Now in its fourth year, the 2024 Accountability in a Sustainable World Conference, as the flagship event of ASWQ, continues to ask the hard questions and delve deeper into regulation, sustainability reporting, capital allocation, and performance metrics. The ongoing conversation will answer the immediate need for dialogue among academics and non-academics about sustainability, data and measurement, related assurance, high-quality information to inform responsible investment decisions, and accountability in setting personal, corporate, and public sector goals. This conference will focus on key concerns regarding assurance of a sustainable future: the changing sustainability reporting landscape, the politization of ESG, accounting for sustainability with a particular emphasis on carbon accounting, measurement and assurance, performance metrics, the new corporate focus on sustainability, the effects of carbon footprint information on consumer choice and thoughts from a younger generation. A main feature of the conference is to generate discourse between academics and non-academics, featuring high-profile, well-informed, often provocative speakers. Events are online and open to the public. Registration is required. Sponsored by the Center for Accounting Research and Education (CARE).

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.

Frank Shovlin (University of Liverpool) will deliver the 2024 Hibernian Lecture, “Like a Prayer: The Novels of John McGahern.”  One of the most acclaimed Irish writers of the second half of the 20th century, John McGahern (1934–2006) authored six novels. His final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, was named the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year in 2003 and adapted into a 2023 film of the same name. Shovlin’s lecture will contextualize the political and social networks into which McGahern was born and explore religious aspects of his work as a writer. The 2024 Hibernian Lecture is cosponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.About the speaker Frank Shovlin is professor of Irish literature in English at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies. A native of the west of Ireland, he is a graduate of University College Galway and the University of Oxford. Shovlin is the author of numerous articles and book chapters as well as four monographs: The Irish Literary Periodical 1923–1958 (2004); Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival (2012); Touchstones: John McGahern's Classical Style (2016); and John McGahern's Dublin (2021). He edited The Letters of John McGahern (2022), and is currently writing McGahern’s authorized biography.In 1978, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians undertook a campaign to establish an endowment at the University of Notre Dame for illuminating the Irish heritage in America. Thanks to their support, since then the Cushwa Center has administered a variety of programs—including the Hibernian Research Award—supporting the study of the Irish experience in Ireland and America. Each year, the center invites a distinguished scholar or author to deliver the Hibernian Lecture at Notre Dame on some aspect of the Irish experience. Image: John McGahern and his siblings on the Feast of Corpus Christi, circa 1946. Note: Hasia Diner (New York University) had previously been scheduled to deliver the 2024 Hibernian Lecture on the subject of her latest book, Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America. The Cushwa Center is working to reschedule Diner’s visit and lecture at Notre Dame. For updates on upcoming events and other news, sign up at cushwa.nd.edu/subscribe.   Originally published at cushwa.nd.edu.