Spring 2015 | Number 42

CIRCA News from the University of Chicago Divinity School Found In Translation At Wednesday lunch on February 18, 2015 in the Common Room we held a Dean’s Forum on Professor Anthony C. Yu’s four-volume tome, The Journey to the West (University of Chicago Press, 2012), which comprises an extended introduction and thoroughly revised translation of the classic sixteenth-century Chinese novel. Professor Yu’s work is a masterpiece of wrong (human) prey or Cinderella-like motifs translation, history of religions analysis, one is dealing with “always available, never and deft and keen literary criticism; indeed, copyrighted folklore.” it is a work of Religion and Literature— In the second response, Professor Brook the signature field of the Divinity School in Letter Ziporyn, translator of the Zhuangzi and which Professor Yu received his PhD and other Chinese texts, noted the monumental served as distinguished professor—at its scholarly achievement this revision finest. When the original four-volume set from the constitutes, and its “sleekness of tone, was completed, in a review in 1983 in the briskness of rhythm” and proximity to the New York Times, Professor David Lattimore “comic allegro of the original.” The Journey of Brown University said the work completes Dean to the West, Ziporyn echoed with Yu, “one of the great ventures of our time in emphasizes the paradoxes of the public humanistic translation and publication.” and private, the obedient and rebellious, How can one improve on that? the attempt to use language and culture to In his opening remarks, Professor Yu seek the truth, and the ultimate acceptance described some of the challenges facing that the truth will always transcend them. any translator of this work, which in Here Ziporyn brought in the saying from the satirizing Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian Chan Buddhist tradition, “officially not religious practice, often inculcates at even a needle is allowed to pass, but least three levels of linguistic meaning privately even chariots can pass through,” simultaneously, fashioning “a patterned to illustrate how the novel, The Journey to tapestry of captivated narration.” But, the West, through “carnivalesque border he emphasized, this form of expressing crossings” of its little band of human and pregnant multi-valence does not just animal pilgrims encapsulates both how substitute one meaning for another; it historical reality is intertwined with poetic challenges the very power of signs to license and how ultimate truth is inexorably signify securely. His task as a translator and of knowledge. “Without translation,” combined with conventional truth (those then as the reviser of his own translation she said, “there cannot be culture or huge and unwieldy things that appear seeking to make it all the better (for no knowledge.” She praised Yu’s extensive everywhere). So it is with the border- translation is ever complete) was to new introduction to The Journey to the crossing that is translation—that work of communicate in English in a way that tries West as a major piece of scholarship in its intellect and art, of cultural knowledge to retain the hermeneutical promiscuity own right, even without the translation. and humanistic optimism at the possibility of the original. This is crucial, Professor Yu A skilled translator of the Rig Veda, the of cross-linguistic, cross-temporal and intoned so powerfully at the end of the Kamasutra and other Sanskrit works cross-regional communication. hour, because there is no singular or (including the Hinduism volume of the Five years ago I wrote my first Dean’s homogenous Chinese religious, cultural, newly appeared Norton Anthology of World column, on the threshold of becoming Dean political or literary tradition, but a great Religions), Doniger explored some of the of the Divinity School July 1, 2010, and now variety. And, he warned, “you will never remarkable episodes in The Journey to the I write my last, on my translation back into understand Chinese religions if you do not West and the perennial questions of full-time scholarship and teaching effective pay close attention to the fiction.” whether the direction of influence went July 1, 2015, literally via a Guggenheim grant In the first response, Professor Wendy from India to China or China to India or awarded in 2010 but deferred until academic Doniger began with an encomium to whether at some point, when dealing with year 2015–2016 when I shall have a full translation itself, as one of the cornerstones talking monkeys, hunters shooting the Continued on page 10 SPRING 2015 | NUMBER 42 83511_Circa_a1.indd 1 7/6/15 1:35 PM Faculty News and Notes of church-state power and Christian-Muslim difference on an everyday basis. Ultimately, her study tracks the materialities of imaginary practice to analyze the making of religion in public theaters of revolution, national- sectarianism and communal authoritarianism. Her second book project shifts gears to Evangelical South Korea to consider the confluence of late capitalist development and anti-communist ideology in Cold War Asia. Of special interest are the transnational linkages between religious