___ the Third Biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award ___

_LFP Update_ Archives List Printable Version

__LFP Update__4.1

Welcome to the _LFP Update_, an e-publication from the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts to keep LFP representatives and others informed about the activities of 1) LFP National Network institutions, 2) present and former Lilly Fellows and, 3) the LFP office at Valparaiso University.

______Nominations and Applications received for the LFP Post-Doctoral ______
______Fellowships and for the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program ______

We are happy to announce that the LFP received 101 applications for three LFP Post-Doctoral Fellowships at Valparaiso University. This year again, the selection committee regarded the applications this year among the strongest in the history of the program. Look for announcements in the May issue of the _LFP Update_ for profiles of the new fellows, who will be selected in February.
We are also happy to announce that the LFP received 89 nominations from 47 network schools for 15 2008 Lilly Graduate Fellowships (This is up from 67 nominees and 39 nominating schools from last year). Thank you for all your work in making the nomination process of this second year of the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program a success. Applications for nominees are due on February 3, 2009. 24 finalists will be selected by March 13, 2009, and the 15 Fellows will be selected during an Interview Conference at the Omni Severin Hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 17-18, 2009.

___ The Third Biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award ___

The Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts announces that it is now accepting nominations for the Third Biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award.
The biennial Lilly Fellows Program Book Award honors an original and imaginative work from any academic discipline that best exemplifies the central ideas and principles animating the Lilly Fellows Program. These include faith and learning in the Christian intellectual tradition, the vocation of teaching and scholarship, and the history, theory or practice of the university as the site of religious inquiry and culture.
Works under consideration should address the historical or contemporary relation of Christian intellectual life and scholarship to the practice of teaching as a Christian vocation or to the past, present, and future of higher education. Single authored books or edited collections in any discipline, published in 2006, 2007 or 2008, are eligible; a Prize of $3000 will be awarded at the Lilly Fellows Program National Conference at Calvin College, October 2-4, 2009.
The Nomination deadline is March 1, 2009; For nomination procedures and further information, please click here.

______New Book: After Modernity?: Secularity, Globalization, and the ______
______Re-enchantment of the World, Edited by James K.A. Smith ______

We would like to announce the publication of After Modernity?: Secularity and the Re-enchantment of the World, edited by James K.A. Smith, on Baylor University Press (ISBN-13: 9781602580688). After Modernity? contains presentations from the 2005 National Research Conference --Globalization and Secularity: What Comes After Modernity?--held at Calvin College. To find out more about the book, click here.

_____ Introducing the Academic Vocations Network _____

We would like to announce the launch of the Academic Vocations Network, a project that has been in the works for a number of years and that the LFP has helped to sponsor. The Academic Vocations Network hopes to become the primary Web-based career resource to connect faith-related colleges and universities with Christian faculty and administrators.
Please click here for more information.

_____ Report on 2008 National Research Conference: Convivencia _____

On March 27-29, Loyola Marymount University hosted a superb National Research Conference organized by Dorian Llewellyn and Amir Hussain on the theme of Convivencia. About seventy-five scholars looked back to twelfth-century Spain where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in creative tension in the Umayyad Caliphate in Al-Andalus while considering the possibilities for Convivencia in the 21st century. The diverse and complicated recipe of heritage, ethnicity, tradition, and personal history provided rich conversational stew, not to mention the literal and wonderful food that colleagues Amir and Dorian had arranged for participants.
On the opening night of the conference, the conferees enjoyed an outdoor reception and from there moved into an intimate recital hall where they were entertained by the mellifluous Yuval Ron Ensemble. The songs and dances of Andalusia drew the scholars from widely separated parts of the United States and from differing faith traditions into the subject in a way that not even the most brilliant paper could have done. As the conference progressed, attendees heard outstanding papers, including a Keynote Presentation by Maria Rosa Menocal. Altogether it was a wonderful conference.
The annual LFP National Research Conference provides a forum for research and scholarship among faculty at Network institutions. The conference fosters and promotes research that addresses issues of faith and learning, Christian practices of teaching, the relationship of religion and the academic disciplines, the relationship of the sacred and the secular, or other aspects of church-related higher education. Any LFP national network school can apply for one of these grants; the deadline for application for 2009 is March 15. Because this is the largest grant offered by the LFP, we recommend that applicants correspond with the LFP office regarding the grant application prior to submission. For more information, click here.

