As part of the Keough-Naughton Institute's fall 2024 speaker series, Emma DeSouza, founder and co-facilitator of The Civic Initiative, will give a lecture titled, "From Partition to Partnership: The Future of Ireland's Peace Process.” Lecture Abstract The Good Friday Agreement is globally recognized as one of the most successful peace agreements of the last century. Its success was the culmination of decades of civic-led cross-community efforts, tilling the ground for a landslide 'Yes' vote. Emma DeSouza considers how civic society remains the backbone of the peace process today. As a new generation emerges, unburdened by the historically entrenched concepts of identity which came to define prior generations, civic society, and the young people within it, are creating a new path. This lecture explores the changing demographics and dynamics in Northern Ireland, the future of the peace process, and the prospects of a united Ireland. Speaker Biography Emma DeSouza is a journalist, campaigner, and peace builder who changed UK law in a landmark human rights case relating to the Good Friday Agreement. She is the founder and co-facilitator of deliberative democracy platform The Civic Initiative, Director of the Northern Ireland Emerging Leaders Program at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and a transatlantic adviser on peace processes and civic innovation. Emma writes for several publications including the Guardian, Irish Times, Irish News, and Byline Times. In 2023, she hosted a limited podcast series on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement titled 'Lost in Implementation.' This event is co-sponsored by the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

In this event, professor in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, and director of the Global Insecurities Centre, at the University of Bristol, Roddy Brett will present his monograph, Victim-Centred Peacemaking: Colombia’s Santos-FARC-EP Peace Process (Bristol University Press, 2024), which he wrote during his time as Kroc Institute visiting fellow (2022–23). The book addresses the fundamental question of how, in the face of unrelenting barbary and adversity, survivors of political violence and atrocity have sought to assert agency and contest power as they painstakingly forge a path through which to bring an end to political violence, craft the effective means through which to reckon with the past, and reconstitute their political and moral communities. The book is, in part, about how war is fought, what its impact is, particularly on civilians, and the means that armed groups employ in order to achieve their ends. It is also about how those who survive atrocious violence narrate and make sense of war and attempt to construct peace, and, in so doing, transform political subjectivity, shape formal peacemaking processes and accountability mechanisms, and reconfigure relations of power. Based on unique empirical research into Colombia’s Santos-FARC-EP peace process (2012-2016), this book interrogates, specifically, how, if at all, survivors and victims may assert agency and contribute to formal peacemaking and transitional justice initiatives. The research argues that victim inclusion — through the so-called victims’ delegations — meaningfully transformed victim-perpetrator relations and dynamics in Havana, while partially shaping the content of both the Victims’ Agreement and Final Agreement. As such, the delegations created paths for empowerment at the individual and, in part, collective levels. However, victim inclusion also precipitated experiences of victim depoliticization, revictimization, retraumatization and instrumentalization. Drawing on insights from across academic disciplines, the book proposes an instrumentalization/empowerment spectrum to analyze the complex impact of victim-centered approaches to peacemaking/transitional justice, and is valuable for both researchers and practitioners. Brett will be joined by Kroc Institute PhD student, Patrick McQuestion (peace studies and political science) and visiting scholar, Alison Ribeiro de Menezes as respondents. Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, professor of the practice and director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) will provide opening remarks. This event is cosponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, in partnership with its Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) Working Group, as part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, proudly offer a four-part lecture series over the 2024–25 academic year. The series focuses on U.S. imperialism and U.S. military and humanitarian involvement in the Middle East, and in particular Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Graduate students serve as discussants after each lecture, prior to Q&A with the audience. The series conducts a critical evaluation of U.S. policy in the Middle East and calls for a reassessment of the nature and function of a U.S. presence, and the implications posed for peacebuilding practitioners and contemporary global affairs scholarship. The United States used "burn pits" to dispose of military waste on its bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. These massive incineration fields caused respiratory illness, cancer, and death for thousands of soldiers. Iraqi and Afghan communities continue to endure the consequences of exposure to burn pits as just one form of harm to their health and livelihoods. Recently returned from fieldwork in Fallujah, Iraq, cultural anthropologist and assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University Kali Rubaii reports back on the condition of Iraq's environment, 20 years since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Her talk poses the question: What are the routes to justice and accountability for the most privatized war in human history? Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor John Welle (Notre Dame). “L’unica poetessa che abbia oggi l’Italia,” Gabriele D’Annunzio declared of Amalia Guglielminetti, who began her literary career at the age of eighteen in 1901 with the ode “Al giglio sabuado” celebrating the birth of Princess Jolanda of Savoy. In the following decade, emerging onto the rich cultural scene of her native Turin, the Italian center of both the worker’s movement and the drive for female emancipation, she would bring forth three of the most important books of poetry of the new century: Le vergini folli (1907), Le seduzioni (1909), and L’insonne (1913). Adopting classical forms such as the songbook, the sonnet, and the tercet, her modernizing self-fashioning showcases various masks of the modern “donna nuova,” from the femme fatale to the emancipated woman. While linked to such traditional figures as Gaspara Stampa and other female poets of the Renaissance, she was also praised for her “stupefacente originalità.” Moreover, her early career, in its rapid rise to literary success, parallels that of her intimate friend, confidant and fellow Turin poet, Guido Gozzano. Their epistolary exchanges, numbering some 126 letters, dated between 1906 and 1912, shed light on their mutual admiration, tense romantic engagement — more literary than amorous — and common “will to fame.” Within the context of women writers of the early 20th century, as well as within that of the modern Italian poetic canon, this research seminar proposes revisiting Amalia Guglielminetti’s literary accomplishments for serious critical reconsideration. While focusing on the dialogue in letters and in verse between these two poets from Turin during the high point of their literary celebrity, I will also trace the factors that have marginalized the female writer in relation to her male counterpart(s), denying her the fame that she so richly deserves. John P. Welle is professor of Italian and concurrent professor of film, television and theatre, emeritus at the University of Notre Dame.The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The Seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The Seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange.Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.

