The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Silvana Patriarca (Fordham University) titled:"Anticolonialism(s) as antiracism(s)?" Italian Radicals Facing 'Race' and the Colonial Question at the Turn of the Twentieth Century In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Italians fully participated in the racialization of the African populations that they and other Europeans colonized. At the same time, Italians themselves were often racialized by other Europeans (including Americans) and engaged in the racialization of southern Italians. In this context, some anthropologists and sociologists of leftist orientation such as Napoleone Colajanni questioned the idea of “pure races” and the racial hierarchies that placed Nordic peoples (including northern Italians) above southern Europeans. A number of leftist and radical thinkers and politicians — radical democrats, socialists, and anarchists — also rejected colonialism and especially the consequences that colonial wars had for the inhabitants of a country like Italy that was still poor and underdeveloped. Some anarchist geographers even claimed a right to so-called “barbarity.” To what extent did the critique of colonialism (including the internal variety) lead to an explicit rejection of anti-Black racism? Were anticolonial thinkers able to express sympathy and solidarity with the colonized people victimized by European aggressions? Analyzing the works of the thinkers and the leftist press of that period, this lecture will address these questions as part of a larger project on the history of antiracist beliefs and sensibilities in modern Italian culture. Silvana Patriarca received her laurea at the University of Turin and her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Florida, and is currently a professor in the Department of History of Fordham University. She specializes in the history of modern Italy and her research has ranged from the social history of industrialization to the intellectual and political history of statistics to the cultural history of nationalism and the construction of national identities in their intersection with gender and “race.” The author of the award-winning Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge University Press) and of Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic (Cambridge University Press), she has co-edited (with Lucy Riall) The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan). She has held fellowships at the National Humanities Center (North Carolina) and at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, and visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) in Paris. Her most recent book, Race in Post-Fascist Italy: "War Children" and the Color of the Nation (2022), focuses on the experiences and representations of the "brown babies" born at the end of World War Two from the encounters between Black Allied soldiers and Italian women, and explores the persistence of racial thinking and racism in post-fascist and postcolonial Italy. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.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.

A Brief History of the Future is presented by Mike Bechtel, managing director and chief futurist with Deloitte Consulting LLP. He helps clients develop strategies to thrive in the face of discontinuity and disruption. His team researches the novel and exponential technologies most likely to affect the future of businesses, and builds relationships with the startups, incumbents, and academic institutions creating them. The Ten Years Hence speaker series explores issues, ideas, and trends likely to affect business and society over the next decade. The theme of the 2025 series is Innovation: The Process of Creation and Renewal. Ten Years Hence is sponsored by the Eugene Clark Distinguished Lecture Series endowment. This is one of seven lectures in the Ten Years Hence Lecture Series. See website for details and other lecture dates. Free and open to students, faculty, staff and public.

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 Keough-Naughton Institute invites you to a staged reading of The Invasion of Melos, an adaptation of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue, by visiting playwright Colin Murphy. A panel discussion and reception will follow the reading.Play Description When is war "just"? Are there laws of war? Who will hold belligerents to account? Is geopolitics only about self-interest and the survival of the fittest? What does it mean to be a “realist”? These questions are not new: one of the first people to document them was the Greek historian Thucydides, in his influential History of the Peloponnesian War. The Peloponnesian War was a long-running war between Athens and Sparta. In 416BC, Athens opened a new front in that war, when it invaded the vulnerable island of Melos. That led to “peace” negotiations between Athens and Melos, and Thucydides documented these in a chapter of his History known as the Melian Dialogue. We present a rehearsed reading of a new adaptation of the Melian dialogue, by one of Ireland’s leading political dramatists, Colin Murphy, with the aim of provoking reflection on today’s conflicts. The staged reading is directed by Notre Dame Professor Kevin Dreyer and features a cast of Notre Dame students. The short performance will be followed by an expert panel discussion on conflict and the ethics of war with Colin Murphy, Professor Michael Desch (ND International Security Center) and Professor Anne García-Romero (Film, Television, and Theatre).  The original production was presented in Dublin in 2024 by ClassicsNow in association with Once Off Productions.   Playwright BiographyColin Murphy is a playwright, screenwriter and journalist from Dublin, Ireland, best known for his series of plays about Irish political history. His new play, The United States vs Ulysses, will run at the Irish Arts Center in New York this May. Other plays include The Asylum Workshop, The Treaty and Guaranteed!, all published by Bloomsbury. His radio plays include #Antigone and Hamlet, Prince of Derry. Screenplays include The Guarantee. He writes a weekly column for the Sunday Independent.       Director BiographyKevin Dreyer is a Professor of Theatre in Notre Dame's Film, Television, and Theatre Department. He is an experienced lighting designer and a member of the United Scenic Artists with an active freelance career. He has designed for major companies across the United States and around the world with reviews and award nominations from four continents. He has been on the faculty at Notre Dame since 1989, where in addition to teaching he has designed lighting and scenery for the theatre season. In recent years he has added the responsibilities of producing and directing for the University. He published the first book about lighting design for dance in 2020. Kevin's work as a lighting designer has been seen in Chicago and around the world with the Joffrey Ballet and Ballet West. His design work is featured in Robert Altman’s film The Company. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

The Department of Art, Art History, and Design invites you for a lecture by Lucas Lynn Christensen, doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology, exploring the relationship between visual art, history, and ritual through Andrew of Crete’s engagement with the Dormition icon. His research examines how visual elements serve as historical evidence, blurring the boundaries between imagery, ritual, and sacred truth. In a series of early eighth-century homilies, Andrew of Crete explicitly references the detailed imagery of the Dormition icon, transforming visual elements into persuasive evidence for the historical events it commemorates. This lecture explores how Andrew deploys the icon’s details as an epistemological resource—a visual argument that invites his audience to actively participate in completing the narrative. For listeners encountering the celebration for the first time, the icon serves not only as a testimonial object but also as an open-ended canvas. By interweaving vivid recollections of his own experiences in Jerusalem with calls for mimetic ritual participation, Andrew positions his hearers within the very frame of the icon, thereby blurring the boundaries between art, lived ritual, and historical truth. This investigation reconsiders the role of visual representation in constructing and authenticating sacred history, revealing how immersive engagement with an image can function as a dynamic form of historical evidence. Originally published at artdept.nd.edu.

Wrestling with the fallout of the war in Gaza on Jewish identity, political commentator Peter Beinart shares his personal reckoning with the moral reconstruction needed to build a future "that recognizes the infinite value of all human life." Atalia Omer, professor of religion, conflict and peace studies, will moderate. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and an MSNBC analyst, Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He is also the editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter. Note: Bags and backpacks will not be allowed inside the venue. A storage space will be provided on site. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu. This event is co-sponsored by Contending Modernities, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Mirza Family Professor in Islamic Thought & Muslim Societies.