COMMUNI CATION/ WOME N’S S TUDIES
Catholic sisters forming citizens
Studies and Gender Studies, is focusing on women religious in the United States and the roles they played in cultivating democ- racy. “My argument is that women religious in the U.S. modeled what it meant to be a citizen, not only in teaching, but in service,” Murphy says. In the 18th
B and 19th Dr. Murphy
turies, women religious were sent to the United
States from Europe. “They were charged with teaching and running orphanages and, for better or for worse, for teaching immigrant children to be American,” says Murphy. ”Early on, this was during a time
ren Ortega Murphy, PhD, of the School of Communication and Women’s
in which Catholics were sort of suspect in the U.S. People doubted as to whether they could be full Americans, with their supposed first allegiance to the pope, a foreign power. And yet sisters were rapidly founding the largest private educational system in the world, forming both Catho- lics and citizens.” Murphy argues that the sisters also cre-
ated a model of service. Women religious were the largest organized group of nurses during the Civil War, and they rose to the occasion during the Spanish Influenza and yellow fever epidemics. “They modeled what it meant to be a part of a democracy, caring for fellow citizens,” she says. And yet, Murphy says, as this was hap-
cen-
pening, the Church was attempting to curb the participation of nuns in civic life. “There was some tension, especially in the 20th century, because sisters who had done so much in the community were some of the most confined people in civic life,” Murphy says. “Looking at the sisters gives us a fas- cinating insight into how democracy and Catholicism intersect and conflict.”
HISTORY/GENDE R STUDI E S
Male isolation in the post-Soviet era
the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies program, is investigating masculinity in late Soviet-era films, especially in relation to Catholicism and spirituality. She is analyz- ing two films by Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and one set of films, Decalogue, by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. “What I see in these films is something
B
that’s discussed in other scholarship from this period, and that is the alienation of men from the family and community,” Hem- enway says. “The argument is that this is largely a result of deliberate Soviet policy.” According to accepted scholarship,
LI T E R ATUR E /PHI LOSOPHY
Pursuing peace despite differences
de Montaigne and Emmanuel Levinas. Montaigne is a 16th-century French writer. Levinas is a 20th-century Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor who was born in Lithuania but spent most of his life in France. Posner is analyz- ing the two philosophers’ questions about how to create a society in which people who are radically different from one another can live in peace.
L Dr. Posner “The first question is, what do we do with
persons who are not only unlike us, but are so different that they seem to be a challenge to our values, and maybe even our exis- tence?” Posner says. “The second question
iterature professor David Posner, PhD, studies the work of philosophers Michel
is, what political frameworks are most likely to provide conditions that allow us to live in harmony with them?” For Montaigne, these questions arise in
the context of the French Wars of Religion, in which Catholics and Protestants fought each other for decades. Montaigne was Catholic, although both sides of his family were originally Jewish refugees from Spain. Levinas, who spent time in captivity at a military labor camp, survived the persecu- tion of Jews during World War II. His father and brothers were killed in the pogroms. “The two of them overlap, although
widely separated by history and social contexts,” says Posner. “They see the same questions as fundamental.” And, despite their different circumstances, they come to similar conclusions. “While Montaigne is wary of disrupting
established order, his respect for difference makes him, like Levinas, an advocate of a society that has religious and cultural tolera- tion as one of its basic principles,” Posner says. “And both of them identify the greatest good as humility in the face of the Other.”
Hemenway says, early Soviet leadership encouraged allegiance to the state above all else, in- cluding the family. “Thus, there was this atomization of the family. People were isolated from each other institutionally,” Hemen- way says. When, later, the Soviet Union again began to encourage family
Dr. Hemenway
ties, it was too late to reverse some laid-in sociological patterns. “People’s loyalty and resources were linked individually to the state, and not to one another,” says Hem- enway. “Mothers got support for raising children—the man was separate. By the late Soviet period, you see this phenomenon where men are wandering around wonder- ing what their purpose is in life.” The films show alienation not only from other people, but from religion and faith—particularly in the Polish work, which is an exploration of the Ten Commandments. Hemenway says she has been encour-
aged by the response to her work and hopes to expand her research. “I gave the paper at the conference in Vilnius, and people said it gave them real insight into their societies. After this particular project is over, I’m really interested in looking at the experience of people in late Soviet eastern Europe. It’s a story that hasn’t been very well documented.”
etsy Jones Hemenway, PhD, of the history department and the director of
FALL 2011
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