Three University of Notre Dame faculty members — Rebecca Tinio McKenna, Sarah McKibben, and Vincent Phillip Muñoz — have been offered fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the 2018 award cycle. With 65 total awards, scholars in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters have received more NEH fellowships any other private university in the United States since 1999.
Assistant professor Kim Rollings’ research examines how built and natural environments impact mental and physical health. In collaboration with Nancy Wells, professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell University, she recently developed an assessment tool that scores elementary school cafeteria environments, suggesting improvements that promote healthier eating.
The launch will take place during “Higher Powers,” a three-day Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture conference examining the proper relationship between God, the human person, and the state.
Babies whose mothers experience interpersonal violence during pregnancy are more likely to exhibit aggression and defiance toward their mothers in toddlerhood, according to new research by Laura Miller-Graff, assistant professor of psychology and peace studies, and Jennifer Burke Lefever, managing director of the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.
Gabriel Said Reynolds — University of Notre Dame professor of Islamic studies and theology — shows in his newest publication, The Qur’an & the Bible: Text and Commentary, that the connections between the sacred texts of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism run deep.
In 2018 the University will launch several initiatives connected to the work of this novelist, critic of Communism, and 1970 Nobel laureate for literature. The plans include the acquisition and first English translations of Solzhenitsyn works, as well as major academic conferences and postdoctoral fellowships that will connect researchers from around the world to the manuscript and print collections held by the Hesburgh Libraries — which are among the most extensive holdings in the U.S. related to the life and work of Solzhenitsyn.
Tatiana Botero, associate teaching professor of Spanish at the University of Notre Dame, has been named 2018 Indiana teacher of the year for university-level instruction by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP).
Kriag Beyerlein’s study, co-authored with Notre Dame graduate student Peter Ryan, compares the 2017 Women’s March Chicago with historical examples of religiously motivated progressive social activism and is now published in Sociology of Religion.
Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the 2018 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He is the seventh living Notre Dame philosophy faculty member to be honored and is to be inducted at an October ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The conference titled “The Whole is Greater than its Parts: Christian Unity and Interreligious Encounter Today” will be held at the University’s Rome Global Gateway Jan. 8-10. This is the second such international gathering hosted by Notre Dame’s World Religions World Church program.
Working to advance the mission of the Church in service of development, peace, and disarmament, attendees will address such topics as the July 2017 United Nations treaty banning nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons and the environment, and the role of Church and civil society in promoting disarmament. The speakers and panelists include Nobel Prize winners, senior diplomats, and leaders from the United Nations and NATO, as well as academic experts and religious leaders.
Nicholas J. Teh, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, along with London School of Economics colleague Bryan W. Roberts, was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study the nature of observables.
In his opening remarks for “Land O’Lakes and Its Legacy,” on September 5, Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., suggested that among the essential activities of a university is to engage in discussion and debate about what its proper activities are. The examination included a lecture and panel discussion with four other Catholic university presidents in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the drafting and signing of the Land O’Lakes Statement. Arts and Letters Dean John T. McGreevy opened the event with a talk on the historical contexts of Land O’Lakes. He pointed to the impact of Vatican II, shifts in university and faculty governance, and a more global Church as essential backdrops for understanding the intentions of Land O’Lakes.
The University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, in collaboration with the Office of the President, will host five Catholic university presidents on Sept. 5 for a lecture and panel to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the drafting and signing of the Land O’Lakes Statement.
The University of Notre Dame will premiere Sorin: A Notre Dame Story, a one-person play about the life and work of the University’s founder, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., on Aug. 30 (Wed.) at 6:42 p.m. in the Patricia George Decio Theatre of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. This production celebrates the 175th anniversary of the University through the collaborative creative work of four notable alumni of Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters: director Patrick Vassel '07, playwright Christina Telesca Gorman '91, performer Matthew Goodrich '09, and projection designer Ryan Belock '11.
Heather Hyde Minor, professor of art history, has been appointed academic director of the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway by Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization. During her two-year term, Hyde Minor will hold full academic oversight of the Gateway, including the Rome undergraduate program and efforts to enhance the University’s research profile in Rome and beyond. Hyde Minor succeeds Theodore J. Cachey Jr., Ravarino Family Professor of Italian and director of the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies.
DellaNeva, a professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, will hold full academic oversight of the Gateway during her two-year term, including the London undergraduate program and efforts to enhance the University’s research profile in London and beyond. A faculty member since 1982, DellaNeva also served as chair of her department from 1989-96 and as associate dean for undergraduate studies in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters from 2010-17.
Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., associate professor of theology, will address the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the theology of migration during the bishops’ annual Spring General Assembly, June 14-15, in Indianapolis. Groody’s talk, “Passing Over: Migration, Theology and the Eucharist,” draws on his research around the world mapping the many sides of the current conversation on migration.
J.J. Wright, University of Notre Dame doctoral candidate in sacred music and Grammy award-winning composer, will premiere his five-part composition “Drama and Devotion” on June 1 (Thursday) at Chiesa Nuova in Rome.
Alvin Plantinga, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, was named the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate on Tuesday (April 25) by the John Templeton Foundation. Over his 50 years of research in philosophy of religion, epistemology and metaphysics, Plantinga has advanced landmark arguments for the existence of God, returning the questions of religious belief to the common discourse of academic philosophy.
The collaborative global research project, Under Caesar's Sword, is co-directed by political scientist Daniel Philpott. “In Response to Persecution,” a report on the UCS project’s findings, was launched April 20 in a day-long symposium at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic studies and theology at the University of Notre Dame, is one of 15 Catholic delegates invited by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) to participate in a bilateral conversation with 15 Muslim counterparts at Al-Azhar al-Sharif Center for Dialogue (ASCD) Feb. 22-23 in Cairo, Egypt. Reynolds, whose research centers on the Quran and Muslim-Christian relations, believes the greatest opportunities for progress come from emphasizing what Christians and Muslims have in common — the shared stories, history and values.
Robert O. Smith, historian and specialist in American Christian theologies concerning the Israeli-Palestinian context, has been appointed the first academic director of the Jerusalem Global Gateway by Nick Entrikin, vice president and associate provost for internationalization. Smith is concurrent faculty in the Department of Theology and Keough School for Global Affairs.
Notre Dame International at the University of Notre Dame will launch four new short-term study abroad programs for summer 2015: South Africa for Student-Athletes, Summer Greece, China Summer Language Program, and Global Gateway seminars for rising freshmen. This expansion of program offerings marks progress toward the University’s goal to provide every eligible undergraduate with an opportunity to study abroad.
Senior Nicole Sganga spent part of summer 2014 traveling in Myanmar and reporting with New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof after winning the “Win a Trip with Nick” contest. While in Myanmar, she wrote and video-d her way through encounters with Rohingya Muslims living under protracted persecution in internment camps. What you might not know is what Sganga learned—and where she hopes her adventures as a global citizen will take her next.
For Ukrainian scholars attending this week’s conference at Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway, the topics to be discussed became lived realities over the past year—realities that led to civil disobedience, public protests, and the loss of a colleague who was killed by a sniper while protesting in February 2014. Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., issued a statement of support for these protesters in December 2013.
What does a private American Catholic university have in common with government-run Chinese universities? Plenty, if the recent activities of Notre Dame International (NDI) are any indication. From June 22-25, NDI hosted a delegation of 20 Chinese university presidents, which was sponsored by China’s National Academy of Education Administration. This delegation represented universities from China’s interior region—an area the Chinese government has targeted for economic development—and made Notre Dame a three-day stop on its itinerary of three American universities.