Letter from the Dean

CIRCA News from the University of Chicago Divinity School A CLASSIC CONUNDRUM IN THE WRITING OF HISTORY CONCERNS THE QUESTION of agency. Do humans make history, or do larger forces — that cannot be ascribed to an individual or a group actually make things happen? In one respect, the question is unhelpful — surely the answer is “all of the above” (and perhaps more). That wise observation does not, however, make the question disappear. Its persistence suggests a grasp of the options we consider as we seek to understand, in retrospect, what happened and why. Academic institutions face an analogous ques- of a faculty member but by the student’s tion. Do individuals make the intellectual responsibility for her program. To be sure, community, or is that community some- despite our best efforts, and also because thing greater than what might be called the of our stellar faculty, every year there are sum of its parts? As is the case with our Letter students who matriculate to study with accounts of history, I reply “all of the above.” Professor X or Y. Those who do so speedily What follows constitutes a “perhaps more” discover that, absent a wider frame of refer- regarding the particular case of the Divinity ence, their project will not pass muster. School. from the What genuinely excites this faculty is not If someone were to write the history of the production of epigones, but intellectual the Divinity School, she or he could do innovation; and, more often than not, worse than to compose a series of profiles Dean students generate such excitement with of the many stellar individuals who have reference not merely to their own area of served on its faculty. That would result in concentration but to a newly formulated a tome of considerable length, real interest, intellectual space between it and others. and rich anecdote. It would convey as well A second way to capture what would the institution’s striking genius in attracting be lost in the “great man” approach to the talented people and in then affording them Divinity School resides in the familiar the freedom to pursue their inquiries into pattern of my conversations with alumni/ae religion wherever their thoughts took them. about their alma mater. These naturally and Within the diversity of their writing and understandably proceed initially from their teaching, readers would see how frequently memory of the School as they knew it: who Divinity faculty consciously endeavor to among “my” faculty (I cherish the possessive) serve a variety of publics — the academy, the remains? But this invariably shifts to a very churches and, more recently, the synagogues different question, asked with equal if not and the mosques, and the broader civil society. greater urgency: is Swift Hall still the same Such a volume would be studded with won- sort of place? Are the conversations still derful anecdotes, one or two tragedies, and energetic and tough-minded? Can people many moments of humor. It would also imply still argue seriously and think in creative the precedence at Chicago of the tutorial ways, from new perspectives? This perennial model of graduate education, in which the query from our graduates testifies to a larger student apprentices herself to a great mind. ... what makes Swift Hall the sense of the place that goes beyond any Whether or not it would sell, it would individual, and to an enduring ethos that be a fine and useful portrait of Swift Hall. place that it has been, is now, transcends not just individual superstars — Despite these attractions, such a history faculty or student — but particular epochs of the Divinity School would mislead in at and always will be is beyond the and their specific curricula for teaching and least one crucial respect — or at least it would learning. require one to read between the lines to get ken of any one person, or indeed From a decanal perspective, then, the the fullest story. It would obscure the fact strength of the Divinity School resides in that what makes Swift Hall the place that it any one collation of individuals, its “both/and” answer to the “either/or” has been, is now, and always will be is beyond to foster or sustain. question. The “perhaps more” that accom- the ken of any one person, or indeed any one panies it is that individual brilliance and collation of individuals, to foster or sustain. accomplishment must have as its counter- This is the sort of point that lends itself to part a commitment to conversation, in the abstractions, and true to form I shall indulge always ascribed is not the tutorial model, but conviction that it is the product of such those momentarily. But let me make the a communitarian one: we invite students to exchanges that will inevitably represent the point initially in two different but much study with the faculty, and the requirements best that we can think — and thus do the more concrete ways. One is to note that the they must meet underscore the importance greatest justice to the topic that we serve. K model of pedagogy to which Swift Hall has of wide consultation unified not by the work Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean SPRING 2010 | NUMBER 33 Faculty News and Notes Browning’s Book Selected by ISSR Library Religious Thought and the Modern Psycholo- gies: A Critical Conversation in the Theology of Culture, by Don S. Browning, Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Social Sciences, has been selected as an element of the International Society for Science and Religion Library. The Library project was launched in November 2007 with the inten- tion of creating a comprehensive resource for scholars, students, and interested lay readers in the area of science and the human spirit. The Library will consist of between two hundred and two hundred and fifty volumes that span the broad dialogue and crucial subfields, and provide essential background materials, providing the kind of coherent overview currently lacking in this still nascent field. Each book selected is subjected to a rigorous, multistage process. Browning has also recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Alumni everal Divinity School faculty members have recently received Council of Disciples Divinity House and the Joann Rasmussen Silver Book Award for Intel- honors in recognition of their work to date and in support of lectual Leadership by the Institute for American Stheir current research projects. To access online faculty profiles, which include bibliographies, photographs, and contact information for all faculty members, please see http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/. Evans is a historian of American religion. His teaching interests include modern American religion, race and religion in U.S. history, and slavery and Christianity. His first book, The Burden of Black Religion (Oxford University Press, 2008), argued that black religion was crucial in debates about the role of blacks in American culture, especially prior to realistic prospects for integration. Values. The Center for Theological Inquiry His research emphases are on interpretations in Princeton, New Jersey, has created the Don and cultural images of African American Browning Fellowship on Interdisciplinary religion, churches and the problem of racial Studies. and social reform, and the effects of con- Browning has interests in the relation sumerism on the practice of Christianity in of religious thought to the social sciences, the twentieth century. His current research specifically in the way theological ethics may project is an exploration of the formation employ sociology, psychology, and the social and evolution of “Race Relations” Sundays 1920 scientific study of religion. A student of founded in the s under the auspices of psychology, he has the Federal Council of Churches. special interests in psychoanalysis, Evans to Give self-psychology, Otts-Maloney Lectures object-relations theory, and evolu- Curtis J. Evans, Assistant Professor of the tionary psychology, History of Christianity, will deliver the 2010 and has written Otts-Maloney lectures to Davidson College. on the cultural, This lecture series consists of two lectures, theological, and given on successive evenings. ethical analysis Two separate endowments—the Otts of the modern and Maloney bequests—have enabled psychologies. An Davidson College in North Carolina to interest in issues and methods in practical bring many great lecturers to their campus theology led to his work A Fundamental over the years in every area of religious stud- Practical Theology: With Descriptive and ies. Recent memorable lecturers have Strategic Proposals. As Director of the Lilly included James Cone, Mary Ann Tolbert, Project on Religion, Culture, and the Family, Donald Shriver, Gustav Niebuhr, Kathryn Professor Browning is now working on issues Tanner, William Schweiker, Dale Martin, pertaining to the shape and future of the and Bart Ehrman. postmodern family. 2CIRCA Franklin Named Alumnus of the Year Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African American Thought (1990). He has he Board of Trustees of the Baptist Theological Union has coauthored (with Don S. Browning, et al.) a named Robert Michael Franklin, Jr., Ph.D., the Divinity volume titled From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family School’s Alumnus of the Year for 2010. Debate (2001). He is the coeditor of the T forthcoming The Cambridge Companion to Franklin is the tenth President of Morehouse Divinity School, and Emory College, the nation’s largest private, four-year University’s Candler School of liberal arts college for men. Franklin earned Theology, where he gained a his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School in national reputation as Director 1978, and his Ph.D. from The University of of Black Church Studies. Chicago Divinity School in 1985 for work on He provides commentary Ethics and Society and Religion and the for the National Public Radio Social Sciences.

Load more