Record Staff Report
Dr. Joseph Flipper, an associate professor of theology at Bellarmine University, has received a Fulbright award that will support a research trip to Chile in the spring 2020 semester.
In Chile, Flipper plans to work on a research project on “Decolonial Worlds: Social Space and Twentieth-Century Chilean Catholicism.”
He will also teach an undergraduate course in religion and U.S. politics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. He will work with scholars at the university’s Center for Studies on Religion and the faculty for history, geography and political science, a news release from Bellarmine said.
Flipper’s research will also be used in a book he’s writing called “The Theological World of Twentieth-Century Catholicism.” The book will feature a chapter on Catholicism in Chile.
“Chile is unique in Latin American Catholicism,” said Flipper in the release. “In the 19th century, the Chilean Catholic Church voluntarily — though gradually — gave up its place of privilege, but did not conceive of this as a retreat from Chilean society.
“Chilean Catholics were able to reconceive the social space of the church apart from colonial space, and to articulate a vision for how the church could thrive without it. And this vision was significant for a new way of thinking about the relationship between the church and the world,” he said.
The Fulbright Program, founded in 1946, offers teaching and research awards in more than 125 countries. Flipper is the 10th Bellarmine faculty member to receive a Fulbright award in recent years.
