Internationalism | College of Arts and Letters | Latest News

History major and Latino Studies Scholar wins Fulbright to attend summer technology, innovation, and creativity institute in Scotland

2023-07-25T11:54:00-04:00

Rising sophomore Connor Kaufmann has won a Fulbright U.K. Summer Institute award to attend a three-week academic and cultural program this month at the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.

The history major, member of the Glynn Family Honors Program, and Latino Studies Scholar in the Institute for Latino Studies is one of just 39 college students from the United States to be selected for one of six summer institutes across the United Kingdom.

He learned via email that he’d won the award to attend the U.K. Summer Institute on the same day that he interviewed.

“I opened it expecting the worst and saw that I had been accepted,” he said. “I put my computer aside, jumped out of my chair and screamed, ‘Oh my gosh!’ before calling my dad to tell him the amazing news.”

At the Summer Institute on Technology, Innovation and Creativity, he’ll learn about Scotland’s development and the cultural roles of its institutions and museums, and he’ll get to explore the country known for its castles and dramatic landscapes.

Kaufmann, whose first name was inspired by a Scottish character in the movie Highlander, anticipates the experience will provide him with a fresh perspective about how he can better use his talents to help the world.

“I strongly felt that it would give me the opportunity to foster my creativity in a unique, robust, and international way,” he said. “This would, in turn, give me the opportunity to best help my community's immigration issues in creative and innovative ways.”

The resident of El Paso, Texas, has been a long-time advocate for immigrant rights.

Growing up, some of his friends who lived in Mexico were applying for U.S. citizenship and crossing the border to attend school in Texas. And while working at a migrant shelter during his senior year of high school, Kaufmann taught himself basic Portuguese so he could help Brazilian migrants arriving in El Paso.

“I remember trying to guide a few families to their sleeping quarters using my limited knowledge of Portuguese,” he said, “and their gratitude for my help has stuck with me forever.”

“When times were difficult during the school year, I relied on my peers in the Latino Studies Scholars Program and the Institute for Latino Studies to keep on pushing through. My peers could and did rely on me, too, which created a beautiful support system between us all.”

Kaufmann and the other selected undergraduates hail from 22 states and 33 universities; 27 have not previously traveled outside of North America, and 15 are the first in their family to attend college. The US-UK Fulbright Commission seeks to invest in people’s potential and seeks to remove obstacles to learning, understanding, and collaboration.

Kaufmann’s selection was based on several factors, including academic excellence (3.7 minimum GPA), a focused application, extracurricular and community activities, ambassadorial skills, and a plan to give back to his home country.

He credits his mother, now deceased, with encouraging him to dream big and to pursue those dreams.

“The lessons she taught me, and her belief in me, has and will continue to stay with me forever,” he said. “She inspired me to put myself out there.”

He set his sights on attending Notre Dame as a youth after learning his maternal grandfather had wanted to attend Notre Dame, but was drafted to serve in the Korean War.

Kaufmann is grateful for the myriad experiences he’s already had at Notre Dame; he said the Institute for Latino Studies’ wilderness backpacking trip to Wyoming before his first semester got underway was a wonderful way to make friends who have become like family.

“When times were difficult during the school year, I relied on my peers in the Latino Studies Scholars Program and the Institute for Latino Studies to keep on pushing through,” he said. “My peers could and did rely on me, too, which created a beautiful support system between us all.”

Aside from his family and peers in the Latino Studies Scholars Program, Kaufmann credits many first-year professors and the ILS administration including Luis Fraga, director; Paloma Garcia-Lopez, associate director; Karen Richman, director of undergraduate studies; and Maribel Rodriguez, administrative coordinator, for helping to make his transition to Notre Dame a smooth and enjoyable process.

Kaufmann plans to eventually attend law school and become an immigration attorney.

“History is an enormous passion and interest of mine,” he said, “and is perfect to begin forming the mindset I will need to utilize in law school, which is my dream.”

Students interested in applying for the for the Fulbright U.K. Summer Institute can receive application feedback and assistance from Mathilda Nassar, national fellowships program manager at the Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE), at mnassar@nd.edu.

Three A&L students awarded Naughton Fellowships to study in Ireland

2023-07-14T07:39:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Naughton Fellowship program has announced 31 faculty members and students — three of whom are connected with the College of Arts and Letters — as awardees in its 2023-2024 cohort.

