Friday, September 19, 2008--"Elective Cosmopolitanism"

There’s no surer sign that we are well into the semester than the dismay one feels when there’s more than one event happening on one night—or several in a single week—that are just too important to miss. This was one such week at Stonehill, and I attended two exceptional presentations. While the topics were very different indeed—one on “Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor” and the other on Pope Benedict’s papacy and whether it presents a challenge to Catholic-Jewish dialogue—there was ultimately a confluence of ideas about diversity and its benefits that should speak powerfully to all of us.

The first event was the Monday night kickoff of the Martin Institute’s two-year theme of “Globalization.” Peter Ubertaccio, Director of the Martin Institute, hosted Professor Arjun Appadurai, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Professor of Social Sciences at The New School in New York. Appadurai, whose scholarship is regularly taught in a number of Stonehill courses, offered a compelling vision of cosmopolitanism that any undergraduate could see as relevant to her or his aspirations.

His address—beautifully introduced by Assistant Professor of English Scott Cohen—was called "Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor." It would be hard to summarize the whole talk, but the part students might compare to their experience would go something like this: As an American student studying abroad, you engage in an "elective" cosmopolitan experience—an experience that stretches the boundaries of who you are and what you know. If you let yourself really encounter what you see in another part of the world, you might consider how the experiences of the poor are like and unlike yours. The poor achieve a kind of "compulsory" cosmopolitanism: they also have to stretch the boundaries of who they are and what they know just to meet their basic needs. In a place like Mumbai (where Appadurai conducts some of his research), this means that even the illiterate and unlettered have to be multi-lingual, multicultural, and politically savvy.

Appadurai researches pavement dwellers, ex-prostitutes, and displaced persons who have to know how to talk to different linguistic groups, different religious groups, the police, or the other groups or individuals who want their piece of pavement. He described three activist groups in India who are creating change in the area of housing—and they are sharing what they've learned with similar groups in different parts of the globe, like South Africa and Nepal. There's a real politics of hope, in Appadurai's estimation, in places that are also filled with despair.

Perhaps I was particularly tuned into Appadurai’s message because my oldest daughter is spending this semester in Senegal. Her blog entries and emails are filled with both the joys of experiencing a completely different culture and the challenges of encountering Dakar’s staggering poverty and suffering on a daily basis. She is fluent in French, but finds that there are many she can communicate with only as she improves her Wolof. And she’s discovering how much more difficult it is to feel “culturally competent” when there are very few experiences (such as good meals, environmental beauty, or other English speakers) to offset the sheer effort and “daily-ness” of her growing “cosmopolitanism.” Yet it’s clear that she wouldn’t trade her experience for a semester in Paris, though that, too, would be a cosmopolitan experience.

As more and more Stonehill students head to the developing world or to countries less-travelled by American students abroad (and this semester alone, I note we have students in South Africa, China, Brazil, Czech Republic, Russia, and other countries beyond Western Europe and Australia), we need to prepare them well for these experiences and also offer opportunities for reflection and integration of what they have learned after they return. This kind of curriculum integration may be the most important work we can do to ensure that our students are prepared to have their cosmopolitanism intersect with the cosmopolitanism of those they encounter in their travels—whether that’s study abroad, a H.O.P.E. trip, or a local volunteer opportunity—and to know how to put those encounters into a broader context.

The second event I attended this week was the annual James J. Kenneally lecture. Sponsored by the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Committee and hosted by Kevin Spicer, C.S.C., Associate Professor of History, the lecture this year featured two scholars: Professor Ruth Langer of Boston College and Professor Philip Cunningham of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The topic was certainly not intended to connect to Prof. Appadurai’s view of cosmopolitanism, but there was a link nonetheless.

Professors Langer and Cunningham took up the question of why—after the tremendous (though occasionally bumpy) progress made by Pope John Paul II in Catholic-Jewish relations—Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio (a personal papal executive order) allowing the wider use of the "Latin Mass," in the form of the 1962 Latin Missal. The chief concern about this missal is that it contains prayers—in the Good Friday rite—that are offensive to those of some other faiths.

While the 1962 missal does not include the most objectionable language calling Jews “perfidious” (this was eliminated in 1959), it does use language that seems out of keeping with Nostra Aetate (1965), the Catholic Church’s official statement on the Church’s relations with non-Christians: “Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness” (emphasis mine). Moreover, the Missal also contains a prayer “For the conversion of pagans [Infidelium]” which cannot help advance the Church’s relations with Islam.

For Stonehill students—indeed for the whole community, regardless of their religious affiliations—this was another call to cosmopolitanism. It was a reminder that while Pope Benedict's action creates some confusion related to the Catholic Church's relations with other faiths, official Catholic teaching in Nostra Aetate stresses the religious bond and spiritual legacy shared by Judaism and Christianity and affirms that God and Jews abide in covenant. Nostra Aetate also makes explicit statements about commonalities between Islam and Christianity and honors philosophical answers provided by other world religions. And, of course, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions all have their own perspectives on these interfaith relations. Both Stonehill's overall curriculum and an interfaith dialogue such as the one we sponsor should promote understanding and respect across all these traditions.