Soares, António, Artist. Humorous Map of Europe. Lisboa, Portugal: A Editora, 1914. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668737/.The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown University) titled: The Activism of Imagination: Fictions of Europe Between Utopia and Disenchantment Against the backdrop of political, economic, and social problems that reinforce the idea of Europe’s existential crisis, this talk redraws the attention to constructive aspects of the Europe-building discourse often muffled by a rising Euroscepticism. In particular, it explores the contribution of literature both as the repository of a European cultural memory and as a forerunner of crucial components of the ongoing European integration design. A selection of modern and contemporary Italian fiction, in dialogue with a broader literary and intellectual discourse at pivotal junctures of the European project, addresses the role of utopia not as a compensatory wishful projection but, rather, as creative thinking propelled by the critical and transformative power of imagination. Nicoletta Pireddu is Inaugural Director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University. Her research revolves around European literary and cultural relations, cosmopolitanism, borders and migration, history of ideas, and translation studies. She has published over eighty articles and numerous monographs and edited volumes, among them Antropologi alla corte della bellezza. Decadenza ed economia simbolica nell’Europa fin de siècle, which received the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award; The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders, and most recently, Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (2023 American Comparative Literature Association “René Wellek Prize for the Best Edited Essay Collection”). The lecture is co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute.The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The Seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The Seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange.Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.

The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Eva Del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania) titled: A Reckless and Scandalous Doctrine: Matthias Ferchius, a Franciscan in the Index  This paper delves into the intriguing journey of a forgotten booklet by the Franciscan Matthias Ferchius (1583-1669), drawing from recently unearthed material. It uncovers a fascinating blend of Biblical exegesis, poison expertise, medical reasoning, and rhetorical balancing acts, all in an audacious attempt by Ferchius to present no less than a revisionist account of the death of Jesus Christ. The paper will engage in the dialectic between Ferchius and the Holy Office censors, shedding light on the aspects of Ferchius’s text that raised particular concerns. It will also demonstrate how the pursuit of “new” outlooks in philosophy and theology always necessitated a firm reliance on tradition, a fact exemplified by other episodes of Ferchius’ intellectual career. Lastly, it will bring to the fore the paradoxical outcomes of this form of “conspiracy” philology.  Eva Del Soldato is associate professor of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the FIGS Graduate Program and serves as interim director of the Center for Italian Studies. She was trained in philosophy and intellectual history at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Her research is primarily devoted to Renaissance thought and culture, particularly the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions. Her current project is focused on lovesickness treatises in the Counterreformation period. She is the author of the monographs Simone Porzio (2010) and Early Modern Aristotle. On the Making and Unmaking of Authority (2020). She has also published several articles and editions, including the Italian translation of Bessarion's In calumniatorem Platonis. She has co-edited several volumes (the most recent is Plato in the Italian Universities, 2024). She received— among others — fellowships from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Villa I Tatti, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and she has been a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Milan, the University of Bergamo, and the 2022/2023 Charles Speroni Chair at UCLA. She has been the interim director (2019/2020) of the Global Medieval Studies Program at Penn, and she is currently the executive secretary of the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS).   The lecture is co-sponsored by the Medieval Institute.The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The Seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The Seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange.Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.