More than 1,200 scholars, students and guests from around the world will attend the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture’s 24th annual Fall Conference, “Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination.” The conference, which began Thursday (Oct. 31) and concludes Saturday (Nov. 2), will feature more than 175 papers, panels and performances across three days of conversation on the enduring and inexhaustible nature of the Catholic imagination. The full schedule is available at ethicscenter.nd.edu/fc24.

The de Nicola Center collaborated with the Biennial Catholic Imagination Conference on the theme for this year’s gathering. Established by Dana Gioia, an internationally acclaimed poet and author and the recipient of the 2010 Notre Dame Laetare Medal, the Biennial Catholic Imagination Conference aims to enhance the understanding and appreciation of the richness and variety of contributions by Catholic artists; explore the critical and theoretical foundations of the Catholic imagination; and foster community and collaboration among writers and readers who share a knowledge of and respect for the Catholic tradition.

Gioia, former California state poet laureate and chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts from 2003 to 2009, will open the conference with a talk and reading titled “Becoming a Catholic Writer,” at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Downes Club of Corbett Family Hall.

Judith Wolfe, professor of philosophical theology at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, will offer a Friday evening plenary keynote titled “The Theological Imagination,” reflecting on how Christian faith gives believers courage to shape the world creatively in the face of ambiguity, contradiction and clashing viewpoints. The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion of “The Future of the Catholic Imagination,” featuring author Ron Hansen and poets James Matthew Wilson and Sally Thomas, in conversation with Jennifer Newsome Martin, director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

Other featured speakers include Cyril O’Regan, the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at Notre Dame and recipient of the 2024 Ratzinger Prize in Theology; Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, writer, poet and professor, Fordham University; Irish poet and novelist John F. Deane; Robin Jensen, the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology and concurrent professor of the history of art at Notre Dame; Academy Award-nominated animator and director Timothy Reckart; and more than 150 additional speakers and performers.

Conference sessions this year include author readings, poetry recitals, staged play readings, film screenings and musical performances from The Saint Hildegard Project, Colin Cutler and Hot Pepper Jam, and J.J. Wright.

The Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening keynotes will be livestreamed at ethicscenter.nd.edu/programs/fall-conference/streamfc/. Many other sessions will be recorded and posted to the de Nicola Center’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/ndethics after the conference concludes.

Walk-up registration is available at the check-in desk in the McKenna Hall Conference Center from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.

Since 2000, the de Nicola Center’s annual Fall Conference has brought together the world’s leading Catholic thinkers, as well as those from other traditions, in fruitful discourse and exchange on the most pressing and vexed questions of ethics, culture and public policy today. The Fall Conference has since become one of the most important academic fora for wide-ranging conversations that engage the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition from a variety of disciplinary points of departure, including theology, philosophy, political theory, law, history, economics and the social sciences, as well as the natural sciences, literature and the arts. Recent past speakers include Nobel Laureate James Heckman, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Mary Ann Glendon, Rémi Brague, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and Etsuro Sotoo.

More information is available on the de Nicola Center’s website, ethicscenter.nd.edu.

Originally published by Kenneth Hallenius at ethicscenter.nd.edu on Oct. 31.