Feore Family Lecture Series on Jesuit Studies
The Feore Family Lecture Series seeks to bring the world's preeminent scholars in the field of Jesuit Studies to Boston College for engagement with the University and the general public. The series also features the presentation of the George E. Ganss, S.J. Award, which recognizes a person's significant scholarly contributions to the field of Jesuit Studies.
FALL 2026
听
Feore Family Lecture Series on Jesuit Studies
October 6, 2026
Gasson Hall 100
Boston College
4:15 p.m. Reception
5:00 p.m. Lecture
The recipient of the 2026 George E. Ganss, S.J., Award is听
Ines 沤upanov,
Senior Research Fellow (Emerita), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Her presentation is entitled,
听Truth and Storytelling in India and Beyond (16th鈥�18th Centuries)
In this presentation, 沤upanov will argue that Jesuit writers in the early modern period had a particular relationship to authorship. They mostly practiced and preferred, when it came to 鈥渓ife writing,鈥� collective authorship or co-authorship. Life is not 鈥減ersonal,鈥� wrote the poststructuralist guru Gilles Deleuze. Indeed, life-writing is a communicative fabric that weaves together emotions, memory, and identity of more than one person.
Biographical elements are building blocks of Jesuits鈥� histories, relations, menologium, martyrologium, and in the popular genre of vitae. These narratives were important information providers as well as 鈥榩ersuasion tools,鈥� using epideictic rhetoric. Therefore, Jesuit life writing is both a literary form and social and cultural practice. It enacts, sustains, and nourishes human relationships, and is increasingly seen today as therapeutic.
Life writing is also always controversial, as 沤upanov will try to demonstrate by looking into a few selected, printed Jesuit biographies in 16th-18th-century India, when the historical texts of the Society of Jesus confronted or embraced the 鈥榥ationalist-colored鈥� wishful-thinking narrativesof the Portuguese empire.
听PAST LECTURES
Nineth Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 6, 2025
"When the Saints Go Marching In" Jesuit Hagiography in Counter-Reformation Context
Presented by Simon Ditchfield, Ph.D.
Eigthth Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 8, 2024
"Jesuit Studies in Context: Historical Questions, Historiographical Trends, and Personal Reflections"
Presented by Stefania Tutino, Ph.D.
Seventh Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 3, 2023
"Tales of Foreign Lands: Jesuit Youth Literature and Missionary Propaganda in the 20th Century"
Presented by Markus Friedrich, Ph.D.
Sixth Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 4, 2022
"Telling a Different Jesuit Story"
Presented by Festo Mkenda, S.J.
Fifth Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 1, 2019
"Comprehending the World: Jesuits, Language, and Translation in the Early Modern Period"
Presented by Liam M. Brockey, Ph.D.
Fourth Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 2, 2018
"A Historian's Journey to Jesuit Education"
presented by Paul F. Grendler, Ph.D.
Third Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 3, 2017
鈥淧ast, Present, and Future of Jesuit Studies: Historiographical Thoughts鈥�
presented by John W. O'Malley, S.J.
Second Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, October 4, 2016
"And Then What?: The Jesuits after Their Restoration (1814...)"
presented by John W. Padberg, S.J.
Inaugural Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies, November 19, 2015
"American Jesuits and the World: Toward a More Global Religious History"
presented by John T. McGreevy, Ph.D.