Catholicism in the College of Arts and Letters
Carolyn Nordstrom
Professor of Anthropology
Frankenstein, written during a time of massive social and scientific change, challenges readers to explore what happens when science advances apart from ethics. As we enter the 21^st century, our world is again undergoing tremendous changes, from academic and industrial discovery to globalization. It is time to update the parable of Frankenstein to the third millennium.
To ask what the connections are between science and conscience; to delve into what moral foundations extend out from the Academy to our world at large. To develop what I call “theory with a heartbeat.” The task might appear simple, but it is not. How often are we, as scholars, asked to be accountable to larger issues of social justice, the integrity of the human spirit, and responsible innovation?
In a world as defined by poverty, political violence and global profiteering, as by creativity, development, and altruism, Notre Dame seeks to take up this challenge. Here, the spirit and context of discovery is as important as the discovery itself. The university rewards both innovation and compassion; it asks about the life and service of ideas. It defines the intellect as a site of responsibility. For me, this allows both the freedom and the passion of discovery in the classroom and in research alike.
Working as I do on the frontlines of survival in warzones, medicine, criminality, poverty, and injustice; indeed in any field where people live and die by the actions we take I know that the body, without spirit, sickens and dies no matter how strong the physical form. So too with the Academy. At Notre Dame, we can work with the deep knowledge that great advances take place when creative insight comes to fruition within a larger world of good.
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Department of Anthropology
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