Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University
Seminars are held from 4:00-6:00 PM,
at the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL.
Papers are pre-circulated. For a copy e-mail scholl@newberry.org
2002-2003
October 3, 2002—"Explaining the Rise of Anglo-American Evangelicalism, 1730-1750"
Mark Noll, Wheaton College
"Explaining the Rise of Anglo-American Evangelicalism, 1730-1750" will be a chapter in a synthetic history of evangelical movements in the 18th-century English-speaking world. It suggests that no single explanation can account for what emerged as evangelicalism over these years in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the main regions of North America. Rather, a satisfying account must include participants' spiritual explanations (unfavorable as well as favorable), the agency of unusually effective leaders, the general flow of ecclesiastical and a national history, and large-scale changes in society, intellect, and perceptions of the self.
November 7, 2002—"A Catholic Progressive? The Case of Chicago's Judge E.O. Brown"
Walter Nugent, University of Notre Dame
The paper presents the life of Edward Osgood Brown (1847-1923), a Chicago lawyer and judge. Brown was born into an impeccably Yankee family in Massachusetts and converted to Catholicism early in life. He arrived in Chicago in 1872 and opened a law office. He befriended John Peter Altgeld, advocated Henry George's single tax, was a self-described "Radical Democrat," and anti-imperialist in 1899. He was well acquainted with Chicago's reformers from Henry Demarest Lloyd to Jane Addams to Harold Ickes. He was the first president of the Chicago NAACP and a life-long "race man."
December 5, 2002—"Rethinking Jane Addams's Secular Humanism: Religion at Hull House"
Rima Schultz, editor, "Women Building Chicago"
Rethinking Jane Addams's private beliefs and public religious expressions has outcomes for the narratives of progressivism, American Protestantism, and the rise of the gender welfare state. This paper examines the material culture of Hull-House as well as its programs and associations in an effort to reconstruct the religious environment created by Addams and co-founder Ellen Gates Starr during the early years of the settlement. Using correspondence, published writings, and images, the paper argues that Addams's lack of conviction of acceptance of traditional Trinitarian Christianity should not be interpreted as an indication that she abandoned religion, either personally, or as an important aspect of human experience. Instead, Addams sought to make religious experience possible for herself and first generation Americans who confronted modernity and the contradictions of progress and blight in the new industrial and urban nation that had emerged by the 1880's. She also attempted to redefine religious and cultural space for the American democracy in a neighborhood where ethnic and religious diversity appeared to progressives like herself, a great barrier to understanding and harmony.
January 30, 2003—"D.L. Moody, the Chicago Avenue Church, and Louis Sullivan: Building Religious Urban Space"
Barbara Dobschuetz, University of Illinois at Chicago
This paper will explore the formation, building and relocation of Moody's Chicago Avenue Church following the Chicago Fire of 1871. Chicago's commercial culture was exploding and numerous church buildings reflected the new found wealth and position of their congregations. Moody's church was making definite steps toward the embrace of commercial culture while still trying to maintain their image of being a house of worship for the poor. The controversy around the hiring of the young Louis Sullivan to paint the interior frescoing of the church reveals the "hybrid" relationship between the Chicago Avenue Church and Chicago's consumer culture. In addition to the challenges posed by the interior of the building and the religious/cultural statements their ultimate choices made, the exterior of the building and the relocation of the church reveal both a contested and complementary relationship between the church and its urban space.
February 27, 2003—"'Action Proportioned to Nature:' Solitude in the Career of Ralph Waldo Emerson"
Clark Gilpin, University of Chicago
This essay employs an early lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Protest," to relate his characteristic resistance against social convention to ideas and practices of solitude. It proposes that solitude is a social act, composed of disciplines such as reading, journal keeping, and solitary walking; the practice of meditative seclusion; intimate conversation; and the cultivation of mental images of solitary presence before Absolute. The essay comes from the third chapter of a work in progress, entitled "Alone with the Alone: Solitude in American Religious and Literary History."
March 6, 2003—"That I May Do My Part: The Prayers of American Soldiers of the First World War"
Jon Ebel, University of Chicago
May 8, 2003—"Catholicism and Abolition: A Historical (and Theological) Problem"
John McGreevy, University of Notre Dame
The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essay in advance, and that all who request the paper will attend the seminar. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
To be placed on the mailing list for notices of presentations, contact Ginger Shulick at scholl@newberry.org, or call 312.255.3524. Please include your e-mail address if you are willing to receive notices by e-mail.