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Past Events: 2015-2016

FALL 2015

September 17, 2015
Faculty Scholarship Lunch — Economic Aspects of Violent Conflict — Professor Chuck Anderton, Department of Economics and Accounting, offers a synopsis of his research journeys over 30 years across a variety of topics related to economic aspects of conflict risk and conflict prevention, including his most recent work on genocides and mass killings.

September 17, 2015
The Ethics of Openness: Scholarly Legitimacy and Control in the Digital Age —  The landscape of academic publishing is changing rapidly, and the power of the traditional "gatekeepers" of scholarly legitimacy (e.g., university presses and academic journals) is being eroded. This faculty discussion explored the changing landscape and practical and ethical implications for scholars and the future scholarship.

September 18, 2015
One-Day Workshop: Is the Internet a Realm of Creativity and Freedom or Corporatization and Control? — The Internet has opened a seemingly free space where people can create, collaborate and share. But in doing so, it also has transformed our ideas of individualism, privacy, commercialism, ownership. This daylong workshop included a presentation by Yochai Benkler of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Harvard Law School, a participatory session with ATB artists-in-residence Troika Ranch, and open conversations on legal and political implications of a free Internet and how the Internet enhances and impinges on creativity and the arts. Co-sponsored by the Charles Carroll Program and the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.

September 21, 2015
Pope Francis on the Globalization of Environmental Responsibility: Perspectives from Holy Cross Faculty — Loren Cass, associate professor of political science, moderates a faculty discussion of the Pope’s Encyclical, Laudato Si, featuring panelists Matthew Eggemeier, assistant professor of religious studies; Daina Harvey, assistant professor of sociology; Kathy Kiel, professor and chair of economics; Kelly Wolfe-Bellin, director of the biology laboratories; and Rev. Thomas Worcester, S.J., professor of history. Co-sponsored with Environmental Studies.

September 24, 2015
Against Empathy — Paul Bloom, Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Cognitive Science Program at Yale University, draws upon his research into psychopathy, criminal behavior, charitable giving, infant cognition, cognitive neuroscience and Buddhist meditation practices to argue that empathy is a poor moral guide and we are better off without it. One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

September 28, 2015
Abolition of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Building a Secure and Sustainable World — Paul Walker ’68, the International Director of Environmental Security and Sustainability for Green Cross International, addresses the build-up of weapons of mass destruction —nuclear, chemical, and biological — and the decades of national and international efforts to abolish these horrifying weapons.

September 29, 2015
Fleshy Passages: How Feminist Biblical Studies Can Contribute to Rethinking Health and Illness — Denise Buell, professor of religion at Williams College, draws from recent studies in microbiology and early Christian texts to offer contemporary ways of thinking about health and environmental responsibility. Co-sponsored with the Class of 1956 Chair in New Testament Studies.

October 5, 2015
Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico — Frank Graziano, John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College, explores how certain statues and paintings — the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Lord of Chalma, the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos — are said to power to perform miracles. The focus is on the nature of miracles and of votive offerings made in gratitude and compensation. Part of Catholics & Cultures and one of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

October 21, 2015
Faculty Scholarship Lunch — Math and Music: The Greatest Hits — Gareth Roberts, associate professor of mathematics, uses a “music first” approach to reveal hidden connections between mathematics and music to his students, and in the process, encourages a greater appreciation and desire for mathematical thinking.

October 26, 2015
Jesuit Kaddish: Encounters between Jesuits and Jews and Why These Might Matter to Us — Rev. James Bernauer, S.J., professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, offers an overview of how Jesuits became a leader in dialogue with Jews and will focus on encounters in the 20th century, with special attention on the historical context of the Holocaust. Co-sponsored with the Mission and Identity Committee. 

October 27, 2015
Holy Salsa/Salsa Santa — The bilingual theater troupe at Holy Cross performs in Spanish and English an original short play written by Rosa Carrasquillo, associate professor of history, about the life of Ismael Rivera, beloved Afro-Puerto Rican singer. A discussion features Ivelisse Rivera, sister of Ismael and director of the Fundación Ismael Rivera; Carrasquillo; Ellen Lokos, visiting associate professor of Spanish, and Helen Freear-Papio, director of the Foreign Language Assistants Program, who co-directed the play; and the actors. Co-sponsored with History, Spanish, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Africana Studies.