Funded by a gift from the Naughton family in 2008, Naughton Fellowships foster leadership through international partnerships and stimulate collaborative research efforts. Fellows from Ireland have the opportunity to study and conduct research at the University of Notre Dame. Fellows from Notre Dame complete their fellowship at a leading Irish research university.

“We are delighted to see the growth of the Naughton Fellowship Program," said Brian M. Baker, the Coleman Professor of Life Sciences at Notre Dame. "By bringing deeper levels of collaboration and exchange between our University and Ireland’s finest research institutions, it is having a greater impact each year.

“We are grateful to the Naughton family for the ability to offer such a transformative opportunity to our students and faculty members, both at Notre Dame and in Ireland,” added Baker, the Naughton Fellowship Committee Chair.

Faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers from the University of Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Technological University Dublin, and the University of Galway are among the awardees.

Masters

From Notre Dame

Julia McKenna, a sociology major, will complete a master’s degree in smart and sustainable cities at Trinity College Dublin.

Undergraduate

Sixteen undergraduate students — two of whom are affiliated with Arts and Letters — have been awarded summer Naughton Fellowships as part of a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

From Notre Dame

Lauren Beede, a psychology and statistics major, will study at Trinity College Dublin with Vinny Cahill, a professor and chair in the Department of Computer Science. Beede’s project is titled “The ClearWay Project.”

Emma Laboe, a physics and gender studies major, will study at Trinity College Dublin with Michael Coey, a professor in the Department of Physics. Laboe’s project focuses on the influence of magnetic fields on the evaporation of water.

Applications for the Naughton Fellowships, including undergraduate, masters, and faculty fellowships, will open for submissions in fall 2023. To learn more, visit naughton.nd.edu.

Contact:

Brett Beasley / Writer and Editorial Program Manager

Notre Dame Research / University of Notre Dame

bbeasle1@nd.edu / +1 574-631-8183

research.nd.edu / @UNDResearch

Originally published by Brett Beasley at naughton.nd.edu on July 13, 2023.

Romance languages and literatures professor’s book about undocumented migration wins Caribbean Studies Association’s most prestigious prize

2023-07-10T08:00:00-04:00

Marisel Moreno

Notre Dame professor Marisel Moreno’s book about the largely unknown and dangerous phenomenon of undocumented sea migration within the Caribbean region has won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, the Caribbean Studies Association’s most prestigious prize.

“Being recognized by my field’s premier scholarly organization is one of the greatest honors of my life,” said Moreno, the Rev. John A. O'Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures.

“It is especially meaningful to know that even despite the linguistic and cultural differences, as well as the distinct colonial histories that characterize the islands of the archipelago, the book has resonated among Caribbean scholars.”

The annual award is given for the best book about the Caribbean published over the previous year in Spanish, English, French, or Dutch.

In Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature & Art, Moreno seeks to lift the veil of invisibility around intra-Caribbean undocumented migration.

“Because those who tend to risk their lives at sea in order to survive — whether it is due to political persecution, hunger, natural disasters or climate change — tend to be Black, it is also a book that centers Blackness and that grapples with the colonial legacy of anti-Black racism in Hispanophone Caribbean societies and their diasporas,” said Moreno, who is also a fellow of the College of Arts & Letters’ Institute for Latino Studies and the Initiative on Race and Resilience.

“We cannot understand undocumented migration in the Caribbean without understanding anti-Black racism, and how the history of slavery and European/U.S. colonialism has shaped the present.”

“We cannot understand undocumented migration in the Caribbean without understanding anti-Black racism, and how the history of slavery and European/U.S. colonialism has shaped the present.”

Moreno’s interest in the topic was, in part, a result of growing up in Puerto Rico and reading headlines about Haitian and Dominican migrants drowning trying to cross in yolas (makeshift vessels).

“Many years later, in grad school and beyond, I continued to be perplexed by the virtual absence of the Caribbean in border studies,” she said. “That silence — which continues to this day — did not align with the reality of the thousands of lives lost trying to cross the Caribbean.”

“I started to look at literature and art to see how this historical reality had been represented in cultural production, and eventually I understood that I needed to write the book I had been looking for,” said Moreno, who is an affiliated faculty member in the Gender Studies Program and the Department of Africana Studies.

