Insights and Conversations from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE)
This series of posts explores the author’s experiences with teaching virtues in connection with his two autistic children. The focus is on the virtue of justice and the challenges of teaching it, as well as the need for understanding different perspectives on justice. The author emphasizes the importance of persistence in nurturing a vision of justice.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
In the first two installments of this series, I explored how the virtues I teach are echoed as callings to me through my two autistic children. As I teach courage, they call me to be present with them in their fear. As I teach moderation, they call me to examine myself rather than judge others. The third echo, justice, is the focus of this post.
Continue reading “Echoed Vocation III: A Call to Justice”The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, associate professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University.
The most recent episode of Callings features a conversation with Geoffrey Bateman, professor of peace and justice studies at Regis University. He is also a NetVUE faculty fellow and NetVUE scholar and has written extensively on the topic of supporting LGBTQIA+ students in their vocational journeys. In addition to serving as one of the faculty advisors for the Queer Student Alliance at Regis, he also leads Brave Space Trainings for the Queer Resource Alliance. His recent scholarship includes the essays “Queer Vocation and the Uncommon Good” in Called Beyond Ourselves: Vocation and the Common Good and “Queer Callings: LGBTQ Literature and Vocation” in Cultivating Vocation in Literary Studies.
Continue reading “Geoffrey Bateman and the Uncommon Good”It wasn’t until Amanda Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Must Climb,” that I realized the more subtle and insidious tragic failing that threatens us. In our own lives the failings are often smaller and less histrionic than tragic failings of an Oedipus, Hamlet, Othello, or Lear. For us, the danger is settling for “just is” instead of “justice.” Gorman’s homophone warns of the seemingly small slippage from our true end and aim into weary, complacent, resignation. These small tragedies will, if they are great enough in number, led to further national tragedy.
Biden’s inauguration occasioned another flurry of internet chatter and reflections on his often used quotation, “when hope and history rhyme,” from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, a version of Sophocles Philoctetes. Making “hope and history rhyme” has always s been an inspiring phrase for me, but, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the literary genre of tragedy and its usefulness to vocation, I was struck by how apt tragedy is for educating us in the type of civic engagement that lines of Heaney and the young poet Amanda Gorman call us to.
Continue reading ““Just is” or “Justice” ?: Amanda Gorman and the tragedy of hope and history”
I remember reading a long time ago that there were fifty different words in Eskimo languages for snow. I tried to imagine how to tease out nuances in texture, timing or other qualities that would be of significance. But I realized that the words were linked to Inuit cultural experience, and I came up short.
This exercise came to mind recently, after someone asked me if I was optimistic about the resiliency of American democracy amidst the current tidal wave of polarization and disruption. “No,” I replied, “but I am hopeful.” That set me to pondering the differences between pairs of related words. The distinctions I make are surely idiosyncratic as well as culturally bound, but some seem important.
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