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Predrag Cicovacki, professor of philosophy and director of Peace and Conflict Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, will be a Senior Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research at Banaras University in Varanasi, India in the fall semester, where he will undertake a teaching and research project titled “Educating for Peace, Nonkilling, and Humanity.”

Cicovacki, of Auburn, Mass., is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2012-13.

Long committed to educating younger generations toward building a more just and humane world, Cicovacki is interested in augmenting how to teach about nonviolence and nonkilling. India is one of the best places in the world to learn about the tradition of nonviolence and nonkilling because of its unique religious, cultural and political history, he says.

In addition to teaching a course titled “The Western Tradition of Nonviolence,” Cicovacki will observe how education for peace is being conducted at the Malaviya Centre. He is especially interested to learn how Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy is being preserved and continued in India.

Gandhi gave the greatest impetus for a widespread use of nonviolence and remains the most important figure to study, Cicovacki says. He is particularly interested in the influence that religion played on Gandhi’s views and conduct, and especially in the role of Jainism — with its emphasis on nonkilling — on Gandhi’s thoughts and action. Cicovacki plans to spend a portion of his research activity by living for two to three weeks in a Jain community, where he plans to learn firsthand not only what the Jain approach involves, but how it is practiced and disseminated.

The trip to India will help Cicovacki restructure the current Peace and Conflict Studies program upon his return to Holy Cross. “I believe that after getting acquainted with how peace programs are being structured and run in India, I may bring some useful and fresh ideas about what kind of changes need to be implemented at Holy Cross,” he wrote in his proposal.

A native of Yugoslavia, Cicovacki, who describes himself as a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the world, has traveled to about 40 different countries, and lectured all over the world. After his first trip to India in 2007 and the exposure to Hinduism and Jainism, he became a vegetarian. He has also visited China three times, a country which fascinates him so much he has started studying Chinese (Mandarin) and Chinese philosophy and literature.

Cicovacki earned his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and his B.A. from the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia. A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 1991, he was the editor-in-chief of “Diatoma: A Philosophical Review,” the College’s philosophical journal, from 2000 to 2002. Cicovacki has published more than 70 essays and papers and authored or edited about 10 books, including the recently released “Dostoevsky and the Affirmation of Life” and “The Restoration of Albert Schweitzer’s Ethical Vision.”

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in over 155 countries worldwide.

Related Information:

• Holy Cross Sociology Professor Receives Fulbright Grant to Explore ‘Couch Surfing’ Trend
• Philosophy

• Peace and Conflict Studies

Eliza Griswold

Eliza Griswold, author of The New York Time best-seller “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), will be on campus to talk about talk about her travels and research in North Africa and Central Asia, where high concentrations of Christians and Muslims live, on Thursday, April 19 at 4:30 p.m. in Rehm Library. 

The lecture, intended to “explore the cradle of Christian-Muslim relations,” is part of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity, presented by the College’s Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture. 

I recently read Griswold’s book in my sociology seminar, “Good Books, Good Sociology,” with Jerry  Lembcke, associate professor of sociology, and was lucky enough to chat with her in the midst of her travels, about her latest book and her future plans.   

Following your recent work, I noticed that you have been in Afghanistan. Are you able to elaborate on your recent travel and what you are currently working on? 

I am currently working on stories of women of color. I am planning on eventually taking another trip to Afghanistan to complete my work there. 

However, my main focus right now is on poverty in America.  I am planning on publishing a book about this topic, but I haven’t started it yet. I am in the research phase so it will be another year or two. 

What are your future plans? Have you been back to Africa since writing “The Tenth Parallel?”   

I have not been back to Africa since the book was published in 2010.  Considering the violence in countries along the tenth parallel, I am trying to plan a trip. I am currently trying to go to Mali Land this summer to follow up. (NOTE: Mali was not included as a case study in Griswold’s book but is located in close proximity to Nigeria which she highlights.)

How do you think (or are you aware) how your book would be perceived if reviewed by non-Westerners? Have you received any feedback from some of the key individuals that you interviewed for the book? 

I have received some good feedback after talking the book over with some of the key individuals that I included, specifically from the imam (leader of a Muslim community) in Nigeria that I worked fairly extensively with. Also, Dr. Hawa Abdi from Somalia has provided me with good feedback on my work for the “Tenth Parallel.” She was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. 

With the conflicts rooted so deeply in history, geography, and moral and cultural beliefs, what do you believe is the first step toward peace? More specifically, what do you believe is the role of the public in resolving and/or contributing to the violence along the tenth parallel? 

Well, first of all, our role is to educate ourselves about the issue. We need to begin there, with education, to change any significant issue. Once we know more, it becomes clear that even acting locally can help globally. Once we educate ourselves, we can see in our everyday lives what we might be able to do to change ourselves and the world around us. 

