Spring 2023
February 6, 2023
Curtis Dozier, assistant professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College, visits Professor Tim Joseph's class in The Classics and Conflict in the U.S. to talk about his web project Pharos, which tracks the uses of Ancient Greek and Roman models and ideas by hate groups. His visit to the class in 2021 opened up students' eyes to the ways that old ideas take on destructive power in the U.S. and elsewhere — and the importance of exposing those uses.
March 21, 2023
Melissa Schoenberger, associate professor of English at Wesleyan University, visits Professor Melissa Schoenberger's seminar on Alexander Pope to explore the ethics of reading works of literary history that include material that is racist, imperialist and destructive to the environment.
March 23, 2023
Cara Healey, assistant professor of Chinese and Asian studies at Wabash College, visit Professor Yongli Li's course on Chinese Culture Through the Camera's Eye, to help students consider the ways Chinese science fiction film and literature portray environmental catastrophe and explore the possibilities and limitations of collective action as a response.
March 29, 2023
Kathryn Getek Soltis, director of the Center for Peace Education and assistant professor of Christian ethics at Villanova University, visits Professor Mary Doyle Roche's class on the Ethics of Work and Family to discuss her work on the impact of mass incarceration on families.
March 31, 2023
Amanda Larson, technical advisor at the Carter Center, visits Professor Tsitsi Masvawure's class, Critical Issues in Global Health, to talk about her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, focusing specifically on the key lessons she learned about ethical community engagement.
April 3, 2023
Alexandre Martins, associate professor of ethics at Marquette University, visits Professor Mary Doyle Roche's class in Pursuing Health to talk about scholarship and advocacy for health as a common good.
April 4, 2023
George Kunnath, professor at London School of Economics, visits Rev. Selva Rathinam, S.J.'s seminar on Social Stratification in India to discuss the Untouchables (Dalits) in India and their resistance to oppression over hundreds of years.
April 13, 2023
January Gill O'Neil, associate professor of English at Salem State University, visit Professor Susan Elizabeth Sweeney's class in African American Poetry to share and discuss her recent poems about contemporary issues of race and social justice, such as "At the Dedication of the Emmett Till Memorial," co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Award.
April 24, 2023
Apekshya Prasai, a PhD candidate at MIT, visits Professor Aditi Malik's class on Women, War and Violence to discuss her extensive ethnographic fieldwork that explores women's high participation rate in the Maoist conflict in Nepal. Estimates suggest women constituted 40% of the insurgents during the 10-year civil war, 1996-2006—a staggering number from a comparative perspective.
May 1, 2023
Annie Smart, professor of French at Saint Louis University, visits Emma Burston's seminar, Ecologies of Collapse, to introduce students to 19th-century French authors and activists who wrote about about/fought against deforestation. Her presentation will help them to better understand France’s history of conservatism.
May 2, 2023
Dr. Tessa Chelouche, MD, co-chair of Department of Bioethics and the Holocaust, UNESCO Chair in Bioethics (Haifa), and co-director of the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust (USA), visits Professor Dan Bitran's class on Science, Medicine and the Holocaust to discuss her membership on the recently formed Lancet Commission on Medicine and the Holocaust: Historical Evidence, Implications for Today, Teaching for Tomorrow.
May 3, 2023
Poet Sally Read, author of the autobiographical "Night's Bright Darkness," visits Rev. John Gavin's Christian Autobiography seminar to discuss her own conversion story, her process of self-reflection and composition and her work as a Christian artist.
Fall 2022
September 15, 2022
Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and director of the Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law at Brandeis University, visits Professor Vickie Langohr’s course on Middle East Politics to speak on agunot (or “chained women”)— Jewish women who are denied a legal divorce and are forced to remain married.
September 15, 2022
Nonfiction writer Paco Inclán, professor at Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno in Spain, visits Professor Rodrigo Fuentes’ class Creative Writing in Spanish to discuss his crónica “Me confunden con un animal.”
