious, and cultural monument that is the Bible.
Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?
Guest Edited by: Mark McVann, F.S.C.
"Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?", the title of this issue of Listening, is a very slightly provocative, even though, of course, this being a Catholic journal, readers will have guessed the answer would be a "Yes!," even if not always a resounding one. And perhaps some may even frown a bit as the title might suggest that the "bother" can outweigh the "worth." And many readers have reached just that conclusion, sometimes unhappily, sometimes with relief, but hardly ever with satisfaction, the Bible being the huge, indispensable, religious and cultural monument that it is.
Clearly, this issue of Listening doesn't have the key to solving these problems or addressing other complications and challenges of biblical interpretation. It does, however, have some carefully framed questions, very thoughtful, interesting, intellectually responsible, and deeply respectful insights into this puzzling, disquieting, challenging, comforting, consoling, inspiring and inspired book: the Word of God, Holy Writ, Sacred Scripture, the Bible.
Our issue opens with Professor Flanagin's piece on the assumptions of biblical exegesis, that is, the underlying attitudes and intellectual strategies that make biblical interpretation both responsible and intelligible. Professor Michael Barram's contribution follows, in some ways, the line taken by Professor Flanagin. His stress on understanding context, genre, and emphasis on biblical books or passages helps put matters into manageable perspective, especially for first time Bible readers, such as many, probably even most, college students: "Beginning Bible readers--and even many seasoned ones--find it difficult to give adequate attention to the context of the ancient biblical text, a phenomenon that can obscure or even misconstrue the contemporary relevance of what they read." However, there is hope! Teachers especially can help clear the underbrush of expectations that are naïve or are unhelpful or hostile towards reading the Bible. The next title, "The Bible is not a Book," comes as something of a surprise, but Professor Carpenter shows with a deep love for Scripture how its life is drawn from worship, from the liturgical forms from which many of its texts were born, and in and by which they have been sustained for generations. Reading the Bible in a post-colonial context dominated by market rationalism and Eurocentric commitments generate serious problems for legitimate biblical interpretation. Professor Drexler-Dreis draws on some of the major figures in the vital and vibrant Liberation Theology movement, perhaps the most significant revival of theological thought and thinking of the last century. My own contribution to this issue of the journal is to show some connections between the Testaments and I use three examples: the thematic links between the stories of the Patriarch Joseph and Saint Joseph; the sacrifices of Isaac and Jesus; The Tower of Babel and The Pentecost.
We hope that our issue of "Reading the Bible: Is It Worth the Bother?" will itself be worth the bother of reading, and that it will afford some challenge, pleasure, reward, as well as a useful resource. We really hope, above all else, that our readers will return with perhaps less bother, but with new questions about, and deeper appreciation for, reading that huge, indispensable, religious, and cultural monument that is the Bible.
Fall, 2018
Thomism, Law, and Grace in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor
Guest Edited by: Jerome C. Foss
In the summer of 2014, scholars from a variety of disciplines gathered at All Hollows College in Dublin, Ireland to discuss the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. The event attracted literature professors, but also theologians, philosophers, political scientists, and many others. Most were from the United States and Ireland, but participants came from other parts of Europe as well, such as Spain and the Czech Republic. And in addition to scholars, the conference also attracted lawyers, poets, and others. What is it about O'Connor's tales that maintains such a broad appeal a half a century after her untimely death?
The essays in this issue of Listening capture the broad appeal O'Connor's works continue to enjoy across America and beyond. Professor Edmondson was one of the organizers of the Dublin conference, and it was there that I met Kevin Jones and Telia Williams. I was impressed by both of their papers and am happy to see them in print in this volume. Henry Edmondson's essay was given as a talk at Saint Vincent College in 2017 at the invitation of the Center for the Political and Economic Thought, and I am likewise happy to see it in print. The goal here is not to hone in on a single theme of O'Connor's works, but to show the breadth of approaches that can be taken in reading her stories, and the depth afforded to each approach. Jones is a theologian, Edmondson a political scientist, and Williams a practicing attorney. Taken together, their essays demonstrate the riches that can be found in one of America's greatest authors.
Thomism, Law, and Grace in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor
Guest Edited by: Jerome C. Foss
In the summer of 2014, scholars from a variety of disciplines gathered at All Hollows College in Dublin, Ireland to discuss the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. The event attracted literature professors, but also theologians, philosophers, political scientists, and many others. Most were from the United States and Ireland, but participants came from other parts of Europe as well, such as Spain and the Czech Republic. And in addition to scholars, the conference also attracted lawyers, poets, and others. What is it about O'Connor's tales that maintains such a broad appeal a half a century after her untimely death?
The essays in this issue of Listening capture the broad appeal O'Connor's works continue to enjoy across America and beyond. Professor Edmondson was one of the organizers of the Dublin conference, and it was there that I met Kevin Jones and Telia Williams. I was impressed by both of their papers and am happy to see them in print in this volume. Henry Edmondson's essay was given as a talk at Saint Vincent College in 2017 at the invitation of the Center for the Political and Economic Thought, and I am likewise happy to see it in print. The goal here is not to hone in on a single theme of O'Connor's works, but to show the breadth of approaches that can be taken in reading her stories, and the depth afforded to each approach. Jones is a theologian, Edmondson a political scientist, and Williams a practicing attorney. Taken together, their essays demonstrate the riches that can be found in one of America's greatest authors.