Have your goals and intentions for publishing this book been met? 

Yes, they definitely have been met. My goal was to bring serious attention through education about the issue (the violent clashes between Christianity and Islam along the tenth parallel) to other parts of the world. In terms of spreading awareness, my goals have been exceeded. 

by Emily Comstock ’12 

NOTE: Emily Comstock is a sociology major with a concentration in peace and conflict studies, and member of the premedical program at the College. She has spent the past two summers working and living in East Africa, which included a summer study abroad program with Judith Chubb, professor of political science, at the Catholic University of East Africa and Hekima College in Nairobi, Kenya, where she interned at Ushirika, a comprehensive public health clinic in Kibera slum; she also interned through the chaplains’ office in Gulu, Uganda, one of the main areas affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army, where she taught English and science at a secondary school.

Upon graduation in May, she hopes to volunteer abroad in a medical setting before applying to graduate programs in midwifery and global health. 

Related Information: 

• Holy Cross Lecture to Explore Cradle of Christian-Muslim Relations

Bill Gibbons

The Mission & Identity Committee at the College of the Holy Cross is hosting a presentation titled “What’s Love Got to Do with it?” on Thursday, April 19 from 12:05 to 1 p.m. in Hogan 401, featuring Bill Gibbons, head women’s basketball coach, and Margaret Freije, associate dean. No, they will not be channeling their inner Tina Turner for a karaoke performance.  They will be talking about how love motivates them in their work. 

“With my dad being a coach for all of my first 25 years, I guess that the love for teaching/coaching was in my blood,” shares Gibbons. “Yet, I was very close to working for AT&T, before my mother’s influence and her six daughters, led me to this job that I love—coaching women’s basketball at Holy Cross.”

Lunch will be served.  Space is limited.  The format will be similar to the “How Can I Find God?” series.

Jennie Germann Molz, assistant professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, has been awarded a Core Fulbright Scholar grant to teach a course on the cultural study of tourism and conduct research on sustainable hospitality and tourist dwelling with colleagues at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland.

Germann Molz, of Douglas, Mass., is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2012-13.

As a Fulbright Core scholar, Germann Molz will pursue a qualitative research project titled “Socially Sustainable Tourism: Informal Economies of Hospitality in Finnish Lapland.” The project extends her work on hospitality and mobility in tourism studies and is designed as a point of collaboration with research currently being conducted at the University of Lapland.

Germann Molz studies the social and ethical implications of tourism mobilities and mobile technologies and she is particularly interested in alternative forms of tourism that seek to mobilize new technologies to create more meaningful, collaborative and sustainable encounters between people from different cultures.

Her empirical research focuses on the online hospitality exchange site CouchSurfing.org. Launched in 2003, CouchSurfing now has more than three million members worldwide.

“Hospitality exchange networks like CouchSurfing raise several questions of sociological concern,” says Germann Molz. “What are the ethics of welcoming the stranger? How do people ‘do togetherness’ with strangers both at home and abroad? In other words, how do we live with difference in socially sustainable ways?”

During her time in Finland, she will explore the informal economics of hospitality and tourist dwelling that characterize couch surfing encounters. As one of several websites that coordinate the free exchange of goods and services, CouchSurfing is emblematic of an emerging “sharing economy,” she says.

“I plan to explore how hospitality is produced and consumed by couch surfers, how hosts and guests ‘host’ one another in ways that potentially challenge conventional power structures associated with hospitality, and how they ‘dwell’ together in way that reconstitute the home as a space of familiarity and difference. More broadly, I ask how the informal arrangements of couch surfing might inform socially sustainable commercial hospitality initiatives in the Finnish tourism context.”

Germann Molz earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Lancaster University (U.K.), her M.A. in popular culture studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is co-editor of “Mobilizing Hospitality: The Ethics of Social Relations in a Mobile World” (Ashgate, 2007) and author of “Travel Connections: Tourism, Technology and Togetherness in a Mobile World” (Routledge), which was released on March 27.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in over 155 countries worldwide.

Related Information:

• Holy Cross Philosophy Professor Receives Fulbright to Research “Peace, Nonkilling, and Humanity”
• Sociology & Anthropology

Was it the day women were first admitted to the College? Or the first time a Nobel Prize was bestowed upon a graduate? What about the morning the president of the United States arrived to speak at Commencement? These are just three of the moments that Holy Cross Magazine, the College’s alumni quarterly publication, selected to include in its “Top 25 Moments in Holy Cross History” feature.