September 19, 2022
Scott Cave, an independent scholar and paleography consultant, visits Professor Hannah Abrahamson’s class on Wicked Women & Proud Patriarchs: Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Latin America to discuss his article “Madalena: The Entangled History of One Indigenous Floridian Woman in the Atlantic World.”
September 22, 2022
Nyoman Triyana Usadhi, a Balinese and Javanese dancer, will visit Professor Lynn Kremer's Asia on Stage class to discuss the role of religion in Indonesian arts and demonstrate how dance forms are manifested in current temple ceremonies.
September 28, 2022
Artist and writer Quan Zhou visits Professor Carolina Blazquez Gandara’s class on Advanced Oral Expression in Spanish to discuss how her experience as a first generation Spaniard influences her graphic works on migration and identity.
October 5, 2022
John Schafer, visiting assistant professor at Wake Forest University, visits Professor Timothy Joseph’s class on Virgil: Nation and Individual, to shed light on the ancient African queen Dido, as presented in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid.
October 6, 2022
Reigan Gillam, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, visits Professor Bridget Franco’s class on Latin America through Cinema to present on contemporary Afro-Latin representations in cinema with a discussion of the figure of Black children in Latin American film.
October 7, 2022
Jonathan Henshaw, research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academica Sinica, visits Professor Morgan Rocks’ class on World War II in Asia, to present on the issue of Chinese collaborators during the War against Japan (1937-1945).
October 17, 2022
Colin Ellard, professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, visits Professor Carolyn Richardson’s Montserrat seminar on Selfhood and Place to discuss the book “Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life.”
October 20, 2022
Adam Hannah, lecturer in the School of English at the University College, Cork, Ireland, visits Professor Paige Reynolds’ class in Irish Topics: Literary Activism to present archival research on W.B. Yeats’ plat “The King's Threshold,” and the idea of hunger striking as political protest.
October 26, 2022
Catherine Tracy Goode, director of the Tools for Researchers Program, visits Professor Hannah Abrahamson’s class on Wicked Women & Proud Patriarchs: Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Latin America to lead a primary source analysis of a selection of love letters from Yucatan, Mexico written by women in the 18th century.
November 3, 2022
Kristina Leo, artist and manager at Cornerscape Artist Management, visits Professor Melissa Boyle’s class on Economics of the Arts to talk about her career in artist management and the impact of COVID-19 on artists.
November 8, 2022
Yasmin Omar, an international human rights lawyer, visits Professor Vickie Langohr’s Middle East Politics class to talk about the human rights situation in Egypt, including the radicalization of young men jailed on bogus terrorism charges who are placed in cells with ISIS detainees.
November 8, 2022
John Emigh, professor emeritus at Brown University, visits Professor Lynn Kremer’s class Asia on Stage to share photographic and video research of temple ceremony performances in rural India.
November 9, 2022
Yao Jiaqi, research fellow at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, visits Professor Morgan Rocks’ class on World War II in East Asia to discuss how Chinese and American journalists mediated truth and reality during the 1937-1945 War of Resistance against Japan.
November 11, 2022
Gabriel Sanchez, photo editor at the New York Times and professor of photography at Parsons The New School of Design, visits Professor Colleen Fitzgerald’s class to discuss photojournalism and how to use the arts and photography to tell human-centered stories and increase empathy.
November 11, 2022
Gloria Chien, associate professor of religion at Gonzaga University, visits Professor Todd Lewis’ class on Buddhism to teach the beliefs and practices associated with a Buddhist form of meditation class Lojong.
November 11, 2022
Andrew McDowell, assistant professor at Tulane University, visits Professor Tsitsi Masvawure’s class on Introduction to Global Health to talk about treating tuberculosis, a disease of poverty and marginalization that kills millions everyday.
