Faculty Travel Seminar 2011:
The Meeting of Cultures: Encountering Difference and Diversity
This seminar will bring a group of USD faculty from across a wide range of different disciplines
to Rome, the so-called ‘eternal city’, long considered a microcosm of the world’s diversity in and
of itself, to explore questions of inter-cultural engagement, interaction and mutual enhancement
in relation to a variety of differing themes, issues and challenges, pertaining to the encountering
of otherness and of the ‘Other’.
The 2011 Faculty Travel Seminar will bring together issues of cultural interaction, inclusion and
diversity, alongside inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue, with questions pertaining to social
justice and religious and social harmony. In doing so it can in turn help participants explore,
understand and in turn promote the catholicity of USD in a rich variety of ways. The term
‘Catholic’, of course, meaning ‘universal’, pertaining to the whole or in the evocative words of
one of the RSCJ Community who has been part of USD’s community for much of its existence,
‘reaching out to everybody’. So this program will be concerned with exploring questions of a
broadly defined area of enquiry and immersion and will encompass a range of cross-disciplinary
interests and touch upon issues of cultural, ethical, ethnic, historical, practical, organisational,
political, religious and scientific relevance.
The Seminar will run from January 4th (arrival in Rome) through January 11th. January 10th
will include the optional possibility to attend a one-day seminar on inter-culturality at Rome’s
Benedictine University of Saint Anselmo. In addition to seminars, lectures and workshops led by
prominent international faculty from a diverse background of countries, churches and
specialisms, including Georgetown University’s Peter Phan, Duke University’s Mary
McClintock Fulkerson (TBC), Paul M. Collins of Chichester University, UK, and Sandra
Mazzolini of the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome itself, the USD Faculty selected to
participate in this event will engage in cultural and historical talks and visits in and around
Rome, they will meet with organisations and specialists working in fields related to the broad
seminar theme.
This year’s application process is obviously going to be processed on a necessarily shortturnaround period. However, faculty whose calendars in January are not already fully
committed for the dates in question are strongly encouraged to apply.
The method of application is via completing the form available on the CCTC website available
here and is open to all full-time tenured and tenure track faculty. All participants will be obliged
to present a paper/reflection in relation to the seminar later in the academic year.
Applications will be accepted up on or before Sunday October 24th . Successful applicants will
be informed as soon as possible afterwards.
Detailed Rationale for the 2011 Seminar:
The Good Samaritan in the parable found in Luke’s Gospel was the ‘foreigner’, the ‘outsider’,
who risked his own welfare to stop and rescue the victim of a violent crime who happened to be
a member of a race whose members were the bitterest of enemies of his own people. In our
contemporary societies, where otherness and difference are often perceived in negative and
threatening terms, this parable offers much food for thought in relation to many issues.
Reflecting on this parable, the Jesuit theologian Roger Haight has reminded us that although the
church necessarily reacts differently to different societies and regimes, it is always called to
resist and actively confront dehumanising structures wherever they are manifested. As a leaven
in society however, the church must also ‘announce the values and promises of the kingdom of
God’, in other words, not only must Christian Samaritans today bind the victim’s wounds, they
must also, in partnership with others beyond the church, ‘participate in making the road to
Jericho safe’. Here, many key themes and concerns for the church and Catholic-linked
institutions today come together.
The location of the 2011 seminar will be Rome, Italy. It is often observed that the ancients used
to say ‘all roads lead to Rome’, in part reflecting the fact that period in antiquity when Rome was
a power base for an imperial regime that spread throughout the majority of the entire known
world of the time (they never quite went for Ireland, thinking the weather too miserable…). But
the sentiment also can be understood as communicating how the different cultures, beliefs,
customs, practices, intellectual, practical and artistic traditions equally flowed back towards and
helped inform and shape the cosmopolitan reality that was the Roman Empire of the time. In
many ways, then, Rome became synonymous with being a microcosm of the richly diverse
world. When Christianity eventually became the religion of the Empire this understanding of
unity in plurality, diversity and encounter continued and developed in myriad ways (some both
positive and negative alike). Throughout its history, the church has lived out is being and been
enriched by and in turn helped to enhance an incredible and diverse range of cultures. In a very
real sense, then, Rome could be understood to be the original ‘melting pot’ of cultural,
intellectually, geographical and religious diversity. The policy of the ‘Pax Romana’ brought
much misery to many diverse peoples, although the cultural encounters that ensued also left their
imprint upon the development of ‘civilisation’ in so many ways.
Obviously the seminar for 2011 will not primarily be about Rome alone as such, although the
location will offer so many rich and evocative resources for reflection and study. Rather the
seminar seeks to encourage the participating faculty to address the wider issues, methods and
implications of what cultural encounter is and what it entails.