Crossing Waters has also earned the 2023 Isis Duarte Book Prize Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association’s Haiti-Dominican Republic Section.

For Moreno — who is also a faculty fellow with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and Center for Social Concerns — teaching and research are interconnected, with one continually influencing the other.

“Early on, when I was working on Crossing Waters, I designed an upper-level Spanish course based on many of the works that I examine in the book,” she said. “Teaching the course several times as I wrote the manuscript allowed me to think critically, deeply, and consistently about its contents. I don’t think the book would have been as strong without the opportunity to design a course around its main topics.”

Her teaching and service also have earned awards. At Notre Dame, Moreno won the Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award in 2016 and the Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C. Award for Social Justice in 2019. And in 2011, she received the Indiana Governor’s Award for Service-Learning.

The co-creator of the digital humanities project Listening to Puerto Rico and co-curator of the exhibit Art at the Service of the People: Posters and Books is now working on a book project, tentatively titled “Eye of the Storm: Hurricane María in Puerto Rican Cultural Production.”

In it, she examines the representation of the hurricane in literature and visual art “to untangle the links between colonialism, anti-Blackness, disaster capitalism, climate change, and migration.”

“It is especially meaningful to know that even despite the linguistic and cultural differences, as well as the distinct colonial histories that characterize the islands of the archipelago, the book has resonated among Caribbean scholars.”

Access to opportunity?: Researching experiences of the Windrush generation in the London urbanscape

2023-06-22T15:21:00-04:00

Ida Addo ’24 is an economics major with a minor in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service. In March 2023, during a week in London, supported by a Nanovic Institute for European Studies spring break research grant, she conducted research for her capstone project, “London Urbanscape and Policies: Their Effect on the Economic State of the Windrush Generation.” The project builds on her interest in the welfare of marginalized groups across the world and characteristics of the barriers they face. In London, Addo examined policies and urbanscapes that have contributed to the hindrance of economic progress among Afro-Caribbeans in the United Kingdom.

We have all met that kid, the one whose nosiness and curiosity about their neighbors and community residents calls for an automatic eye roll. With such kids, every drive or casual stroll provokes chatter, as they pester you with questions from, “Oh mom, why does their house look like that?” to “Why are the people who live there different from those that live here?” or “I don’t see her grandmother anymore, where did she go?”

The temptation to silence this kid rises with each question. But hear me out! What if I told you that their observations are not pointless?

I became that kid.

Is it not important that we challenge what has become normalized so we may overthrow the institutions that continue to marginalize certain people more than others? I became that kid when I discovered that accessibility, context, and economic mobility lie at the heart of human rights and the recognition of human dignity.

“Why are the people who live there different from those that live here?”

The article “Can You Move to Opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration” (American Economic Review, February 2022), by American economist Ellora Derenoncourt, sparked my curiosity to explore the effects of migration and neighborhoods on intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. As I studied the intricate link between poverty and access to housing, employment, and education, I had the urge to challenge the normal. After reading Derenoncourt’s article, my next question was, “What are the parallels between the Great Migration and the Windrush generation?” I wanted to understand the similarities and differences between the experiences of the approximately 6 million African Americans who migrated north from the American South in the middle decades of the 20th century and those of Afro-Caribbean migrants to the U.K. during a similar era.

My research follows the seismic demographic change from 1948 to 1971 with the entry of Afro-Caribbeans to London and its key policy responses. I took the unsettling observations of the immigrant experience that I wrestled with a step further and turned them into research questions to understand the impact of the London urbanscape and its policies on the economic state of the Windrush generation and their descendants.

Derenoncourt drew some connections between place and the economic earnings of Black migrants who moved to northern American cities from the South during the Great Migration. I particularly focused on housing and employment as critical economic factors that reveal hindrances to the successful economic development of the Black British population at large. As I walked the alleyways of Hackney, the graffiti on the walls, the positioning of Brutalist social housing structures, and historic pictures of bombed-out homes that early West Indies immigrants occupied animated the plights of the Windrush generation. There, my questions like, “Who owns this house?” and “Did their grandparents live here too?” were not so odd. The multiplex answers to these questions do not solely tell an economic tale. They reveal pernicious colonial legacies and unfairness in the British rule of law, adding layers of complexity to the lives of these immigrants.