Spring, 2018
Listening through Catholic Media
Guest Edited by: Brian Gilchrist
The articles in this special issue of Listening announce various approaches to understanding Catholic Media, an interpretive lens through which media is grounded in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. We begin with "Transcendent Media: Sacramentals and the Roman Rite of Mass" by Anthony M. Wachs. He invites us to consider how Marshall McLuhan's media theories offer further analyses of the liturgy as meditations between God and humankind. Next, we turn to Brian Gilchrist's "John of Salisbury's Metalogicon: Articulating the Trivium as Social Communion." This article positions the medieval trivium, the verbal arts of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, as a system that gathers educators and students together in the pursuit of knowledge for the glory of God. Then, we turn to "Thinking Vertically, Writing Horizontally: A Trivium Framed First-Year Composition Course" by Galvin F. Hurley. He uses the trivium as an educational framework to construct a writing course for college students. Finally, we close with John J. Jasso's "A Simple Twist of Faith: Adopting Catholic Through to Popular Hierarchies." This article identifies dialectics and rhetoric as promising arts that could raise the profile of the Catholic imagination as a response to contemporary American secular culture.
Listening through Catholic Media
Guest Edited by: Brian Gilchrist
The articles in this special issue of Listening announce various approaches to understanding Catholic Media, an interpretive lens through which media is grounded in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. We begin with "Transcendent Media: Sacramentals and the Roman Rite of Mass" by Anthony M. Wachs. He invites us to consider how Marshall McLuhan's media theories offer further analyses of the liturgy as meditations between God and humankind. Next, we turn to Brian Gilchrist's "John of Salisbury's Metalogicon: Articulating the Trivium as Social Communion." This article positions the medieval trivium, the verbal arts of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, as a system that gathers educators and students together in the pursuit of knowledge for the glory of God. Then, we turn to "Thinking Vertically, Writing Horizontally: A Trivium Framed First-Year Composition Course" by Galvin F. Hurley. He uses the trivium as an educational framework to construct a writing course for college students. Finally, we close with John J. Jasso's "A Simple Twist of Faith: Adopting Catholic Through to Popular Hierarchies." This article identifies dialectics and rhetoric as promising arts that could raise the profile of the Catholic imagination as a response to contemporary American secular culture.
Winter, 2018
The Theology of the Body: Developing New Context
Guest Edited by: Susan Windley-Daoust
When I was on a recent college visit with my son at a nationally regarded liberal arts college, I saw a poster for a summer course: the philosophical anthropology of dance. I immediately wanted to stop the tour, find the professor, and take that course. (Or dance the samba in celebration of a great idea!) What a brilliant inspiration, I thought--get the dance students (this poster was in their theatre area) to consider the form, function, and meaning of the expressive body, what the body expresses in itself and what we intend it to express through the tradition and practice of dance. But, I rejoined the tour--pounding the pavement, pondering the poster--and mused, while the course would be fascinating, this is not a faith-affiliated college. What would be perfect would be a course on the Theology of Dance, joining the insights of the anthropology proposed by John Paul II's audiences with the common experience of dancing and watching dance there performed. What an exceptional set of possibilities there, to reach out and explore the communicative meaning of the human body!
This set of essays engages the broader possibilities within the Theology of the Body from a variety of other directions, both to challenge the audiences and explore the opportunities. We engage the audiences and/or their insights through a hermeneutic of friendship.
The first essay, by Susan Windley-Daoust, explores a primary theme in the audiences, human receptivity, through what it means for the human being to be a receiver of these writings (specifically, the art of reader-response criticism). The second essay, by Tim Muldoon, puts the insights of the Theology of the Body in dialogue with Pope Francis's integral ecology presented in Laudato Si'. In the third essay, Christine Falk Dalessio argues that prominent scholars in gender studies could benefit from an understanding of "the prophetism of the body," as those who appreciate the Theology of the Body could support certain insights from gender studies. In the final essay, Tim O'Malley brings his expertise in liturgical theology to reflect upon the embodied sign of the family.
This set of essays is meant to move beyond theological camps and impressions and instead provide grist for the mill, sparking different ways of thinking about the Theology of the Body audiences. For the question behind its work is a timeless one: How is God's creation of us as human, male and female, perceived, received, expressed, and lived in the wild expanse of the human life?
The Theology of the Body: Developing New Context
Guest Edited by: Susan Windley-Daoust
When I was on a recent college visit with my son at a nationally regarded liberal arts college, I saw a poster for a summer course: the philosophical anthropology of dance. I immediately wanted to stop the tour, find the professor, and take that course. (Or dance the samba in celebration of a great idea!) What a brilliant inspiration, I thought--get the dance students (this poster was in their theatre area) to consider the form, function, and meaning of the expressive body, what the body expresses in itself and what we intend it to express through the tradition and practice of dance. But, I rejoined the tour--pounding the pavement, pondering the poster--and mused, while the course would be fascinating, this is not a faith-affiliated college. What would be perfect would be a course on the Theology of Dance, joining the insights of the anthropology proposed by John Paul II's audiences with the common experience of dancing and watching dance there performed. What an exceptional set of possibilities there, to reach out and explore the communicative meaning of the human body!
This set of essays engages the broader possibilities within the Theology of the Body from a variety of other directions, both to challenge the audiences and explore the opportunities. We engage the audiences and/or their insights through a hermeneutic of friendship.
The first essay, by Susan Windley-Daoust, explores a primary theme in the audiences, human receptivity, through what it means for the human being to be a receiver of these writings (specifically, the art of reader-response criticism). The second essay, by Tim Muldoon, puts the insights of the Theology of the Body in dialogue with Pope Francis's integral ecology presented in Laudato Si'. In the third essay, Christine Falk Dalessio argues that prominent scholars in gender studies could benefit from an understanding of "the prophetism of the body," as those who appreciate the Theology of the Body could support certain insights from gender studies. In the final essay, Tim O'Malley brings his expertise in liturgical theology to reflect upon the embodied sign of the family.
