VHI Academic Officer Delivers Lecture and Workshop at Europa-Universität Flensburg: ‘Incarnation and Antisemitism in Dante’s Commedia’ & ‘Mass Incarceration and Restorative Justice’

On Friday, 23 June, VHI Academic Officer Dr Thomas Graff visited the Europa-Universität Flensburg in Flensburg, Germany, in order to deliver a lecture and graduate workshop in the fields of interreligious dialogue and conflict resolution.

The lecture, entitled ‘Incarnation and Antisemitism in Dante’s Commedia’, was presented as part of the Wasatia-ICES Lecture Series on Religion and Reconciliation. Co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies, the Maecenata Foundation, and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the series is hosted by the European Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, a PhD-programme founded to create an interdisciplinary framework for dialogical understanding of the structural nature of conflict and the development of sustainable conflict resolution strategies. In his lecture, Dr Graff charted some of the problematic and tragic ways in which Dante’s Commedia, often praised unreflectively as a poem of hope and mercy for all, theologically envisions the incarnation and atonement as justifying the historical persecution of the Jewish people.

The accompanying workshop, entitled ‘Mass Incarceration and Restorative Justice’, considered the contemporary relevance of restorative justice practices for critiquing and locally counteracting the innumerable harms of the American penal system, and also provided a more informal space for the Wasatia graduate cohort to discuss their respective research projects. The workshop was enriched further by the expertise and insight of Dr Graff’s former mentor, Ellen G. Williams, JD, who co-presented virtually. A restorative justice practitioner and trainer, Williams has worked extensively in conflict resolution education and with incarcerated youth and adults, alongside a lengthy career at the University of Notre Dame (USA), teaching and directing social programming. Central to the workshop was discussion of Take Heart, Inc. (South Bend, Indiana), a non-profit co-founded by Ellen and her husband Michael to provide restorative approaches for highly at-risk youths, in and through mentorship by formerly incarcerated adults trained in conflict resolution and restorative justice.

The visit is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Von Hügel Institute and the Wasatia Graduate School. In Fall 2023, St Edmund’s will host a cohort of students from the Graduate School for a conference entitled, 'Conflict Resolution and Interreligious Encounter’.