The e-newsletter from the College of Arts and Letters

Across three continents, research and languages are the keys to Ugandan undergraduate’s success in economics and global affairs Whether he’s studying in Uganda or France, South Africa or South Bend — or speaking English, Luganda, French, or Swahili — Trevor Lwere has one topic at the forefront of his mind. No matter where he is, the economics and global affairs major is driven to investigate what different cultures and perspectives can teach each other about forming the best society. “Every time I move to a different place, I get curious about how different societies imagine how they should be organized and how they approach life,” he said.  Read his story Interdisciplinary theology and psychology research explores link between art, spiritual understanding A digital image of a famous piece of art doesn’t tend to stir the soul in the same way as looking at it while standing in the same room. The context matters. Notre Dame theology and psychology faculty will extrapolate on that idea thanks to a $230,000 grant from the Templeton Religion Trust for an 18-month research project exploring the ways in which viewing art informs and enhances spiritual growth and how that changes based on time and place. The researchers will focus on two sets of religious art on the Notre Dame campus — The Stations of the Cross by Luigi Gregori in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and The Life of Christ/Cycle of Life by Philip Rickey in the Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park. Read more PLS professor wins fellowship to research at center for Italian Renaissance studies in Florence Denis Robichaud, an associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, has been awarded the I Tatti Jean-François Malle Residential Fellowship for his project, Controversies over God and Being in the Italian Renaissance: religion, philosophy, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s De ente et uno. As one of 15 recipients awarded an I Tatti residential fellowship, Robichaud will spend a year researching and writing at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. Read more Through research and teaching, historian and gender studies scholar Karen Graubart explores how archives shape narratives What Karen Graubart didn’t find in archives in Spain and Peru was, in some ways, as valuable as what she did. An associate professor in the Department of History, Graubart has spent more than 15 years conducting archival research on women and non-dominant communities in the Iberian Empire for her first two books. But she is also considering how the archives themselves have shaped her research — by questioning who is represented in them and why. Read her story Video: Philosopher Kris McDaniel on the fragmentation of being and perception of history “There’s no escaping metaphysics, but why would we want to? It's so interesting and so fun to pursue,” said Kris McDaniel, a Notre Dame professor of philosophy. His research focuses on existence and value — in particular, exploring the idea that there are different kinds of existence, a position that is contrary to most contemporary philosophical scholarship. One example that McDaniel examines is our perception of history. “It seems like history is a body of truth, so it must in some way be about real things, but the way in which Abe Lincoln is real isn’t the same way in which you and I are real,” he said.  Watch the video Reilly Center names new directors of Medicine and the Liberal Arts, GLOBES programs The John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values has announced new leadership for two key programs — Vania Smith-Oka, an associate professor of anthropology, and Amy Hixon, an associate professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences. Smith-Oka will serve as the inaugural director of the center’s Medicine and the Liberal Arts program, and Hixon has been named director of the GLOBES graduate certificate program. Read more More news Copyright © 2020 | University of Notre Dame | College of Arts and Letters

Share this email: Manage your preferences | Opt out using TrueRemove™ Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails. View this email online. 101 O'Shaughnessy Hall Notre Dame, IN | 46556 US This email was sent to josh.weinhold@nd.edu. To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.