Part of the fifth annual International Symposium on Jesuit Studies, titled “Engaging Sources: The Tradition and Future of Collecting History in the Society of Jesus,” included a viewing of selections from the Burns Library's Jesuitica collection. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
More than 70 scholars from around the world gathered at Boston College for the fifth annual International Symposium on Jesuit Studies, titled “Engaging Sources: The Tradition and Future of Collecting History in the Society of Jesus,” organized by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies.
The event, held from June 11-13, featured presentations by researchers, librarians, and archivists from five continents, all with a common interest in understanding how Jesuit sources have shaped history, and a desire to better preserve and disseminate those materials in the future. It also marked the formal launch of the Jesuit Online Bibliography, a collaborative, open-access database founded by three institutions represented at the symposium: the IAJS, the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, and the Jesuitica project at KU Leuven.
Burns Librarian Christian DuPont spoke at the fifth annual International Symposium on Jesuit Studies, organized by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
Among the symposium’s 14 panels and five plenary sessions, one focused on fascinating historical discoveries: how archeological work assists in recovering the shared past of Jesuit missionaries and indigenous people in Peru; what a never-published manuscript from 1701 reveals about Jesuit missions in the Mariana Islands; and the recent discovery, in a local church, of documents hidden in advance of the Jesuits’ expulsion from Portugal in the 1750s.
Other panels addressed topics such as the Jesuits’ personal motivations expressed in their private petitions, and how house diaries, bureaucratic correspondence, and other seemingly ordinary Jesuit sources reveal much about the Jesuit experience and the wider circulation of knowledge. Multiple presentations addressed the collection and preservation of Jesuit sources in conjunction with new technology.
“We are delighted to assist the scholarly community in encountering one another and sharing their work,” said IAJS Director Casey Beaumier, S.J., vice president and University secretary. “We care deeply about archives, so an archival theme was intriguing from the very beginning. We anticipated that it would spark conversations and curiosity about the variety of sources that scholars in the field of Jesuit Studies have encountered.”
“Events such as these too often become occasions for scholars to present their research and leave,” said Seth Meehan, the institute’s associate director. “With this symposium, though, I got the impression that people learned more than they presented and that people left energized by what they had learned, by the connections they had made, and by the possibilities they saw in the future of Jesuit Studies. Researchers and archivists alike learned a lot more about the exciting potential for future collaboration between these two groups of professionals who are usually kept apart.”
Selected papers from this year’s event, after being revised and peer-reviewed, will be published by Jesuit Sources, both in print and online in open access available through the Portal to Jesuit Studies. The full program for the 2019 symposium and the call for papers for the 2020 event, “Engaging the World,”—which will take place June 17-19 in Lisbon—are available at bc.edu/iajs.
–Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies