We wish each of you an enjoyable spring break, whether that time brings you study, rest, travel, or any combination thereof!  The library will be closed the weekends of March 9-10 and March 16-17.  We will be open Monday-Friday the week of spring break from 7:30 AM to 5 PM.  If we can assist with your spring break projects, please let us know!

On Wednesday, February 20, Dr. Ian McFarland, Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Systematic Theology, and Dr. Ellen Ott Marshall, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Conflict Transformation, spoke with a group of Candler students about times when they needed to learn something new.  Each described a similar process for gaining familiarity with a new field, although the particulars varied for each instance.

Dr. Marshall described a time when she was asked to give a talk about biomedical ethics, an area outside of her expertise.  She contacted faculty in that area first to gather reading recommendations that would provide her with a high-level sense of the field.  After gaining that perspective, she asked herself about other approaches to the topic and realized that she could apply her knowledge of virtue ethics.  Doing so gave her both a research question and a way to connect her research in this area  to a topic that she knew well.  With this research question in mind, she contacted faculty again to determine if they had reading recommendations with this more narrow focus.  She also met with a librarian to discuss databases, articles, and keywords that could help her locate more resources.

Dr. McFarland discussed how a footnote about Maximus the Confessor in an article by a Luther scholar led him to a new area of study.  He followed the footnotes in the article, both primary and secondary, and located the only two books that translated Maximus the Confessor’s writings into English.  Reading Maximus’ writings alongside secondary literature on the topic provided a good entree to this area of study.  The footnotes in the secondary literature helped him gain an understanding of recent decades of scholarship in this area.  Knowing this history helped him determine which untranslated documents he wanted to read.  He could then use article databases and WorldCat to determine what had been published subsequent to the secondary book he had read.  The subsequent articles also provided him with the names of other scholars with similar research interests and helped him connect with conversation partners.  He also discussed that this project had the side benefit of helping him keep up his reading knowledge of Greek.

Students present asked about finding time to pursue individual research interests when coursework has its own requirements.  Both professors suggested talking with teaching faculty about the possibility of proposing a research topic that would connect with the themes of the course and with the individual research interest.  They also discussed the necessity of picking a slice of a research question to investigate in a research paper rather than a broader life question, and the importance of having a research question that placed one in dialogue with other scholars as one means of focusing research.

The session was full of helpful information for students, and we thank both professors for spending an hour with us!