André Brouillette, S.J., presented a paper at the Annual Conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Pittsburgh on the theme “Between naïveté, trust, and shrewdness; resisting oppression with grace. The case of Teresa de Jesús.” He also published an article reflecting theologically on the realities of pilgrims and refugees, “Pèlerin et réfugié: Regards théologiques croisés,” Théologiques 25, no. 2 (2017): 75-94.

Andrew R. Davis published his new book Reconstructing the Temple: The Royal Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in Ancient Israel and the Near East (Oxford University Press, 2019), which examines temple renovation as a distinct topos within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Davis presented his paper “Jehoash, Josiah, and the Historiography of Temple Renovation” at the 23rd Congress of the International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament in Aberdeen, Scotland, August 2019, and at The Spirit of Scholarship: Biblical and Mesopotamian Studies in the Roman Catholic Academy at Boston College in September 2019. He delivered his paper “Disability and Advocacy in the Book of Job” at three conferences: CBA Annual Meeting, North Canton, OH, July 2019; American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, March 2019; and at the 23rd Congress of the International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament, Aberdeen, Scotland, August 2019.

Brian Dunkle, S.J., delivered a paper, “Sin, Mercy, and David’s Felix Culpa,” for a workshop on “Ambrose and Misericordia” at the International Patristics Conference in Oxford, UK. Dunkle also published an article, “Augustine’s ‘Two Cities’ and Steven Smith’s Pagans and Christians,” in the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies.

Angela Kim Harkins delivered her paper “Finding Your Place in the Spaces Described in the Qumran Prayers” in a joint session organized by the Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls section and the Places, Spaces, and Identity section of the International Society of Biblical Literature (ISBL), held in Rome, Italy, in July. She also interviewed Eileen Schuller, OSU, at ISBL's plenary Conversations event (formerly Fireside Chat). Harkins also gave a talk on the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Nashoba Valley Theology on Tap in September.

Franklin T. Harkins recently published two books: a translation of St. Albert the Great's commentary On Job, Volume 1, Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation, vol. 19 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019), and The Discovery of Being & Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, edited by Christopher M. Cullen, S.J., and Franklin T. Harkins (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2019). In addition to co-authoring the introduction, Harkins contributed an essay to this volume entitled “Angelic Corporeality: A Case of Metaphysical Manuduction in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.” Earlier in the summer, Harkins's essay “Medieval Latin Reception” appeared in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, edited by Peter Martens and Paul Blowers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Richard Lennan addressed the annual conference of Catholic Religious Australia (CRA) in Sydney in June. The topic was “communion.” In September he published “Beyond Scandal and Shame?: Ecclesiology and the Longing for a Transformed Church” in Theological Studies.

Christopher R. Matthews recently published the second issue of Volume 63 of New Testament Abstracts (NTA). This issue contains 500 abstracts and 172 book notices. The first 29 volumes of NTA (spanning 1956–84) are now available online, thanks to the efforts of BC Libraries and the University's commitment to digitization, and to making more and more resources available online to scholars and students. With the addition of the first three decades' set of volumes, the entire NTA corpus is now available online.

Catherine M. Mooney was elected to a three-year term as president of the Hagiography Society. Mooney has also been appointed to the U.S. Board of the Bollandist Society, a 400-year-old Jesuit institution that studies saints and hagiography. In July, she gave a one-week intensive course to 60 Poor Clares, Franciscans, and other scholars on the life and writings of Clare of Assisi. In June and August, she consulted with Francisan friars on the Eastern seaboard regarding their places of ministry.

In September, Theresa A. O’Keefe traveled to Chicago to conduct a day-long in-service with the theology and mission and ministry departments at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois. Over the summer, members of the 21-person theology department, who are revising the school’s theology curriculum, read O’Keefe’s book Navigating Toward Adulthood, which was awarded second place in the Pastoral Ministry: Catechetical category by the Catholic Press Association. O’Keefe also presented “Spirituality, Religion, and the College Student Experience” at the Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education in July. A highlight for her summer months was an opportunity to travel to Spain with 15 Boston College colleagues to follow the footsteps of Ignatius of Loyola.

Andrea Vicini, S.J., co-organized with Dr. Philip Landrigan the international conference Ethical Challenges in Global Public Health: Climate Change, Pollution, and the Health of the Poor on September 16, 2019, at Boston College. He co-edited with Kristin Heyer and James Keenan, S.J., the volume Building Bridges in Sarajevo: The Plenary Papers from CTEWC 2018—the 7th volume in the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church Series published by Orbis Books. He published the article “Prophetic Solidarity for Our Common Home” in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica in the English, Italian, and Spanish editions, while in the journal Annals of Global Health he published the article “Social Justice and the Promotion of the Common Good in Medical Missions to Low-Resourced Countries.” Finally, two book reviews of the volume Incarnate Grace: Perspectives on the Ministry of Catholic Health Care, edited by Charles Bouchard, O.P., appeared in America magazine, both in the print edition and online.