History Professor Receives Yale Visiting Scholar Fellowship
Kathleen M. Comerford, Ph.D., professor of history at Georgia Southern, will travel to Yale University this summer as one of the recipients of the Beinecke Visiting Scholar Fellowships.
Comerford will travel to New Haven, Connecticut, in the fall to visit the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where she will continue her research project, a comparative study of college libraries managed by the Society of Jesus — the Jesuits — in the 16th and 17th centuries.
“The Society is an order of priests with an illustrious history of missions and education, but their bookholding practices have not been studied in depth.,” she said.
The Beinecke Library holds at least seven books that once resided in European Jesuit Colleges in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Comerford says they will help further her understanding of how they were used by the Jesuits.
“One of the most difficult issues in progressing from lists of books is determining how those books were used, and understanding that depends on tracking down the physical texts which were held by these libraries,” she said. “The Jesuits were suppressed between 1772 and 1814, which means that their libraries were scattered via purchases, donations and theft. The Beinecke Library also houses multiple sources for the study of other early modern European libraries and a large collection of works on European Jesuit history.”
In her research, Comerford has traveled Jesuit libraries in Spain, the Netherlands and England, and also plans to visit libraries in Belgium this summer. Upon completion of her research, she will publish her findings in a book.
Posted in Faculty, Reward & Recognition