November 15, 2022
Mary Kouyoumdjian, assistant professor of composition at Boston Conservatory and a lecturer at Columbia University, visits Professor Matthew Jaskot’s Music Theory class to discuss how she draws on her heritage as an Armenian-American and her interest in music as documentary to create powerful musical works such as Silent Cranes, composed in 2015 to mark the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.
November 16, 2022
Andrew Laurion, Bioremediation Project coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association, visits Professor Christopher Conz’s class in Global Environmental History to talk about urban farming and food justice in the Springfield, Massachusetts area.
November 22, 2022
Elizabeth Hordge Freeman, associate professor of sociology at University of South Florida, visits Professor Carmen Jarrin’s class on Race, Racism and Anthropology to discuss her book “Second Class Daughters: Informal Adoptions as Modern Slavery in Brazil” and visits the Cultures and Politics of Latin America class to discuss “The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma and Racialization in Black Brazilian Families.”
November 30, 2022
Chitja Twala, professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa, visits Professor Christopher Conz’s class on Modern Africa Since 1800 to speak about the African political struggle under Apartheid, especially the activities of the African National Congress.
December 1, 2022
Linford Cunningham, director of prevention services at AIDS Project Worcester, visits Professor Tsitsi Masvawure’s class on HIV/AIDS in Global Perspective to present on “Living with HIV.
Spring 2022
February 16, 2022
Nyoman Triyana Usadhi, a Balinese and Javanese dancer, visits Professor Lynn Kremer's Asia on Stage class to discuss the role of religion in Indonesian arts and demonstrate how dance forms are manifested in current temple ceremonies.
February 24, 2022
Robin Hemley, Director & Polk Professor at Long Island University, visits Professor Xu Xi's Asian Stories: Creative Writing Seminar. Hemley is co-author with Professor Xu Xi of "The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer's Guide and Anthology," which the class is reading.
February 25, 2022
A Vietnamese refugee, Kelly Nguyen is the leading scholar of classical receptions in the Vietnamese diaspora and an
IDEAL Provostial Fellow at Stanford University. She visits Professor Katherine Hsu's class on Refugees in Ancient Myth and Today to discuss Vietnamese refugee monuments and their connections with Greco-Roman imagery.
March 1, 2022
Mary Clarke, a lecturer at Boston University Program of Archaeology, visits Professor Natalie Susmann's DIY Digital Archaeology to share her experiences as a Mesoamerican archaeologist whose research focuses on digital art and public dissemination.
March 17, 2022
John J. Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism at Yale Divinity School, visits Professor Thomas Martin's class on God and War to discuss the ethics of the relationship between God and war in the Bible.
March 22, 2022
Emily Austin, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, visits Professor Aaron Seider's Greek 102 class to speak about the significance of solitude in Sophocles' tragedy "Philoctetes," particularly in regard to our current experiences.
April 4, 2022
John Emigh, Professor Emeritus at Brown University, visits Professor Lynn Kremer's class "Asia on Stage" to share his research and photographic and video materials of temple ceremony performances in rural India.
April 11, 2022
Kathryn Hampton, Deputy Director of the Asylum Program of Physicians for Human Rights, joins Professor Katherine Lu Hsu's class in Refugees in Ancient Myth and Today to speak about the crisis at the US's southern border, her work documenting human rights violations, and the legal interpretations of the UN Convention on Refugees.
April 12, 2022
Lindsey Steward,
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, visits Professor Jameliah Shorter-Bourhanou's class on Black Feminist Philosophy to discuss new directions in Black feminist scholarship and activism.
April 21, 2022
Inez Tan,
Academic Coordinator/Lecturer in Creative Writing at University of California Irvine, visits Professor Xu Xi's Asian Stories: Creative Writing Seminar to discuss her story featured in "The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer's Guide and Anthology" and cross-cultural issues of writing for different audiences.
April 26, 2022
Film director César Díaz speaks with Professor Rodrigo Fuentes' students in Spanish 305: Introduction to Textual Analysis after they have watched "Nuestras Madres," a film dealing with postwar Guatemala and the politics and ethics of historical memory.
