In addition to its other programs, the Erasmus Institute sponsors annually a summer seminar for faculty, in order to offer scholars a chance to enrich their research by relating it to the intellectual traditions associated with the Abrahamic religions. The seminar, over the course of two weeks, explores ways in which these traditions can enhance their individual projects. The Institute will cover expenses of food, lodging, and transportation for all participants. The 2003 seminar will be housed on the attractive campus of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, one hour west of Boston.

This year, a distinguished senior scholar of literature and culture, Geoffrey Hartman, Sterling Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emeritus and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, will lead the interdisciplinary workshop-style seminar. Hartman’s many books include The Fateful Question of Culture; The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust; A Critic's Journey: Literary Reflections, 1958-1998; Easy Pieces; Minor Prophecies: The Literary Essay in the Culture Wars; Saving the Text: Literature/ Derrida/ Philosophy; Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle against Inauthenticity; and, as co-editor, Midrash and Literature.

The seminar will encourage readings in significant literary and cultural thinkers about religion, ritual, and the residues or resilience of religious perspectives. Vattimo, Eliade, Gaster, the Cambridge anthropologists, V. Turner and Van Gennep, as well as some older sources (perhaps Vico, Schleiermacher and Arnold) will be among the suggested readings. It will be essential for participants to have done some of those readings before coming to the seminar, which will concentrate mainly on poetic texts. The first two sessions will concentrate on interpretation theory and will include an exploration of midrash. The remaining sessions will focus on close readings of poems chosen from among the following authors: Addison, Smart, Collins, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, E. Dickinson.

Application instructions can be accessed at our website. Deadline for all application materials is February 17, 2003.