The Graduate Research Collaborative in Literature and Religion, sponsored by a grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Boston College in conjunction with Religion and the Arts, provides a forum for ongoing dialogue between graduate students and professors on topics related to the developing field of religion and literature.  Specific topics vary from year to year, ranging from broad theoretical discussions to analyses of specific texts.  Past collaboratives have focused on the role of religion in scholarship and teaching, on Marilynne Robinson's novels Gilead and Home, on Chaim Potok's The Chosen, on Czeslaw Milosz's poetry, on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and on the religious dimensions of contemporary fantasy films.  Any interested individuals are welcome to participate.

For this year’s collaborative, we will be discussing the notion of “evil” and its presentation in literature. As a way in to this topic, we are reading Alan Wolfe’s recent book, Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It (Knopf, 2011). In Political Evil, Wolfe, a BC professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, argues for the necessity of recognizing evil in its specificity and responding with political and moral precision. In his attempt to distinguish between general evil and “political evil,” Wolfe draws upon the writing of saints, theologians, and twentieth-century philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Niebuhr. Central to his argument is the importance of thinking about evil not according to the absolutist and morally clarifying rhetoric of “good versus evil,” but in the more pragmatic terms of political realism. Using Wolfe’s text as a spur, we will discuss a variety of short literary and religious texts, selected and introduced by members of the collaborative, that offer perspectives on/representations of “evil”—as an absolute and intolerable force best understood through a moral prism, or as something resembling Wolfe’s “political evil,” specific to its historical moment with motivations that can and need to be understood.

In past years, members have written and presented on texts and themes first aired in the collaborative, and we dedicate a portion of our meetings to discuss writing and publishing in the field of Religion and Literature.

For inquiries regarding the Collaborative, please contact Joshua Olivier-Mason.

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