Notre Dame political scientist James McAdams recalls the first time he stepped over the border from West Germany to East Germany in 1973 as a 19-year-old college student studying in West Berlin. “The first time I entered East Berlin, it felt like I was going to an anti-Disneyland.”
“What’s Next? Week” is a series of academic and career information sessions designed to help Arts and Letters majors?from first-year students to seniors?make the most of their time at Notre Dame.
Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin of Pittsburgh, a 1978 Notre Dame alumna who majored in economics, was elected Nov. 3 to a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
British paleontologist Simon Conway Morris will deliver a lecture titled “Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation” at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 3) in the auditorium of Notre Dame’s Jordan Hall of Science. The lecture is free and open to the public.
José Zalaquett, professor of human rights at the University of Chile’s Law School, will be awarded the 2009 Notre Dame Prize for distinguished public service in Latin America at a ceremony Nov. 12 (Thursday) in Santiago.
Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute will present its first film festival Friday to Sunday (Oct. 30 to Nov. 1), featuring four classic motion pictures with medieval settings?three that explore the lighter side of the Middle Ages and one cinematic masterpiece.
Three distinguished panelists will join Luis Cosenza, the former minister to the presidency in Honduras, to discuss whether Latin American democracy is in peril?or if a new, Latin American form of democracy is rising to meet the region’s challenges?at a roundtable on Thursday (Oct. 29).
Three members of the theology faculty will be in San Antonio this weekend for a Saturday Scholar Series presentation titled “Latinos and the Remapping of American Catholicism.” The talk will take place before the University’s home-away-from-home football game against Washington State.
Jan Tomasz Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson ‘16 and ’48 Professor of War and Society and professor of history at Princeton University, will give a lecture titled "On Holocaust’s Periphery: Poles and Their Jewish Neighbors" at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 27) in Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall auditorium.
Robert Johansen, professor of political science and director of doctoral studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, has received the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Peace Studies Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association.
Notre Dame’s Alumni Association will present awards to six graduates this fall, including Arts and Letters alumni Maj. Gen. Frederick Roggero (political science ’76), Marc Maurer (Program of Liberal Studies ’74), Paul Geary Jr. (English ’65), and Theodore “Ted” Robinson (American studies ’78).
The Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame has established the Chicago Latino Research Collaborative to conduct academic research aimed at providing decision-makers with important information about matters affecting Chicago-area Latinos.
Several years ago, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., formed a Notre Dame committee to respond to a request made by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger before he became pope, one involving the search for a “common denominator” of universal moral principles. The committee’s work is now available as a book.
Four undergraduates, including two Arts and Letters students, have been selected to compete as a team in NASCAR Kinetics, a program that immerses students into the business world of NASCAR to improve their marketing skills.
Letras Latinas, the literary program of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to fund the final stop of “The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry ON TOUR.”
While reactions around the world to President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize have varied, Scott Appleby, professor of history and Regan Director of the University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, believes it to be an inspired choice.
Kevin Whelan, Smurfit Director of the Keough Naughton Notre Dame Study Center in Dublin, Ireland, will discuss the role of sports in Irish culture during the University’s annual “Why Irish?” colloquium on Oct. 16 (Friday) at 3 p.m. in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies.
Cindy Williams, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give a lecture titled “U.S. Homeland Security Eight Years after 9/11: Are We Getting Our Money’s Worth?” at 4 p.m. Oct. 15 in Room 119 of O’Shaughnessy Hall.
A book written by Brian Ó Conchubhair, assistant professor of Irish language and literature, has won the first-place prize in Ireland’s 2009 Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Competition, the most prestigious Irish language literary competition in the country.
“The Encultured Brain: Building Interdisciplinary Collaborations for the Future of Neuroanthropology,” a first-ever neuroanthropology conference, will be held Thursday (Oct. 8) in Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall.
Paul Collier, professor of economics and director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford, has accepted an invitation to serve as special adviser to the University of Notre Dame’s Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity.
Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy will host its inaugural conference, “The Change Election? The 2008 Presidential Election and the Future of American Politics,” on Oct. 5 and 6 (Monday and Tuesday) in the McKenna Hall auditorium.
Notre Dame has launched a new postdoctoral fellowship program that aims to attract scholars from underrepresented groups to the University for research and engagement of issues related to multiculturalism and diversity.
Undergraduate and graduate students alike are being invited to present papers at “People, Power, and Pragmatism: The Future of Development in Our Changing World,” a conference on human development scheduled for February 26?27, 2010 on the Notre Dame campus.
Beginning this fall, plays created in the “New Playwrights Workshop” of the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) will be part of the regular theater season.
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies an Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages Program grant of approximately $180,000 to advance Asian language and area studies at the University.