April 27, 2022
Matthew Galway,
Lecturer on Chinese History at the School of Culture, History, & Language, Australian National University, visits Professor Morgan Rocks' Asian Revolutions classes to discuss the role of violence and global Maoism in the Khmer Rouge's Revolution.
Fall 2021
September 13, 2021
Bradford Chin, a dance artist, scholar, DEI/accessibility consultant, and audio describer for dance, visits
Professor Jimena Bermejoi's Body Stories class to address mental health among athletes and dancers and to present on "Practice, Aesthetics, and Equity in Western Dance Culture."
September 20, 2021
Caitlin Gillespie, Assistant Professor at Brandeis, visits Professor Timothy Joseph's class in Advanced Latin: Tacitus to talk about her research on the ancient British queen Boudica, who led her people in fighting Roman invasion of the island.
September 28, 2021
Aaron Sachs, Professor of History at Cornell University, speaks to students in Professor David Karmon's Introduction to Environmental Humanities about why and how we study the environmental humanities, exploring the importance of both humor and humility in this kind of scholarship.
September 30, 2021
Jenny Price, writer, artist, and research fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis, discusses her recent manifesto "Stop Saving the Planet!" as well as her new research in Professor David Karmon's Environmental Humanities class.
October 7, 2021
Reighan Gillam,
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California, visits Professor Bridget Franco's class on Latin America through Cinema for a presentation on contemporary Afro-Latin representations in cinema with a focus on the Afro-Brazilian experience and a discussion of the figure of black children in Latin American film.
October 8, 2021
T.J. Tallie,
Assistant Professor of History at the University of San Diego, visits Professor Christopher Conz's class on Gender and Power in Africa to discuss gender, sexuality and queer studies in African religion, culture and politics.
October 20, 2021
Timothy Cheek, Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, gives a lecture to both sections of Modern China on the experience of Wang Shiwei, an influential Chinese communist writer in the 1930s and 40s. In early 1942, Wang, after calling out hypocrisy among the Chinese Communist Party's leadership, suffered an intensely critical trial in which he became the most prominent victim of the Party's Rectification campaign.
November 2, 2021
Alexandra Ratzlaff, Lecturer in Classical Studies at Brandeis University, visits Professor Natalie Susmann's Greek Archaeology in the Digital Age to talk about her innovative work as a digital archaeologist and digital humanities educator and how digital methods of data collection, analyses, and dissemination can aid or hinder our understanding of the human past.
November 15, 2021
Alexandre Martins,
Assistant Professor at Marquette University specializing in bioethics, healthcare justice, and human rights, visits Professor Mary Roche's class on Ethics and Epidemics to speak about his liberationist perspective on healthcare.
November 18, 2021
Yonatan Binyam,
President's Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Society and Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, visits Professor Thomas Martin's class on Alexander the Great and Asia to discuss the representation of Alexander the Great in the Ethiopic tradition and the diverse intersections of religion, ethics, cultures, and race that took place in antiquity and later.
November 22, 2021
Thuto Thipe, Lecturer in African Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, visits Professor Christopher Conz's class Gender and Power in Africa, to review recent discourses about African feminisms.
December 8, 2021
Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, author of "When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective," and Allen Dwight Callahan, author of "The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible," visit Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew's class on African Americans and the Bible to engage with students who have read the books.
Spring 2021
February 8, 2021
Tamara Williams, assistant professor of dance at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, visits Professor Jimena Bermejo's class on Decolonizing Dance History to discuss Ring Shout, a dance tradition inspired by the Yoruba, Ewe, Angola, Nago, Fon, and Akan people of West Africa that was brought to the United States by enslaved people and a form of resistance that has been preserved by Black communities in the US for generations.
