Niagara Peace & Dialogue Awards 2008

Co-Chair

Richard A. Rosengarten

Co-Chair
Dean of the Divinity School, The University of Chicago

Rosengarten, who received his Ph.D. from the Religion and Literature program in the Divinity School, returned to the University in 1991, when he was appointed Dean of Students. Since that time, he has become a national voice on questions of the academic study of religion.

Under his tenure, the Divinity School created the Chicago Forum on Pedagogy and the Study of Religion, a three-year forum of plenary talks, panel discussions and graduate student workshops, which explored the issues that surround teaching the academic subject of religion. A new and important step in educating future religion professors, the Chicago Forum helped boost the Divinity School’s reputation as the premier “teacher of teachers” in the study of religion.

Rosengarten is currently at work on three books. His main project is titled The Catholic Sophocles and examines how Flannery O’Connor’s fiction works in expressive relation to the Roman Catholic tradition as analogous to the relationship of the plays of Sophocles to Greek mythology. The goal of the book is twofold: to characterize the influence of Catholicism on O’Connor’s short fiction and to contribute constructively to recent debates about Catholic identity beyond the current liberal vs. conservative divide.

He also is editing a collection on future directions in religion and literature. Future projects include a study of satire and negative theology tentatively titled On Goodness and God: Apophasis, Irony, Satire.

Rosengarten earned his B.A. in English language and literature from Kenyon College, and his M.A. in the same subject from Chicago’s Division of the Humanities. Before joining the University faculty, Rosengarten taught as an assistant professor at Saint Xavier College.