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. Though the US-led “war on terror” has been ongoing for over two decades, it is a war that has been waged largely in the shadows—in the concealed spaces of black sites, extraordinary renditions, covert drone programs, secret global surveillance, and through expanding terrorism laws and security databases. This talk tracks a little-known but ever-expanding dimension of US counterterrorism warfare, one that travels in and through a growing body of US counterterrorism law and sanctions regimes that tether to foreign aid flows and monetary transactions around the world. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, this talk traces how US counterterrorism law bundles and embeds in humanitarian and development aid flows inbound to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, transporting, in turn, Washington’s counterterrorism regime into the intimate spaces and interstices of Palestinian everyday life—in a greenhouse in Gaza, in a library in Bethlehem, in the collection of personal information and mapping of land plots, in the halls of municipal councils, and in local elections. Tracing the transnational operation of US law, this talk demonstrates how US empire operates as a topological formation that projects security and war power through opaque arrangements and blended genres of rule—in this case contracted relationships of aid—that render Washington’s counterterrorism regime intimately embedded in the lifeworlds of those afar. More broadly, it suggests that a close analysis of the topological workings of the US security state in Palestine tells us something significant about the shape-shifting nature of imperial formations, their realignments and reformulations, their haunted sites, and their obscured but intimate forms. Speakers:Lisa Bhungalia is a political geographer researching late-modern war, law, empire, and transnational linkages between the US and Southwest Asian and North African region and an Assistant Professor of Geography and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book, Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine, published by Stanford University Press in December 2023, examines the entanglements of aid, law, and war in Palestine with attention to policing and surveillance regimes produced through the embedding of counterterrorism laws and infrastructures into civilian aid flows. She is also developing new research on the social lives of terrorism databases. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, and Palestinian American Research Center, among other bodies, and her published work has appeared in Politics and Space, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Society and Space, Environment and Planning A, Middle East Report, and Jadaliyya, among other venues.Student respondent: Francesca Freeman, Peace Studies and HistoryFaculty respondent: Perin Gürel, Associate Professor American StudiesOriginally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Alexandra Razskazoff, the 2022 Met Opera Laffont Competition Grand Finals winner, and Dror Baitel, Notre Dame Opera music director, join forces in a vibrant program spanning Baroque to the 20th century, including works by Handel, Strauss, and Britten. This concert is free and open to the public.  To watch a livestream. Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Javier Zamora is a Salvadoran poet and activist. In his debut New York Times bestselling memoir, Solito, Javier retells his nine-week odyssey across Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually through the Sonoran Desert. Zamora was a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University (Olive B. O’Connor), MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation (Ruth Lilly), Stanford University (Stegner), and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize, and the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. Co-sponsors: Creative Writing Program, Department of American Studies, Institute for Latino Studies -- Join the Center for Social Concerns on Friday afternoons of home football weekends for MVP Fridays: lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose.Learn more

Join the Center for Social Concerns in the Coffee House for free food, fellowship and informal conversation around justice. Featuring AngLes Southern soul comfort food. Co-sponsors: Initiative on Race and Resilience; Procurement Services; and  University Operations, Events, and Safety.

Longtime faculty fellow of the Kroc Institute, Sandra M. Gustafson draws on key insights from the field of peace studies (including positive and negative peace, as well as direct and indirect violence) in a rich study of US literature and culture in her most recent volume, Peace in the US Republic of Letters, 1840-1900 (Oxford, 2023). Exploring the early peace movement, Gustafson's book charts the rise of the peace cause in the works of William Penn and John Woolman, through the founding of the first peace societies in 1815 and the mid-century peace congresses, to the postbellum movement's consequential emphasis on arbitration. With the Civil War as the central axis, the volume includes readings of novels by James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne spanning the period from 1840 to 1865. It also explores fiction engaged with problems that arose in the aftermath of that war, including novels by Henry Adams and John Hay on political corruption and class conflict; works on the failures of Reconstruction by Albion Tourgée and Charles Chesnutt; and the varied treatments of Indigenous experience in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona and Simon Pokagon's Queen of the Woods. Each of these writers focused on issues related to the cause of peace, expanding its thematic reach and anticipating key insights of twentieth-century peace scholars. Lunch will be provided. Speakers:Sandra Gustafson, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English; Concurrent Professor, Department of American StudiesAzareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English; Concurrent Professor, Romance Languages & Literatures; Director, Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & ResistanceSpencer French, Graduate student, Department of EnglishGeorge Lopez, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace StudiesOriginally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Ethnomusicologist Shayna Silverstein discusses her monograph, Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria, which draws on ethnographic, archival, and digital research. She talks about how dabke—one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions—embodies the dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state.   Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Ilyon Woo is the New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. She has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions. Ilyon is also the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times. Ilyon has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on such programs as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Co-sponsors: Creative Writing Program, Department of American Studies, Department of History, Program of Liberal Studies — Join the Center for Social Concerns on Friday afternoons of home football weekends for MVP Fridays: lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Reception and book signing to follow.Learn more

© Robert Cross, 2024As part of the Keough-Naughton Institute's fall 2024 speaker series and in celebration of International Translation Day, Professor Marco Sonzogni will deliver a lecture titled, "Is this translation?: ‘Lightenings viii’ (‘The annals say…’) and The Translations of Seamus Heaney." Lecture Abstract As a poet and translator, Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) embraced the ‘liberating idea’ that ‘an original work exists not in order to be perfect but in order to engender itself repeatedly in new translations’ (Translations of Poetry and Poetic Prose: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 110, 1999: 331). Heaney’s poem ‘1 Lightenings viii’ (Seeing Things, 1991: 62) exemplifies this idea. In this poem — known also as ‘The annals say…’ — Heaney relays to readers an extraordinary event recorded in Irish annals: the sighting of crewed ships in the sky. Reported, among other sources, in Lebor Laignech (‘Book of Leinster’), in Lebor Bretnach (Irish Nennius) and also in Konungs skuggsjá (‘The King’s Mirror’), the sighting reaches Heaney’s imagination through K.H. Jackson’s English translation, ‘The Air Ship’ (Celtic Miscellany. Translations from the Celtic Literatures, 1971: 165). In this lecture, Professor Marco Sonzogni reviews his conclusion that ‘Lightenings viii’ was an original poem and why, consequently, he did not include it in the edited collection, The Translations of Seamus Heaney (2022). Rather, Sonzogni singled the poem out in his ‘Introduction’ as an example of the evolutionary impact of translation as practiced by Heaney. While Sonzogni is now uncertain that he made the right decision, he remains convinced that this text too — like all the texts collected in The Translations — bears witness to Heaney’s ‘credo’ in ‘discovering what survives translation true’ (‘Remembered Columns,’ The Spirit Level, 1996: 45). Speaker Biography Marco Sonzogni (OMRI, Officer) is an award-winning scholar, literary translator, poet, editor, and cultural activist. He is a Professor of Translation Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches evolutionary translation and intercultural communication at undergraduate and postgraduate level and directs the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation. He is the editor of the critically acclaimed The Translations of Seamus Heaney (Faber 2022 and FSG 2023). He is also the editor of the definitive edition of Seamus Heaney’s poetry in Italian translation, Poesie (Mondadori 2016). This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Center for Italian Studies. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

