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| Class compiles entries for religious dictionary |
By: DAVID HENKE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Friday, April 17, 2009 9:48 pm
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NORTHFIELD — It’s one thing to understand the theological implications of terms like “heaven,” “angel” and “prayer.”
It’s another thing entirely to try and define them for a comprehensive dictionary of religious philosophy.
But that’s exactly what a group of St. Olaf College students enrolled in professor Charles Taliaferro’s Philosophy of Religion seminar did this semester. The group was challenged by Taliaferro to define difficult, often complex religious terms and concepts for a reference book and companion guide, which will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2010.
For the project, each of the participating students was assigned several religious term or historical figures. Their goal: to conclusively define each term in a single, short entry, often no longer than 12 to 15 sentences in length.
“It was a really strange process,” said senior Charlie Biskupic, who defined “St. Francis and the Franciscans,” “Idolatry” and “Irony” for the compendium. “It was definitely an exciting prospect, but being a part of creating a dictionary seemed overwhelming at first.”
To define the terms, Biskupic and his fellow students poured over reference material in the college library. They consulted a number of different sources on each subject and looked for common threads and important points in each definition. Then, the students compiled that information and boiled it down to a dictionary-length entry.
Writing a publishable, accurate entry for Mahatma Gandhi was challenging, but enjoyable, for senior philosophy major Kate Hagen.
“It’s fairly time-consuming,” Hagen said. “You don’t want to discredit what he’s said or the importance of him by leaving out important parts of his thought.”
Still, the opportunity to be published in a respected source of reference, and learning about the publishing process, attracted both Hagen and Biskupic.
“It was really cool to get a snapshot of the publishing and writing process in the professional world,” Biskupic said. “To go through a microcosm of the process was really interesting.”
The project also allowed the students to get engaged in an active, religious discourse and put their knowledge to practical use, Taliaferro said. Fostering active engagement in his classes is important to Taliaferro as a professor.
“What I do hope they’ll take away from this is a sense of confidence that they can contribute on a high level to any disciplined, scholarly work,” Taliaferro said. “It’s not everyday that you get a citable publication before you graduate.”
Each of the students will receive credit as a contributor to the work, Taliaferro said. According to Taliaferro, the final product will be around 240 pages long, and contain roughly 300 definitions. In addition to editing the students’ entries, Taliaferro is writing many of definitions for the dictionary. A number of religious and philosophy scholars are also contributing to the work.
“It really was a collective enterprise,” Taliaferro said. “There’s a lot of responsibility that goes into this.”
— David Henke can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100. |
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