This set of essays is meant to move beyond theological camps and impressions and instead provide grist for the mill, sparking different ways of thinking about the Theology of the Body audiences. For the question behind its work is a timeless one: How is God's creation of us as human, male and female, perceived, received, expressed, and lived in the wild expanse of the human life?
Fall, 2017
Listening to Our Monsters
Guest Edited by: Michael Paradiso-Michau
Welcome, courageous reader, to this special edition of Listening, devoted to "listening to our monsters." Since the mid-1990s, the multidisciplinary field of scholarship known as Monster Studies has emerged and proliferated on the academic scene. The issues, figures, and topics interrogated in this volume offer a contribution to this burgeoning field of study. As guest editor, I invited eleven authors to attune their critical senses to "listening" to their respective monster. What is it that the monster has to say? And to whom? Why is their message delivered in that particular way?
Each of our essayists was posed three questions to frame their remarks. First, "Identify, and provide appropriate background for, your selected monster. Why and how is this particular monster culturally and/or historically significant?" The essays that follow contextualize and historicize their objects of inquiry, adding helpful perspective and relevant folklore regarding the monster under consideration. Second, "Etymologically understood as a specific, foreboding form of communication--a warning sign, an omen, a portent--what is your selected monster saying? To whom? And how is this particular message being communicated?" Among scholars of Monster Studies, we are well aware of the etymology of the term "monster." Understood in its etymological context, a monster is a "warning sign," an "omen" or "portent." What is each monster warning its victim or community about? The next question to ask, of course, is this: since a monster is an ominous form of communication, what exactly or approximately are monsters saying? To whom? How are their messages being conveyed? The third question was, "How have 'listeners' (readers, viewers, survivors, etc.) responded to your selected monster? How should or could we respond to this monstrous message or prophecy?" A message is pointless--and the communicative event is rendered fruitless--unless it makes some sort of impact on, or elicits a specific response from, its intended recipient. The essays that follow address these three questions in their own ways.
In what follows, you will encounter a veritable smorgasbord of monstrous ideas, histories, provocations, and perspectives. Enjoy...if you dare.
Listening to Our Monsters
Guest Edited by: Michael Paradiso-Michau
Welcome, courageous reader, to this special edition of Listening, devoted to "listening to our monsters." Since the mid-1990s, the multidisciplinary field of scholarship known as Monster Studies has emerged and proliferated on the academic scene. The issues, figures, and topics interrogated in this volume offer a contribution to this burgeoning field of study. As guest editor, I invited eleven authors to attune their critical senses to "listening" to their respective monster. What is it that the monster has to say? And to whom? Why is their message delivered in that particular way?
Each of our essayists was posed three questions to frame their remarks. First, "Identify, and provide appropriate background for, your selected monster. Why and how is this particular monster culturally and/or historically significant?" The essays that follow contextualize and historicize their objects of inquiry, adding helpful perspective and relevant folklore regarding the monster under consideration. Second, "Etymologically understood as a specific, foreboding form of communication--a warning sign, an omen, a portent--what is your selected monster saying? To whom? And how is this particular message being communicated?" Among scholars of Monster Studies, we are well aware of the etymology of the term "monster." Understood in its etymological context, a monster is a "warning sign," an "omen" or "portent." What is each monster warning its victim or community about? The next question to ask, of course, is this: since a monster is an ominous form of communication, what exactly or approximately are monsters saying? To whom? How are their messages being conveyed? The third question was, "How have 'listeners' (readers, viewers, survivors, etc.) responded to your selected monster? How should or could we respond to this monstrous message or prophecy?" A message is pointless--and the communicative event is rendered fruitless--unless it makes some sort of impact on, or elicits a specific response from, its intended recipient. The essays that follow address these three questions in their own ways.
In what follows, you will encounter a veritable smorgasbord of monstrous ideas, histories, provocations, and perspectives. Enjoy...if you dare.
Spring, 2017
Reflections on Pedagogy: Philosophical and Applied Perspectives
This issue of Listening provides an opportunity to attend to reflections on pedagogy. The four contributions in this issue vary in length and focus, each offering insights to inform how we think about the task of teaching, how we find meaning in our tasks as instructors, and how listening to voices from past and present, including our own and the voices of diverse others, shapes our orientation to the contexts and content of our instruction. In the following pages, we will hear from persons in various stages of their professional journeys--some just beginning their academic lives, some seasoned and steeped in decades of experience. Each article brings something for us to listen to, for, and with. Linda Coleman asks us to consider the importance of listening to students entering an English-speaking educational context for whom English is a second language. McDowell Marinchak, DeIuliis, and Flinko apply listening as an element of professional civility to the business and professional communication classroom. E. James Baesler reminds us that life is a precious gift; our appreciation of that gift translates into our teaching. Jonathan Crist turns to the Catholic intellectual tradition to consider how attentiveness to the mission of a Spiritan university offers creative ways of responding to students who have transgressed codes of conduct in the classroom. Thank you for listening to this issue.
Reflections on Pedagogy: Philosophical and Applied Perspectives
This issue of Listening provides an opportunity to attend to reflections on pedagogy. The four contributions in this issue vary in length and focus, each offering insights to inform how we think about the task of teaching, how we find meaning in our tasks as instructors, and how listening to voices from past and present, including our own and the voices of diverse others, shapes our orientation to the contexts and content of our instruction. In the following pages, we will hear from persons in various stages of their professional journeys--some just beginning their academic lives, some seasoned and steeped in decades of experience. Each article brings something for us to listen to, for, and with. Linda Coleman asks us to consider the importance of listening to students entering an English-speaking educational context for whom English is a second language. McDowell Marinchak, DeIuliis, and Flinko apply listening as an element of professional civility to the business and professional communication classroom. E. James Baesler reminds us that life is a precious gift; our appreciation of that gift translates into our teaching. Jonathan Crist turns to the Catholic intellectual tradition to consider how attentiveness to the mission of a Spiritan university offers creative ways of responding to students who have transgressed codes of conduct in the classroom. Thank you for listening to this issue.