Venice, BNM, Lat. Z 399, c. 98v. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice.The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Dr. Giovanna Corazza (Cà Foscari) titled:Dante’s Chorographies. From the territory to the Comedy   Between the 13th and 14th centuries, medieval Italian culture witnessed the emergence of regional and local territorial representations more prominently than in the rest of Europe. This detailed chorography, which developed both in the visual language of cartography and the verbal language of writing, evidently corresponds to the new practices of urban society, playing a central role in the conquest of rural areas and the increase in mobility, thereby engaging in a process of conceptual appropriation of space. Despite the diversity of expressive tools, the graphic and verbal chorography of the early 14th century reflect similar forms of territorial knowledge, based on an odological perspective and the need to reproduce the actual spatial and proportional relationships between the geographical objects represented. Moreover, Dante’s Comedy contains important chorography, composed in the formalized language of poetry. The analysis of these passages reveals construction methods perfectly integrated into the knowledge practices and the culture of territorial representation characteristic of his time. Giovanna Corazza è Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow presso il Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia con il progetto GEODETIC – Geography and Cartography in Dante’s Comedy (GA 101110048), che coinvolge il Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell’Antichità dell’Università di Padova e il Center for Italian Studies della University of Notre Dame. Si interessa principalmente del rapporto tra geografia e letteratura nell’opera di Dante e nella produzione letteraria del XIV secolo, di cultura topografica e cartografica medievale, di interpretazione e ricezione dantesca.      HORIZON EUROPE Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This event is part of the MSCA Project GEODETIC – 101110048 by Giovanna CorazzaThe 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.

Join the Department of Music for the first Fall Fridays at Noon concert, which features short performances by talented Department of Music students.  Originally published at music.nd.edu.

The current Glee Club comes together with alumni from the 1950s to the 2020s for a program of classical and popular selections, along with Glee Club favorites. For tickets, call 574-631-2800 or visit performingarts.nd.edu. Originally published at music.nd.edu.

This debate features two articulate law professors and former government officials with very different political perspectives: Professor John Yoo, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, a Republican, former deputy assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush Administration, former general counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has served in all three branches of national government, and who is a regular commentator on FoxNews; and Harry Litman, the senior legal affairs columnist for the Opinion page at the Los Angeles Times; the host and creator of the Talking Feds podcast; a regular commentator on MSNBC, CNN, and CBS News; a Democrat who advised the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 and (post-election) the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008; and a former U.S. Attorney and deputy assistant attorney general.This matchup promises an animated debate on a range of current political, legal, and constitutional issues facing the nation yet distinctive for its civility and civil engagement of the ideas embodied in the parties' differing perspectives. This event is free and open to the public. Originally published at constudies.nd.edu.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into 36 languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida. Co-sponsors: Creative Writing Program, Gender Studies Program, Program of Liberal Studies — Join the Center for Social Concerns on Friday afternoons of home football weekends for MVP Fridays: lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose.Learn more

The NDSO is joined by local musical treasure Jennet Ingle for Ruth Gipps’ “Oboe Concerto,” composed in 1941 and recently edited for performance in its full orchestral version. Felix Mendelssohn’s revered “Italian” Symphony completes the program. For tickets, call 574-631-2800 or visit performingarts.nd.edu. Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Notre Dame Children's Choir presentsits first concert of the season at the South Bend Farmer's Market, 1105 Northside Blvd.South Bend. All six choirs perform sacred songs of love and joy!Originally published at sma.nd.edu.

Join the Liturgical Choir of the Notre Dame Children's Choir the second and third Mondays of the month in-person or online for a prayerful Vespers service.  Notre Dame Children's Liturgical ChoirOriginally published at sma.nd.edu.

The Center for Social Concerns presents the 2024 Annual Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture: An evening with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Welcome from University President Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C. Part of Notre Dame Forum 2024-25 Free, no ticket required. Doors open at 5:00 p.m. Interested in taking a free shuttle from the Notre Dame campus? Shuttle Interest Form Co-sponsors: Department of American Studies, Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights, Initiative on Race and Resilience, The Law School, Office of the President --- Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of the bestselling book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which has been adapted into a feature film. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.

As part of an album release tour, Cornelia Sommer, along with Dror Baitel, present a magical evening of original arrangements of classic fairy tale music, as well as newly commissioned works. This concert is free and not ticketed.  Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Schola Musicorum, an early vocal music vocal ensemble, presents Gregorian chant from medieval manuscripts, early polyphony, and early organ works. For tickets, call 574-631-2800 or visit performingarts.nd.edu. Originally published at music.nd.edu.

Join the Liturgical Choir of the Notre Dame Children's Choir the second and third Mondays of the month in-person or online for a prayerful Vespers service. Notre Dame Children's Liturgical ChoirOriginally published at sma.nd.edu.