The Spring 2012 issue, which landed in mailboxes the last week in March, outlines 25 moments that brought about meaningful change or significant honor to the College. With the help of Rev. Anthony Kuzniewski, S.J., history professor and author of “Thy Honored Name,” a history of Holy Cross from its beginning days to the early 1990s, the magazine shares details about these important milestones through short articles and archival photos.

As the editorial team had hoped, the response from the magazine’s 40,000-plus readers has been swift.

“We’re getting five times the amount of email we normally do after an issue comes out,” says Editor Suzanne Morrissey. “It’s great, because the feedback — darts and laurels alike — is going to be presented in a follow-up feature in the Summer issue, which comes out mid-July.” Morrissey says there is enough fodder for a dozen more features based on conversations stemming from the Top 25 article.

Along with the main list of moments, the story features a Top 25 Sports Moments list, which includes the men’s ice hockey sudden-death overtime upset over Minnesota in the 2006 NCAA tournament, as well as the July 1928 Olympic gold medal that Jim Quinn ’28 took in track and field in Amsterdam.

“We’ve already heard that we missed the boat by not including the College’s Patriot League men’s basketball titles,” Morrissey notes. “As anyone can imagine, it was tough to whittle all the memorable moments that Holy Cross athletes have given us down to just 25.”

Readers have a chance to vote for the No. 1 moments from each list, and to write in moments they feel should have made the cut.

The top 25 story also has a compelling Web Exclusive companion piece that took shape as the magazine team researched the feature: The photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in the Fieldhouse in 1962 led to conversations with Steve Bashwiner ’63 and Jerry King ’63, who were responsible for driving Dr. and Mrs. King to and from campus for the event. Each man had a moving experience the night they met the civil rights icon, and they shared their memories in a web exclusive called “The Night I Met Dr. King.”

• Read the Top 25 Moments story

• Read the Top 25 Sports Moments story here

• Vote for the No. 1 moment from both lists

Girl Talk

Girl Talk, a techno deejay, will be headlining the Spring Concert at the College of the Holy Cross on Monday, May 7 in the Hart Center. Doors will open at 7 p.m. and the concert will begin at 8 p.m.

Gregg Michael Gillis, better known by his stage name Girl Talk, is an American techno deejay who specializes in mashups (digital blending of two or more pre-recorded songs) and digital sampling. In 2007, he was the recipient of Wired Magazine’s Rave Award.

The artist Big Gigantic, a techno group who combines elements of both a deejay and a live band setup, will be performing the opening act.

Tickets will be sold in the Holy Cross Bookstore, which is located on the first floor of Hogan Campus Center, starting this week, and online.

Tickets are $20 for Holy Cross students with an ID (limit two tickets per student) and $25 for Holy Cross faculty and staff and students in the Colleges of Worcester Consortium. Tickets for the general public are $30. Tickets are not being sold by phone.

Prior headlining acts for the annual Spring Concert, sponsored by the Campus Activities Board (CAB), have included J. Cole, Drake, Jason Mraz, Lupe Fiasco and Guster.

For more information, contact CAB Concert co-chairs, Mark Lussier ’13 and Samantha Adams ’13, at cabconcert@holycross.edu.

Stephanie Reents

Stephanie Reents, assistant professor of English at Holy Cross, is teaching her students about city life this semester in a course titled “Bright Lights, Big City.”  The class is offered through Montserrat, the College’s living and learning program for all first-year students. “The course asks students to explore the history of cities in this country before they venture out into Worcester, New York, and Boston to continue the great literary tradition of the travel essay and writing about places,” shares Reents.  “We are also going to survey the terrain of literary responses to urban and suburban life and examine the myth of alienation and disconnection that arises out of crowded subways or gated communities.”

For the past few weeks her students have been learning all about Worcester’s industrial and cultural history. Reents says she has been learning a lot, too.  “That is the great thing about teaching, you’re often discovering right alongside your students,” she shares.

One of the unique components of the course is an assignment called “Sense Worcester,” which embraces technology and brings attention to all there is to offer in our own backyard. The project requires groups of students in the class to blog about different aspects of Worcester.   Each blog entry will begin with a single sense (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) to frame the brief essay.  “One idea that is very important to me as a writer is that the process of writing often leads to discovery. You don’t really know what you’re writing about until you begin writing,” shares Reents. “I’m hoping my students have a similar experience as they’re exploring Worcester.  I want them to get lost (but a just a little).  I want them to take detours. I want them to be surprised by what they discover in the city.”

That’s just what her first-year students plan to do. Cecilia Wolfe ’15, a psychology major hailing from New York, says the most interesting thing she has learned about Worcester—is the people.  “I try to talk to every cabby, waitress, bus driver, cop and cashier I run into. To me, people characterize a place almost beyond its physical structure and history,” shares Wolfe. “The diner cook whose family has been in Worcester for four generations, whose dad gave her a job behind the counter when she was fifteen, or the cab driver whose mom was in the first graduating coed class at Holy Cross, who knows the history of all the police and firehouses in the area, these are the people who teach me the most. It is refreshing to talk to community members who have so much pride for Worcester.”

