Saturdays with the Saints has established itself as a popular Notre Dame football pregame ritual that combines the university's rich traditions of Catholic faith and spirited game days. In this lecture, Therese Cory, associate professor of Thomistic studies, will present. The lectures take place in the Andrews Auditorium on the lower level of Geddes Hall adjacent to Hesburgh Library. The talks are free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early as the events tend to fill to capacity. Come and grab a free T-shirt! Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

American political life is characterized by hyper-partisanship and polarization. Each election cycle seems to sharpen divisions and deepen political idolatry, while leaving most of us exasperated and exhausted. Yet, the Catholic Church encourages us to participate in politics. Pope Francis expresses the Church’s conviction that politics is “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good” (EV, 205). This series explores the Church’s call to participate in political life and the complexities, challenges, and possibilities therein: What is politics? How do Catholics balance the call to participation without making an idol of politics? Is our call to participate exhausted by our duty to vote? What is the mission of Catholics in the public square? What constitutes the public square? How can the Eucharist transform our understanding of politics? Can we envision a world where charity, not political ideology, guides all our actions and decisions? Featured panelists will include: Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore; Kathleen Buckley Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference; and Theresa MacArt, assistant professor of politics and public service at Holy Cross College.  Click here to register. Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.

How did an event once considered the greatest of all political dangers come to be seen as a solution to all social problems?Join the Transnational France Research Cluster, supported by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, to welcome Dan Edelstein, William H. Bonsall Professor of French at Stanford University. He will be delivering a fascinating talk and leading a discussion on "Revolution: The History of an Idea." About the speakerDan Edelstein is a scholar specializing in eighteenth-century France, with a focus on literature, history, political thought, and digital humanities. He earned a Ph.D. in French from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, following a Licence ès lettres in French, English, and Latin from the Université de Genève in 1999, and a Maturité scientifique from Collège Calvin in Geneva in 1993. Edelstein’s most recent book, On the Spirit of Rights (University of Chicago Press), traces the evolution of natural and human rights from the wars of religion to the revolutionary period. An earlier iteration of this research appeared in the Journal of Modern History, while a more theoretical exploration can be found in Humanity. A synopsis of the initial arguments was published in Critical Analysis of Law.At Stanford University, Edelstein teaches courses covering the literature, philosophy, history, culture, and politics of the Enlightenment; nineteenth-century novels; the French Revolution; early-modern political thought; and French intellectual culture, including a popular course titled “Coffee & Cigarettes.” Edelstein is a regular instructor in Education as Self-Fashioning, a first-year program focused on liberal education, and directs the Stanford Summer Humanities Institute, a program for high school juniors and seniors. Additionally, Edelstein teaches and co-directs, with Debra Satz, Stanford's Humanities Core program. A highly regarded educator, Edelstein has received Stanford’s highest teaching honor, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching (2006), as well as the Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award (2011).Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.

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

The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Eva Del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania) titled: A Reckless and Scandalous Doctrine: Matthias Ferchius, a Franciscan in the Index  This paper delves into the intriguing journey of a forgotten booklet by the Franciscan Matthias Ferchius (1583-1669), drawing from recently unearthed material. It uncovers a fascinating blend of Biblical exegesis, poison expertise, medical reasoning, and rhetorical balancing acts, all in an audacious attempt by Ferchius to present no less than a revisionist account of the death of Jesus Christ. The paper will engage in the dialectic between Ferchius and the Holy Office censors, shedding light on the aspects of Ferchius’s text that raised particular concerns. It will also demonstrate how the pursuit of “new” outlooks in philosophy and theology always necessitated a firm reliance on tradition, a fact exemplified by other episodes of Ferchius’ intellectual career. Lastly, it will bring to the fore the paradoxical outcomes of this form of “conspiracy” philology.  Eva Del Soldato is associate professor of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the FIGS Graduate Program and serves as interim director of the Center for Italian Studies. She was trained in philosophy and intellectual history at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Her research is primarily devoted to Renaissance thought and culture, particularly the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions. Her current project is focused on lovesickness treatises in the Counterreformation period. She is the author of the monographs Simone Porzio (2010) and Early Modern Aristotle. On the Making and Unmaking of Authority (2020). She has also published several articles and editions, including the Italian translation of Bessarion's In calumniatorem Platonis. She has co-edited several volumes (the most recent is Plato in the Italian Universities, 2024). She received— among others — fellowships from the Scuola Normale Superiore, Villa I Tatti, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, and she has been a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Milan, the University of Bergamo, and the 2022/2023 Charles Speroni Chair at UCLA. She has been the interim director (2019/2020) of the Global Medieval Studies Program at Penn, and she is currently the executive secretary of the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS).   The lecture is co-sponsored by the Medieval 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.

Bringing together scholars, activists, and faith leaders with expertise in religion, radicalism, democracy, and depolarization, the 2024 Election Postmortem offers space for interdisciplinary analysis and collaboration at this critical historical moment. All sessions are free and open to the public. Drop-ins are welcome, but advanced registration is appreciated for planning purposes. REGISTER HERE.8:45AM - 9:00AM Opening RemarksLaura Frances Callahan, Asssistant Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre DameMichael Rea, Rev. John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Center for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame9:00AM - 10:45AM What Happened: Reflecting on the 2024 Election and How We Got HerePanelists:David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and the Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, University of Notre DameDavid French, Opinion Columnist for The New York TimesRobert P. Jones, President and Founder of the Public Religion Research InstituteChristopher Sebastian Parker, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa BarbaraKatherine Stewart, Journalist, Author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and GodModerator: Michael Rea11:00AM - 12:45PM Remaining Vigilant: What to Watch for in the Days AheadPanelists:Rachel Brown, Founder and Executive Director of Over ZeroKristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Calvin UniversityLilliana Mason, SNF Angora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins UniversityElizabeth Neumann, Department of Homeland Security (former)Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant Scholar, Institute for Islamic • Christian • Jewish StudiesModerator: Laura Frances Callahan3:30PM - 5:30PM Strategy Session: Planning, Partnerships, and Practical Steps for the Next Four YearsPanelists:Chris Crawford, Policy Strategist, Free & Fair Elections, at Protect DemocracyAmanda Tyler, Executive Director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious LibertyJim Wallis, Director of the Center on Faith +Justice, Georgetown UniversityTim Whitaker, Creator + Facilitator, The New EvangelicalsModerator: Joel Day, Managing Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, University of Notre DameFree visitor parking is available in the Stadium, Joyce, Walsh, and Compton lots on campus, located just south of the football stadium. Campus Map Lodging within walking distance of the conference center include The Morris Inn on campus, and the Embassy Suites by Hilton South Bend at Notre Dame and the Fairfield Inn & Suites South Bend at Notre Dame at Eddy Street Commons. The 2024 Election Postmortem event is hosted by the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the Unversity of Notre Dame. Please contact the Center for Philosophy of Religion with questions.

Register here  We hope you will join us each month for the Virtues & Vocations lunchtime webinar series, Conversations on Character & the Common Good. There is always time for audience questions. Sanford “Sandy” Shugart served from 2000 to 2021 as the fourth president of Valencia College in greater Orlando, Florida. He is a senior fellow with the Aspen Institute and the author of Leadership in the Crucible of Work: Discovering the Interior Life of an Authentic Leader. Our conversation will consider the broad landscape of higher education — and particularly pre-professional and professional education for flourishing within community colleges — along with issues of leadership and character. Virtues & Vocations is a national forum for scholars and practitioners across disciplines to consider how best to cultivate character in pre-professional and professional education. Virtues & Vocations hosts faculty workshops, an annual conference, and monthly webinars, and engages issues of character, professional identity, and moral purpose through our publications.