February 10, 2021
Andy Lee, chief mindfulness officer at Aetna Insurance, visits Professor Nancy Billias's class on Mindfulness in the Workplace to provide a real-world example of how and why mindfulness is practiced and promoted in a corporate setting.
February 12, 2021
MIT architecture professor Mark Jarzombek, a renowned architectural historian and founder of the Global Architectural History Teaching Collective, speaks to Professor David Karmon's Art History class about First Society People and the social, religious, and ethical functions of architecture at the time of its origins in pre-history.
Feburary 23, 2021
McGill University professor Laila Parsons, a leading historian of the British Mandate of Palestine (1918-1948), visits Professor Sahar Bazzaz's classes on the Historian's Craft and the History and Historiography of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict to discuss the role of history in normalizing divisions between the two communities and the impacts of those divisions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict today. On a broader level, the lecture illuminates the interdependence of narrative, history, and political conflict—a topic that has great resonance today in many societies including the United States.
February 24, 2021
Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau visits Professor Leila Philip's course on Writing Nature to talk about her writing and activism, including a project to map New England as Native Space.
February 25, 2021
American journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc visits Professor Leila Philip's class on Reality Hunger to talk about research and reportage and the skills involved in immersive journalism. LeBlanc's work focuses on the marginalized members of society, adolescents living in poverty, prostitutes, and women in prison.
February 25, 2021
Sunder John Boopolan, assistant professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Canadian Mennonite University, visits Professor Emily Campbell's class on Global Antiracism to present on "Wrongs and Formations of Violent Identities: Theorizing Race and Caste,” based principally on the book, "Memory, Grief, and Agency: A Political Theological Account of Wrongs and Rites" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
February 26, 2021
Nakai R. Flotte, an anthropologist finishing her doctoral work at Harvard University, visits Professor Sarah Ihmoud's class on Coming of Age at the Border to discuss her ethnographic fieldwork with LGBTQ refugees and migrants in Mexico headed north and seeking asylum in the United States.
March 2, 2021
Jessica Bauman, theater director, visits Professor Daniel Blank's Intro to Literary Study: Literature and Displacement class to discuss her theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" entitled "Arden / Everywhere," in which she reimagines Shakespeare's play as a story about refugees.
March 10, 2021
Essayist, journalist, and scholar Jon Malesic joins Professor Karen Guth's class on Everyday Ethics to discuss the ethics of work, a major concern in Catholic Social Thinking and religious thought more broadly.
March 11, 2021
Roger Wieck, Melvin R. Seiden Curator and department head of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, visits Professor Stella Wang's class on Medieval Women's Writing to discuss his work on devotional literature and female patronage at the Morgan Museum.
March 12, 2021
Amalia Córdova, Latinx digital curator for New + Emerging Media at the Smithsonian Institution, visits Professor Bridget Franco's class on Latin American Cinema to share her expertise in indigenous cinema and her first-hand experience with indigenous filmmakers from Latin America.
March 17, 2021
Gabriel Arboleda, assistant professor of art and the history of art and architectural studies at Amherst College, visits Professor David Karmon's Art History class to talk about his leadership in the Guyana Hinterland Housing Project, where architectural design is conceived as a collective project that draws upon the knowledge and participation of a wide community. He is also preparing a book on sustainability in social design, which connects the themes of design and sustainability with social justice.
March 18, 2021
Emily Austin, assistant professor in the Department of Classics, University of Chicago, speaks to Classics Professors Aaron Seider's and Daniel Libatique's Greek 102 students about the significance of solitude in Sophocles' tragedy "Philoctetes," particularly in regard to our current experiences. Austin’s work explores various ways that Philoctetes' unparalleled isolation raises questions of productivity, illness, and heroic endurance.
March 18, 2021
Death penalty activist Sr. Helen Prejean attends Professor Travis LaCouter's class on Theology in Protest to talk about the death penalty, her memoir "Dead Man Walking," and Church documents such as "Fratelli Tutti."
