The Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies has issued a called for papers for its 2022 International Symposium on Jesuit Studies. The theme of the symposium is “The Jesuits and the Church in History.” The event takes place August 1–4 at Boston College. Submissions are due December 6, 2021. More information appears below.
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON JESUIT STUDIES
The Jesuits and the Church in History
Boston College | August 1–4, 2022
The Roman Catholic Church is the principal milieu within which the Society of Jesus has operated over the course of its history. In order to effectively manage their interactions with the rest of the world, the Jesuits first had to establish, clarify, and cultivate their relations with this wider Catholic environment. This involved different strategies, such as initiating and maintaining good relationships with the hierarchy; collaborating, competing, or interacting with other religious orders and the diocesan clergy; establishing, running, or promoting Catholic institutions and operations. Managing these forms of relationship has proven to be complex. The history of the Society includes moments of success and positive collaboration with the Church; it also contains moments of difficulty, crisis, and even termination, as in the order’s suppression in 1773.
This International Symposium on Jesuit Studies will explore the many aspects of the Society’s relations to the Church, all within the global contexts in which the Jesuit mission grew and operated. This event will be held at Boston College between two other major gatherings of global scope, one being that of the International Federation of Catholic Universities and the second that of the International Association of Jesuit Universities.
The symposium welcomes the submission of paper proposals from across a wide range of themes, periods, and disciplines. Presentations might address such questions as: How has the special vow to the pope influenced the work of the Society at the service of the Church and contributed to the creation of different images of the Society itself? What has the relationship of the hierarchy to the Society revealed about the role of the Jesuits in the Church? What functions did the Society play in the Church’s global mission and how did the Jesuits both cooperate and compete with other religious orders in mission territories? How did politics affect the relationship between the Jesuits and the Church? How have various ecclesially established Jesuit-directed cultural initiatives (including schools, observatories, popular media, research institutes and journals) influenced this relationship? What do educational initiatives of the Society and its intellectual contributions reveal about Jesuit influence on Catholic culture over the course of history? What can we gather about the relationship of Jesuits and the Church from the lives and works of Jesuit saints and luminaries?
Proposals and a narrative CV (together no more than 500 words) are due before the end of Monday, December 6, 2021, with decisions communicated before the end of the year. Proposals for individual papers or panels are accepted. Selected papers may be peer reviewed and published in open access following the event. For further information and to submit proposals, contact the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at iajs@bc.edu.