Join us in celebrating the launch of Charles W. Powell's book Southern Baptists and Muslims: A Path to Dialogue through Narrative Empathy with a brief reading from Charles himself as well as opening remarks from Ansari Faculty Fellow, Daniel Philpott. About the BookSince the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the largest Protestant religious group in the United States—the Southern Baptist denomination—has been criticized for using and fostering anti-Islamic rhetoric. The use of anti-Islamic speech, specifically by Southern Baptist leaders, has become an alarming trend within the denomination. The effects of Southern Baptists' antipathy towards Muslims are indeed dire. Charles W. Powell has observed that the Southern Baptist denomination is underprepared and at times reluctant to engage with Muslims in the United States. His formal interviews with Southern Baptist pastors reveal that most pastors as well as their congregants have had no personal encounter with Muslims. As a result, this lack of encounter has created a deficiency of narrative empathy. Southern Baptists and Muslims empirically investigates the dynamics of these patterns. Powell proposes that this lack of narrative empathy is the primary reason why leaders within the Southern Baptist denomination have negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it is primarily the lack of narrative empathy that allows for anti-Islamic rhetoric to flourish. The purpose of this book is to shape an improved, if not new, perception of Islam and Muslims--a perception that can foster neighborliness via personal encounter. About Charles W. Powell. Charles W. Powell, serves as the associate director for Mission Engagement and Church Affairs (OMECA) at the University of Notre Dame. Powell joined OMECA in the fall of 2024. Prior to joining the team, he worked with the Ansari Institute where he headed multifaith engagement initiatives and taught the course “Evangelicals and Global Affairs.” Simultaneously, he was adjunct teaching faculty at Holy Cross College at Notre Dame; he taught courses in Christian-Muslim relations. Additionally, through Notre Dame Global he co-led the course “International Law and the Holocaust” in Poland for five years. He has traveled extensively into the Levant and Gulf States with a focus on building understanding, trust, and collaboration between Christians and Muslims. Powell is an academic visiting fellow alumnus of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford, UK. He earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago; his concentration was spirituality. He is married to Emilia Justyna Powell, professor of Political Science at Notre Dame. He and his wife have two daughters and a Brussels Griffon.Charles Powell will be introduced by Daniel Phillpott, an Ansari Institute faculty fellow who is a professor of poltical science at Notre Dame who specializes in religion and global politics. Food and refreshments will be available following the formal portion of the event program. This is a free event and advanced registration is not required. Originally published at ansari.nd.edu.

This event welcomes back Kroc Institute alumna Rosette Muzigo-Morrison (M.A. '93), legal officer at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, located at the Hague, Netherlands. Muzigo-Morrison will highlight several notable world events that coincided with her arrival at Notre Dame in the early 1990s— the collapse of the Berlin Wall to the release of Nelson Mandela and an end to apartheid in South Africa to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Despite these developments, a united resolve to work for human dignity has been stifled. Muzigo-Morrison will also address the concerns surrounding forgotten wars in Cameron, South Sudan and Sudan, Ethiopia and Syria, the rise of white supremacist governments in Europe, and implications for the future. Anne E. Hayner, associate director for alumni relations, will provide an introduction. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

The Medieval Institute is pleased to present the eighteenth lecture in the Graduate Student Invitation Series with Hanna Gentili (University of Hamburg, Institut für Jüdische Philosophie und Religion), who will be speaking on "Natural Philosophy in the Arabic-Hebrew-Latin Landscape: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Corpus." About the Talk Averroes’ works received their authoritative form in Latin in the Renaissance printed projects, culminating in the mid-sixteenth century Giunta editions. From this moment, up to modern editions, Averroes’ text remained “frozen in place.” But in reality, it was never like that. Dynamic and fluid, Averroes’ works were constantly evolving, circulating in various forms already in the Arabic world. This complication escalated as they reached the Latin world, often via the mediation of Hebrew, as further hands became involved. Finally, there was the hidden space that occupied the transitions from manuscript to print. Through a series of examples on the macro and micro levels, my talk will breathe life into this process, with focus on Averroes’ natural philosophy. I will argue that examining the texts across languages and media has philosophical and historiographical implications, and that we should adopt new methods to better understand philosophy and its study in premodern circles.  About the Speaker Hanna Gentili (Ph.D, Warburg Institute) is a historian of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. Her research focuses on the consolidation and circulation of the Hebrew philosophical corpus in manuscript and early print. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Hamburg where she is working on Averroes’ natural philosophy in Hebrew and Latin within the ERC Project HEPMASITE (Hebrew Philosophical Manuscripts as Sites of Engagement). Before joining the University of Hamburg, she worked at the crossroads of philosophy and kabbalah in the Digital Humanities project Ilanot and in 2023 she was the curator of the Hebrew collections at the British Library. Her first monograph—about the philosophical notebook of the fifteenth-century Jewish intellectual Yoḥanan Alemanno in the context of the Italian Renaissance and Jewish philosophical training—is currently in preparation. Originally published at medieval.nd.edu.

Soares, António, Artist. Humorous Map of Europe. Lisboa, Portugal: A Editora, 1914. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668737/.The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown University) titled: The Activism of Imagination: Fictions of Europe Between Utopia and Disenchantment Against the backdrop of political, economic, and social problems that reinforce the idea of Europe’s existential crisis, this talk redraws the attention to constructive aspects of the Europe-building discourse often muffled by a rising Euroscepticism. In particular, it explores the contribution of literature both as the repository of a European cultural memory and as a forerunner of crucial components of the ongoing European integration design. A selection of modern and contemporary Italian fiction, in dialogue with a broader literary and intellectual discourse at pivotal junctures of the European project, addresses the role of utopia not as a compensatory wishful projection but, rather, as creative thinking propelled by the critical and transformative power of imagination. Nicoletta Pireddu is Inaugural Director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University. Her research revolves around European literary and cultural relations, cosmopolitanism, borders and migration, history of ideas, and translation studies. She has published over eighty articles and numerous monographs and edited volumes, among them Antropologi alla corte della bellezza. Decadenza ed economia simbolica nell’Europa fin de siècle, which received the American Association for Italian Studies Book Award; The Works of Claudio Magris: Temporary Homes, Mobile Identities, European Borders, and most recently, Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (2023 American Comparative Literature Association “René Wellek Prize for the Best Edited Essay Collection”). The lecture is co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute.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.

Join the McGrath Institute for Church Life for a special book launch and lecture on "The Concept of Woman: A Synthesis in One Volume" by Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM. Topics of discussion will include the development of a philosophically coherent concept of woman from the pre-Socratics to the 20th-century personalists. Brief presentations will be led by Sr. Ann Astell, Ph.D., John Cavadini, Ph.D., and Abigail Favale, Ph.D., with a response by the author, Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM. Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

Democratic erosion can be stopped. There are good theoretical reasons and first empirical evidence for that. However, stopping democratic erosion is not equivalent to democratic recovery. What possible trajectories are there for the post-erosion phase? How can democratic recovery—as one of them—be captured? These questions have not been found sufficient attention but are highly relevant for developing strategies of post-erosion democratic reconstruction. This lecture presents a framework covering these questions and thus offering an approach for addressing post-erosion developments.Kellogg Lecture by Marianne Kneuer.   More information here