March 18, 2021
Anne Harrington, Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, visits Professor Daniel Bitran's class on the Biological Basis of Mental Disorders to discuss her book "Mind Fixers" that reviews the trouble that psychiatry has had in finding biological explanations for mental disorders.
March 19, 2021
Mary Jo Iozzio, professor at Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry, visits Professor Mary Roche's class on the Theological Perspectives on Medical Ethics to discuss disability ethics and fundamental questions regarding vulnerability and dependence.
March 26, 2021
Mary Augusta Brazelton, University Senior Lecturer in Global Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine at Cambridge University, visits Professor Ke Ren's class on Modern China to discuss a chapter from her book "Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China," on the mass vaccination campaigns in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s.
March 26, 2021
Brad Parker, senior adviser of policy and advocacy at Defense for Children International, visits Professor Sarah Ihmoud's class on Coming of Age at the Border to discuss his work as an advocate for Palestinian children's rights in the West Bank, where he has been based for nearly a decade.
March 30, 2021
Kristina Latino, artist manager at Cornerscape Artist Management, visits Professor Melissa Boyle's Economics of the Arts class to talk about her career as an artist manager. Her visit highlights the impact of the pandemic on the arts and artists, which will lead to a discussion of the government/public responsibility for funding the arts.
April 7, 2021
Jenee Osterheld, culture columnist for the Boston Globe, visits Professor Frances Maughan-Brown's seminars on Protest to discuss her series "A Beautiful Resistance," an original attempt to rethink the ways in which protest is possible, by emphasizing the strengths of the Black community rather than the struggles it faces.
April 12, 2021
Jan Willis, noted Buddhism scholar who taught at Wesleyan University, visits Todd Lewis's class on American Civil Religion, Racism, Film to talk about her experience on the front-lines of anti-segregation struggles in Birmingham. Her story as an African-American Buddhism scholar has been featured in popular literature and in her autobiography, "Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist and Buddhist, One Woman's Spiritual Journey."
April 13, 2021
Essayist Krista Eastman, administrator for the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, speaks to Professor Morris Collins' Introduction to Prose Narrative as well as students in the Montserrat seminar Memories, Stories, Histories about the ethical, intellectual, and creative issues implicit in writing about "place"—both as a local and a visitor.
April 13, 2021
Mary Hirschfeld, associate professor of rconomics and theology, Villanova University, visits Professor Peter Fritz's class on the Theology of Thomas Aquinas to discuss her book, "Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy."
April 15, 2021
Holy Cross alumna Adeline Gutierrez Nunez '19, assistant to the director at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, visits Professor Jameliah Inga Shorter-Bourhanou's class on the Philosophy of Race to talk about antiracist scholarship and activism. As an assistant to Ibram Kendi, she helps students reflect on Kendi's book "How to be an Antiracist."
April 15, 2021
Ana-Maurine Lara, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon, visits Professor Alvaro Jarrin's classes on Race, Racism and Anthropology and Global Queer Activism to discuss two recent books: the award-winning "Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignties," which addresses how black Dominicans use criollo spiritual practices to challenge race and gender binaries, and "Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic," a book which provides an intimate portrayal of how LGBTQ activists are changing lives and minds in a homophobic nation.
April 16, 2021
Lauren Markham visits Professor Kristina Reardon's Montserrat seminar Writing Human Rights to discuss her award-winning non-fiction book "The Faraway Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life." Markham is both a writer and an educator, and her journalistic investigation of the two brothers' lives as they work through the court system in California after migrating from El Salvador embraces complex questions not just about our immigration system but about belonging and our ethical obligation as Americans to fellow humans.
April 16, 2021
Sarah Cameron, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland-College Park, speaks to students in Professor Erina Megowan's course on the Soviet Union After Stalin about her current research on the environmental history of the Aral Sea (now almost entirely dried up) in Central Asia.