The dawn of the Windrush generation in the mid-20th century

HMT Empire Windrush. Royal Navy Official photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

From the 1940s through the ’60s, Britain endorsed open borders to allow Commonwealth citizens from the West Indies to fill the employment gap after World War II. These immigrants were invited to fill labor requirements in London's hospitals, transportation venues, and railway development. This arrangement conferred British citizenship and the right to settle in the U.K. to all people from the British colonies to help rebuild the country. The newly arrived Caribbean workers were subjected to low-quality housing in areas like Brixton and Hackney where they first settled. Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the ’50s could not purchase homes due to sale ads that read, “No Blacks, No Dogs, and No Irish.” They were either charged twice the market rent price by ruthless private landlords or subjected to deteriorating conditions in council estates. In the ’60s, the persistence of Black activists, who refused to be silenced, led to investigations into the Hackney Local Housing Authority, which proved the agency’s policies were discriminatory toward Black residents. Homeownership is a vital tool for wealth building, one from which Black Brits have been systemically excluded.

Exclusion from housing opportunities in earlier generations has led the median accumulation of wealth through homeownership in Black families over the past decade in Great Britain to be zero, a stark contrast to a net £115,000 for white British property owners. The sentiment toward the Windrush generation turned hostile as Britain grappled with its colonial legacies. Despite their contributions to British society, this hostility was reflected in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act which restricted the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the U.K. for work.

The Windrush scandal and 21st-century outcomes

Addo visited the Black Cultural Archives on Windrush Square in Brixton. Third-party photo, stock.adobe.com.

The plight of the Windrush generation was revisited in British national discourse after the Windrush scandal emerged in 2017. Hundreds of Commonwealth citizens from this group had been wrongly detained, deported, and denied legal rights. Falsely considered “illegal immigrants” or “undocumented migrants,” they began to lose their access to housing, health care, bank accounts, and driving licenses.

The compounded impact of historical discrimination and policy failures exemplified in the Windrush scandal resulted in the persistence of intergenerational poverty. The economic state of Afro-Caribbean immigrants bears witness to this phenomenon. Their decline in economic well-being is evident, as for every £1 of white British wealth, Indian households have 90-95p; meanwhile, Black Caribbean households hold around 20p. This gap reflects the ramifications of the British Empire’s colonial legacies and policy failures toward a group that contributes tremendously to the British economy.

On the other hand, the bustling of the markets, the rhythm of the jazz restaurants, and a plethora of businesses tell a tale of the hopes that Afro-Caribbean settlers had. British citizens with Afro-Caribbean heritage continue to be leading figures in Britain’s public domain. Diane Abbott, the first Black woman to be elected to parliament, and Bernie Grant, who also served as an MP, are prominent examples of the resilience of the descendants of the Windrush generation.

Nonetheless, we cannot fail to acknowledge the inequities that persist today. The intergenerational drag hypothesis views contemporary disparities as the cumulative effects of macro-level systems interacting with one another in ways that generate and sustain racial inequalities.

The economic well-being of Afro-Caribbeans from the mid-20th century through contemporary times has always been stunted, in part, due to wage inequality. The 1944 Education Act wrongfully labeled Afro-Caribbean children as “educationally subnormal,” indicating a supposed limited intellectual capacity. This incorrect label affected their access to quality schools and educational achievement, which led to diminished employment opportunities.

Research applications and conclusions

By gaining a greater historical understanding of the structures that have constrained Black mobility in the U.K., I have started to consider comparisons with similar policies in the U.S., such as redlining, a discriminatory practice that limited Black homeownership.

Exhibition in the British Library calling attention to housing inequality. Photo by Ida Addo.

The residency of Afro-Caribbean migrants in the U.K. has been subject to instability, both historically and in recent years. The Hostile Environment legislation empowered the Home Office to wrongfully detain and deport many immigrants from the Windrush era. Without the necessary documents to prove their right to remain, many legal citizens of Afro-Caribbean descent from that period were inaccurately labeled “illegal immigrants.” This instability impacted subsequent generations of Black British folks descended from those migrants. The dispersal of communities, loss of employment, and lack of housing regressed the economic mobility of their progeny. Memoirs and collections from the Black Cultural Archives and the British Library disclose the gradual erosion of the social and economic rights of victims and their families during periods of inhumane treatment.

When your sources are derived only through a computer screen, the narrative uncovered by your research can be one-dimensional. Living out the research bridges the gap that exists where data has not caught up with the lived experiences of the people.

Every day, I lived my research by experiencing the city of London. The borough markets, ethnic enclaves, and interactions with Londoners who elaborated on their experiences gave me the language to express the outcomes of my research. My research focused on two key indicators of economic progress that are also foundational elements to the urban core: housing (homeownership) and employment. Observing the city provided a comprehensive view of the environment that allowed for the institutionalization of particular policies and the quality of life of contemporary immigrants. I also witnessed firsthand the engagement of local governments in the economic outcomes of Commonwealth citizens and their progeny.

My experience doing research in London helped me understand the importance of housing accessibility, the types of amenities that should be available in a neighborhood, and the policies that coalesce to determine the economic well-being of marginalized groups.

In addition, my time in London taught me not to silence the nosy kid within that prompted me to ask difficult questions. To engage in successful research with this caliber of question is to view the city as a living and breathing being. When your sources are derived only through a computer screen, the narrative uncovered by your research can be one-dimensional. Living out the research bridges the gap that exists where data has not caught up with the lived experiences of the people.

Originally published by Ida Addo at nanovicnavigator.nd.edu on June 22, 2023.

Political science courses, internships, NDISC prepared Madeline O’Mara '18 for data science career involving national security

2023-06-06T07:08:00-04:00

Madeline O’Mara, daughter of a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, says her family moved all around the country during her childhood. “It was great to see so much of the country and really understand and appreciate how different and unique each place is,” she says. At Notre Dame, O’Mara majored in political science, earning the NDISC Certificate along the way. Now a data scientist at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which works with the Department of Defense, we were excited to hear about her story.

Why did you go to Notre Dame?

I knew I was going to get an amazing education at Notre Dame, no matter what I decided to study. I also really wanted to continue my Catholic education at a school where the faith is truly a part of the culture and mission.

Why did you study international relations?

I decided to study international relations late in my college career. I was a science business major up until junior year. Everything changed when I studied abroad in London and interned for a member of Parliament. I loved both the internship and the accompanying British politics class, and I realized that if I wanted to study political science and pursue a career in that field, I needed to change my major immediately to graduate on time. I was nervous about changing my major so late, but I had a feeling it was the right choice. I'm so glad I did.

How did you discover the Notre Dame International Security Center?

I first learned about NDISC through Professor Dan Lindley — I took his U.S. Foreign Policy course during the spring of my junior year, and he encouraged me to attend the NDISC lectures based on some of the interests I had shared in his class. I got to know Professor Michael Desch and the other professors while attending the seminars, and I officially became an NDISC fellow my senior year. Before I learned about NDISC, I didn't realize Notre Dame had a specific program that really focused on the topics I was interested in.

Was there a specific class that resonated with you?

My favorite class was U.S. National Security Policymaking. It was a great overview of the most important topics in the national security arena, and I still think a lot about the things I learned in that course. It also was co-taught by three of my favorite professors—Michael Desch, Dan Lindley, and Eugene Gholz—so, it was great learning from all of them at once, and always entertaining.

While you attended Notre Dame, you took part in several internships, including at the Department of Justice, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.K.’s Parliament. What did you learn in these roles?

I was lucky to experience different parts of the national security apparatus through my internships. My internship for a member of the House of Representatives gave me insight into local issues — especially those veterans face. My Parliament internship gave me insight into the foreign policy of one of our closest allies. My internship at the DOJ was probably the most insightful, as I got to work on domestic security issues. All my internships helped me understand national security better.

You continued your security studies with a master’s at Georgetown. How did NDISC prepare you?

I worked full-time and attended Georgetown part-time for my master's in security studies. It was an incredibly busy three years, but I was very prepared for the coursework at Georgetown thanks to NDISC. NDISC ensured that I had a very strong foundation not only in IR theory and the basic concepts of military analysis, but also prepared me for some of my more advanced classes at Georgetown.

At Booz Allen Hamilton, you work with the Department of Defense and the U.S. government. How do you bring your NDISC education to work with you?

At Booz Allen, I've been lucky enough to support several different clients in roles that require different skill sets — which has given me additional insight into the national security apparatus. My roles have ranged from all-source analysis focused on the Middle East all the way up to organizational strategy. NDISC's encouragement of critical thinking and problem-solving, the range of topics, and the emphasis on theory have enabled me to be successful in all these positions.