Winter, 2017
Imagination and Cooperation in the Care for our Common Home
Guest Edited by: Christopher J. Renz, OP
In his encyclical letter, "Laudato si: On care for our common home," Pope Francis invited all people to enter into dialogue on our shared responsibility to respect and care for this planet. On October 5, 2017, the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology (DSPT) in Berkeley, California sponsored a conference designed to open up such a dialogue on the anthropology of the human person. By engaging leading experts from evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, and theology, along with members of our own school and those faculty and students of Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley, participants explored the role that human imagination can play in building a cooperative approach to the care for our common home. The goal was to "test" whether or not an interdisciplinary conversation, especially one between experts who do not "naturally" associate, could bear real fruit in the form of practical and tangible steps in a coordinated effort to care for our planet.
In this issue, we present to you the papers from the conference along with a summary essay that draws from the insights of the plenary session and the group discussions that followed. The summary essay points to new questions that arise as we continue to explore the possibilities for cooperation in the care for our common home. Finally, the summary essay identifies ways that the DSPT can continue researching the topic and engaging in conversations within the academy and society.
Fall, 2016
Listening to the Transcendent: Thomas Poole Pickett's The Offering
Editor Introduction by: Janie Harden Fritz, Ph.D.
In June 2015, at Duquense University's biennial Philosophy of Communication conference, hosted by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, in order to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Listening/Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture (formerly Listening/Journal of Religion and Culture), Thomas Poole Pickett read selections from his poetic work, The Offering. This reading, which held all in attendance spellbound, followed a panel focused on philosophy of communication and poetry and marked, in performative fashion--indeed, ushered in--what I will identify as a "poetic turn" in philosophy of communication.
As the purpose of Listening/Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture is to be attentive to the presence of ideas and their work in the world within a given historical moment, calling forth their expression in a voice to which we may give ear, and because of the significance of this embodied performative event and its coincidence with the fiftieth anniversary of Listening, it seemed appropriate to present an issue of the journal dedicated to the complete text of Thomas Poole Pickett's remarkable poem, which speaks of a transcendent reality that lends its truth to what Russell Kirk terms "the permanent things."
It is my pleasure, therefore, as Editor-in-Chief of the journal, to host the first published appearance of The Offering, by Thomas Poole Pickett, in its entirety. It is, indeed, a worthy gift to the world.
Imagination and Cooperation in the Care for our Common Home
Guest Edited by: Christopher J. Renz, OP
In his encyclical letter, "Laudato si: On care for our common home," Pope Francis invited all people to enter into dialogue on our shared responsibility to respect and care for this planet. On October 5, 2017, the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology (DSPT) in Berkeley, California sponsored a conference designed to open up such a dialogue on the anthropology of the human person. By engaging leading experts from evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, and theology, along with members of our own school and those faculty and students of Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley, participants explored the role that human imagination can play in building a cooperative approach to the care for our common home. The goal was to "test" whether or not an interdisciplinary conversation, especially one between experts who do not "naturally" associate, could bear real fruit in the form of practical and tangible steps in a coordinated effort to care for our planet.
In this issue, we present to you the papers from the conference along with a summary essay that draws from the insights of the plenary session and the group discussions that followed. The summary essay points to new questions that arise as we continue to explore the possibilities for cooperation in the care for our common home. Finally, the summary essay identifies ways that the DSPT can continue researching the topic and engaging in conversations within the academy and society.
Fall, 2016
Listening to the Transcendent: Thomas Poole Pickett's The Offering
Editor Introduction by: Janie Harden Fritz, Ph.D.
In June 2015, at Duquense University's biennial Philosophy of Communication conference, hosted by the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, in order to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Listening/Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture (formerly Listening/Journal of Religion and Culture), Thomas Poole Pickett read selections from his poetic work, The Offering. This reading, which held all in attendance spellbound, followed a panel focused on philosophy of communication and poetry and marked, in performative fashion--indeed, ushered in--what I will identify as a "poetic turn" in philosophy of communication.
As the purpose of Listening/Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture is to be attentive to the presence of ideas and their work in the world within a given historical moment, calling forth their expression in a voice to which we may give ear, and because of the significance of this embodied performative event and its coincidence with the fiftieth anniversary of Listening, it seemed appropriate to present an issue of the journal dedicated to the complete text of Thomas Poole Pickett's remarkable poem, which speaks of a transcendent reality that lends its truth to what Russell Kirk terms "the permanent things."
It is my pleasure, therefore, as Editor-in-Chief of the journal, to host the first published appearance of The Offering, by Thomas Poole Pickett, in its entirety. It is, indeed, a worthy gift to the world.
Spring, 2016
Reading for Good: Literature and Ethics
Guest Edited by: Mark McVann, F.S.C.
Reading for good? Literature and ethics? In an era when it seems that more and more (especially young) people feel "threatened" and "unsafe" after seeing the name "Trump" chalked on a sidewalk, as happened at Emory University, or need "trigger warnings" to steel themselves for hearing about suicide before reading Antigone, for example, or must flee to a "safe space" or 'recovery room' after being exposed to ideas that they disagree with at Brown University, it is clear that reading can cause discomfort. This is probably all to the good, especially if the places where such discomfort is engendered are college campuses.