April 20, 2021
Vera Shevzov, professor of religious studies at Smith College, visits Professor Amy Adams class on Russian Icons: Art and Soul to deliver a lecture on the meaning and practice of icon veneration in Russian Orthodoxy. She explores the understanding of the sacred in human meaning and help students understand the workings of a Christian faith other than their own.
April 22, 2021
Matthew Polly, an instructor at Yale and the world's leading authority on Bruce Lee, visits Professor Todd Lewis's class on American Civil Religion, Racism, and Film to discuss how Lee's exclusion from roles and treatment by Hollywood shaped his life and led indirectly to his early death.
April 23, 2021
Holy Cross alumna Dr. Karen Blackstone '90, a geriatrician at the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Washington, DC, visits Professor Mary Roche's Theological Perspectives on Medical Ethics class to discuss ethical issues in geriatrics and her vocation to medicine and this specialty.
April 26, 2021
Michelle Kuo, associate professor in the History, Law, and Society program at The American University of Paris, visits Professor Ke Ren's class on Asian American Experience to discuss her book, "Reading with Patrick" (2017), a memoir of a Taiwanese-American teacher and her relationship with an African-American student in the Mississippi Delta, with whom she read books while he was imprisoned.
Fall 2020
September 22, 2020
Heather Johnson, associate director of Jobs for the Future and former director of the Teacher Education Program at Holy Cross, visits Lauren Capotosto's Montserrat seminar "The Good Student" to discuss a case study she wrote entitled “Politics, Partisanship, and Pedagogy,” exploring dilemmas in teaching controversial issues in schools.
September 22, 2020
Eric Rauchway, Distinguished Professor of History at UC Davis, visits Professor Stephanie Yuhl’s U.S. history class to discuss his book Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America. Rauchway presents a riveting account of the late 19th-century strains of industrial monopoly capitalism, immigration, union/labor, urbanization, radical ideologies, and emergent Progressivism.
September 24, 2020
Martha Akstin, director of Preventative Services at AIDS Project Worcester, visits Professor Tsitsi Masvawure's Introduction to Global Health to provide students with firsthand accounts of a COVID-19 testing site, including safety measures, contact tracing, and challenges encountered.
October 1, 2020
Anahi Russo Garrido, associate professor, Metropolitan State University of Denver, visits Professor Alvaro Jarrin’s class on Cultures and Politics of Latin America to discuss the status of lesbians in Mexico, tackling the ethical dimensions of their struggle for sexual citizenship, given the gender inequalities and homophobia of Mexican society.
October 1, 2020
Reighan Gilliam, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, visits Professor Bridget Franco’s Montserrat class on Latin America through Cinema to give a presentation about contemporary Afro-Latin representations and cinema with a focus on the Afro-Brazilian experience and a discussion of the figure of black children in Latin American film.
October 5, 2020
Gaiutra Devi Bahadur, assistant professor at the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at Rutgers University, visits Professor Aditi Malik’s class on Women, War and Violence to read from and discuss her book Coolie Woman. This book traces the exodus and settlement of Indian women who were brought to British Guyana as part of the indentured labor system. Bahadur shares how an undertaking to trace her own great-grandmother’s journey opened the doors to the broader project.
October 6, 2020
Artists Robert and Shana Parkeharrison visits Professor Rachelle Beaudoin’s Digital Art Studio to discuss how they investigate man’s relationships and obligation to the natural world through elaborately staged sets and photographs.
October 8, 2020
Jurgen Brauer, visiting professor of economics at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, visits Professor Chuck Anderton’s course on Topics in Conflict Economics to provide an overview on supply and demand in the U.S. civilian and law enforcement firearms industry, followed by discussion of what is scientifically known about the effects of state legislation attempting to curb firearms misuse and abuse.
October 13, 2020
Helen Morales, Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies at UC Santa Barbara, visits Professor Aaron Seider’s Introduction to Greek to speak about her new book Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths. The discussion highlights ways the ancient world intersects with our search for meaning in what we study ourselves and in the resonances of ancient myth that still exist today.
