In Jesuit Postmodern, Francis X. Clooney has gathered nine American Jesuit scholars teaching at universities to reflect on their scholarly work, why they engage in it, and how the work they do coheres with their self-understanding as Jesuits. In accounts that weave together scholarly lives and personal stories, the contributors to this volume explore the irreducible diversity of their experiences and criticize the dominant modern synthesis that shaped Jesuit institutions of higher education from the 1960s to the 1990s. While the contrapuntal display of voices enunciated in this collection will unsettle the conventional and still dominant ways of talking about Jesuits, scholarship, and religious intellectual inquiry, Jesuit Postmodern does not end the conversation, but pushes scholars to talk more critically and imaginatively.

In Jesuit Postmodern, Francis X. Clooney has gathered nine American Jesuit scholars teaching at universities to reflect on their scholarly work, why they engage in it, and how the work they do coheres with their self-understanding as Jesuits. In accounts that weave together scholarly lives and personal stories, the contributors to this volume explore the irreducible diversity of their experiences and criticize the dominant modern synthesis that shaped Jesuit institutions of higher education from the 1960s to the 1990s. While the contrapuntal display of voices enunciated in this collection will unsettle the conventional and still dominant ways of talking about Jesuits, scholarship, and religious intellectual inquiry, Jesuit Postmodern does not end the conversation, but pushes scholars to talk more critically and imaginatively.

"In an age of Zeppelins and gyroplanes, atomics and horseless carriages, the Transatlantic Span is the industrial marvel of the nineteenth century. A monumental feat of engineering, the steel suspension bridge stretches across the Atlantic from Liverpool to the distant harbor of New York City, supported by no less than seven hundred towers. But in the shadows of its massive struts, on the docks of the River Mersey, lies a faceless corpse...
"Inspector Matthew Langton is still seized with grief when he thinks of Sarah, his late wife. Tortured by nightmares and afflicted by breathless attacks of despair and terror, he forces himself to focus on the investigation of the faceless man. The victim wears the uniform of the Transatlantic Span Company but bears the tattoos of the Boers--could there be a Boer conspiracy to assassinate Queen Victoria on the upcoming Inauguration Day of the Span?
But the truth, as it begins to emerge, is far more bizarre than a political coup. As additional victims turn up--each with strange, twin burn marks on their necks--Langton draws a connection between the dead man beneath the bridge and chilling rumors of the Jar Bars, soul snatchers who come under cover of night. Most frightening of all is the mythic and elusive Doktor Glass, who may not only be behind the illicit trade in souls...but who may hold the key to what happened to the inspector's own beloved wife on her deathbed...