Join the Medieval Institute as we host a special celebration of the 65th year of collaboration with the Ambrosiana Library of Milan, Italy. Our first event is an evening lecture with Reverend Canon Doctor Federico Gallo . More details will be added closer to the lecture. About our Speaker Rev. Can. Dr. Gallo, of the Archdiocese of Milan, studied Classics at the Università Cattolica del S. Cuore di Milano. He went on to serve in the Vatican Secret Archives, working in Latin and Greek Paleography, Diplomatics, and Archival Studies, and in the Archivio Storico Diocesano di Milano. Since 2008 he has been a Doctor of the Ambrosiana Library, where he is director and a faculty member. There, he organizes conferences, publications, and research and is responsible for the daily life of the Library and its readers. His publications focus on the history of libraries, manuscripts, ancient collections in libraries and archives, and the history of the Ambrosiana Library. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the State Archive of Milan and the State University of Milan. He is a regular visitor and lecturer here at the Medieval Institute. Originally published at medieval.nd.edu.

If you Teach@ND, this event is for you! Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence is setting aside February 21 to celebrate and support the excellent teaching that happens on our campus. We will have events, giveaways, and more meant to recognize the immense value of your work and your connections with students. Please register by February 3. Lightning Talks Session 9:00–10:30 a.m. Notre Dame faculty who have participated in the Kaneb Center Course Design Academy, Notre Dame Inclusive Teaching Academy, and the Foundational Course Transformation Academy will share informal, three-minute lightning talks about exciting aspects of their own teaching. Come grab a cup of coffee and learn more about some of the great teaching going on right here on our campus. Keynote: “A Pedagogy of Kindness” 10:30–11:45 a.m.Speaker: Cate Denial, Knox College What does it mean to practice a Pedagogy of Kindness? This presentation will explore three tenets of compassionate teaching: justice, believing students, and believing in students. We’ll reflect together on what kindness (and its lack) has meant to us within academia, and how we can—piece by piece—assemble a kind approach to pedagogy that meets the needs of our students and ourselves in a time of great change. Lunch for Teach@ND Day Attendees 12:00–1:30 p.m. Take the time to connect with colleagues and join us for lunch!  Originally published at learning.nd.edu.

The Ambrosiana Library in MilanJoin the Medieval Institute as we host a special celebration of the 65th year of collaboration with the Ambrosiana Library of Milan, Italy. Today, we will host a series of roundtables and talks. More details will be added closer to the event. Originally published at medieval.nd.edu.

Join the Institute for Social Concerns on Friday afternoons for Encounter: lectures by distinguished scholars in the field of Catholic social teaching, who will share their insights and provide critical conversation on matters of justice and the common good.  Reception to follow. Marcus Mescher is an associate professor of Christian ethics. He holds a Ph.D. from Boston College and specializes in Catholic social teaching and moral formation. His research and writing concentrate in the following areas: human dignity and rights; social/environmental justice for the global common good; how moral agency is impacted by cultural context and digital technology; the moral dimensions of friendship; sexual justice and the ethics of marriage and family life; liberation theology and inclusive solidarity; healing the psychological, spiritual, social, and moral harm caused by clergy abuse. Dr. Mescher has written dozens of popular and academic articles; he has published essays in the Journal of Moral Theology, the Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Jesuit Higher Education, and The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. He is the author of The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity (Orbis, 2020) and Fratelli Tutti Study Guide (Paulist, 2021). His current research and writing focus on mental health and moral injury.

The Institute for Social Concerns presents the 2025 Poverty Studies Distinguished Lecture with Andrea Elliott. Reception and book signing to follow. socialconcerns.nd.edu/elliott Andrea Elliott is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has documented the lives of poor Americans, Muslim immigrants and other people on the margins of power. She is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and the author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch” between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

Learn more and register here Signs of the Times: Interdisciplinary Responses to Religious Nationalism March 20-22, 2025   This 2025 CST conference will remember the 60th anniversary of two significant Vatican II texts, Gaudium et spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) and Dignitatis humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom). Released on the final day of Vatican II, these texts together invited serious consideration of the role of the church and other religious communities in relation to the state. This year’s CST conference takes up Vatican II’s invitation to discern “the signs of the times” and to attend to the roles of church and state within civil society with a view toward the common good. These central CST themes warrant further exploration as Christian and other forms of religious nationalism represent a significant sign of the current time in particular national and international contexts. This interdisciplinary conference invites historical, constructive, and comparative approaches as we consider the ecumenical, interfaith, and transdisciplinary challenges of religious nationalism. For example, what is the history of Christian nationalism in the United States and how is it related to similar movements in other parts of the world? What are the scriptural and theological resources available to analyze these expressions of Christian and national identity? To what degree and under what forms are the academy and the Christian churches complicit with the history and recent expressions of white Christian nationalism? What are the possible connections between the reemergence of various forms of religious nationalism with economic changes, poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation? How has the rise of these political ideologies been facilitated by changes in laws and institutional structures? What are the implications of Christian and other forms of religious nationalism for the relationship of religious bodies and the state in civil society? What are the pedagogical challenges across the disciplines in addressing the significance of Christian and religious nationalism? Normatively, what options for constructive engagement and responses emerge from our shared consideration of these questions?