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, Kali Rubaii, cultural anthropologist and assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, reports on the condition of Iraq's environment, 20 years since the 2003 US invasion. Her talk poses the question: What are the routes to justice and accountability for the most privatized war in human history? Richard "Drew" Marcantonio, assistant professor of environment, peace, and global affairs, will serve as a respondent. 

Ches Thurber is an associate professor of political science at the School of Public and Global Affairs, Northern Illinois University, who studies global conflict and security. Thurber studies international conflict, security, peace-building and global governance. His book, Between Mao and Gandhi: the Social Roots of Civil Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2021), examines dissident choices between violent and nonviolent strategies of resistance.  Sponsored by the Liu Institute's South Asia Group. In support of the Liu Institute’s growing commitment to sustainability, we will no longer be offering drinks at our public lectures and panels. We encourage audience members to bring their own water bottles or to drink from nearby water fountains. Thank you for your understanding. Registration Required - Sign Up Here Originally published at asia.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.

Acclaimed pianist Renana Gutman presents a program of Jewish composers who perished during the Holocaust, alongside works by their contemporaries — Berg, Ravel, and Debussy. This is event is free and not ticketed.  Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Whistleblowers have a prominent place in Hollywood films, and a growing subgenre within focuses on government employees who release classified information. This biopic follows Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney), a former Air Force intelligence specialist, who leaked a private report demonstrating that Russia interfered in the 2016 United States presidential elections. In 2017, the FBI visited Reality's home in Georgia and questioned her about her involvement with the leaks. Her unauthorized release of information landed her a prison sentence of five years, which she wrapped up serving in 2021 with an early release. GET TICKETS!  

This is a free and public lecture by Paolo Carozza addressing this question: "How should our understanding of human dignty evolve in ways that respond to the emerging dangers and promises of our time?" Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.