For the spring 2020 semester, the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies welcomes Christoph Sander as an in-resident fellow, joining Marco Rochini and Andrew Barrette, both of whom are completing two-semester fellowships.
Sander received his Ph.D. at Technical University of Berlin and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome) for Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions. His research deals with the conceptions of magnetism in the early modern period, with a current focus on diagrams. His second field of research is the history of early modern Jesuit philosophy, particularly the idea and practice of censorship in Jesuit colleges. At the Institute, Sander will prepare an edition of a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript, which contains the first monographic treatise on magnetism and was written by the Jesuit, Leonardo Garzoni (1543-1592) around 1580. While a drafted version of the text has been edited in 2005 already, the planned edition will be based on a recently rediscovered manuscript held at Madrid, which can be seen as the final redaction of Garzoni’s study. His experimental approach to the subject precedes, and partly inspired, the more famous studies on magnetism by Giambattista della Porta and William Gilbert. An edition, accompanied by an English translation, will enable painting a more nuanced and complex picture of the scientific achievements of the early modern period, with a rather unknown Jesuit as one of its pioneers.
Rochini, who received his Ph.D. in History of Christianity from the Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy, is a specialist in the history of the Roman church and Christianity, paying particular attention to the history of the Society of Jesus, the history of the religious missions, and the Jansenist and reformation currents in the Catholic world during the eighteenth century. At the Institute, Rochini will continue work on two projects. He is working on the Digital Indipetae Database, a forthcoming platform consisting of the letters written by Jesuits to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus requesting a missionary assignment overseas. Rochini is also finishing a book project on the indipetae written during the “New” Society of Jesus. The book will be a companion to the Digital Indipetae Database, providing scholars with an interpretative tool with which to understand the relevance of the indipetae in their historical context.
Barrette received his Ph.D. in 2018 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he finished his dissertation, The Origin of the Question: The Structure and Emergence of Questioning in Edmund Husserl’s Work. He is in the process of preparing a manuscript on similar themes in Husserl’s method which means to ground his future work in phenomenological ethics. As a Lonergan Fellow, he is also working on Bernard Lonergan and his relation to phenomenology. At the Institute, Barrette will continue his research on Jesuits in Leuven at the turn to the 20th century, focusing especially on Joseph Maréchal and Pierre Scheuer. Along with editing some of their work, he aims to show the enduring significance of how they engaged, understood, and influenced philosophical and theological traditions.
For the one-semester appointments in fall semester, the Institute was fortunate to host Claudio Ferlan–a full-time researcher at the Italian-German Historical Institute (Bruno Kessler Foundation) in Trento, Italy, who worked on a research project about food habits (ecclesiastical fasts, table behaviors, beverages, and drunkenness) as essential features of the negotiation between individuals and social models in the Jesuit missionary culture between the 16th and 19th centuries–and Hilmar Pabel–a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, who worked on his book on the literary career of Peter Canisius.
More information about the in-residence fellowship program at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies — including a roster of current and past fellows — is available at https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/centers/iajs/research-/in-residence-fellows.html