____ Report on 2008 Network Exchange: ____
____ Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights, Geneva College ____

On June 3-6, 2008, Geneva College held a Network Exchange Program: "Returning to the Roots of Civil Rights." This four-day seminar brought together participants from seven LFP network schools to learn about Geneva's tour of historic sites pertaining to the Civil Rights movement. The seven then participated in an eight-day bus tour (June 7-15) of the sites. Participants met with movement veterans as well as and tour organizers in order to learn from Geneva's program so that they could start similar programs at their own schools. The exchange was a resounding success.
Network Exchange Programs allow Network institutions to showcase distinctive projects, institutes, or curricula that highlight the Christian or church-related characteristics of their schools. They provide for an extended visitation by faculty and leaders from other Network colleges, allowing close observation and study of the pertinent program, so that other institutions might learn from the host institution's experience and perspectives. Any established and distinctive institution, program, or curricular emphasis that especially promotes the college or university's mission and Christian character may be an appropriate focus for a Network Exchange. These may be programmatic initiatives like core programs, honors programs, interdisciplinary programs, or capstone courses. Or they might take the form of research or study institutes, international experiences, co-curricular programs, off-campus study centers, or service learning programs. A Network Exchange program may be funded for $25,000. Institutions that have already received a grant in this category will not be eligible in the same category again for three years after the original grant was awarded. Application deadline: September 15, 2009 for a program planned for the 2010-11 academic year. For more information, click here.

___ Upcoming award and grant opportunity deadlines:____
____ Summer Seminars and National Research Conferences ___

The deadline for hosting the 2010 Summer Seminar for College Teachers is March 15, 2009. For more information, click here.
The deadline for hosting the 2010/2011 LFP National Research Conference is March 15, 2009. For more information, click here.

______From the Colloquium... ______

The Fellows Colloquium has taken up its work for the new semester here at Valpo. Our focus is on teaching and readings for discussion come from Charles Taylor, Stanley Fish, Gilbert Meilaender, St. Augustine, Philip W. Jackson, Ken Bain and Robert Inchausti. We will be examining some of our own course syllabi, as well.

In our first reading, "A Catholic Modernity," Charles Taylor (Sources of the Self, A Secular Age) has called to our attention a dilemma that is well worth pondering at this time of global economic crisis and national transition. Taylor submits:
Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so much as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates. A similar point can be made, if we look at the other dimension of the affirmation of ordinary life, that concerned with universal justice. Here too, we are asked to maintain standards of equality which cover wider and wider classes of people, bridge more and more kinds of difference, impinge more and more in our lives. How do we manage to do it? (28-29)

Taylor provides three possible answers to his own question before delivering his own proposal for the solution of this dilemma:

…it is clear that Christian spirituality points to [one way out]. It can be described in two ways-either as love and compassion which is unconditional, that is, not based on what you the recipient have made of yourself; or as one based on what you are most profoundly, a being in the image of God. They obviously amount to the same thing. In either case, the love is not conditional on the worth realized in you as an individual, or even in what is realizable in you alone. That's because being made in the image of God, as a feature of each human being, is not characterized just by reference to this being alone. Our being in the image of God is also our standing among others in the stream of love which is the facet of God's life we try to grasp, very inadequately, in speaking of the Trinity.

This cannot be a matter of guarantee, only of faith. (33)
God bless you and your schools in the new semester and the new year.

-- John Steven Paul