Latest News

Sommo Poeta: Dante at Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame has long traditions in the research and teaching of Dante and is considered one of the leading centers in the world for the study of the great Catholic poet. As we approach the 700th anniversary of his death, Dante’s work still speaks powerfully, says Ted Cachey, professor of Italian and the Ravarino Family Director of Italian and Dante Studies. “I am often asked how Dante is relevant for today,” he said. “The answer is very simple: Dante confronted a world that was culturally, politically, and spiritually in profound crisis.” 

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Led by Notre Dame theologians, ThinkND series to explore world religions

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, Internationalism, General News, and Faculty News

Notre Dame theologians from the World Religions World Church program will embark on a virtual teaching series examining the Catholic Church in a global religion context starting Jan. 26 and running through October. This program, hosted by ThinkND, will enable learners to enrich their understanding of the Church’s relationship with believers of other faiths around the world. Gabriel Reynolds, the Jerome J. Crowley and Rosaleen G. Crowley Professor of Theology, will lead the first four sessions that delve into the overlap between the Bible and the Quran, the historical relationship between the Church and Islam, and the theological tensions and harmonies between believers in both traditions.

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New research pieces together Piranesi’s books — from the backs of drawings

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Arts

While early modern artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi has been principally known for his drawings and etchings of ancient Rome, new research from Heather Hyde Minor, a Notre Dame professor of art history, reinterprets Piranesi’s artistic oeuvre by flipping the works over and reading what is written on the backs. Minor’s Piranesi Unbound, examines nearly 200 of Piranesi’s engravings and drawings. The research, recuperative in method, serves as a biography of Piranesi’s books, bringing text and image together to reveal a learned mind alive with biting wit and unflinching big-picture questions.

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There will be singing: New echoes awaken in Notre Dame Stadium

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Undergraduate News, Graduate Students, General News, Faculty News, Catholicism, and Arts

As with so much of life during the coronavirus pandemic, Notre Dame Stadium is operating under "business as unusual" — with choir rehearsals taking place in the Leahy Gate, near the south endzone. “Before now, the gate had been just a passageway and the only way to get from the first floor of O’Neill to other buildings,” said Mark Doerries, director of graduate studies and head of the graduate choral conducting program for Sacred Music at Notre Dame. “But now it holds rehearsals, classes and study space — a living incubator of music and teaching.”

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Notre Dame professor co-designs first AP Seminar on African diaspora

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Centers and Institutes

Ernest Morrell, a professor of Africana studies and English, the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education, and director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame, has collaborated with fellow subject experts to create the first capstone course on the African diaspora for AP Seminar high school teachers and students.

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New history of Notre Dame charts academic growth, consistency in mission

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Catholicism

In new research, Rev. Thomas Blantz, C.S.C., Notre Dame professor emeritus of history, presents the story of America’s premier Catholic university from its inception as a French-founded boys’ school in 1842 to its status as an acclaimed undergraduate and international research institution of the 21st century.

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Two Arts and Letters faculty members win ACLS fellowships

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

Notre Dame researchers Jon Coleman, professor of history, and Emily Wang, assistant professor of Russian, have been named fellows in the 2020 cohort of American Council of Learned Societies. The fellowships honor scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and Coleman and Wang were among 81 winners selected from nearly 1,200 applicants.

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Pope Francis appoints Notre Dame theologian to commission for Catholic-Muslim dialogue

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Catholicism

Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic studies and theology at Notre Dame, has been appointed by Pope Francis as consultor to the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims, which is part of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The appointment lasts five years, and the commission meets annually in Rome to debrief and advise on the Church’s relations with Muslims.

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Art historian awarded Andy Warhol Foundation fellowship

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Arts

Nicole Woods, assistant professor of art history at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a 2019 recipient of an Arts Writers Grant. This award is among the highest honors an art historian or critic can receive, and Woods is one of 19 recipients from a candidate pool of more than 800. Woods is an expert in Euro-American neo-avant-gardes, performance and conceptual art, intersectional feminism and taste cultures. Her current research includes a consideration of the widespread use of food as an object of consumption and a form of political critique in the work of several late-20th-century artists.

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Oil and American religion set stage for current political divides, historian finds

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

In his newest research, Darren Dochuk, associate professor of history at Notre Dame, chronicles North America’s age of oil — in particular, crude’s inseparable relationship to Christianity. He finds that since the Civil War-era discovery of oil, Americans have consistently claimed black gold as a spiritual blessing, a sacred burden and an emblem of national identity and mission in the world.

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Three Arts and Letters professors named ACLS fellows

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

Two historians and one theologian are among 81 fellows named from more than 1,100 applicants in the 2019 award cycle. ACLS awardees are selected for excellence in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and the fellowships support six to 12 months of full-time research and writing. Notre Dame winners include Yury P. Avvakumov, associate professor of theology; Katie Jarvis, assistant professor of history; and Emily Remus, assistant professor of history.

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American studies professor's research explores how U.S. Catholics' quest for holy heroes leads to tensions between national, religious identities

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, Centers and Institutes, and Catholicism

In new research, Kathleen Sprows Cummings — University of Notre Dame associate professor of American studies and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism — chronicles how canonization, or the intricate process of naming someone a saint, prompted a minority religious group to define, defend and celebrate its American identity. Her book, A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American, is the first study of multiple causes for canonization within a United States context. 

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Three faculty awarded NEH fellowships, continuing record funding for humanities research

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

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. 

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Small changes to cafeteria design can get kids to eat healthier, professor of psychology and architecture finds

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

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.

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Prenatal exposure to violence leads to increased toddler aggression toward mothers, study finds

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Centers and Institutes

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.

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Notre Dame to establish new American home for Solzhenitsyn research

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Internationalism, General News, and Centers and Institutes

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.  

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Philosopher Robert Audi elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

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.

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Cardinal Onaiyekan and Bishop Farrell to headline Notre Dame conference on interreligious and ecumenical dialogue

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Internationalism, General News, Faculty News, and Catholicism

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.

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Arts and Letters faculty and students to participate in Vatican meeting on nuclear disarmament

Author: Amanda Skofstad

Categories: Internationalism, General News, Faculty News, Centers and Institutes, and Catholicism

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.

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