Theological Libraries Month is here! Announcing Faculty & Author Talks this month and more!
It’s October, which means that it is officially ATLA’s Theological Libraries Month. To celebrate the month, the Theology Library has many exciting events to celebrate:
Faculty Talks: In celebration of our School of Theology Faculty authors, the STH Library is pleased to sponsor faculty and author talks focused on recent publications and research. These intimate discussions hosted in the Library are intended to provide an opportunity for participants to be introduced to and engage with the work of a STH faculty member or author! All author talks will be held in the Library Conference Room (202A).
Dean Bryan Stone on Tuesday, October 16th at 4:00pm:
What does it mean to evangelize ethically in a multicultural climate? Following his successful Evangelism after Christendom, Bryan Stone addresses reasons evangelism often fails and explains how it can become distorted as a Christian practice. Stone urges us to consider a new approach, arguing for evangelism as a work of imagination and a witness to beauty rather than a crass effort to compete for converts in pluralistic contexts. He shows that the way we lead our lives as Christians is the most meaningful tool of evangelism in today’s rapidly changing world.
Dr. Wesley Wildman on Tuesday, October 23rd at 12:30pm:
Dr. Wesley Wildman, Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics at STH, will discuss the chapter “Bliss” from his book released this month, Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language. Dr. Wildman’s work confronts the human obsession with ultimate reality and our desire to conceive and speak of this reality through religious language, despite the seeming impossibility of doing so. Each chapter of the work is a meditative essay on an aspect of life that, for most people, is fraught with special spiritual significance: dreaming, suffering, creating, slipping, balancing, eclipsing, loneliness, intensity, and bliss. These moments can inspire religious questioning and commitment, and, in extreme situations, drive us in search of ways to express what matters most to us. Drawing upon American pragmatist, Anglo-American analytic, and Continental traditions of philosophical theology, Wildman shows how, through direct description, religious symbolism, and phenomenological experience, the language games of religion become a means to attempt, and, in some sense, to accomplish this task.
Author Talks: Furthermore, the Theology Library is proud to offer a forum for STH students working on their dissertation to discuss their research with members of our community. All author talks will be held in the Library Conference Room (202A).
Kathryn House on Wednesday, October 17th at 1pm:
Kathryn House is a PhD candidate in Practical Theology at Boston University School of Theology. Her dissertation reconsiders Christian identity in light of intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in US-American evangelical campaigns for sexual purity. Analyzing women’s writings across three centuries, she asks how Christian identity is connected to soteriological imagination and recast in terms of purity. Kathryn gives critical attention to the Moral Reform movement of the 1830s and 1840s, to lynching and anti-lynching campaigns at the turn of the 20th century, and to women’s challenges to the legacies of 1990s evangelical purity culture. Interrogating the wedding of whiteness and purity in these campaigns, she queries the possibility of baptism as a counter-practice to the implications of these intertwined symbolics. She is the author of “Torture and Lived Religion: Practices of Resistance” in Trauma and Lived Religion: Transcending the Ordinary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and “Sometimes, the Minister is a Girl,” in Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay (White Cloud Press, 2015). She has also contributed to the Feminism and Religion blog. Kathryn is the Assistant Director of the Center for Practical Theology here at STH, where she is currently inspired by and coordinating Creative Callings. She is ordained in the Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA, and is a member of The First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Kate Common on Wednesday, October 24th at 1pm:
Kate Common is a feminist practical theology PhD student writing a dissertation that examines feminist and womanist ecclesiology and begins the development of a holistic feminist ecclesiology from key themes found in this discourse. She is also exploring contemporary eco-villages as a holistic model of community building that can potentially influence some mainline church revitalizing efforts.
Library Presentation at the Anna Howard Shaw Center lecture: The library staff will present at the Anna Howard Shaw Center lecture on Thursday, October 11th at 12:30pm in STH Room 323. Stop by as we talk about some things you may not know about the library!
Wednesday Workshops: Our Wednesday Workshop Series continues through October. There are some good workshops to attend if you have not already, but the biggest may be our Plagiarism Workshop on October 10th and repeating on October 31st.
Faculty & Staff Open House: On the morning of the October STH Faculty meeting (Friday, October 19), the library will provide light refreshments for faculty members near the front of the library by the reference desk. We encourage our STH faculty to stop by and chat with staff about recent library projects, and we look forward to hearing your suggestions on ways to move forward and improve the library. Stop by from 9am-12pm!
Presentations at Faculty Meeting: Two of our librarians, Sean and Stacey, will present at the beginning of the faculty meeting. Sean will discuss the implementation of new course reserve management tool Leganto at BU Libraries and the benefits of integrating the tool into your classes. Stacey will discuss the benefits of integrating LibGuides into your classes and Blackboard.