October 15, 2020
Shikha Silwal, associate professor of economics at Washington & Lee University, visits Professor Chuck Anderton’s course on Topics in Conflict Economics to discuss widows as a neglected gender, human rights and conflict issue. In many parts of the world, widows do not have property rights, inheritance rights, and are stigmatized and blamed for the death of their husbands, rendering millions of women into a cycle of exclusion and poverty.
October 20, 2020
Victor Carmona, a Catholic moral theologian and assistant professor at University of San Diego, visits Professor Mary Roche’s class on Ethics of Work and Family to speak about the impact of migration and U.S. immigration policy on families, particularly at the Southern border.
October 20, 2020
Alan Rosen, renowned scholar of Holocaust literature and Kraft-Hiatt Scholar in Residence, visits Professor Alan Avery Peck’s Intro to Judaism to talk about Jewish holidays and how they are observed in his neighborhood in Israel.
October 21, 2020
Harriet Fertik, associate professor of classics at the University of New Hampshire, helps students in Aaron Seider's Aeneid course to look at the Gwendolyn Brooks' poem Anniad and explore questions related to injustice, wellbeing, and the recent reception of the Aeneid and Greco-Roman culture.
October 22, 2020
Reyna Grande, author of the bestselling memoir The Distance Between Us, visits Professor Michelle Sterk Barrett’s course on Community Engagement and Social Responsibility to talk about her journey as an undocumented child immigrant from Mexico.
October 27, 2020
Kathryn Getek Soltis, a Catholic ethicist whose work focuses on prison/justice reform and mass incarceration, visits Professor Mary Roche’s class on Ethics of Work and Family. She is Director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education and an Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Villanova University.
October 28, 2020
Stacy Gallin, director of the Center for Human Dignity in Bioethics, Health and the Holocaust at Misericordia University, visits Professor Daniel Bitran’s Science, Medicine and the Holocaust class. Gallin is leading a world-wide effort to develop a curriculum that uses the Holocaust as a medium to teach biomedical ethics to students of medicine and other health professions.
October 29, 2020
Rev. Jean-Pierre Ruiz, associate professor at St. John's University, visits Professor Benny Liew’s class Nature and Animals in the Bible to discuss Pope Francis’ use of the Bible in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.
October 29, 2020
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Executive Director of The Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, visits Professor Alan Avery-Peck’s class on Messiahs in Judaism to talk about his recent book Resurrection Logic. Supported by the Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding.
November 12, 2020
Michael A. Martínez, S.J., a Jesuit rapper who teaches theology at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, visits Professor Megan Ross’s Hip-Hop and Musical Identity class. “[When] You see a guy in a collar, you think Mass, you think…this guy’s reading the Bible somewhere or preaching a homily,” Fr. Martinez explained. “But, for me, hip-hop is part of my identity. And as a Jesuit, I don’t give up my identity—I just become more me.” Martínez also gives an evening talk and performance, available for viewing here.
December 1, 2020
William S. Green, senior vice provost at University of Miami and senior fellow in the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, visits Professor Alan Avery-Peck’s Intro to Judaism to talk about his recent study of Gen X and beyond and the use of the internet to form virtual Jewish attachments and communities. Supported by the Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding.
December 8, 2020
Su Fang Ng, Clifford A. Cutchins III Professor and associate professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic and State University, visits Professor Tom Martin’s class on Alexander the Great and Asia to discuss her ground-breaking research on the function of ancient fictions about Alexander the Great as cultural indices of status and identity in early modern Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia in its initial contact with European imperialists. She is author of Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia: Peripheral Empires in the Global Renaissance (Oxford UP, 2019).
December 9, 2020
Kalpana Jain, senior religion and ethics editor at The Conversation, visits Professor Mathew Schmalz's class on Hinduism to speak about her area of research in Hindu nationalism.