Her group’s blog page is titled “Workings in Worcester.”  Her blog entries will focus on not only the sensory experiences of the places she visits, but the characters she meets along the way. Her first blog entry will focus on a typical Worcester cab ride and a unique Worcester cab driver, named Michael.

“I’ve been writing since I was a scrawny little kindergartner with a legal pad and became editor of my high school’s creative writing magazine, but I never had the opportunity to take a proper course,” shares Wolfe. “Between the expansiveness of the class subject matter, the truly engaging writing assignments, and the incredibly constructive advice given by, I feel I’ve really lucked out taking this class.”

Vincent Taormina ’15 has also been learning a lot about the city. “Going around Worcester and learning about its history has been one of the most fascinating things I’ve done while at Holy Cross,” shares Taormina. “I had no idea how much of an industrial force the city really was.” 

A political science major, from St. Louis, Missouri, Taormina plans to blog about a drive he took around Worcester. “I went through all of these back streets and found a lot of interesting looking homes and buildings.  At one point in my trip, I went to the top of one of its hills and I could see the entire city below me. I could see miles of railroad tracks and thousands of triple-decker houses.” 

Taormina says this is his favorite class this semester. 

While this class is a favorite among students, Reents feels the same way. “This is my first year teaching in the Montserrat program, and I like my students’ sense of community, their spirit, and their willingness to try anything.”

Paul Melley

Paul Melley, assistant chaplain and director of liturgical music at the College, has just released his second CD “God is Love” by GIA Music. Based in Chicago, GIA is an international publisher of Catholic and Christian resources for prayer and worship.

Melley says his new CD was inspired by an immersion trip to Kenya with a group of Holy Cross students in January 2009. “I was inebriated by Kenyans’ use of song to communicate the meaning of who they are as individuals and as people,” shares Melley. “You can’t escape music in Kenya. I loved their song, rhythm, melodies, and language. It was a part of every encounter and every day. We seem to have lost that here.  Music can be heard everywhere here, in the car, iPods, in stores, elevators. But no one is singing. Kenyans are always singing. Not to communicate information but meaning.” 

He says he was enamored with what Kenyans sing and how they sang it and this influenced much of the music on his album. “The trip will have an impact on me for the rest of my life,” explains Melley. “I wrote the title track, and infused it with their national language Kiswahili, using the phrase, Mungu ni upendo, which means God is love.”  

The title track features a Kenyan vocal ensemble. “I recorded Kenyans because authenticity is really important to me. Not only because of the content—I know how to say and sing the words Mungu ni upendo—but it doesn’t sound ‘mine.’”

While writing the song he says he could hear the Kenyan’s voices in his head. “We actually had a studio choir singing the song initially, but it just didn’t feel right. I was pretty adamant to have it be authentic.”

With that in mind, he connected with Kenyan singers. “We recorded in my office in Campion, there were only three singers, but we did some layering and multi-tracking and it made everything come together.”

When Melley started thinking of a concept for the cover of the album he said he didn’t want it to look like a Hallmark card.  “How do you represent God and love?” he asks. “It was a task. We worked on a lot of concepts, but what I kept coming back to is that it’s not always easy to love. A real, deep, and abiding love is not sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.”

Melley says one of his moral theology professors at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, used to define love as such: “Loving someone is being willing to descend into another’s chaos.”

Melley decided to take a picture of the riveted, rusted, and stained corrugated tin huts that they use for their homes in the slums all over the country; and that can be encountered in many of the places where some of the world’s most poor live and place a heart over it, “almost as if it had been painted on or graffiti,” shares Paul. “I think it’s very provocative, and really draws you to gaze at it.”

Melley has worked at the College since 2003. “Being at Holy Cross grounds me in a community,” he explains. “It’s really important that my work has some benefit to the larger Church.”

Melley will be performing at Boston College the first week of May. If you would like to hear him out on campus he will be leading the sung prayer at the liturgies of the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday Vigil, and Easter Sunday morning.

As far as his next big project: “I’ve been writing music again, which I’m excited about. I’ve been presenting at some national conferences so that has been taking a lot of thought and reflection and study, and I’m hoping to turn some of them into articles. I’m also chipping away on working on a prayer resource book.”

His debut album, “Humbled,” was released in 2007 by GIA Music. “Humbled” is a collection of songs that have been used in worship, including many that Melley has used during liturgies at Holy Cross.

Related Information

• Listen to title track and view album cover.
• Holy Cross Chaplain Releases Debut Album, ‘Humbled’