October 28, 2015
Comics as Documentary: Words, Images, and War — Hillary Chute, associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, discusses why drawing can be an ethical practice of creating images of witness to war, with a focus in particular on the Japanese Hiroshima survivor cartoonist Keiji Nakazawa, and the American Jewish cartoonist Art Spiegelman, son of Holocaust survivors. Her talk is the inaugural Thomas More Lecture on the Humanities.

November 9, 2015
Faculty Scholarship Lunch — Dr. Algorithm or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Digital Age — Associate Professor of Music Chris Arrell discusses how acoustics and computer science inform his creative process.

November 10, 2015
Dilemmas of Educational Justice — Meira Levinson, professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of "No Citizen Left Behind" (Harvard University Press, 2012), combines philosophical analysis and school-based case studies to illuminate the complex dimensions of evaluating, achieving, and teaching justice in schools. Her talk is part of the Charles Carroll speaker series and co-sponsored with the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.

November 12, 2015
Cultures of Capital Enhancement: Who is the Neoliberal Subject and What Does It Know of Democracy? — Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley, explores neoliberal reason and its influence on democratic practice and imagination. Brown is author of "Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution" (Zone Books, 2015). Co-sponsored with CIS.

November 18, 2015
Bringing Equal Opportunity for Children to an Unequal Society — Mary Jo Bane, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, looks at what governments, the private sector, civil society and churches should do to make sure that all children can grow up to lead productive and fulfilling lives. One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

SPRING 2016

February 2, 2016
Meaningful Inter-religious Dialogue — Rev. Thomas Kuriacose, S.J., International Visiting Jesuit Fellow teaching South Asian Theology, gives a lunchtime talk on interreligious dialogue, especially in the context of terrorism or religious fanaticism.

February 4, 2016
Does Religion Promote Violence? — William Cavanaugh, director of Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology and a professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, talks on the myth that religion is more prone to violence than secular orders. He is author of "The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict" (Oxford University Press, 2009). One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

February 9, 2016
Equity, Schools, and The American Dream: What the Data Tell Us about the Future of Equity-Oriented Policy — Douglas Gagnon, a research associate at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, draws from his own research and others’ to examine the state of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools and describe what we might expect from equity-oriented education policy in the near future. Co-sponsored with the Education Department.

February 10, 2016
Jesus: Bad Jew or Good Jew? — Adele Reinhartz, professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada, lectures on how Jesus’s Jewishness has been construed in 19th-21st century scholarship, and how the Gospels of Matthew and John themselves attempt to answer that question. Supported by the Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding.

February 25, 2016
Choosing Love: Bearing the Weight of the Other — Cultural critic David Kyuman Kim, associate professor of religious studies and of American studies at Connecticut College, examines the status of love in politics, public life, religion and the arts, and draws examples from the work of American playwright Tony Kushner and photographer and essayist Susan Sontag. His current book project is titled "The Public Life of Love."

February 29, 2016
What Really Matters about the Globalization of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal? — Marc Loustau, Catholics & Cultures fellow at Holy Cross, presents his ethnographic fieldwork with Charismatic Renewal participants at the Csíksomlyó Roman Catholic shrine in the Transylvania region of Romania, to highlight the existential context of Charismatic rituals and storytelling.

February 29, 2016
Patriarchy and Gender: Understanding the Spiraling Incidences of Sexual Violence on Women in India — Shaji George Kochuthara, associate professor of theology at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore, India, talks about culture, sexual violence and gender justice in India. One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity. 

March 2, 2016
Equity, Schools, and Testing: What National Achievement Scores Do and Don't Tell Us — Educational historian Ethan Hutt, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, explores the origins and implications of talking about educational achievement — and educational equity — in national terms, and by relying on standardized test scores. Co-sponsored with the Education Department.

