1.1 Theology with Ryan McDermott

The first episode of the podcast is based on Ryan McDermott’s session at the summer school in 2018, and a follow-up interview we conducted with him afterwards. Ryan is a professor of medieval and Reformation English Literature at the University of Pittsburgh, and one of the originators of the Genealogies of Modernity Project as a whole. We discuss with Ryan the many and varied senses that genealogy has as a term and methodology in the humanities, before looking at some particular examples of genealogical thinking which he has found important in his own work.

Resources

  • Foucault, Michel, Donald F. Bouchard, and Sherry Simon. *Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews*. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, n.d.

    Gregory, Brad S. *The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society*. Cambridge, MA, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015.

    Mannheim, Karl. “The Problem of Generations (1928).” *Theories of Ethnicity*, 1996, 109–55. [doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24984-8_9][0].

    Pinker, Steven. *Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*. New York: Viking, 2018.

    Scott, David. “The Temporality of Generations: Dialogue, Tradition, Criticism.” New Literary History 45, no. 2 (2014): 157–81. [doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0017][1].

    Biblical sources:

    [Genesis 10:1-32][2], [Matthew 1:1][3], & [Luke 3:23-38][4]

  • Blumenberg, Hans, and Robert M. Wallace. *The Legitimacy of the Modern Age*. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.

    Carroll, Stuart. “Thinking With Violence.” *History and Theory* 56, no. 4 (2017): 23–43. [doi.org/10.1111/hith.12036][5].

    Edelstein, Dan. *The Enlightenment: A Genealogy*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

    Evola, Julius, and Guido Stucco. *Revolt Against the Modern World*. Rochester (Vermont): Inner Traditions International, 1995.

    Flanagan, Kieran, and John Milbank. “Theology and Social Theory beyond Secular Reason.” *The British Journal of Sociology* 44, no. 2, 1993.

    Isidorus, and Stephen A. Barney. *The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville*. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011.

    MacIntyre, Alasdair C. *Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition: Being Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1988*. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

    McDermott, Ryan. *Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c. 1350-1600*. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.

    Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Ian Johnston. *On the Use and Abuse of History for Life*. Arlington, VA: Richer Resources Publications, 2010.

    Pinckaers, Servais, John Berkman, and Craig Steven Titus. *The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology*. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005.

    Spinoza, Benedictus de, Jonathan I. Israel, and Michael J. Silverthorne. *Theological-Political Treatise*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

    Williams, Bernard. *Truth & Truthfulness: an Essay in Genealogy*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

    [0]: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24984-8_9

    [1]: https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2014.0017

    [2]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2010%3A1%2CGenesis%2010%3A32&version=NIV

    [3]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%201%3A1&version=NIV

    [4]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%203%3A23-38&version=KJV

    [5]: https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12036