Projects

 

Gregory Beabout, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Saint Louis University

This project brings together several lines of research from Aristotle’s work on animals, to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’, and wisdom in animal behavior to garner wisdom for living in today’s world. This project focuses on three particular birds of different species — a swan, an owl, and a crane — each outfitted with a GPS-GSM transmitter. Geospatial mapping permits one to observe these particular birds to deepen our understanding of what it is for them and for us to live and to live well in contemporary environments. 

 

Rachel Lindsey, Ph.D.

This project is an extension of the Lived Religion in the Digital Age (LRDA) project. Since 2018, LRDA has created models and platforms of sustained critical attention and public engagement to better understand “religion” in the modern world. This project develops a mobile/desktop application where scholars, students and public users can upload, analyze and visualize collected fieldwork data. The result will be an ongoing collection of user entries, all visualized in our scalable and interactive map. 

 

Charles H. Parker, Ph.D.
Professor in the Department of History
Saint Louis University

This project traces the interconnections between space, narrative and praxis in religious encounters to provide new ways of thinking about early modern religion. Utilizing insights from the “spatial turn,” this project explores commonalities in religious entanglements around the early modern world. The research combines in-depth spatial analysis of several Catholic and Protestant missions and their interactions with a reconstruction of spatial politics in several key Asian domains. Such settings allow for contextualization, comparison and contrast to help make sense of common “early modern” tendencies formed in the contests over sacred geography.

Jintong Tang, Ph.D.
Mary Louise Murray Endowed Professor in Management
Professor of Entrepreneurship
Research Institute Fellow
Saint Louis University

Women's entrepreneurship has been identified as one of the most effective and fruitful approaches to empowering women, and yet women continue to be systematically underrepresented in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship theories emphasize the spatial nature of entrepreneurial networks, cultural norms and behaviors. This project uses geospatial data to characterize the spatial-temporal patterns of entrepreneurial businesses founded by women and identify the key determinants encouraging women to enter entrepreneurship. We hope to help women overcome psychological barriers and motivate them to engage in entrepreneurship with greater potential for success. 

This interdisciplinary research group gathered to study the concept of death as it is imagined in various discourses, from the heat death of the universe to the death of stars, to death in evolutionary theory, to death and climate change, to death in popular culture and contemporary society, to death in medicine. We explored how our concepts of death shaped how we imagined life in contemporary culture and society. This interdisciplinary group included:

Convenor

Jeffrey P. Bishop, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Tenet Endowed Chair in Bioethics
Saint Louis University

Visiting Professor

The Rev. David Brown, SJ, D.Phil
Astronomer, Vatican Observatory

Community of Scholars

Alaina Baker-Nigh, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology
Saint Louis University

Harold Braswell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics
Saint Louis University

Benjamin de Foy, Ph.D.
Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science
Saint Louis University

Emily Dumler-Winckler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Theology
Saint Louis University

Martin Fitzgerald, Ph.D. (c)
Assistant Professor
The Ohio State University

Kimbell Kornu, MD, Ph.D.
Provost’s Professor of Bioethics and Theology
Belmont University

Outcomes

Harold Braswell

Courses

Graduate Seminar: Interdisciplinary Methods in Bioethics: Adorno (Fall 2022)

Papers

Harold Braswell and Spencer Schmid, “Anteaters After Auschwitz” in progress.

Jeffrey P. Bishop

Courses

Graduate Seminar: Bergson: Metaphysics and Morals (Spring 2023)

Papers

Bishop, J.P. and Fitzgerald, M.J. (2020) “Norming COVID-19: The Urgency of a Nonhumanist Holism,” Heythrop Journal. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.13570

Bishop, J.P. (2020) “Technics and Liturgics.” Christian Bioethics 26(1): 12-30. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz016

Bishop, J.P. (in review) “Cutting the Dynamic Heart: Chaplaincy and the Static Religion of Medicine” Christian Bioethics

Benjamin de Foy

Talks and Panels

21 Apr 2023: COLLIS Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, Cornell University. Panel: “Laudato Si: Taking Stock and New Challenges”; Workshop: “Discernment, Faith, and the Academy at a Time of Challenge of Opportunity.” (9 people), with Christiana Zener and Dan DiLeo.

22 November 2021: Podcast on climate change and Laudato Si' for Missouri Catholic Conference with Deacon Tyler McClay

16 Oct 2020: Laudato Si and the Anthropocene, Panel conversation for Lumen Christi with Willis Jenkins and Simone Kotva, Hosted by Jeff Bishop and Michael LeChevallier.

Martin Fitzgerald, Ph.D. (c)

Papers

Bishop, J.P. and Fitzgerald, M.J. (2020) “Norming COVID-19: The Urgency of a Nonhumanist Holism,” Heythrop Journal. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.13570

The myth of disenchantment – the proposition that there are no mysterious or incalculable forces in the world – is so ingrained in the intellectual cultures of the late-modern West that it is difficult for educated people to speak of good or evil except adjectivally. Yet, in 2020, we live in a time of moral potency in which talk of good and evil has become ubiquitous: outside the academy moral realism abounds. Consider the ethically-dense forces unleashed by COVID-19. From the outset, many of those most directly impacted by the pandemic — from emergency room nurses, to bus drivers, to nursing home residents — have spoken about the pandemic in the disquieting language of a dark unseen presence or a possession. This refers to possession by the virus itself, yet it also includes one felt in hoarding items, social exclusion, racial targeting, and demonization of others. Once people started dying, this language only intensified, spilling over into talk of the diabolical and the divine. Like a swelling flood, the experience of good and evil in the pandemic has overwhelmed our social channels, bursting open old social wounds and reminding us, yet again, that pandemics are not merely biological but also political, social, and indeed spiritual facts.

Convenor

Jeffrey P. Bishop, MD, PhD
Professor of Philosophy
Tenet Endowed Chair in Bioethics
Saint Louis University

Visiting Professor

Gaymon Bennett, PhD
Associate Professor
School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies
Arizona State University

Community of Scholars

Danny Cox, Ph.D. Student
Boston College

Samuel Deters, Ph.D. (c)
Saint Louis University

Martin Fitzgerald, Ph.D. (c)
Assistant Professor of Bioethics
The Ohio State University

Annie Friedrich, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Bioethics
Medical College of Wisconsin

Samuel Herbig, M.A.
Theology Instructor
Rosati-Kain Academy

Valerie De Wandel, J.D., M.A.
Attorney at Law

Outcomes

Jeffrey P. Bishop

Talks

The Unbearable Porosity of Being
Romanell Center for Ethics
University at Buffalo

The Unbearable Porosity of Being
McCullough Institute
University of Alabama

Papers

Jeffrey P. Bishop, Intuiting the Excess: Science, Interpretation, and the Transcendence of Life in Hermeneutics and Transcendence edited by Darren Sarisky, (forthcoming)

Chapter for a Book

Templeton Foundation Funded Project

Jeffrey P. Bishop, Scientific Theology or Apophatic Science: Intuition and the Promise of Science Engaged Theology Religious Studies (submitted)

Jeffrey P. Bishop and Martin Fitzgerald

Book Project

The Unbearable Porosity of Being (in conceptualization stage)