March 15, 2016
Dorothy Day: A Saint for Today — Robert Ellsberg, editor in chief and publisher of Orbis Books, discusses the life and legacy of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and cited as one of four “great Americans” by Pope Francis during his address to Congress. George Horton '67, Catholic Charities Director of Social and Community Development for the Archdiocese of New York, is working on Day's case for canonization and talks about the process under way. One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

March 16, 2016
Gender and Genocidal Violence — Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, assistant professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, speaks on gender-related violence in genocide and broader global conflicts. She is completing a book on gender and the prevention of genocide. Co-sponsored with the Garrity Professorship and the Department of Economics and Accounting.

March 30, 2016
My Brother’s Keeper: Closing the Opportunity Gap for Young Men of Color — College of the Holy Cross alumnus Broderick Johnson '78 speaks on his roles working in the White House: as assistant to President Barack Obama, as Cabinet secretary, and as chair of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, which works to improve outcomes for boys and young men of color in this country. A panel of students — Greyson Ford ’16, Jewel Duberry-Douglas ’18, Lance Madden ’18, Isaiah Baker ’16, and Marcellis Perkins ’19 — poses questions ranging from educational policy and STEM initiatives to police-community relations and criminal justice reform.

March 31, 2016
Profiting from climate change? Ethics of investing in the age of climate crisis — This fishbowl discussion explores the practical and ethical choices facing colleges and universities that invest in fossil fuel industries. Featuring Matthew Eggemeier, associate professor of religious studies; Kendy Hess, Brake-Smith Associate Professor in Social Philosophy and Ethics; Tim Jarry '00, chief investment officer; Marie Therese Kane '18; Victor Matheson, professor of economics; and Mary Kate Silk '16. Moderated by Thomas M. Landy, director of the McFarland Center. Sponsored by Pax Christi and the McFarland Center.

April 6, 2016
Catholicism and Science in the Modern Era: A New Rapprochement — Vatican astronomer David Brown, S.J. talks about the Vatican Observatory and his roles there as well as current research and trends in astronomy. He then considers the larger questions of the universe and how scientific work fits in with Catholic belief. One of the Deitchman Family Lectures on Religion and Modernity.

April 8, 2016
Building a Better World: A More Human Economy — Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, speaks of the escalating problem of global income inequality and advocates for policies and bold ideas that will put employee wages, access to health care and environmental sustainability ahead of corporate profits.

April 9-10, 2016
Conference: The Future of Scholarship on the Quran —This two-day workshop explores the relationship of traditional Islamic scholarship to Western academic study, considering matters such as who should interpret the Quran, what standards for scholarship should be set, and how scholarship can inform public conversation on the Quran. Ingrid Mattson, London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario, gives the keynote address.

April 11, 2016
Philosophy and Theology or Philosophy vs. Theology: Lessons from Jewish Thought — Alan Mittleman, the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary, argues for an affirmation of a philosophically articulated Judaism, which nevertheless respects the particularity and thickness of Jewish tradition. Supported by the Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding.

April 14, 2016
The Politics of Mercy: Ambassadors of Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda — Jay Carney, assistant professor of theology and director of African Studies at Creighton University, draws upon the situation in Rwanda to explore how the Pope's call for a "year of mercy" happens within very difficult political contexts. Part of the McFarland Center's initiative on Catholics & Cultures.

April 15, 2016
Transcending the Humanities-Sciences Border: New Approaches to the Study of Religion and Ethics — Edward (Ted) Slingerland III, professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia and fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, draws upon the case example of early Chinese thought to demonstrate how a “consilient” approach to the study of religion and ethics can help us make progress on problems that have long concerned us. Co-sponsored with Philosophy, Asian Studies and History.

April 21, 2016
Six Days Before the Passover: A Concert of Byzantine Chant for Passion Week — The vocal ensemble Psaltikon performs newly transcribed music from medieval manuscripts, well-known Greek Orthodox chants and traditional folk music commemorating Lazarus Saturday, Holy Friday and springtime. Psaltikon Director Spyridon Antonopoulos gives a pre-concert lecture on the oral and written traditions of Byzantine chant, the sacred music of the Eastern Orthodox liturgical rite.

April 26, 2016
The Laboratory Lives of Humans and Animals: Anthropological Reflections on Morality in Science — Lesley A. Sharp, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Senior Research Scientist in Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, talks on the morality of animal care in laboratory science, and how we can be more ethical in using animals as experimental subjects. Co-sponsored with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.