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A football game isn’t the only thing Notre Dame is bringing to Boston in late November. As part of a weekend of events surrounding the Shamrock Series, Notre Dame’s annual home-away-from-home football game, the College of Arts and Letters will host a pair of academic conversations the day before the Fighting Irish face Boston College at Fenway Park. Notre Dame historians will offer an interdisciplinary look at the impact of Irish immigration on American religious and political structures, as well as the role of the U.S. in the 1916 Easter Rising, while economists will discuss research initiatives that aim to change the way humanitarian services help the poor both domestically and abroad.

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What’s going on in your head while you sleep? The research of Jessica Payne, associate professor and Nancy O’Neill Collegiate Chair in Psychology, shows that the non-waking hours are incredibly valuable for your day-to-day life, especially for helping to commit information to memory and for problem solving. If you ever thought sleep was just downtime between one task and the next, think again.

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They bring expertise in subjects that span physical borders and chronological boundaries. They bring passion to their research and energy to their classrooms. And the six new faculty members joining the Department of History this fall bring additional prestige to an already elite group of academics. “For a long period of time, we’ve been working to assemble a group of scholars that could work across national boundaries, redefining the department and what it does," said Patrick Griffin, chair of the department.

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The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), in close collaboration with the Creative Writing Program, will present a conference, “Angels of the Americlypse,” on October 28 and 29, 2015, featuring Latino/a poetry readings, literary translation, and roundtable discussions. The event—held in conjunction with Letras Latinas, the ILS literary initiative—will include readings by acclaimed poets Rosa Alcalá, Carmen Giménez Smith, Roberto Tejada, and Rodrigo Toscano.

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Notre Dame Research, together with Notre Dame International, invite faculty in all Colleges and Schools to apply for inaugural Rome Global Gateway Faculty Research Award. Grants for any amount up to $50,000 of total funding for a period of up to one year are available through the program.

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An interdisciplinary research collaborative between the University of Notre Dame and Cornell University has awarded nearly $2 million to 18 projects in five countries. The researchers will examine the theoretical, empirical, and practical dimensions of hope and optimism. The project, Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations, is funded through a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation and additional money from Notre Dame and Cornell.

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The Cross-Cultural Leadership Program (CCLP) is a three-credit, eight-week summer course administered by Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. This service learning experience immerses students in organizations serving Latino communities in either Chicago, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C. All living expenses are covered for the students during the program. “We’re able to go out into the community, speak Spanish, and really relate to the people on the ground level. I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” said Gregory Jenn, a junior political science and Romance languages major.

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The projects took them them to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and England. The research offers new insights into the Renaissance, Protestantism, immigrant religiousness, monks, and begging practices. Eight graduate students from Notre Dame’s Department of History received competitive fellowships or grants in support of their research—awards including a Rome Prize, a Fulbright, and Louisville Institute, Newcombe, and Schallek fellowships.

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Indiana’s school choice program is one of the largest in the United States. Until now, little has been known about how this initiative to increase parents’ educational options for their children is affecting either the schools or the students. A Notre Dame sociologist will now get to examine a range of those effects, thanks to a $1 million grant from The Spencer Foundation. The award will fund a three-year study in a ground-breaking initiative with data allowing for comparisons among traditional public, charter, and private schools.

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As far as titles in academic journals go, it’s quite the attention-getter. “There is no such thing as infant sleep, there is no such thing as breastfeeding, there is only breastsleeping,” reads the title of a new peer-reviewed commentary piece by University of Notre Dame anthropologists James McKenna and Lee Gettler that appears in the prestigious European journal Acta Paediatrica.

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Through a series of new community-based learning Spanish courses at Notre Dame, undergraduates are improving their language skills both inside and outside the classroom. The learning model is based on the idea that a faculty member and local organization leader are co-educators—the experience is designed to be mutually beneficial to both the class and the community group. Spanish students in intermediate-level and community-based learning classes now average about 3,000 hours of service per year in South Bend.

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Disheartened by anti-Muslim rhetoric that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Anne García-Romero resolved to write a play that explored the intricacies and nuances of interfaith love, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence. After years in the making, that work has become a reality. Paloma—which received its West Coast premiere and ran for a month this summer at the Los Angeles Theatre Center—focuses on a romance between a Muslim man and a Christian woman.

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Five theologians will discuss the life and work of Blessed Óscar Romero of El Salvador in a presentation titled “Archbishop Romero and Spiritual Leadership in the Modern World” at 4 p.m. Sept. 17 in the Hesburgh Center for International Studies Auditorium.

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When Pope Francis lands at Andrews Air Force Base on September 22, it will be the first time in a short pontificate and a long life that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of Argentina, has ever set foot in the United States. His visit promises to be unprecedented in numerous other ways, and several University of Notre Dame scholars have been speculating on how.

