On October 16-18, 2014, Loyola University Chicago will hold a major conference marking the bicentennial of the Restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814. The conference aims at locating works — of both restored Jesuits and their colleagues from women’s religious orders — within the specific experiential context of building an American nation. The stories of these men and women provide studies in what Thomas Tweed has termed “Crossing and Dwelling” (2006): the crossings and dwellings of refugees from European exclusions; transatlantic immigrants; multilingual and transnational identities; settlers in ethnic urban cores; boundary-dwellers in frontier peripheries.

In order to give examples of historiographical approaches the conference hopes to foster, a Tumblr page has been set up: http://jesuitrestoration2014.tumblr.com/. Scholars are urged to consult the posts for preferred topics. They are also invited to post reports of research in progress, forthcoming dissertations, archival possibilities, and other emerging resources.

Approaches being sought include:

• emotions
• ethnicity
• frontier
• gender
• immigration
• intellectual history
• libraries/book history
• material religion
• migration
• science
• space
• sports
• transatlantic
• trauma
• urban

Proposal Submissions:

Please send a 250-500-word proposal and a brief summary of your research
interests and career to date to: Kyle Roberts (kroberts2@luc.edu) and Stephen Schloesser (sschloesser@luc.edu).

The deadline for the proposal is February 1, 2014.

Participants with accepted proposals will be notified by April 1, 2014.