Arts and Humanities

David Kyuman Kim, professor of religious studies and American studies at Connecticut College, talks about choosing love, versus cynicism, in the face of injustice.

The triumph—an elaborate procession celebrating Rome’s military victories over foreign peoples—was one of ancient Rome’s most important institutions, a ritual at once religious and political, military and spectacular. In this talk, Maggie Popkin, assistant professor of Roman art at Case Western Reserve University, explores the architectural elaboration of the triumphal route during the third and second centuries B.C.E. The temples, porticoes, arches, and column monuments in front of which triumphs passed powerfully shaped how Romans experienced and remembered triumphs and, consequently, how they conceived of an urban identity for their city.

Cinthia Gannett offers a history of the multi-century aim of Jesuit humanistic education, eloquentia perfecta. She considers the present status of educating for eloquence, and prompt a discussion on ways that faculty, curricula, programs, and the broader educational culture at Holy Cross can engage the aim of eloquence in the 21st century. Gannett is associate professor of English at Fairfield University, where she directs the Core Writing Program. With her husband, John Brereton, she is co-editing a volume on "Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Rhetorical Studies." Holy Cross professors Patricia Bizzell, English, and Rev. Thomas Worcester, S.J., history, both contributors to Gannett's forthcoming book on eloquence, offer brief responses following her talk.

Heinrich Watzka, S.J. is professor of philosophy at Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and an International Visiting Jesuit Fellow at Holy Cross. His talk is co-sponsored with the Department of Philosophy.

American novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt is the author of internationally bestselling novels “What I Loved” and “The Summer Without Men.” Her latest novel, “The Blazing World,” was released in March 2014. She has also published three collections of essays and nonfiction work including, “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.” She is the recipient of the 2012 International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities. Co-sponsored with the Creative Writing Series.

Celebrated Italian writer Dacia Maraini talks about Saint Clare, the subject of her most recent novel "Clare of Assisi: In Praise of Disobedience." Maraini, award winning author of "The Silent Duchess" and "Darkness," describes the life of Clare and her followers in the context of the 12th-century Church, the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, Lisa Ruddick talks about her current book project which makes the case that the ways we approach literature in academe can elicit or negate a feeling of aliveness. She spoke at Holy Cross on November 14, 2011

Leading contemporary Irish writer Colm Tóibín reads from his new novel, Brooklyn, April 16, 2009