Spring 2022 Humanities Forum
Spring 2022 Events
Of Original Sin
The Inaugural St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture
Candace Vogler
David B. And Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy
University of Chicago
Friday, Jan. 28, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Candace Vogler is the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include the history of philosophy and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, with some work on the thought of Immanual Kant and John Stuart Mill. She has published a wide range of essays on topics in the history of philosophy, on Aquinas, on philosophy and literature, cinema studies, psychoanalysis, and gender and sexuality. At present, she is working on a monograph on the thought of G.E.M. Anscombe.
Immediacy, or, the Style of Too-Late Capitalism
Anna Kornbluh
Professor of English
University of Illinois-Chicago
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been postponed until fall 2022.
Originally scheduled for Friday, Feb. 4, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Anna Kornbluh is professor of English and director of graduate studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is the author of The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (Chicago, 2019), Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club (Bloomsbury, 2019), and Realizing Capital (Fordham, 2014), and a new manuscript currently under review, Immediacy, Or, The Style of Too-Late Capitalism. She has published essays on psychoanalysis, climate fiction, academic labor, and television. She is the founding facilitator of the V21 Collective (Victorian studies for the 21st Century) and InterCcECT (The Inter Chicago Circle for Experimental Critical Theory).
Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African American Students Reading Great Books Literature*
Part of MLK Convocation Month
Anika T. Prather
Department of Classics, Howard University
Founder and Head of School, The Living Water School
Friday, Feb. 11, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
After earning several degrees from Howard University, New York University, and St. John’s College (Annapolis), Dr. Anika T. Prather earned her Ph.D. in English, theatre, and literacy education from the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on building literacy with African American students through engagement in the books of the canon. Recently, she self-published her book Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African American Students Reading Great Books Literature. She teaches classics at Howard University and founded the Living Water School, a unique Christian School for independent learners, in Southern Maryland.
*This will be a hybrid event. Dr. Prather will be present virtually with a live audience in Ruane 105.
A Debate on the Question: “Is Dante’s Depiction of Hell in The Divine Comedy Compatible with Christian Charity?”
Part of the Disputatio Project
Friday, Feb. 18, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Jason M. Baxter is associate professor of fine arts and humanities at Wyoming Catholic College and the author of A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (Baker Academic, 2018), Falling Inward: Humanities in the Age of Technology (Cluny Media, 2018), and An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Recovering the Wildness of Spiritual Life (Baker Academic, 2021). His upcoming book is entitled The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis. Dr. Baxter earned his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Notre Dame.
Brendan W. Case is associate director for research in the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, the author of The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgment (T&T Clark, 2021), and co-author with William Glass of Least of the Apostles: Paul and His Legacies in Earliest Christianity (forthcoming from Pickwick Press). Dr. Case earned his doctor of theology degree at Duke Divinity School.
On Reading Edmund Burke in the 21st Century
Jeffrey Nelson
Executive Director and CEO of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been postponed.
Originally scheduled for Friday, Friday, Feb. 25, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Jeffrey O. Nelson is executive director and CEO of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. For three decades prior, he held senior roles in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). After studying at the University of Detroit and Yale Divinity School, Nelson earned his Ph.D. in American history at the University of Edinburgh. He was editor of The Intercollegiate Review: A Journal of Scholarship and Opinion and is founding editor and publisher of ISI Books. He served as president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and is founder and treasurer of the Edmund Burke Society of America, whose journal he edits. He is the editor of several books.
Will Rhetoric Save or Destroy Democracy? An Introduction to Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric
Part of the Frederick Douglass Project
Robert C. Bartlett
Behrakis Professor of Hellenic Political Studies
Boston College
Friday, March 25, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Robert C. Bartlett is the first Behrakis Professor of Hellenic Political Studies at Boston College. His principal area of research is classical political philosophy, with particular attention to the thinkers of ancient Hellas, including Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review and other leading scholarly journals. He is the author or editor of nine books including a new edition of Aristotle’sArt of Rhetoric (Chicago, 2019) and, most recently, Against Demagogues: What Aristophanes Can Teach Us About the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy (California, 2020). He is also the co-translator of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago, 2011).
Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Catholic Education in the 21st Century
Inaugural Ex Corde Ecclesiae Lecture
John Garvey
President of the Catholic University of America
Friday, April 1, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
John Garvey is a nationally acclaimed expert in constitutional law, religious liberty, and the first amendment, and is president of the Catholic University of America (CUA). He is the author or co-author of numerous award-winning books. After clerking for the chief judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and working at a private law firm, he became a legal educator, eventually becoming dean of Boston College Law School. In his leadership at CUA, Garvey emphasizes that a Catholic approach to scholarship enriches every discipline. He has provided expert testimony numerous times in the United States House of Representatives and is a regular contributor and guest in religious and secular media.
A screening and discussion of Sons of Providence
In collaboration with the Providence College Jewish-Catholic Theological Exchange
Arthur Urbano, Department of Theology, Providence College
Jennifer Illuzzi, Department of History and Classics, Providence College
Thursday, April 7, 3 p.m.
Guzman 250
Learn the stories of the Jewish men who attended Providence College from its founding through the era of the Second Vatican Council. Through interviews, student publications, and historical context, learn about the groundwork for positive interfaith relations between Jews and Christians laid at Providence College at a time when anti-Semitism was high at home and abroad.
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse
The Inaugural John F. Fay ’68 Keynote Address of the 2022 Veritas Conference
Timothy Carney
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Friday, April 22, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Mr. Carney is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist for the Washington Examiner, and the author of three books, most recently Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse. He has written articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic, National Review and other publications.
Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence
David Bromwich
Sterling Professor of English, Yale University
Friday, April 29, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. He has written widely on Romantic and modern poetry and on social critics of the 18th and 19th centuries. His essays and reviews appear regularly in the London Review of Books, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement. Among his books are Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic and The Intellectual Career of Edmund Burke. He edited the Penguin edition of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and served as co-editor of the Yale edition of John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty.
Cervantes, Golden Age Spain, and the 21st Century
Nicholas Jones
Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of California-Davis
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center Scholar-in-Residence, New York University
Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been postponed until spring 2023.
Originally Scheduled for Friday, May 6, 3 p.m.
Ruane Center for the Humanities 105
Nicholas R. Jones is assistant professor of Spanish as the University of California-Davis and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center’s (KJCC) Scholar-in-Residence at New York University. He is the author of the prize-winning Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (Penn State, 2019) and co-editor of two books with Chad Leahy. He also co-edits the Routledge Critical Junctures in Global Early Modernities book series with Derrick Higginbotham. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and he is currently completing his second monograph entitled Cervantine Blackness.
