We're currently planning for Fall 2024. As events are confirmed, you can find details on this page. Explore last year's events here.
Fall 2024
Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again
Monday, September 16, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Dr. Susan Solomon, Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Chemistry at MIT, argues that we’ve solved planet-threatening problems before, and we can do it again. She’ll examine the inside stories of past environmental victories to extract the essential elements of what has made change possible and what’s needed now to do it again.
Dr. Susan Solomon is internationally recognized as a leader in atmospheric science, particularly for her insights in explaining the cause of the Antarctic ozone “hole.” Her lecture will take place on the United Nations’ International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.
Continuity within Chaos: Caring for Individuals Living Chronically in Shelters and on the Streets
Monday, September 23, 2024
7:00 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Dr. Jim O’Connell, President and Founder of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, will share how he transitioned from the role of Chief Internal Medicine resident at MGH to the country’s first street doctor for those experiencing homelessness. Recounting his forty years of serving Boston’s most vulnerable population, Dr. O’Connell will illuminate the history of homelessness and the undue burden of co-occurring disorders among chronically homeless persons. Most importantly, Dr. O’Connell will reflect on the many lessons he’s learned while caring for his patients.
Co-sponsored with the Health Professions Advising Preprofessional Program.
Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land?
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
The struggle over Israel/Palestine is not just another contest by competing nationalisms or an instance of geopolitical competition. It is also about control of sacred territory that involves local Jews, Muslims, and Christians as well as worldwide faith communities, each with their own interests at stake in a tangle of secular and theological claims.
S. Ilan Troen is Lopin Professor of Modern History, emeritus at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Stoll Family Professor in Israel Studies, emeritus at Brandeis University, USA, and founding director of the Israel Studies centers at both institutions.
Part of the Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding and a Deitchman Family Lecture on Religion and Modernity.
There’s Something About Mary: Devotion, Pilgrimage & Belonging in Colonial & Post-Colonial India
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Throughout history, the fortunes of political organizations have often been linked to the cosmic patronage of gods and saints. Yet some saintly devotions begin and flourish despite disinterest from the state; such is the case with a Marian figure of devotion in South India, Our Lady of Vailankanni. Neglected by the colonial state(s), she has in the 20th century become for Indian Catholics a figure of devotion and an icon of their belonging as a minority in India.
Brent Howitt Otto, S.J. is the McFarland Center’s Global Catholicism Predoctoral Fellow and a historian of modern South Asia.
Every Day Is Earth Day: Understanding the Long-Term Impacts Of April 22, 1970
Monday, October 7, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Dr. Daniel Hungerman, Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, considers the history of Earth Day and presents evidence showing how actions on the original Earth Day, April 22, 1970, led to transformed communities years and even decades later. The lesson is clear: regular people, acting in small and disorganized groups, can come together to make a real and lasting difference on the environment.
A Phi Beta Kappa Lecture co-sponsored with the Department of Economics & Accounting.
Racial Capitalism: Asian Americans as the Miner’s Canary of American Racism
Thursday, October 10, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
What if race didn’t create racism, but racism created race? What if racism is less about prejudice and hatred and more about greed and power? And what do Asian Americans have anything to do with any of this? This public lecture looks at these questions from a religious perspective and tries to tell a story about race and racism where Christianity both hurts and helps.
Jonathan Tran is Associate Dean for Faculty at Baylor’s Honors College, where he also teaches theology and ethics. He is the author of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Co-sponsored by Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.
Colloquium: Politics of Knowledge and Disciplinary Challenges in Ancient Mediterranean Studies
October 24, 2024 - October 26, 2024
This colloquium will explore the varied epistemologies and tangible practices across the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as their suppression within ancient political contexts and modern disciplinary practices. The participants, professors in Classics and Biblical Studies, will scrutinize assertions of power and expressions of resistance, as well as the hegemonic processes, ancient and modern, of silencing and appropriating those expressions. The colloquium will also feature a keynote address by Joy Connolly, a renowned American scholar of classics and the president of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Sea, Sand, and Rocks: Regarding the Social-Materiality of Time
Thursday, November 14, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Dr. Mayra Rivera is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University. Rivera works at the intersections between the philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race, and gender. Drawing from Caribbean decolonial thought, this lecture will propose that climate change calls for rethinking our conceptions of time.
A Deitchman Family Lecture on Religion and Modernity. Co-sponsored by Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.
Deuteronomy, Trauma, and Politics
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
4:30 p.m., Rehm Library, Smith Hall
Moses’ farewell discourses in the book of Deuteronomy present a program for constituting Israel as a ‘nation’ in political terms and, at the same time, as the ‘people of God’. In this talk, Dr. Dominik Markl SJ, Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies at Innsbruck University, Austria, will reflect on how trauma theory can help us understand both the political and religious dimensions of Deuteronomy. He will also offer some reflections on how trauma, politics, and religion are still intertwined in our contemporary world.
Part of the Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding.