The University of Notre Dame Band will be presented with the prestigious Sudler Trophy at halftime of the Notre Dame vs. Air Force game on Saturday, October 8 in Notre Dame Stadium. The Sudler Trophy is considered the Heisman trophy of college bands.
Notre Dame students in a College of Arts and Letters course called Foundations of Business Thinking are the only class in the nation invited to participate in the inaugural gathering of ConvergeUS, a new nonprofit initiative dedicated to social innovation through technology. Chaired by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and TechNet CEO Rey Ramsey, the organization connects leading entrepreneurs, scholars, nonprofits, corporations, and technology experts in an attempt to find innovative solutions to pressing social problems.
Olivier Morel was in his car one day when a story came on the radio about suicide among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the report, eight to 10 veterans were taking their own lives each day. The news was like a punch in the stomach for Morel, a Notre Dame faculty member whose research focuses on fiction and trauma. “I was trembling,” he recalls. “I was angry, and I felt helpless … I was thinking, ‘This is unacceptable.’”
The University of Notre Dame’s doctoral program in clinical psychology recently earned accreditation from the American Psychological Association (APA). This new designation—along with a recently expanded faculty of leading researchers—is putting the College of Arts and Letters’ young clinical program firmly on the fast track to national prominence, says Director Scott Monroe, the William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology.
Three doctoral students in Notre Dame’s Department of History have been named 2011 Fulbright Scholars. Max Deardorff, Nathan Gerth, and John Moscatiello will use their Fulbright funding in Russia and Spain to support research that spans education policy, government bureaucracy, and religion.
Strong Bodies Fight, a film which chronicles the University of Notre Dame’s Bengal Bouts charity boxing tournament, was recently named Best Sports Documentary at the 2011 Action on Film International Film Festival in Pasadena, Calif., and won the Audience Choice Award from the Chicago United Film Festival. Produced by writer Mark Weber ’09 and director William Donaruma ’89, a professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, the film has been building a winning record at film festivals.
Theologian John C. Cavadini, McGrath-Cavadini Director of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life (ICL), was recently in Washington speaking to a symposium of young Catholic theologians about how to teach the faith. The meeting, Intellectual Tasks of the New Evangelization, was sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and intended to deepen and strengthen their relationship with a new generation of America’s Catholic teachers, and most of the 54 as-yet untenured theologians in attendance had received their doctoral degrees within the last five years.
College of Arts and Letters students taking on senior thesis projects can accelerate the research and writing process during fall break at Hesburgh Libraries’ second annual Senior Thesis Camp.
The phrase “All Roads Lead to Rome” connotes the cosmopolitan culture that has long been present in the Eternal City. It’s also the title of a Notre Dame exhibit running through the fall 2011 semester to highlight spectacular acquisitions by the University’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in conjunction with the new interdisciplinary Italian Studies at Notre Dame program.
Though economists have long suspected that developing countries struggle to emerge from poverty because they lack robust financial sectors, few economists have tried to determine just how this phenomenon occurs—until now. University of Notre Dame Economics Professor Joseph Kaboski, together with colleagues from UCLA and Washington University in St. Louis, examine this phenomenon in the study “Finance and Development: A Tale of Two Sectors,” published recently in the American Economic Review.
The question of religion and freedom in American public life will be the topic of a conference at the University of Notre Dame September 29 and 30 (Thursday and Friday) at McKenna Hall on the University’s campus. The conference is free and open to the public.
New research from the University of Notre Dame Department of Psychology shows that people’s ability to learn and remember information depends on what they do with their hands while they are learning.
John Duffy, associate professor in the English department and the Francis O’Malley Director of the University Writing Program, has recently co-edited the latest issue of Disability Studies Quarterly with Melanie Yergeau of the University of Michigan. This special issue, titled “Disability and Rhetoric,” promotes new methodological possibilities for applying rhetorical approaches to the burgeoning study of disability.
The University of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) will welcome Horst Koehler, former president of the Federal Republic of Germany, and his wife, Eva Luise Koehler, to the University for a three-day visit that will include a major public lecture by Koehler. Titled “The Whole is at Stake,” the lecture will be held Wednesday, September 28 at 7 p.m. in the Carey Auditorium of the Hesburgh Library.
It’s a timeless project—and a priceless opportunity: Advanced students at the University of Notre Dame are currently working with some of Italy’s top linguistics experts to assemble the most complete historical dictionary of the Italian language prior to 1375. Notre Dame is currently the only university outside of Italy invited to contribute research to the Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO) project, an initiative of the prestigious Accademia della crusca’s Opera del vocabolario italiano (OVI) branch.
“What’s next?” That thought lurks in the back of every undergraduate mind as the years at Notre Dame fly by. To help College of Arts and Letters students explore the many and disparate ways they can answer that question, the Career Center will host its annual “What’s Next?” Week from September 26-29. The event, designed just for students in the College, provides information about internship, career, and service opportunities available both before and after graduation.
Three Ph.D. candidates in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Theology have recently been awarded prestigious fellowships from organizations such as the American Academy in Rome, Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, the Dolores Zorhab Liebmann Foundation, and the Louisville Institute.
The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) will present Mary Zimmerman’s drama The Secret in the Wings September 30, October 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances on October 1, 2, and 9 at 2:30 p.m., in the Philbin Studio Theatre of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
In 2011, University of Notre Dame Professor Thomas F.X. Noble received the prestigious Otto Gründler Book Prize in medieval studies, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and the Sheedy Award—the highest teaching honor in the College of Arts and Letters.
There is growing recognition in academia that “screen literacy” is a valuable asset for many scholars—especially those who teach language and literature. To help develop this skill set, the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) has created a new graduate minor in screen cultures. It is open to students in any Notre Dame graduate program.
The Department of History’s two newest faculty members share a common interest in colonialism, although their research has led them to explore this issue in different parts of the globe. Rebecca Tinio McKenna, whose research has focused on the Philippines, and Paul Ocobock, a scholar of Africa, both join the University of Notre Dame as assistant professors this fall.
The American Political Science Association recently honored University of Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre for his influential 1981 book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press). MacIntyre, the Rev. John A. O’Brien Senior Research Professor of Philosophy (emeritus), received the association’s biennial Benjamin E. Lippincott Award, which recognizes “a work of exceptional quality by a living political theorist” that is still considered significant at least 15 years after its original publication.
David Campbell, John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Robert Putnam of Harvard University are the 2011 recipients of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. The American Political Science Association awards the prize annually to the best book from the past year on government, politics, or international affairs.
On Sept. 13, the U.S. Census Bureau will release official poverty estimates for 2010, and those numbers are likely to be higher than last year’s staggering 14.3 percent poverty rate for 2009. However, Census poverty figures are based on a narrow measure of income that often doesn’t accurately reflect an individual’s true economic circumstances, according to James Sullivan, associate professor in the University of Notre Dame Department of Economics.
The 2011-12 Notre Dame Forum, “Reimagining School: to Nurture the Soul of a Nation,” will present a number of events this fall, beginning this month with an address by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a panel discussion featuring four leading figures in American education.
Associate Professor Gail Bederman is the latest faculty member in Notre Dame’s Department of History to accept a prestigious invitation to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. Only about 190 scholars are chosen each year for membership at the institute; more than 1,500 typically apply.
Assistant Professor Monika Nalepa has been named a winner of the 2011 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization section for Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge University Press).
The Notre Dame Alumni Association recognized three Notre Dame graduates last week, including College of Arts and Letters alumni Haley Scott DeMaria ’95, and Rev. David Garcia ’74 M.T.S., ’84 M.S.A., and Mendoza College of Business Alumnus Lt. Cmdr. Robert L. Miller, Sr. ’42, ’47 J.D. USNR (Ret.).
The new chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre spends part of each summer teaching his specialty to a different type of students—fellow faculty members from the College of Arts and Letters. Professor Jim Collins, who specializes in media theory, postmodern studies, and digital humanities, created a weeklong seminar five years ago to help faculty from other departments better incorporate film into the classroom.
There was a time when the size of the University of Notre Dame’s faculty and student body, the integrity of the University’s community, the enthusiasms of its students, and the very culture in which it was embedded all made it possible, in theater historian Mark C. Pilkinton’s succinct phrase, “for everyone to attend everything.”