What would you tell someone who is considering NDISC, but isn't sure it's the right fit?

Join — you won't regret it! When I joined NDISC as a second-semester junior, I had no idea that I was going to meet some of my best friends and future colleagues. There's something for everyone in NDISC: You can really make the experience what you want. In the process, you'll make great friends and have amazing mentors. A strong foundation in foreign policy and national security issues can help you in a variety of careers, even if you don't want to come to D.C.!

Originally published by Notre Dame International Security Center at ndisc.nd.edu on June 01, 2023.

16 Arts & Letters students named 2023-24 Fulbright US Student Program finalists

2023-06-05T10:13:00-04:00

Twenty University of Notre Dame students — three graduate students and 17 undergraduates — have been selected as Fulbright U.S. Student Program finalists for the 2023-24 academic year, contingent upon host country approvals, medical clearance and submission of all required grant documents. Sixteen of the students are affiliated with the College of Arts and Letters.

Another seven students — two graduate students and five undergraduates — have been selected as alternates for the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

In applying for the award, undergraduate students worked closely with the Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE) and graduate students with the Office of Grants and Fellowships in the Graduate School.

Jeff Thibert is the Paul and Maureen Stefanick director of CUSE.

“We are thrilled to have had another successful year with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, one that should place on the Top Producing list of U.S. institutions for the 10th consecutive year. Clearly we are doing something right!” Thibert said. “Much of the credit should go to those who prepare our students to be competitive Fulbright applicants by providing them with a truly global education, including the teams in Notre Dame International, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures, and all the other globally facing units at the University.

"Perhaps I’m biased, but in my view the most credit should go to the outstanding Fulbright advising team we have in CUSE: Elise Rudt-Moorthy and Mathilda Nassar, who work with our English teaching assistantship applicants, and Emily Hunt, who works with our study/research grant applicants. They put in long hours between March and October recruiting applicants, helping them to discern whether Fulbright is right for them and working with them to prepare the best possible applications.

"The University’s consistently outstanding performance with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a result of the excellent support that Notre Dame provides to our extraordinary students.”

Thomas Fuja, interim vice president, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School, said, “To win a Fulbright award is a badge of honor that is recognized and respected everywhere in the world. We should all be proud that Notre Dame students can successfully compete in such a prestigious program — and even more proud that they are motivated to take their talents and training and go be a force for good throughout the world.”

The 20 finalists are:

Undergraduate

• Isabella Allen, class of 2023, chemical engineering, study and research grant to Jamaica.

• Michael Barrett, class of 2023, political science and history, English teaching assistantship to Germany.

• Britton Brindle, class of 2023, political science, English teaching assistantship to Serbia.

• Rachel Colligan, class of 2023, Program of Liberal Studies, study and research grant to Italy.

• Abigail Craff, class of 2023, German and economics, English teaching assistantship to Germany.

• Allison Doctor, class of 2023, honors Spanish and global affairs (supplementary), English teaching assistantship to Spain.

• Grace Ducat, class of 2023, preprofessional studies, English teaching assistantship to Vietnam.

• Joshua Gilchrist, class of 2023, Program of Liberal Studies and theology (supplementary), English teaching assistantship to South Korea.

• Mary Kate Godfrey, class of 2023, political science and global affairs (supplementary), English teaching assistantship to Morocco.

• Mireille Ibrahim, class of 2023, honors Spanish, English teaching assistantship to Andorra.

• Mitchell Johnson, class of 2023, accountancy and honors English, English teaching assistantship to Montenegro.

• Alexis Kelly, class of 2023, honors art history and psychology, English teaching assistantship to Germany.

• Claire Kloska, class of 2023, psychology and Spanish, English teaching assistantship to Spain.

• Quinn McKenna, class of 2023, Program of Liberal Studies, English teaching assistantship to Panama.

• Sofia Nakfoor, class of 2023, psychology and economics, English teaching assistantship to Spain.

• Carlondrea Petty, class of 2023, preprofessional studies and Spanish (supplementary), English teaching assistantship to Spain.

• Julia Schlueter, class of 2023, science-business and honors Spanish, English teaching assistantship to Spain.

Graduate

• Eric Budd, master’s student in education (Alliance for Catholic Education), English teaching assistantship to Bulgaria.

• Ella Baxter, master’s student in education (Alliance for Catholic Education), English teaching assistantship to Spain.