So, we needn’t leave campus to expand the boundaries of who we are and what we know. Indeed, these two events provided a wonderful reminder of what exposure—at home and abroad—to a diversity of persons and ideas can do to widen our perspectives and to enhance our cosmopolitan frameworks for living. Thank you for your work to encourage our students to take advantage of all these opportunities.

Best regards,

Katie

Friday, September 21: It's About More than Film

When I recently read the September 17^th issue of The New Yorker, I was struck by Anthony Lane’s review of David Sington’s documentary about Apollo astronauts, “In the Shadow of the Moon.”

Lane’s final sentence concludes: “. . . [M]aybe, however many movies we see, there’s something about the Apollo experience that should remain indescribable--drifting away from our imagination, as if out of radio contact, on the dark side of the moon.”

What a beautiful sentence--and an interesting starting point for considering the remarkable emphasis on film that’s taking place on our own campus this fall. The Global Film Series launched its season last week, and the Political Science Film Series begins tonight with “All the President’s Men.” We can look ahead in the campus calendar to find a series of Italian films and another of Postmodern Film Screenings.

Three of the four series promote films set in other countries, written in other languages, and directed by artists with imaginations nurtured in other corners of the globe. The Global Film Series, for instance, focuses this semester on African film, featuring works about Senegal, South Africa, Mali, Nigeria, and Mauritania. The languages in these films range from French and English to Wolof, Hassanya, Zulu, Bambara, Ibo and Yoruba. The stories span from re-workings of Biblical and Shakespearian narratives to engagements with the harsh details of 20^th century apartheid or the contemporary lives of ordinary Nigerians.

For most of us, nearly all these languages are “out of radio contact,” and for many of our students, these places might as well be the “dark side of the moon.” Certainly, a film series cannot be expected to illuminate all the complexities of these cultures, but it’s a beginning. The Italian films on tap this semester likewise invite students to explore both a culture and a culture’s perspectives on ideas, issues, and known events: soldiering, World War I, the nature of friendship, the Holocaust. All these places, people, and events are to some extent “indescribable--drifting away from our imagination[s],” yet the language of film and film’s visual economies have a way of anchoring the unfamiliar.

With films from America, Spain, and Mexico--set in such contexts as the far past of Sparta, the modern past of the Spanish Civil War, the recent past of “Father Knows Best,” and the near future of 2027--the Postmodern Film Series suggests that film can translate (indeed, can upend) familiar narrative conventions, leaving us somewhat lost in space and time. Instead of anchoring us, they deliberately set us adrift with our imaginations to chart a course. Since we’re in the business of fostering imaginations, this dislocation and disorientation should be encouraged.

Finally, the Political Science Film Series includes a number of well-known films that explicitly raise questions about politics, policy, and social issues. But these films--all of which challenge students to think about 20^th-century issues such as Watergate, the Cold War, race relations--also challenge another assumption: that the only thing to do on Friday nights is to “party.”

Coordinated by faculty members and involving faculty-led introductions, screenings, and discussions, all these film series model for students the kinds of engaged lives adults can lead--lives where watching movies and talking about them, reading books and discussing them, learning languages and using them, reading newspapers and arguing about them, exploring other cultures and struggling with how they are always still “drifting away from our imaginations” are all part of being an educated person (even on Friday nights). So I thank the faculty members who have put so much energy into this semester’s film offerings: Scott Cohen (Global Film Series), George Piggford, C.S. C. (Postmodern Film Series), Antonio Barbagallo (Italian Film Series), and the Political Science Faculty (Political Science Film Series--with Richard Finnegan, Celeste Lay, and Jim Millikan leading the discussions this semester).

As I mentioned last week, the Martin Institute--in collaboration with the Honors Program--kicked off its programming this year with a film: Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, “Why We Fight.” Jared Green’s erudite introduction to that film set a standard for how faculty can welcome students into critical engagement with such texts.

In spite of the fact that film series such as these are one feature of how we are dramatically increasing the focus on global and political issues and on intercultural understanding in our curriculum and co-curriculum--and in spite of the increasing percentage of our student body who are abroad in short-term, semester-long, and year-long programs--our students report relatively low levels of satisfaction (on surveys of student engagement such as NSSE and the senior Exit Survey) with their own understanding of international issues, their “understanding and appreciating cultural and ethnic differences,” their appreciation for their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and their opportunities to have serious conversations with students and faculty of different religious beliefs, political opinions, personal values, and social, racial or ethnic backgrounds.

So, as we work together across the College to address the diversity of the student body and of the faculty and staff, I encourage you to encourage your students to take advantage of these campus opportunities for developing their intercultural understanding, for expanding their capacity as citizens, for participating in frank discussions, and for expressing differences of opinion. At the risk of losing the Apollo metaphor altogether, it’s not “rocket science” that the world of work and further study they will enter expects them to be prepared for, open to, and engaged with such complexities.

Best regards,
Katie