Academic Authors Faculty Community House

Academic Authors Community provides a welcoming home for global, faculty-level scholars who have research fellowships or visiting teaching appointments in Washington, DC. It is also a place for visitors to learn more about intentional community through stays with us of as little as a day and as long as a year. The house is collective, and uses its not-for-profit 501c3 status with the goal of keeping costs lower for the scholars whenever possible. Although Catholic in origin and spiritual center, its practice is contemplative and interfaith (so far Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sufi, and "None," or no claimed faith but happy to engage with us), facilitating dialogue across boundaries through shared living next to the Georgetown University campus. We are open and affirming, and do not proselytize.

Carole Sargent modeled it (quite loosely) on traditional "House of Studies" examples she found connected to some of the older congregations worldwide, but with the variation that this is for faculty-level scholars, not students. There is abundant quiet time for research and writing, but the energy is lively, and everyone also shares occasional structured times together such as weekly meals, morning prayer, and meditation. Because of our interfaith nature, prayer is sometimes in the form of  music via our shared Spotify account.

 
bit.ly/Chemi-Rosado-SeijoSargent was inspired  by several places, including (with links in italics):

• The Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas in Rome;
• Anne Montgomery House (formerly Kearny Street Community) in Washington, DC, one of the Welcoming Communities of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ);
• The New Camaldoli Hermitage with its Benedictine heritage, on Big Sur, California;
• Pendle Hill, the home of Quaker "radical hospitality" in Wallingford, Pennsylvania;
• Nuns and Nones, a national movement you have to read about to understand (we love them, and some of their members may come to us for a sojourn after living with the sisters).
• Twin Oaks Community, the first one she ever visited, back in the 1980s (it is still going strong).

Here are just some of the people who have lived in the house since we opened in May of 2019.

FULL-TIME, 2019-2020

1. A theologian in the department of Theology and Religious Studies. Her research focuses on forms of conflict, negotiation, and reconciliation between the spirituality of Christian individuals — particularly the vulnerable and excluded — and the public and institutional representation of religion and theology. She has agreed to extend until at least May of 2021.

2. A Ge'ez Rite Ethiopian Catholic diocesan priest who ministers to immigrant communities throughout the Eastern U.S. He took the place of the diocesan priest from Italy who had to leave early. He will stay here during the Covid-19 lockdown, and then we will all discern together about the future. We are helping him prep for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

3. (February-March 2020) A diocesan priest from Northern Italy studying bioethics at the Pontifical Gregorian University. It was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola and is the Jesuits' university in Rome. He is in Georgetown for a fellowship at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. Note: he was supposed to stay until June, but his stay ended March 2020 due the university's closure for Covid-19/coronavirus. He returned to serve his home parish in Northern Italy, but the university will welcome him back after the crisis.

4. (August 2019-February 2020) A visiting fellow in Georgetown University's Department of Art and Art History, studying Buddhist art (she is a scholar at Peking University). Her husband has an Asian history fellowship at UC Berkeley, so he was here sometimes, and she was there sometimes. We enjoyed interfaith engagement between  Buddhism and Catholicism, especially through silent meditation.

5. (October-December 2019) An expert in not-for-profit and global service organizations, originally from India. He is active in his Muslim faith and a peace leader, bringing dialogue with Islam to our community.

6. Dr. Carole Sargent, the founder, who has worked at Georgetown for 23 years, the last 14 of which have been running the Office of Scholarly Publications (faculty publishing for tenure and promotion). She is an Associate of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ).

GUESTS

• Three attendees  of "Thomas Berry and the Great Work," a conference co-hosted by Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and the Yale University Forum on Religion and Ecology. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/events/thomas-berry-and-the-great-work.
  • The Dominican sister (OP) who founded Homecoming Farm (with a group) on the grounds of the Dominican motherhouse in Amityville, New York. She is also a peaceful antinuclear activist.
  • A member of the board of Homecoming Farm, and of the American Teilhard Association.
  • A Holy Child sister (SHCJ) and antinuclear activist who has been profiled in The New Yorker, by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and in many other media outlets for her peaceful but radical activism.

 

• An India scholar and nonprofit entrepreneur from the Central University of Rajasthan. A Roman Catholic (his sister is a nun), he joined us regularly for meals, prayer, and mass. He is a global activist for Dalit rights.

 

• Two founders of L'Arche DC to meet with all the members of the house and discuss the meaning of true community.

 

• An expert in maternal and child health from Nigeria, who earned a PhD at the University of Witswatersrand in South Africa.  Sargent mentored her through AuthorAid (see "Why Nonprofit?").

 

• Two guests, a faculty member and a research scholar, from the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. They were research fellows at Dumbarton Oaks, August 2019, continuing their work on ancient translations of the Apostolic Fathers with work in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, Middle Persian, Ethiopic and Arabic, along with other studies of Late Antique Christianity.

 

• A skateboard artist who builds community in Puerto Rico. His work is in the Phillips Collection and the Whitney Museum of Art. He is supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, among other venues, and visits the Department of Art and Art History. He returned for one week at a time, approximately four times per year, until his final exhibition at the Maria and Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery at Georgetown University.

 

• A professor in public policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, UT Austin, focusing on healthcare and aging. Summer 2019.

 

• A Yale University environmental scholar and summer fellow at a DC-based environmental think tank, now working for Pete for America, June 2019.

Plus so many others who came for dinner (eventually a list will come).

Everybody cooks! Academic Authors House subscribes to the vegetarian choices from Martha & Marley Spoon, a service that provides fresh,  healthy, prepped-and-ready-to-cook meals. This allows everyone to cook no matter what their experience level, but members of the house are also welcomed to cook from their cultural cuisines, or anything else they would like to make for the group. The amount the university or fellowship pays for them to stay includes food, so besides sharing our standard food they can order weekly from online grocery delivery services such as Instacart. Each person cooks for the house about twice a month.

So far it has been amazing. The scholars all think together about what the house can and should be, so it is a dynamic place in ever-refreshing calibration.

The house still does not have an official name (its nickname is the Mothers and Fathers of the Incremental Transformation), so feel free to recommend one. The WiFi does have a name: Dorothy Day.