The Providence College C. S. Lewis Fellowship invites all members of the PC community to attend a special event this coming October 9 at The Vets in downtown Providence. Tickets are $5 for students and can be purchased here. “C. S. Lewis on Stage: Further Up and Further In” is written and performed by the award-winning actor Max McLean. This tour de force performance captures C. S. Lewis’ magnetic personality, astonishing eloquence and laugh-out-loud wit to create an onstage experience venturing deep into the soul of one of the most influential thinkers of the past century. Students can receive the discounted ticket price by purchasing in person at 220 Weybosset Street, calling 401.421.2787, or online with the code BROWNSTUD.

Providence College has published a feature article on the academic courses of the Humanities Program that emphasizes the Program’s “courses outside of the ordinary.” The article highlights “HUM 250 – Beer” (co-taught by Dominican friar and English professor Fr. Jordan Zajac and Chemistry professor Dr. Jay Pike) and “HUM 275 – The Soul of Rock ‘n Roll” (taught by Providence College Chaplain Fr. Justin Bolger). A complete list of the Program’s current offerings can be found here.

Under the leadership of Dr. Iain Bernhoft, Humanities Forum Coordinator, and Dr. Raymond Hain, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Humanities Program, the Humanities Program has received a Capacity Building Grant from the Wake Forest University “Educating Character Initiative.” This grant will support the development during academic year 2024-2025 of a sustainable and impactful approach to integrating the humanistic educational tradition with character formation here at Providence College. 

The Humanities Program invites all members of the Providence College community to participate in the 15th Annual Humanitas Summer Symposium being held at Portsmouth Abbey (Portsmouth, RI) June 14-15, 2024. A collaboration between the Humanities Program and The Portsmouth Institute, the Summer Symposium is an annual opportunity for sustained reflection on perennial human themes from the perspective of the Catholic and Benedictine intellectual tradition.

Isabella Fechter ’24 was named one of three Providence College 2024 Valedictorians. PC’s first Catholic Studies major, and graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA, she hopes to begin a family and to work in service to the Catholic church, possibly in the pro-life movement. In the summer of 2023 she received a Veritas grant to support an internship with the Girls Deserve Better program of Feminists for Life of America and she later represented the organization at the Pro-Life Women’s Conference in St. Charles, Missouri.

Each year the Veritas Conference, the annual conference of the Humanities Program, considers an important cultural theme from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and within the context of the Catholic and Dominican intellectual tradition. The conference is open to the public and includes a broad range of speakers from on and off campus. The 2024 conference will consider a Christian response to the contemporary technological and cultural aspirations for human progress.

Manya Branham Glassman ’19, filmmaker, Providence College Humanities major, and current student at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, recently filmed “How I learned to Die” here at Providence College. Co-produced by distinguished filmmaker Spike Lee, “How I Learned to Die” will be released in the coming year and tells the semi-autobiographical story of a high school student’s struggle with cancer and the exploration of important philosophical questions about life and death. Glassman said in a recent Providence College feature article that “PC offers the widest range of humanities, philosophy, women’s studies, ethics. I can take all of these and use them to make movies. I want to incorporate all of those things in my films.”

Hosted by the University Club in downtown Providence and a collaboration between the Humanities Program and the Portsmouth Institute, the 2024 Providence Catholicism and Culture Symposium will consider the diplomatic role of the Catholic Church in the contemporary world. Panelists include Fr. Roger Landry (former attaché at the permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the United Nations), Lucas Koach (Director, Office of International Justice and Peace, USCCB), and Fr. Benedict Kiely (Founder at Nasarean.org). All members of the Providence College community are invited to attend; registration is free but space is limited.