Father Columba Stewart (ΦBK, Harvard College), a professor of theology at Saint John’s University in Minnesota, is one of fifteen prominent scholars in the liberal arts and sciences selected to serve as a ΦBK Visiting Scholar during the 2019-2020 academic year.
Fr. Stewart has been a Benedictine monk of Saint John’s Abbey since 1981. He publishes regularly in his field of Eastern and Western Christian monastic history, and recently was selected to deliver the 2019 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities. At the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, he leads the digitization and cataloging of more than 200,000 endangered Christian and Islamic manuscripts in libraries around the world, and he works to make them available and accessible to the public.
Over the course of the year, Fr. Stewart will visit Saint Michael’s College, CUNY Queens College, Fordham University, Louisiana State University, American University, Catholic University, and Valparaiso University. He will spend two days on each campus he visits, meet with students and faculty, participate in discussions, and give a lecture that is open to the public.
“I’m delighted to have the opportunity to visit Phi Beta Kappa chapters across the country and meet a new generation of scholars,” Stewart said. “The chance to speak about a range of topics that interest me and to benefit from the interaction with students and faculty will be both enjoyable and stimulating. What a great gig!”
Learn more about this year’s ΦBK Visiting Scholars at pbk.org/VisitingScholars or email Hadley Kelly, director of the Visiting Scholar Program, at hkelly@pbk.org.