enterprise and political conservatism. Dr. Heo is also nourishing broader interests in American and German Protestant mission history abroad, the emergence of ‘third world’ theologies and the role of religion in post-1965 US immigrant communities. Professor Heo will be offering “Anthropology of Religion” and “Spirits of Capitalism” in the Autumn Quarter, and “Comparative and Global Christianities” and “Religion and the Cold War” in Winter 2016. tay up-to-date with news at the Divinity School: bookmark Continued on page 3 our website at divinity.uchicago.edu, find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and sign up for our weekly email Son public events in Swift Hall. Heo and Fredericks Join Faculty We welcome two new faculty members Asian Pacific Rim. She is interested in the study to Swift Hall in July of 2015. of comparative and global Christianities in the modern world, with particular focus on Eastern Angie Heo will join the faculty as Assistant Orthodox and Evangelical Protestant traditions. Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology Dr. Heo’s first book (under review) examines of Religion. holy images in Egypt to approach the social, Dr. Angie Heo is an anthropologist focusing religious and political dynamics of Coptic on public and political cultures of religion, Orthodoxy in Egypt. Grounded in thirty months media, and economy. Her geographic areas of of fieldwork carried out over a momentous research include the Arab Middle East and the decade (2004-2014), her ethnography African Mediterranean, Northeast Asia and the scrutinizes the visual technological mediation Willemien Otten named a Luce Fellow innovative theological research, Fellows engage John Scottus Eriugena and modern Ralph Waldo in yearlong research in various areas of theologi- Emerson. The project will also draw on the cal inquiry. The six new Fellows constitute the thought of Maximus Confessor, Augustine, twenty-second class of scholars to be appointed Schleiermacher, and William James. A second since the inception of the program in 1993. goal of the project is to deconstruct the modern Willemien Otten studies the history of notion of pantheism and reinstate nature as Christianity and Christian thought with a focus on conduit of the divine in the West. She will do the Western medieval and the early Christian so with the aid of the medieval notion of the intellectual tradition, including the continuity of parallelism of nature and Scripture by which, Platonic themes. Her project as a Luce Fellow will through a kind of communicatio idiomatum, be “Natura Educans: The Psychology of Pantheism nature can speak if and when in a secular and from Eriugena to Emerson.” Otten’s aim is to global world Scripture stands to lose some recalibrate the Christian tradition on nature of its force. By taking nature out of a state of through a deconstruction of pantheism. The result environmental victimhood, Otten intends will be a dynamic sense of nature that is animated to rehabilitate it as a source for theological by the divine without canceling out the human reflection not unlike how it is used for self. Her reconfiguration of the Christian natural philosophical reflection, varying from deep tradition will take shape in a book project with ecology to moral perfectionism. Willemien Otten, Professor of Theology and the the title, Natura Educans: The Psychology of The Luce Fellows program is supported by a History of Christianity, has been named a Pantheism from Eriugena to Emerson. grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, honoring 2015–2016 Luce Fellow by the Association of In her project, Otten seeks to develop a the late Henry Luce III. The Henry Luce Foundation, Theological Schools in the United States and revised history of nature, allowing for a deeper established in 1936, builds upon the vision and Canada (ATS) and The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. sense of nature in which the divine is inherent values of four generations of the Luce family: Selected on the basis of the strength of and lends nature a voice of its own. She will broadening knowledge and encouraging the their proposals to conduct creative and dialogue with two central authors, premodern highest standards of service and leadership. 2 CIRCA 83511_Circa_a1.indd 2 7/6/15 1:35 PM Faculty News and Notes Continued from page 2 Sarah E. Fredericks will join the faculty as Professor Fredericks Assistant Professor of Environmental Ethics. will be offering Profesor Fredericks joins us from the University “Introduction to of North Texas, where she was Associate Professor Environmental Ethics” in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. and “Sustainability” She is the author of Measuring and in the Autumn Quarter Evaluating Sustainability: Ethics in Sustainability and “The Place of Indexes (Routledge, 2013), and articles in Science in Religious Journal for the Study of Religion; Nature and Environmental Ethics” Culture; International Journal of Sustainable and “Environmental Development and World Ecology; Environmental Guilt and Shame” in Ethics; and Ethics, Policy, and Environment.

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