• Jacob Moniz, master’s student in creative writing, study and research grant to Portugal.

Established in 1946 and administered by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports and enables passionate and accomplished graduate and undergraduate students to pursue graduate study, conduct research or teach English abroad.

The application window for the 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Student Program is currently open. For more information or to apply, visit cuse.nd.edu (undergraduate/ACE) or graduateschool.nd.edu/graduate-training/research-communication/the-office-of-grants-and-fellowships (graduate).

Originally published by Erin Blasko at news.nd.edu on June 02, 2023.

A leap of faith: How two Christian and two Muslim young women went from Nigeria to Notre Dame, overcoming tragedy and trauma to show the world-changing power of knowledge

2023-05-31T08:00:00-04:00

Laila Ibrahim, Dinah Lawan, Maijidda Haruna, and Godiya Simon

Five years ago, on a frigid January morning, a nearly indescribable journey began for four young women from Nigeria. They came to Notre Dame after being carefully selected by their government, shepherded by senior leaders from the United Nations and the Catholic Church, and anxiously but quietly awaited by a tight circle of supporters on campus.

For a country torn apart by religious violence and where the value of educating girls was constantly questioned, sending this group to a Catholic university on an unfamiliar continent was a gamble, but a risk many felt was worth taking. There were two Christians — Dinah Lawan and Godiya Simon — who had been kidnapped by Muslim terrorists as schoolgirls and endured a harrowing path back to freedom. And there were two Muslims — Maijidda Haruna and Laila Ibrahim — who had encountered devastating violence at the hands of Christians.

They arrived with the chance to pursue an education that could transform their lives, but also, their country hoped, be an example that could help heal their homeland. Maybe, just maybe, if this quartet could go to America and thrive, they could demonstrate all that is possible when strength is built through knowledge and community is founded on forgiveness.

“The symbolism of this was breathtaking,” said Sara Sievers, a former Notre Dame faculty member who served as a host mother to all four. “They had lost all you really can, short of their own lives. But if they could learn to love one another as sisters, then anyone can.”

To read more, click or tap here or on the photo above.

“The symbolism of this was breathtaking. They had lost all you really can, short of their own lives. But if they could learn to love one another as sisters, then anyone can.”

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi earns Pforzheimer Fellowship; 'It Is What It Is' to be featured in Best American Short Stories 2023

2023-05-23T09:28:00-04:00

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, an associate professor of English at Notre Dame, will be a 2023-24 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute.

The Pforzheimer Fellowship offers scholars in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts — as well as writers, journalists, and other distinguished professionals — a rare chance to pursue ambitious projects for a full year in a vibrant interdisciplinary setting amid the resources of Harvard. The Radcliffe Institute's 2023–2024 fellows represent 3.3% of the applications received.

At Harvard, Van der Vliet Oloomi plans to work on her next novel, a "work of speculative fiction about America's continuously evolving definitions of freedom as well as the corresponding shifts in constructions of American Identity in relation to nature and notions of the wild."

In addition, Van der Vliet Oloomi's short story "It Is What It Is" was selected by editors Min Jin Lee and Heidi Pitlor for Best American Short Stories 2023 (forthcoming from Mariner Books in October 2023). Making its first appearance in Electric Literature with an introduction by Alyssa Songsiridej, "It Is What It Is" tells a story of a cat orphaned by violence and a new owner determined to give her "the best Iranian life ever."

I stared at Khorshid’s high cheek bones and exaggeratedly long whiskers, her green eyes through which she looked out at the world in shock and concluded that her owner’s deaths had been a kind of disappearance. No bodies had been recovered. They had turned to ash mid-air and taken their place next to all of the unburied dead. Next to my father who had never been found.

– Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, "It Is What It Is"

Van der Vliet Oloomi, a fellow with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, has authored three novels, including Savage Tongues (Mariner, 2021) and Call Me Zebra (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), which won the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the John Gardner Award, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. She received a 2015 Whiting Writers Award and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” award for her debut novel, Fra Keeler (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2012).

She has been supported by an Aspen Institute Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship and a Fellowship from ART OMI, and her work has appeared in Granta, Guernica, The Paris Review, BOMB Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her work also has been translated into half a dozen languages.