So this seminar invites applications from faculty whose research and teaching interests may, for
the sake of illustration and to offer you some food for thought only, relate in some form to the
following areas or areas connected with the same:
The history and emergent development of the city and empire of Rome itself; the origins and
growth of the Church and of the notion of Catholicity; the outreach and spreading of the gospel
and the encounters between the faith and its theological and intellectual articulation with the
many different cultures, peoples, and faiths of the world; questions of mission, dialogue,
inculturation and contextualization; exchanges, conflict, division and understanding between
churches, differing faiths and people of no faith; the hermeneutics of cultural encounter; ethnic
studies; ethnographic, cultural anthropological and sociological perspectives on the meeting of
cultures; changing paradigms in the relations between differing peoples, cultures and faiths;
questions of identity, boundaries and existential boundary markers; questions of borders,
inclusion and exclusion; questions of immigration, asylum and hospitality; the origins, stories
and development of differing religious orders and their own intercultural and transborder forms
and means of existence; the story of migrant labor perceived through different historical, cultural
and sociological lenses; trafficking of workers and exploitation; social provision and safety nets
for migrant labor; method and practice in overcoming cultural, religious and ethnic difference
and conflict; historical comparisons of immigration, asylum, borders and national identity and
migrant labor; border control, understandings of security and perception of ‘threats’ to home
communities; human rights issues, abuses; torture and violence against perceived ‘Others’; rights
and treatment of communities of Travellers; theories and practices – both explicitly and
implicitly understood – pertaining to the conception and perception of otherness (alterity) and of
the ‘Other’; the history and diversity of methods in missionary encounters and practice; case
studies in the meeting of cultures, such as the Jesuits in China and the Chinese Rites
Controversy; inculturation in India and the Christian Ashram Movement; the enormous debt
Christian theology, and ‘western’ philosophy and culture in general owe to Islamic thought and
culture; the debt ‘western’ culture and science owe to Chinese thought and culture; the
Ecumenical Movement’s origins and development; diversity and exclusivism in contemporary
American church communities in relation to gender, race and able-bodiedness; the emergence of
specific forms of ‘migrant Christianity’ such as Asian American Christianity; the meeting of
cultures in and through the arts, literature, theatre, music, film, folk traditions, food and drink,
scientific rivalry and cooperation, business, trade and commerce, conflict and territorial disputes;
cultural specificity in delivering education and health care.
In addition to seminars, lectures and workshops led by prominent international faculty from a
diverse background of countries, churches and specialisms, the USD Faculty selected to
participate in this event will engage in cultural and historical talks and visits in and around
Rome, they will meet with organisations and specialists working in fields related to the broad
seminar theme.
Depending on the disciplinary and departmental background of the faculty selected to
participate, these additional activities could include encounters with the work of organisations
and experts from the academic, political and NGO world who have helped pioneer
groundbreaking perspectives and practices in relation to the meeting of cultures such as Caritas
Internationalis, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers and the the
Pontifical Councils for Interreligious Dialogue, for Christian Unity and for Culture. We hope to
visit the offices of some of these organizations, along with visits to an asylum center as well as to
the faith communities of other churches and religions in Rome to hear of their historical and
contemporary reflections on the meeting of cultures in a very vivid fashion. It is also hoped to
visit the Roman headquarters of the RSCJ, the order which co-founded USD and to hear about
their long standing work in promoting the meeting of cultures and in so many of the areas
outlined above.
Alongside the CCTC’s Director, Gerard Mannion, who has research interests in this field,
himself, in relation to ethical and ecclesiological questions, this faculty program will involve a
rich panel of external facilitators who themselves, in keeping with the travel seminar overall
theme, embody a rich cultural, geographical, ecclesial and disciplinary diversity:
Professor Paul Collins is an Anglican Priest and Reader in Systematic Theology at the
University of Chichester, UK. The author of numerous books, with a particular specialism in
ecclesiology, as well as wider questions of a systematic theological nature. Particular questions
of inculturation, ecumenism and foundational ecclesiology have featured in his recent books.
Professor Mary McClintock Fulkerson of Duke University (with background in the
Presbyterian church, in theology and the social scientific approach to ecclesiology in particular,
with her recent work focusing upon particular minorities in relation to Christian communities),.
Professor Sandra Mazzolini is an Italian Roman Catholic and a Professor at the Pontificia
Università Urbaniana in Rome. Her specialisms include missiology, inter-religious dialogue and
ecclesiologies of communion. Her publications reflect such interests, along with questions of
interculturality. She collaborates with numerous institutions and individuals in these fields across
Rome and throughout Italy and internationally.
Professor Peter Phan is the Ignacio Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown
University. He has multiple specialisms in social thought, Asian Christianity and inter-religious
dialogue. Originally from Vietnam, Professor Phan is a former Portman Lecturer at the
University of San Diego.