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Melinda Henneberger, a 1980 University of Notre Dame alumna and columnist for the Sacramento Bee, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, journalism’s highest honor. Henneberger was honored for “persuasive columns demanding justice for alleged victims of a retired police detective accused of being a sexual predator,” pieces she wrote while working as vice president and editorial page editor for The Kansas City Star. Graduates of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters have now won Pulitzer Prizes three out of the last four years.

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Douglas Kinsey, an artist and professor emeritus in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, died May 21 at his home. He was 88.

Kinsey joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1968 after earning his M.F.A. at the University of Minnesota and his bachelor’s degree at Oberlin College. Before coming to Notre Dame, he taught at Oberlin, the University of North Dakota, and Berea College.…

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John T. McGreevy has been the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters since 2008. After two five-year terms as dean, he has decided to move on. Effective July 1, he will become the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History and begin a yearlong research leave. This summer, he shared his thoughts as outgoing dean, his hopes for the future of the College, and his excitement about incoming dean Sarah Mustillo, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology.

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Mary Ellen Konieczny, the Henkels Family Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, died Feb. 24 as a result of complications from cancer. She was 58. A faculty fellow of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, she studied religion and conflict, the family and public politics.

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Luis Ricardo Fraga, a pioneer in the field of Latino politics, and Timothy Matovina, a leading expert on Latino Catholicism, have been appointed co-directors of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, effective July 1, 2015. “The combination of skills that they bring to the institute is spectacular,” said John McGreevy, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, where ILS is housed.

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p(image-right). !/assets/148962/annie_rhodes_icon.jpg(Annie Rhodes)! Annie Rhodes ’14 had her first study abroad experience at age eight—in a village elementary school in Ancient Corinth when her family moved to Greece. While she remembers being apprehensive in a classroom where she could not speak or understand the language, she said she quickly made friends, learned passing Greek, and discovered a passion for travel and language.

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p(image-right). !/assets/101443/kristin_valentino_icon.jpg(Kristin Valentino)! “I've always been interested in childhood maltreatment because it represents such an extreme failure of caregiving,” said Kristin Valentino, the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Assistant Professor of Psychology at Notre Dame. “I'm really passionate about this issue, which affects 2 million people in our country each year.”

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p(image-right). !/assets/134697/mia_counts_icon.jpg(mia_counts_icon)! College of Arts and Letters students made a strong showing at Notre Dame’s 7th annual Undergraduate Scholars Conference, which showcased more than 250 research, scholarship, and creative projects from across the University. At the May 2, 2014, event, history major Mia Counts ’14 won the Undergraduate Library Research Award for best senior thesis.

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p(image-right). !/assets/106924/abigail_wozniak_2013_newest_icon.jpg(Abigail Wozniak)! Notre Dame Associate Professor Abigail Wozniak has been appointed to a one-year term as a senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the board that advises President Barack Obama and his staff on domestic and international economic policy.

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Anthropologist Arlene Dávila will visit the University of Notre Dame next week as the inaugural recipient of the Institute for Latino Studies’ Virgilio Elizondo Distinguished Visiting Professorship. A professor of anthropology and American studies at New York University, Dávila, “is one of the country's leading Latino studies cultural anthropologists,” says ILS Director José Limón, the Notre Dame Professor of American Literature and Julian Samora Professor of Latino Studies.

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Darcia Narvaez, a professor of psychology in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, and Nancy Snow, a professor of philosophy at Marquette University, are co-directing a new, interdisciplinary research initiative on virtue, character, and the development of the moral self. The three-year project is supported by a $2.6 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, which funds “discoveries relating to the big questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.”

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It’s no secret that Notre Dame alumni go extraordinary places with their degrees. A select few have even made it to the highest echelons of the United States government—working within the White House to support the president himself. Graduates of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters work in the Situation Room, with the Department of Justice, on national security, and as the deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama.

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Molly Hayes, a 2008 graduate of the University of Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters, has been awarded a 2014 George Mitchell Scholarship. Hayes, who studied English and Arabic while at Notre Dame, will use the Mitchell Scholarship to pursue a master's degree in Irish literature at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is the first Mitchell Scholar from Notre Dame since 2007.

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The pre-school years are the most formative for young brains. Notre Dame Psychologist Kristin Valentino sees both the promise and vulnerability of children at this stage of life. That’s why Valentino, the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Assistant Professor of Psychology, developed an intervention program designed to improve communication between mothers and maltreated preschoolers and, ultimately, lead to happier, healthier families.