There are, of course, tragic and real threats to people arising from hateful ideologies that can motivate hateful acts. But when ethics is reduced to making sure no one is "threatened" by hearing challenging ideas or reading about disagreeable topics, and when censorship is regarded as a virtue because it spares the feelings of the sensitive, ethics has been cheapened to meaningless, empty formalism. Informed, disciplined, and robust debate, open discourse, and challenging reading are banished as non-inclusive, divisive, and insensitive.
Readers of Listening, then, have before them four articles whose authors take life-changing story and literature very seriously. In his piece, "Dionysus: Stranger, God, Monster," Michael Paradiso-Michau deploys the relatively new, but rapidly growing, literary critical approach known as Monster Studies. Marilyn Nissim-Sabat's "Good Reading Does Not Read Out: Reading Radical Economics Out of Uncle Tom's Cabin" addresses the question how it is that a recently published interpretation of Uncle Tom's Cabin is blind to one of its most important and thematic features: "the economic radicalism which is manifestly there in it." William C. Graham's contribution, "Pages & Grace," reflects on the power of story to charm, illuminate, entertain, sustain, challenge, and heal. Mark McVann's "Reading A Different Drummer: Hope for a New Exodus" investigates the claim that this novel is a moving and hopeful book, as well as one profoundly influenced by the Bible.
Winter, 2016
The Ethics of Language Development
Guest Edited by: Elizabeth S. Parks
Language is intimately tied to people's identities and cultural expression. Yet, social norms and behaviors endanger the health of language and social ecosystems around the globe, leading many language advocates to assert that if the existing global language situation continues in its current course, thousands of languages in use today will become extinct by the end of the century. This issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture offers a cross-disciplinary look at the ethics of communicating in and about language in different cultural contexts.
In the first essay, Larin Adams offers a brief overview of the language development process and ethical issues that arise over the course of language revitalization in "Dissonance in Participatory Language Development." In the second essay, J. Albert Bickford considers how language identification processes have been pursued, and he reflects on more ethical ways to move forward in "The Ethics of Language Identification and ISO 639-3." In "Language Standardization and Language Endangerment," Ken Decker discusses the ethics of language standardization and the potential for language endangerment through the process. In the fourth essay, "Data Curation: Ethical Communication through Purposeful Action," Shun-Sho Fong considers how ethical handling of data is comprised of not only the use and application of research findings but also the method in which data is cared for throughout its entire lifecycle. In the final essay, "Language Witnessing: Exploring an Intergenerational Cosmopolitan Ethic of Care for Endangered Languages," Elizabeth Parks reminds readers that language death is often closely associated with personal losses felt by individuals and costs to communities that reflect swooping social injustice performed globally.
It is the hope that these essays will lead us to think more critically about the ethical values that are often taken for granted in the endangered language and language development movements.
The Ethics of Language Development
Guest Edited by: Elizabeth S. Parks
Language is intimately tied to people's identities and cultural expression. Yet, social norms and behaviors endanger the health of language and social ecosystems around the globe, leading many language advocates to assert that if the existing global language situation continues in its current course, thousands of languages in use today will become extinct by the end of the century. This issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture offers a cross-disciplinary look at the ethics of communicating in and about language in different cultural contexts.
In the first essay, Larin Adams offers a brief overview of the language development process and ethical issues that arise over the course of language revitalization in "Dissonance in Participatory Language Development." In the second essay, J. Albert Bickford considers how language identification processes have been pursued, and he reflects on more ethical ways to move forward in "The Ethics of Language Identification and ISO 639-3." In "Language Standardization and Language Endangerment," Ken Decker discusses the ethics of language standardization and the potential for language endangerment through the process. In the fourth essay, "Data Curation: Ethical Communication through Purposeful Action," Shun-Sho Fong considers how ethical handling of data is comprised of not only the use and application of research findings but also the method in which data is cared for throughout its entire lifecycle. In the final essay, "Language Witnessing: Exploring an Intergenerational Cosmopolitan Ethic of Care for Endangered Languages," Elizabeth Parks reminds readers that language death is often closely associated with personal losses felt by individuals and costs to communities that reflect swooping social injustice performed globally.
It is the hope that these essays will lead us to think more critically about the ethical values that are often taken for granted in the endangered language and language development movements.
Fall, 2015
Swallowed by the Analytic/Continental Divide: Connecting the Thought of the Inklings to Philosophy of Communication
Guest Edited by: Anthony M. Wachs
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are widely known for their literary works of fiction, and Lewis, in particular, for his Christian apologetics. However, less widely known is the literary group, the Inklings, to which they belonged. The Inklings was an early 20th century groups associated with Oxford University that was primarily concerned with the production, reading, and criticism of literature. The fact that they are overlooked is easily understandable since they were non-analytic English intellectuals who brought philology, literature, and history to bear on the philosophy of language and communication, but they were working at the same time as analytic thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Ayer, and Austin on the one side and phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty on the other. Consequently, their potential contribution to philosophy of communication gets swallowed up by the analytic/Continental divide. The philosophical works of the Inklings, however, can be useful for bridging the divide between these two philosophical traditions. Although the thought of the Inklings was largely passed over, the authors of this issue of Listening demonstrate that the Inklings are still relevant to the philosophy of communication in the 21st century. To this end, the authors of this issue analyze various Inklings with regard to the value of their works to philosophy and communication.