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“I love the language itself,” said Sara Spittler ’15, an Italian major in the College of Arts and Letters. “It’s so beautiful, and I’ve never really studied another language that I could speak and feel comfortable in, so that just gives me a whole new sense of confidence and that I feel is really important in a college education.” The Italian major incorporates language acquisition with immersion into the culture and literature of Italy. Students become proficient in the cultural vocabulary of Western civilization while developing critical thinking and analysis skills.

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A research collaboration involving two scholars in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology that seeks to combat student inattentiveness in STEM learning has captured the attention of the National Science Foundation (NSF), receiving a three-year grant totaling $550,000. The work of James Brockmole, an associate professor of psychology and visual attention expert; Sidney D’Mello, an assistant professor of psychology and computer science who studies cognitive sciences; and others is part of a research effort to fight the problem called mind wandering.

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Pope Francis is due to arrive in America Sept. 22, his first trip to North America. He’s expected to address the growing influx of Latinos in the U.S. Catholic church while he’s here, including delivering several talks in Spanish. Timothy Matovina, professor of theology and co-director of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, says Latinos have much to offer in the Church. Matovina teaches and studies Latino theology and Catholic history in America.

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“If you want to set yourself apart in anything you do—whether it’s a job, whether it’s applying to graduate school, whether it’s meeting a new person—I say learn a language,” said Jack McKenna ’15, a Chinese major in the College of Arts and Letters. As a major in Chinese at Notre Dame, students learn the language of the world’s most populous country. In addition to language study, students engage with the culture and literature of China, with topics ranging from religious traditions to international relations.

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Krzysztof Zanussi, a leading figure in contemporary European cinema, will deliver the 2015 Nanovic Forum Lecture at 5 p.m. Wednesday, September 9, in the Eck Visitors Center Auditorium at the University of Notre Dame.

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Majors in art history gain a broad understanding of Western art along with opportunities for in-depth examination of particular periods, such as ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and modern art. “There’s something I really love about the challenge that comes with the unexplored,” said Cotter. “I love the tradition that can emerge from that, and I love that I’m part of that tradition.”

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An Italian-born, German-speaking scholar of ancient philosophy will spend the 2015-16 academic year at the University of Notre Dame, supported by the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study and Workshop on Ancient Philosophy teamed up to help secure the post-doctoral fellowship for Diego De Brasi, an assistant professor of classical philology at the University of Marburg, Germany.

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Two faculty members from Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters have won fellowships this year from the American Council of Learned Societies. John P. Welle, a professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and concurrent professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, was awarded the fellowship to complete his book, The Poet and the Diva: Print Media from the Golden Age of Italian Silent Film. Eileen Hunt Botting an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, received the award to support her book project, Frankenstein and the Question of Human Development.

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A public conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be held from 7 to 8:15 p.m. Sept. 2, an event co-sponsored by the Institute for Latino Studies. The event, also sponsored by the Office of the President and Notre Dame Law School, is free and open to the public. Doors open one hour before the event.

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Eileen Hunt Botting’s students have suggested, only half jokingly, that had someone only given Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s creature a hug, a lot of violence and tragedy could have been avoided. Botting, an associate professor of political science, has come to believe those students aren’t far from Shelley’s main point—that so much can go wrong when society shirks its responsibilities for its most vulnerable citizens. She will get to elaborate on that theory over the course of a year thanks to an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship supporting her book project, Frankenstein and the Question of Human Development.

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A comprehensive review of the research assessing charter schools as the fastest growing area of school choice reforms has uncovered a need for studies that take a different tack, according to Notre Dame sociologist Mark Berends. The director of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity notes that the explosive growth of charter schools in the past decade, with total enrollment now exceeding 2.5 million children, has benefited from claims in the public arena that are not thoroughly examined.

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Fifteen Notre Dame students who studied in the College of Arts and Letters have received grants from the Fulbright program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. A total of 18 students were named Fulbright finalists—the most grantees the University has ever had in the program.

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The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education will send forth 272 Catholic school teachers and leaders to nearly 200 Catholic schools across the country in the annual Missioning Mass, capping two months of professional formation and spiritual renewal. The ceremony, scheduled for 9:30 a.m. July 24 in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, will celebrate and bless the next steps on the educators’ journeys back to their respective schools and classrooms.

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A White House Council of Economic Advisers report released July 14 includes an account of Reading for Life, a local juvenile diversion program that is being evaluated by the University of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. The report, “Economic Costs of Youth Disadvantage and High-Return Opportunities for Change,” features the RFL program, which has been used at the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center since 2007.

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Two recent Notre Dame graduates are tackling global health issues with support from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. French and Francophone studies major Claire Donovan will work with UNICEF in Togo to examine women’s adherence to micronutrient supplement programs. Christina Gutierrez, who majored in Romance languages and literatures and political science, will pursue a master’s degree at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy and conduct research on and pilot a food co-op concept there.

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Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities has received a $435,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a two-year study of Stay the Course, a program designed to keep low-income community college students on the path to academic success. Participants are paired with a case manager who offers guidance and support on how to stay on track to graduate or transfer to a four-year college. They are also directed to affordable child care or other social services that will aid them in their pursuit of an education.

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