It’s been a little over 60 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, but the messages from that speech resonate today. “MLK: Now is the Time” is an immersive journey that explores key themes of Dr. King’s speech and highlights systemic inequities that persist in our society. Through first-person stories and interactions, “MLK: Now is the Time” drops a participant into a thoroughly modern interpretation of a contemporary March on Washington. This immersive session leverages the power of extended reality (XR) to provide a unique and impactful learning experience. Facilitated by: Horane Diatta-Holgate, Program Director of Inclusive Pedagogy, Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence; XR Collective Format: Discussion/Workshop10:00–11:30 a.m. (in VR headsets for registrants); 12:00–1:00 p.m. (Lunch/discussion); 1:00–3:00 p.m. (in VR headsets for registrants)Audience: Administrators, faculty, staff, students Session Objectives: Through XR simulations and discussion, our objectives for the workshop/discussion include:Empathetic Understanding: Participants will step into the shoes of individuals from various backgrounds, gaining insight into the challenges they face.Interactive Scenarios: Participants will engage in real-life scenarios, facilitated by XR, to make decisions and/or navigate situations to learn DEI principles.Safe Space for Dialogue: Participants will have opportunities for open discussions, sharing experiences, and learning from one another in a supportive environment.Practical Tools for Inclusion: Receive guidance on implementing inclusive practices in both personal and professional spheres, leveraging XR as a tool for positive change.Part of the Tech for Good series being presented during Walk the Walk Week by Teaching and Learning Technologies (Office of Information Technology), the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship (Hesburgh Libraries), Notre Dame Learning, and the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights Originally published at learning.nd.edu.

Celebrate Lá Fhéile Bríde/St. Brigid's Day 2025 with a reading by visiting poet Victoria Kennefick! Book sales and a reception will follow the reading. Victoria Kennefick's debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Butler Literary Prize. Her second collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024), was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2024 and BBC Poetry Extra Book of the Month for March. Egg/Shell was also a Book of the Year 2024 in The Telegraph, The Sunday Independent and The Poetry Society. This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Gender Studies Program. Originally published at irishstudies.nd.edu.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963) Racial justice and anti-Blackness are pressing global challenges that demand our attention. Join us for an engaging and thought-provoking panel discussion with distinguished experts who will delve into these critical issues. They will explore the far-reaching impacts of systemic, institutional, and organizational racism, and uncover the urgent need for change on a worldwide scale. Panelists: Joseph Butler, Assistant Dean for Access, Diversity and Inclusion, Princeton UniversityCarla Goar, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, Kent State UniversityAmber Hewitt, Racial Equity Practitioner and Counseling Psychologist  Moderated by Gwendolyn Purifoye, Assistant Professor of Racial Justice and Conflict Transformation, University of Notre Dame  Greg Wilson, Assistant Professor of Management and Public Affairs, Ohio State University  Photo credit: "Prayer Changes Things," (c) 2017, courtesy of Eurnice Harris from Good Victory Art Studio. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Ring in the Lunar New Year with food, stickers, local shopping and more at the Portage Collective, 905 Portage Avenue, South Bend. The Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies is sponsoring free cookies from Chips & Doodles and Year of the Snake stickers while supplies last! Originally published at asia.nd.edu.

Rev. Msgr. Anthony Onyemuche Ekpo is the undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He will join the Keough School of Global Affairs during the Nanovic Institute for European Studies' Keeley Vatican Lecture, the latest in this series that seeks to connect the University of Notre Dame with the Vatican. His message, titled "The Reform of the Roman Curia and the Promotion of Integral Human Development," will focus on integral human development, a critical component of Catholic Social Teaching that emphasizes supporting the growth of each person as a holistic human being. This powerful calling inspires the mission of the Keough School of Global Affairs. We invite all students, faculty, staff, and the general public to attend this timely event. Notre Dame President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., will introduce Rev. Msgr. Ekpo.About the Keeley Vatican Lecture series The Keeley Vatican Lecture, facilitated annually by the Nanovic Institute, provides a way to deepen Notre Dame’s connection to the Holy See by bringing distinguished representatives from the Vatican to explore questions surrounding the University’s Catholic mission. Established in 2005 through the generous support of alumnus Terrence R. Keeley ’81, lecturers typically spend several days on campus, joining classes, celebrating Mass with students, and conversing with faculty members. Past Keeley Vatican Lectures have included Sister Raffaella Petrini (secretary-general of the Vatican City State), Rev. Fr. Hans Zollner, Dr. Barbara Jatta, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, and Ukrainian Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak. Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.

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.