Swallowed by the Analytic/Continental Divide: Connecting the Thought of the Inklings to Philosophy of Communication
Guest Edited by: Anthony M. Wachs
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are widely known for their literary works of fiction, and Lewis, in particular, for his Christian apologetics. However, less widely known is the literary group, the Inklings, to which they belonged. The Inklings was an early 20th century groups associated with Oxford University that was primarily concerned with the production, reading, and criticism of literature. The fact that they are overlooked is easily understandable since they were non-analytic English intellectuals who brought philology, literature, and history to bear on the philosophy of language and communication, but they were working at the same time as analytic thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Ayer, and Austin on the one side and phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty on the other. Consequently, their potential contribution to philosophy of communication gets swallowed up by the analytic/Continental divide. The philosophical works of the Inklings, however, can be useful for bridging the divide between these two philosophical traditions. Although the thought of the Inklings was largely passed over, the authors of this issue of Listening demonstrate that the Inklings are still relevant to the philosophy of communication in the 21st century. To this end, the authors of this issue analyze various Inklings with regard to the value of their works to philosophy and communication.
Spring, 2015
Levinas, Interreligious Dialogue, and Ethics
Guest Edited by: David Seltzer
The following is a selection of papers from the 8th annual conference of the North American Levinas Society, held at Duquesne University in July 2013. The topic of the conference was Levinas and Interreligious Dialogue, and it was striking that many of the papers chose to address this theme by questioning the conference topic itself. What exactly constitutes a religion? Is religion defined by a confessional faith, or a set of practices, or a response to the other, and can one conception of religion actually interfere with another? Are Eastern forms of thought--Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto--religions, or philosophies, or do they simply not fit into any Western category? Can atheism be considered a religion? How are we to understand the idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition which, as Drew Dalton pointed out, exists only for Christians and not for Jews? Is Judaism a religion or, as Levinas suggests, a certain way of living? Can one be Jewish without believing in or obeying God?
Levinas, Interreligious Dialogue, and Ethics
Guest Edited by: David Seltzer
The following is a selection of papers from the 8th annual conference of the North American Levinas Society, held at Duquesne University in July 2013. The topic of the conference was Levinas and Interreligious Dialogue, and it was striking that many of the papers chose to address this theme by questioning the conference topic itself. What exactly constitutes a religion? Is religion defined by a confessional faith, or a set of practices, or a response to the other, and can one conception of religion actually interfere with another? Are Eastern forms of thought--Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto--religions, or philosophies, or do they simply not fit into any Western category? Can atheism be considered a religion? How are we to understand the idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition which, as Drew Dalton pointed out, exists only for Christians and not for Jews? Is Judaism a religion or, as Levinas suggests, a certain way of living? Can one be Jewish without believing in or obeying God?
Winter, 2015
Listening to Frantz Fanon on Postcolonial Humanism & Ethics
Guest Edited by: Douglas Ficek
Nigel Gibson, after winning the Frantz Fanon Prize at the annual meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2009, observed that one of the most common questions about Frantz Fanon these days is whether or not he is still relevant, whether or not he is still worthy of serious theoretical and/or practical attention. Fanon is interesting, it is argued, but not particularly important - especially given the uniqueness of our historical moment. In his acceptance speech, Gibson flatly rejected this dismissive argument and the initial question itself. He said that the question isn't whether or not Fanon is relevant today - spoiler alert: he absolutely is - but rather whether or not we are relevant to Fanon. What did he mean by this? Quite simply, he meant that Fanon left us a legacy of libratory thought and action, and that we should examine ourselves in terms of its normative content, asking how (and to what extent) we have committed our minds and bodies to the ongoing struggle against neocolonial exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization, asking how (and to what extent) we have contributed to the Fanonian project of creating a more human world.
The four essays in this special issue of Listening address different questions, but they clearly share something: a deep commitment to the Fanonian project of creating a more human world. Perhaps in some small way they can contribute to that ambitious, unabashedly normative goal.
Listening to Frantz Fanon on Postcolonial Humanism & Ethics
Guest Edited by: Douglas Ficek
Nigel Gibson, after winning the Frantz Fanon Prize at the annual meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2009, observed that one of the most common questions about Frantz Fanon these days is whether or not he is still relevant, whether or not he is still worthy of serious theoretical and/or practical attention. Fanon is interesting, it is argued, but not particularly important - especially given the uniqueness of our historical moment. In his acceptance speech, Gibson flatly rejected this dismissive argument and the initial question itself. He said that the question isn't whether or not Fanon is relevant today - spoiler alert: he absolutely is - but rather whether or not we are relevant to Fanon. What did he mean by this? Quite simply, he meant that Fanon left us a legacy of libratory thought and action, and that we should examine ourselves in terms of its normative content, asking how (and to what extent) we have committed our minds and bodies to the ongoing struggle against neocolonial exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization, asking how (and to what extent) we have contributed to the Fanonian project of creating a more human world.
The four essays in this special issue of Listening address different questions, but they clearly share something: a deep commitment to the Fanonian project of creating a more human world. Perhaps in some small way they can contribute to that ambitious, unabashedly normative goal.
Fall, 2014
Human Rights as Social Constructions
Guest Edited by: Thomas E. Wren
Today rights talk is everywhere. It is spoken by social activists, politicians and policy wonks, practicing lawyers and legal theorists, victims of structural injustices such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and of course by moral philosophers and educators.
In this issue, the article "Human Rights as Social Constructions" is most directly focused on the socially constructed character of the concept of rights, especially the contemporary notion of human rights. The second article, "Educating for Human Rights Consciousness," is a remarkable ethnographic study of the reception by Guatemalan school children and young adults of a human rights educational program that was set up in the aftermath of their country's horrific 36-year civil war. In the article "Human Rights and the Rest of Us," human rights theory is focused on through tools of contemporary analytical philosophy rather than real-life narratives and case studies. The final article, "From Rightness to Rights: A Case Study of Moral Discourse," provides a useful historical context within which the essentially constructed character of rights discourse can be understood.
Human Rights as Social Constructions
Guest Edited by: Thomas E. Wren
Today rights talk is everywhere. It is spoken by social activists, politicians and policy wonks, practicing lawyers and legal theorists, victims of structural injustices such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and of course by moral philosophers and educators.
