Now in the Historical section of my department

One thing that I’ve learned in my almost twenty years as a professor is that deeply-held, but often latent, views on the nature and standards of one’s discipline come to the surface at:

• Hiring, when a department brings a new soul into the mix, and must adjust to the added personality, his or her thinking, and the effect the addition has upon the whole;
• Tenuring, when a department must examine its standards of scholarship and teaching competence, and ask whether it wishes to be forthwith defined in part by the membership of this particular professor;
• Program and name changes, when departments must capture just what it is that they and their members are intending and doing, and ask whether proposed changes make sense to them, and to the audiences they serve.

My career thus far has seen the first two of these three, and now it sees the third. As a result of late-summer conversations with my Department chair I have been moved from our Department’s systematic theology/ethics section to its historical section. For me this is a most pleasant development, academically and professionally. But it is a change, and one that calls for an explanation. The following stream-of-consciousness offering is my attempt.

My graduate work in medieval studies in Toronto centered upon all aspects of the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas—nihil thomisticum mihi alienum, to paraphrase Terence—and while my first teaching job at Saint Joseph’s College had me teaching a wide array of general education and Core Curriculum courses, far removed from the specialized work I had done on Thomas, I was nonetheless able in my personal research to follow-up on work begun in graduate school (a typical story). But the emphasis on teaching at Saint Joe’s let me develop some teaching and publication interests in ethics, specifically in medical ethics (from a Catholic perspective), where of course Thomas Aquinas was regularly brought into the fray (natural law, the moral object, proportionalism, etc., all being linked to him in both direct and indirect ways). I had also been studying the history of Catholic Moral Theology via Eschmann, Vereecke, Lottin, Angelini and Valsecchi, et al. So when Marquette University’s Department of Theology was looking for someone in ethics who had an interest in the tradition, and who would teach medical ethics courses as well as our “Introduction to Theological Ethics” MA-level courses—and, of course, our undergraduate Introduction course—I turned out to be a good fit, and was hired. Beato me, the Italians say, “lucky me.”

Immediately at Marquette I started teaching an upper-level undergraduate course on medical ethics, and had the chance to participate in fora at MU’s Law School, television interviews, etc., all regarding topics in contemporary ethics. I was still researching Aquinas, but was not finding much opportunity to teach him directly in my courses, because of their nature and location in our overall program, and because those of us in the ethics subsection of the Department’s systematics/ethics section did not—and still do not—have a burgeoning clientele for graduate seminars in ethics. I was feeling myself pulled in differing directions at once, a sensation that became acute when it was clear that our young son, Sam, was autistic. I no longer had a regular workday or workweek, and would have to be as efficient as possible in my teaching and research choices. At the same time, medical ethics was evolving into a distinct and lasting sub-discipline within ethics, with a billowing literature-base, and Catholic moral theology was largely moving on from the debates that animated the 1990’s. My own research was taking me back more frequently to Aquinas’s predecessors in moral matters, and I had done much reading in his Dominican Order and about the Cathars. I had even begun editing a medieval confessor’s manual from the manuscripts. I had to make a choice.

The simple fact is that I was a medievalist theologian by training and inclination, with my academic habits immediately orienting me more towards the world of Aquinas than towards the world of today. The world of medieval theology is what I know best, am best-trained to explore and further, and is frankly the world in which I have a distinct public profile. So starting with my sabbatical in 2004 I have completely directed my academic efforts to what I call “the moral universe of Thomas Aquinas”—though, I must add, Thomas’s world cannot be partitioned into tidy bits—therefore, nihil thomisticum mihi alienum. My Department has since hired an expert in medical ethics, and added strengths in social ethics as well. We’re doing fine. So when my Chair proposed this change to me during the summer, having shared her thinking with other deliberative bodies and stakeholders, I gratefully accepted.

Generatio unius est corruptio alterius: this transfer is not without effects on the teaching and student-direction practices of the historical section. Members of the section now have a new personality to deal with, one with hopes that the study of Aquinas will flourish at Marquette, and become a magnet for the University. Yet my addition will also mean that courses taught, and direction provided, by others hitherto will perforce have to be shared, thereby taking from them some measure of their customary academic contribution. My collegial intentions and efforts will be directed towards the section’s common good. As I see it, we’re not after dividing the pie up into more sections, we’re after growing the pie.

So my happy home here at Marquette now provides me with another happy home within the Department: in the historical section, teaching and researching on the thirteenth century, particularly Thomas Aquinas. A new school year, a new home. New opportunities, new obligations.

Game on.

Comments

[James Arcadi]

A welcome change for my personal interests as well!

[SIster Gayle]

I am glad it's a good fit, Mark. The three points at the beginning reminded me much of religious community life. :-)