2020 - 2021 Student Fellows

Emily Bernard
I am very excited to be writing my first-full length play under the mentorship of Professor Willenbrink.  The play, taking place in a small town, is about two brothers wrestling with a betrayal from the past, and questioning each other's intentions and identity. 

Timothy Cody
My Humanities Fellowship project will make students more aware of the significance of the art found on The University of Scranton campus – and throughout Jesuit spaces worldwide - in an effort to develop a friendship with the arts that incorporates the Ignatius Examen outside the walls of the Theology 121 classroom. 
  
Molly Elkins
This project will investigate the role of spirituality in a cura personalis approach to medicine. I will engage philosophical, psychological, and theological principles, and will investigate historical and current trends in medicine. 

Jessica Goldschlager
I will analyze the impact of personal experience on the portrayal of schizophrenia among Latinx authors. I will also study the literary history of schizophrenia within the Latin-American realm, and I will posit plausible causes for the lack of literary frameworks on mental disorders. 

Ryan Maguire 
My project will study the complex relationship between the medical field and Christian theology. I will study the philosophy of medicine in the ancient world, before the dawn of Christianity.  Second, I will consider these topics and evaluate how Christian ethics and Ignatian spirituality have a place in modern medicine. All of this will help to develop a philosophy of medicine that is genuinely humanistic in its approach and thoroughly dedicated to caring for the sick.  

Mary Purcell
My project will recognize the forgotten voices of three important female philosophers of the 17th century: Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, and Princess Elizabeth. I will deal with vitalism, panpsychist, aesthetics, materialism, and Cartesian dualism. I will also draw on the work of of their male counterparts: Hobbes, Leibniz, and Descartes. 

Jonathan Rizzo
This project is a narrative essay of my personal experience with and perspective of the Shipsky family, a farming family from Clifford, Pennsylvania, that is grounded in love, their Byzantine Catholic faith, and honest, hard work. It will document how my experience with them had a profound impact on my life. 

Quinn Stanford
This project is a poetry collection developed around gender and sexuality. The primary goal of this project is to explore themes of gender through a dialogue between the poet and a character invented for the project, named Blair.

Christopher Volpe
My project explores the relationship between the American Civil War and the evolution of the American Catholic identity. Through analysis of different Catholic orders and communities, I have synthesized a thesis on the birth of the modern American Catholic identity forged not only along the Potomac but in the halls of Congress. My research points to a unique identity for Catholic Americans and the beginning of a greater church movement that will eventually be realized as Catholic Democracy. 

Casey Welby
For this project I will be researching the letterforms found in ancient manuscripts and coins up to 1600 CE. Each of the manuscripts and coins will be digitized in order to more closely observe the lettering. There will be a physical exhibition of the manuscripts and coins, on loan from a private collection, on the fifth floor of the Weinberg Memorial library come Spring 2021 along with an online exhibition through the University’s website.