In this issue, the article "Human Rights as Social Constructions" is most directly focused on the socially constructed character of the concept of rights, especially the contemporary notion of human rights. The second article, "Educating for Human Rights Consciousness," is a remarkable ethnographic study of the reception by Guatemalan school children and young adults of a human rights educational program that was set up in the aftermath of their country's horrific 36-year civil war. In the article "Human Rights and the Rest of Us," human rights theory is focused on through tools of contemporary analytical philosophy rather than real-life narratives and case studies. The final article, "From Rightness to Rights: A Case Study of Moral Discourse," provides a useful historical context within which the essentially constructed character of rights discourse can be understood.
Spring, 2014
Listening to Calvin O. Schrag: Communicative Praxis in Application
Guest Edited by: Susan Mancino
This special issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture contains graduate student papers engaging the study and application of philosophy of communication through the work of Calvin O. Schrag. The origin of these essays lies in a Masters level philosophy of communication course taught by Pat Arneson at Duquesne University. The course and the papers in this special issue recognize Schrag as an exemplary scholar of philosophy of communication and his scholarship as an exemplary point of engagement with the "why" behind human communication.
Listening to Calvin O. Schrag: Communicative Praxis in Application
Guest Edited by: Susan Mancino
This special issue of Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture contains graduate student papers engaging the study and application of philosophy of communication through the work of Calvin O. Schrag. The origin of these essays lies in a Masters level philosophy of communication course taught by Pat Arneson at Duquesne University. The course and the papers in this special issue recognize Schrag as an exemplary scholar of philosophy of communication and his scholarship as an exemplary point of engagement with the "why" behind human communication.
Winter, 2014
Contemplative Ways of Knowing in Higher Education
Guest Edited by: Ozum Ucok-Sayrak
The main questions that bring together the essays in this issue include: What goes missing when our educational institutions focus their goals on rearing "current men" and, "elevat[ing] information acquisition to the goal of education"? Is it possible that the sole transmission of information can guide action without the cultivation of "fully developed human beings" whose expert knowledge and analytical skills are joined with their capacities for compassion, connectedness, and country - what the Dalai Lama calls the "ethics of the heart"? Aren't we failing our students if what we teach neglects to offer some kind of a connection to a sense of meaning and direction in/for their lives, and to a well-lived life?
The essays in this issue are concerned with attending to the "full range of human capacities for knowing, teaching and learning" by extending the more conventional, rational-empirical-critical ways of knowing in the classroom to include contemplative knowing that invites attention to and exploration of one's own internal experience of the subject matter along with the subject matter itself.
Contemplative Ways of Knowing in Higher Education
Guest Edited by: Ozum Ucok-Sayrak
The main questions that bring together the essays in this issue include: What goes missing when our educational institutions focus their goals on rearing "current men" and, "elevat[ing] information acquisition to the goal of education"? Is it possible that the sole transmission of information can guide action without the cultivation of "fully developed human beings" whose expert knowledge and analytical skills are joined with their capacities for compassion, connectedness, and country - what the Dalai Lama calls the "ethics of the heart"? Aren't we failing our students if what we teach neglects to offer some kind of a connection to a sense of meaning and direction in/for their lives, and to a well-lived life?
The essays in this issue are concerned with attending to the "full range of human capacities for knowing, teaching and learning" by extending the more conventional, rational-empirical-critical ways of knowing in the classroom to include contemplative knowing that invites attention to and exploration of one's own internal experience of the subject matter along with the subject matter itself.
Fall, 2013
Semiotics and the Sacred
Guest Edited by: Deborah Eicher-Catt
The articles included in this issue all seek to explore the complex signifying relation - between our experience and understanding of the profane or mundane aspects of existence and their distinction from what we identify as the "other worldly" or the sacred.
Semiotics and the Sacred
Guest Edited by: Deborah Eicher-Catt
The articles included in this issue all seek to explore the complex signifying relation - between our experience and understanding of the profane or mundane aspects of existence and their distinction from what we identify as the "other worldly" or the sacred.
Spring, 2013
Communicology and Culture
Guest Edited by: Isaac E. Catt
The articles included in this special issue on Communicology and Culture are intended as an introduction to a new way of thinking about human communication. Culture consists of verbal and nonverbal codes that organize signs into systems of discourse. Discursive formations impose implicit and explicit rules on our experiences and behavior. Thus, the articles published here exemplify theoretical and applied work at the intersection of culture and communication.
Communicology and Culture
Guest Edited by: Isaac E. Catt
The articles included in this special issue on Communicology and Culture are intended as an introduction to a new way of thinking about human communication. Culture consists of verbal and nonverbal codes that organize signs into systems of discourse. Discursive formations impose implicit and explicit rules on our experiences and behavior. Thus, the articles published here exemplify theoretical and applied work at the intersection of culture and communication.
Winter, 2013
Crossing Boundaries: Christians and Muslims in Study and Dialogue
Edited by: Sr. Marianne Farina, CSC
These essays illustrate how listening and learning across religious borders provides critical resources for the academy and society. They point to that fact that a deeper understanding of the teachings and practices of the world's religions can foster good scholarship and relations among believers.
Crossing Boundaries: Christians and Muslims in Study and Dialogue
Edited by: Sr. Marianne Farina, CSC
These essays illustrate how listening and learning across religious borders provides critical resources for the academy and society. They point to that fact that a deeper understanding of the teachings and practices of the world's religions can foster good scholarship and relations among believers.
Fall, 2012
Listening to Mark: Reflections on the Second Gospel
Edited by: Mark McVann, F.S.C.