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On Wednesday, November 13, Carlos Eire, the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, will give the inaugural lecture in the Transformative Latino Leadership Lecture Series, sponsored by Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS). Eire, author of the National Book Award-winning memoir _Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy_ (2003), will speak at 7 p.m. at the Hesburgh Center Auditorium, followed by a reception and book signing.

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This fall the University of Notre Dame joined seven premier universities in Semester Online, an education consortium offering for-credit courses to students attending participating schools. College of Arts and Letters professors Candida Moss and Peter Holland are the first Notre Dame faculty to offer courses in the new format.

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The Fischoff National Chamber Music Association, which hosts the nation’s largest chamber music competition, held annually on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, was awarded the 2014 Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence by the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County on August 28. Founded in 1999, the Leighton Award for Nonprofit Excellence provides a $100,000 endowment challenge grant to one winner each year. The award is designed to recognize and celebrate the achievement of a local nonprofit and provide resources to its winner to help sustain the nonprofit’s mission.

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The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Africana Studies and Office of Community Relations are working together to present a yearlong community celebration of Africa and the African diaspora. The series of programs, lectures and events, called "The Africana World," is a collaboration between local higher education institutes and community organizations.

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Adam Asher Duker, a Ph.D. candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of History, has been awarded two major external fellowships that will allow him to continue his dissertation research this year in Paris, France. Duker received the Bourse Jeanne Marandon, a humanities fellowship awarded by the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d’Amérique, and the Huguenot Scholarship from School of Advanced Study at the University of London's Institute for Historical Research.

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A woman’s work is never done--or so the saying goes. Though women still do about two-thirds of household chores, the division of labor may depend on what her mate does for a living, according to new research by University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth Aura McClintock.

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The University of Notre Dame is hosting its eighth annual Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) orientation for the coming academic year, bringing foreign language teachers from 28 countries to campus August 5 through 8 for a series of workshops designed to enhance their teaching in the United States.

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Whether we’re driving down the highway, scrolling our Facebook newsfeeds, or flipping through television channels, various forms of animation bombard us constantly. “Even if you don’t watch television, you see these images on your phone, your iPad, even billboards when you drive down the road,” says Donald Crafton, the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at Notre Dame.

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It’s generally understood that people with college degrees earn more money than those who did not attend college, and new research now shows that a college degree also boosts health.

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In order to effectively program robots that ultimately could be used to aid seniors, researchers at the University of Notre Dame and University of Missouri studied the type of language older adults used when describing the location of a desired object to either a robot or human-like avatar. It turns out that seniors become tongue-tied when talking to robots.

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Amid allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on European Union institutions, European officials expressed outrage and predicted serious repercussions. But according to University of Notre Dame Political Scientist Michael Desch, an expert in international security, these latest developments should not be surprising to anyone. “This is a reaffirmation of the old adage that when it comes to diplomacy, countries don’t have permanent allies, only permanent interests,” Desch says.

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The rate of triplet or higher-order multiple births increased by 26 percent between 1996 and 2002 in seven states mandating insurance coverage for infertility treatments, costing an additional $900 million in delivery costs alone, according to a new study by University of Notre Dame economist Kasey Buckles. The study will be published in the July issue of _Health Economics_.

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By agreeing to increase public transportation fares just two weeks before hosting the FIFA Confederations Cup, coupled with the repressive reaction to protesters by military police in Sao Paulo, Brazilian authorities have transformed a struggle for free transportation into a major wave of protest against political corruption and inequality, according to Guillermo Trejo, University of Notre Dame political scientist and fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

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Jennifer Jones, the newest faculty member in Notre Dame’s Department of Sociology, focuses her teaching and research on the ways in which immigration policies affect the experiences and identities of various minority groups in the United States. “I liked observing the dynamics around race in other countries and that got me interested in comparing race relations and how race works here,” she explains.

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Alex Coccia, an Africana studies and peace studies major in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, has been named a 2013 Truman Scholar. Established in 1975 as a “living memorial” to President Harry S. Truman, the prestigious scholarship includes $30,000 in graduate study funds, priority admission and supplemental financial aid at select institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and internship opportunities within the federal government. Nationwide, just 60 to 65 college juniors are selected as Truman scholars each year, based on leadership potential, intellectual ability, and likelihood of “making a difference.”

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Same-sex marriage, abortion and other cultural conflicts centered on the family have intensified in recent years, particularly among American Catholics. These same conflicts also are widely believed to form the basis for much of the moral polarization in public politics among Americans in general. A new book by Mary Ellen Konieczny, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, examines how religion and family life are intertwined and how local parishes shape that intersection.

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