Log in
Fordham University; Harvard University
Harvard University, PhD, Asian Culture, Language, and Religion, 1971
Joseph F. Roccasalvo was trained as a comparative research scholar in global cultures, East and West. Joseph has been on the volunteer staff at Mary Manning Walsh Home for over ten years. As a graduate student and mentor, he has guided students to vocational choices, national and international, which genuinely reflect their abiding talents and interests; Joseph's goal is to help them avoid expensive mistakes, giving them confidence to proceed alone but remaining available to them for further clarity. Joseph is a fiction writer of novels and short stories, including the "JR Brand." When speaking about what guides the JR Brand, its designer writes: "There's always a mystery about Roccasalvo's writings. It's the way in which he reveals personal truths while leaving something untouched, implied, and unsaid--what we call an omission; hence, the notch ['R] before the capital letter R. It's both an apostrophe and the letter J: the sign of a contraction and the initial of his first name. It asks the question: Is more going on than meets the eye, or is what meets the eye all that's going on? Roccasalvo's prose is striking for its irony in which words fence with one another. Touche' is a hit whether in combat, argument or wit. In all three, it sometimes draws blood." Joseph conducts annual presentations in the U.S. Virgin Island of St. John on the relationship of Judaeo Christian thought to world religions. His published novels, short stories, and plays including one memoir, AS IT WERE: Life at a Slight Angle to the Universe, can be found on his website, www.josephroccasalvo.com. All of his teachings and writings are meant to express the classical ideal: to entertain and to instruct. Joseph has speaking fluency in English, Italian, French; and reading fluency in Spanish, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Pali, the sacred language of South Asian Buddhists.