The work on the Second Gospel presented here represents some of the major contemporary currents of scholarly approaches to the gospel. Both challenging and rewarding, this issue of Listening Journal will, we hope, illustrate some of the wide-ranging and creative methods and approaches used by today's biblical scholars. More important, of course, we hope that the issue will encourage our readers to turn again with new questions, fresh insights, and a deepened appreciation for the challenging and inspired, difficult and beautiful Gospel of Mark.
Listening to Mark: Reflections on the Second Gospel
Edited by: Mark McVann, F.S.C.
The work on the Second Gospel presented here represents some of the major contemporary currents of scholarly approaches to the gospel. Both challenging and rewarding, this issue of Listening Journal will, we hope, illustrate some of the wide-ranging and creative methods and approaches used by today's biblical scholars. More important, of course, we hope that the issue will encourage our readers to turn again with new questions, fresh insights, and a deepened appreciation for the challenging and inspired, difficult and beautiful Gospel of Mark.
Spring, 2012
Catholicism and the Court
Edited by: Jerome C. Foss, Ph.D.
This issue aims at providing a beginning to the conversation addressing the question "in what ways, if any, can the Catholic intellectual tradition inform American judicial philosophy and practice?" Whatever the answer to this question, it stands to reason that Catholics will always disagree on particular applications of law. The discussion does not aim at revealing a single, doctrinal Catholic interpretation of the constitution, but rather how judges can approach the Constitution informed by this tradition and committed to faithful discharge of their duties in accord with the law.
Catholicism and the Court
Edited by: Jerome C. Foss, Ph.D.
This issue aims at providing a beginning to the conversation addressing the question "in what ways, if any, can the Catholic intellectual tradition inform American judicial philosophy and practice?" Whatever the answer to this question, it stands to reason that Catholics will always disagree on particular applications of law. The discussion does not aim at revealing a single, doctrinal Catholic interpretation of the constitution, but rather how judges can approach the Constitution informed by this tradition and committed to faithful discharge of their duties in accord with the law.
Winter, 2012
A Catholic Engagement with Liberalism in the Twenty-first Century
Edited by: Janie Harden Fritz, Ph.D.
This issue seeks to answer the questions:
(1) How can the Church listen to a new historical moment and to tradition, to changing practices in public and private life and to enduring convictions about what it means to flourish as a human being, to the strident voice of an age in which the New Atheism demands a hearing even as varied fundamentalists advocate competing visions of the (common) good?
(2) What philosophical resources can the Church bring to bear from her store of riches to offer wisdom to an increasingly secularized world?
(3) How do Catholics participate in a pluralistic public sphere in ways that honor the "local soil" of a democratic society and remain faithful to a Catholic teaching?
A Catholic Engagement with Liberalism in the Twenty-first Century
Edited by: Janie Harden Fritz, Ph.D.
This issue seeks to answer the questions:
(1) How can the Church listen to a new historical moment and to tradition, to changing practices in public and private life and to enduring convictions about what it means to flourish as a human being, to the strident voice of an age in which the New Atheism demands a hearing even as varied fundamentalists advocate competing visions of the (common) good?
(2) What philosophical resources can the Church bring to bear from her store of riches to offer wisdom to an increasingly secularized world?
(3) How do Catholics participate in a pluralistic public sphere in ways that honor the "local soil" of a democratic society and remain faithful to a Catholic teaching?
Fall, 2011
Rethinking the Secular
Edited by: Ada S. Jaarsma, Ph.D.
The essays in this issue are to invite readers to contemplate her or his own existential hopes. Who do we become, in and through the embodied and relational hopes that animate our lives?
Rethinking the Secular
Edited by: Ada S. Jaarsma, Ph.D.
The essays in this issue are to invite readers to contemplate her or his own existential hopes. Who do we become, in and through the embodied and relational hopes that animate our lives?
Spring, 2011
Intellectual Priests Across the Ages
Edited by: Janie Harden Fritz, Duquesne University
Examines Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Walter Ong, and Henry Koren as intellectual priests responding to questions
of a given historical moment.
Intellectual Priests Across the Ages
Edited by: Janie Harden Fritz, Duquesne University
Examines Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Walter Ong, and Henry Koren as intellectual priests responding to questions
of a given historical moment.
Winter, 2011
Listening to Leisure
Edited by: Annette Holba, Plymouth State University
Offers reflection on the philosophical intersections between leisure and human communication that will be meaningful in an age of fast paced
communication and information overload.
Listening to Leisure
Edited by: Annette Holba, Plymouth State University
Offers reflection on the philosophical intersections between leisure and human communication that will be meaningful in an age of fast paced
communication and information overload.
Fall, 2010
Human rights Discourse Across Religious Traditions
Edited by: Marianne Farina, C.S.C., Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley
Explores how consideration of religion in a human rights context and human rights in a religious context can guide us, reflecting on the type of human rights
thinking that enables us to speak of "the right to religion" and "the right to human rights."
Human rights Discourse Across Religious Traditions
Edited by: Marianne Farina, C.S.C., Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley
Explores how consideration of religion in a human rights context and human rights in a religious context can guide us, reflecting on the type of human rights
thinking that enables us to speak of "the right to religion" and "the right to human rights."
Spring, 2010
World Religions
Increasingly the presence of Sikhs, Hindus, Korean Presbyterians, Muslims, and members of other religions in growing numbers is a new force in
contemporary America.
World Religions
Increasingly the presence of Sikhs, Hindus, Korean Presbyterians, Muslims, and members of other religions in growing numbers is a new force in
contemporary America.
Winter, 2010
The Liberal Arts in Catholic Higher Education
Edited by: Professor William Hodap, College of Saint Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota
The Liberal Arts in Catholic Higher Education
Edited by: Professor William Hodap, College of Saint Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota
