Support for Faculty Scholarship

Brent McFarland Center program

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Through conferences, lectures, and support for faculty scholarship, the McFarland Center enhances our community's capacity to address a wide range of important religious and ethical issues.

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Grand Challenges Fellows

Beginning in September 2025, the Center will welcome two groups of Holy Cross faculty as McFarland Center Faculty Fellows for a term lasting through the academic year. This initiative supports the Center’s ongoing mission to foster a diverse scholarly community engaged in meaningful dialogue and collaborative research.

 

Each group will address one of two “grand challenges” from the Academic Strategic Plan as they connect to the mission of the McFarland Center. This year’s challenges are “Enhancing Democracy and Pluralism” and “Climate.”

Enhancing Democracy and Pluralism

These three faculty members will address the challenge of “Enhancing Democracy and Pluralism” as part of the Grand Challenges Fellows program.

Climate

These two faculty members will address the challenge of “Climate” as part of the Grand Challenges Fellows program.

Faculty Grants

The McFarland Center offers grants to faculty from across the college to pursue scholarship related to the Center’s mission. 

 

Grants are awarded in collaboration with the Committee on Faculty Scholarship, which issues calls annually for grants on Global Catholicism or on other religious and ethical themes.

 

Proposals will be submitted through the faculty research portal and reviewed jointly by the Committee on Faculty Fellowship (CFS) and the Director of the McFarland Center, Thomas M. Landy. 

 

Recommendations will be submitted to the Provost’s Office for final approval.

 

More information on that process can be found here.

 

Global Catholicism Grants 

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Conferences and Publications

To address important issues at the intersections of religion, ethics and culture from the vantage point of many disciplines, the McFarland Center works alongside Holy Cross faculty to sponsor dozens of on-campus programs annually.

 

Recent Conferences

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Browse Our Published Work

Divided Worlds? Challenges in Classics and New Testament Studies, SBL Press

From the November 2020 conference "Divided Worlds? Contexts of the New Testament Then and Now," this volume brings together New Testament Studies and Classics to open up new landscapes.

Religion, Protest, and Social Upheaval, Fordham University Press

From the 2017 conference of the same name, this volume represents some of the best, cutting-edge thinking available on multiple forms of social upheaval and related grassroots movements.

Tolstoy and Spirituality, Academic Studies Press

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines Leo Tolstoy’s unorthodox and provocative approach to spirituality and contains scholarship derived from the 2017 conference of the same name.

Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern, Revolutionary, and Post-Soviet Russian Culture, Northern Illinois University Press

This volume introduces readers to the cultural life of Mary from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet era and contains scholarship derived from the 2011 conference "Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern Russian Culture."

Ethical Sentimentalism: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press

With scholarship derived from the 2014 conference "Moral Sentimentalism and the Foundations of Morality," the essays in this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation of the sentimentalist project.

Thomas Jefferson and the Science of Republican Government, Cambridge University Press

This biography of Notes on the State of Virginia reexamines Thomas Jefferson's only published book, revealing its core political ideas and the strategic purpose behind its composition and dissemination. The volumes contains scholarship derived from the 2010 conference "Religion and Reason in the American Founding."

Resistance to Tyrants, Obedience to God, Lexington Books

This volume, containing scholarship derived from the 2010 conference “Religion and Reason in the American Founding," explores the intertwined influence of reason and religion in the American Founding.

Re-examining Globalization and the History of Science: Ottoman and Middle Eastern Experiences, Cambridge University Press

This 2022 special issue of the British Journal for the History of Science contains scholarship derived from the March 2017 conference "The Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries."

The Russian Intelligentsia: Myth, Mission, and Metamorphosis, Academic Studies Press

This volume, an edited collection expanding on the historic phenomenon of an educated opposition, features scholarship derived from the 2021 conference “The Intelligentsia in Russia: Spiritual and Moral Values.” 

Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov: Art, Creativity and Spirituality, Universitätsverlag Winter

This collection of essays about Dostoevsky’s philosophical novel features scholarship derived from the 2008 conference "Art, Creativity, and Spirituality in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov."

Practicing Catholic: Ritual, Body, and Contestation in Catholic Faith, Palgrave Macmillan New York 

This book brings together top scholars, including Holy Cross professors, to explore methodologies for studying ritual and Catholicism.

Destined for Evil?: The Twentieth-Century Responses, Boydell & Brewer, University of Rochester Press

This collection, edited by Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Predrag Cicovacki, brings together a variety of responses to the ancient question of whether we are — individually and collectively — destined for evil.

Toward a Deeper Understanding of Forgiveness

A Special Collection of Talks from the Inaugural Conference of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, published in 2001. 

McFarland Center Advisory Committee

A group of Holy Cross faculty review proposals for Center-sponsored conferences and applications for our annual faculty fellows cohort.

  • devin gouvea

    Devin Gouvêa

    Assistant Professor
    Areas of Expertise General philosophy of science (focusing on conceptual change in science), philosophy of biology, integrated HPS (history and philosophy of science)
  • Headshot of Matthew Eggemeier.

    Matthew Eggemeier

    Professor
    Areas of Expertise modern and contemporary Christian theologies; political and liberation theologies; postmodern theology
  • Headshot of Katherine Lu Hsu.

    Katherine Lu Hsu

    Assistant Professor
    Areas of Expertise Greek literature, Mythology, Violence and heroism, Migration in ancient myth
  • Daniel Klinghard

    Daniel Klinghard

    Dean of Education and Academic Experience, Professor
    Areas of Expertise Political parties and interest groups, politics and technology, American political development
  • Liat Spiro

    Liat Spiro

    Assistant Professor
    Areas of Expertise Nineteenth-century U.S. history, history of capitalism, history of technology, imperialism and international political economy, and modern German history
  • Kevin Walsh

    Kevin Walsh

    Associate Professor
    Areas of Expertise Security, Networks, Systems

Virtual Class Visits

Virtual Classroom Visits give students first-hand access to scholars, authors, performers and community leaders whose work they are studying. Initiated during a year of remote learning, this program continues to make possible unparalleled opportunities for student engagement with scholars in the classroom. 

 

A call for proposals goes out to faculty before the start of each semester.

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