Keynote Speaker: Michael Waldstein, Ph.D. | St. Paul CenterDr. Waldstein, Distinguished Fellow of The St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, is the Max Seckler professor of theology. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame before serving as the founding president of the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he also held the position of St. Francis of Assisi Professor of New Testament. He served as a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family (2003-2009) and is a member of the the Board of Trustees of the University of Eichstaett, Germany. He holds a B.A. from Thomas Aquinas College, a Ph.D. from the University of Dallas, an S.S.L. from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and a Th.D. from Harvard University in New Testament and Christian Origins.
Plenary Speaker: Richard Dougherty, Ph.D. | University of DallasDr. Dougherty is Chair of the Politics Department and Director of the Politics Graduate
Program at the University of Dallas. He was awarded a teaching and research position
from the State of Bavaria, Germany and served as Visiting Professor in the Department of Comparative
Political Science at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Inglostadt. His research interests include Medieval Political Philosophy, Constitutionalism and American Politics, the Presidency,
and the American Founding. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Belmont Abbey
College, a M.A. in Political Philosophy and Literature from the University of Dallas,
and a Ph. D. in Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas.
Each year the Braniff Graduate Student Association organizes a conference that reflects the unique interdisciplinary nature of the Braniff Graduate School and its emphases on the Western tradition, classical education and contemporary scholarship.
This year's conference will explore the ways in which the Bible informs or has transformed the liberal arts disciplines and will take place at the University of Dallas, located in Irving, TX.
We welcome papers in disciplines including—but not limited to—philosophy, literature, politics, theology, history, and psychology, and drawing from the classical, medieval, modern, or contemporary period. We also welcome papers that take an interdisciplinary approach.
We invite scholars working in the liberal arts to submit abstracts of no more than 500 words that examine a specific passage or theme in the Bible alongside a specific author or text from one of the disciplines. For example, papers might explore Adam and Rousseau’s natural man, Ecclesiastes and Hamlet, Augustine on Cain as the founder of the first city, or the Sermon on the Mount as ethical revolution.
Preference will be given to papers conversant with the great texts of the Western tradition. The conference committee will invite select authors to publish their essays in a special edition of Ramify: The Journal of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts.
Submit abstracts to udbgsaconference@gmail.com. Abstracts should be prepared for blind review. Please include a separate cover letter with your name, paper title, email address, and institutional affiliation.
Abstracts are due no later than Friday, November 23, 2018. Presenters will be notified of their acceptance by Tuesday, December 11, 2018 and will be asked to submit their full papers, suitable for a 15 minute presentation (no more than 2500 words), by Monday, January 14, 2019.
In the current COVID-19 crisis, the love of Danny Fitzpatrick, BA '13, for Italy, appreciation for his time there, and a creative collaboration with sculptor Tim Schmalz have led to a specific way of rendering aid to the country beloved by so many UD alumni and one-time Romers.
+ Read MoreEdisson Ramos, BA '20, is one of many students receiving assistance from UD's COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund, which has currently raised nearly $90,000; the first of the funds were distributed last week to help students make their April rent, and Director of Financial Aid Taryn Anderson, BA '07, is in the process of distributing a second wave to students with housing or food insecurity or in need of Wi-Fi or other resources for online learning.
+ Read MoreIn our current condition, with most of the U.S. sheltering in place and/or learning and working from our homes, it's hard to imagine that just 20 days ago, teachers and those aspiring to be teachers gathered together for the fourth annual Excellence in Education conference at the University of Dallas, organized, run and sponsored by UD's Education Department, but so they did, and so we will all do -- gather together, that is -- some day again.
+ Read More