At Notre Dame, Van der Vliet Oloomi founded Literatures of Annihilation, Exile and Resistance, a bi-annual symposium and lecture series that focuses on the study of literatures that have been shaped by histories of territorial and linguistic politics, colonialism, military domination and gross human rights violations. She serves on the Board of Advisors for Notre Dame's Initiative on Race and Resilience.

Originally published by Paul Cunningham at english.nd.edu on May 22, 2023.

Through studying five languages, researching in Italy, and interning at a Ukrainian-American museum, anthropology major discovers the value of taking surprising paths

2023-05-19T08:00:00-04:00

Senior Emma Ackerley canoeing in Lago di Braies in the Italian Dolomites. A member of the Globally Engaged Citizens program, she is fluent in Italian, reads and speaks Portuguese and French, can read Spanish, and took a Russian course.

Someone once remarked to Emma Ackerley that her college transcript was all over the map.

The anthropology major, who has a supplementary major in global affairs (with a concentration in transnational European studies), and a minor in journalism, ethics, and democracy — takes that as a compliment.

After all, the comment is accurate, literally and figuratively.

Ackerley, who grew up in Arizona and graduated high school in Colorado, has spent summers in Australia and Finland, traveled to Italy three times in the last two years, and participated in an internship in Cleveland (after her summer trip to France was canceled due to COVID-19).

“I’ve explored my interests and what I wanted to do,” she said. “I’m not afraid of not being on the most traditional path.”

Wherever that path leads, there’s a good chance Ackerley can communicate with locals when she arrives. She’s fluent in Italian, reads and speaks Portuguese and French, and can read Spanish. One semester, she took a one-credit Russian course because she wanted to explore yet another language.

With her travels and impressive language skills, Ackerley easily completed the requirements of the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures’ Globally Engaged Citizens program — which encourages deeply engaging with languages and cultures.

“I am happy to see Notre Dame recognize the value of global experiences through the GEC program,” she said. “Filling out the online portfolio was a really wonderful chance to reflect on mine.”

“Honestly, the things I didn't expect, or anticipate, have been most valuable. They weren't necessarily what I had planned, or what everyone would have done or thought would be the best thing for me. But with the amount of opportunities and experiences available, Notre Dame has been even more valuable than I ever could have expected.”

Embracing the unexpected

Anthropology courses have enabled Ackerley to study people and cultures worldwide, and Notre Dame’s numerous resources and funding opportunities have guaranteed that her path is well-traveled.

Ackerley with friends while studying abroad in Bologna, Italy.

This spring, for instance, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and Nanovic Institute for European Studies funded her trip to Naples, Italy, to take photographs for her senior thesis in anthropology — a visual ethnography about soccer star Diego Maradona.

Ackerley also spent her junior year abroad in Italy — in Bologna, where she immersed herself in the culture and took most of her classes and tests in Italian.

“I really, really improved my language skills and was able to travel a lot throughout Italy,” she said. “I made great friends and took some interesting classes, like Archeological Sites around Vesuvius.”

Ackerley was slated to study in France the summer after her sophomore year, but the pandemic derailed those plans. So she opted for a six-week internship at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland, where she worked on an exhibit about Ukrainian-American political involvement.

While she initially wondered whether Cleveland might be a bit of a letdown compared to her plans in France, her doubts soon evaporated.

“It was such an incredible experience, especially in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It gave me an interesting perspective,” she said. “I couldn't speak more highly of it. Now, every time I'm skeptical about something, I know I should just embrace things.”

Valuing the unanticipated

Travel and languages have been welcome constants in Ackerley’s life.

Ackerley — whose mother is from Italy — grew up speaking Italian, and she frequently visited family members there. She also has visited family who reside in Australia, and she lived there one summer in high school. During another high school summer, she lived in Finland thanks to an exchange program.

Ackerley along the Mediterranean coastline in Liguria, Italy.

With her fascination with travel and languages, Ackerley said the global affairs supplementary major was a natural fit. She added the journalism minor because of her love of writing. This spring, Ackerley took a multimedia class and interned with Notre Dame Magazine. During her year in Italy, she penned pieces for the online tourism blog Turisti per Caso, which included writing about Liguria during a four-day, all-expenses paid tour.

In the future, she’s considering pursuing journalism or graduate school — but first, she’s going to take time to explore, professionally and geographically. She plans to travel, including a return trip to Italy, as she gains work experience.

For Ackerley, her Notre Dame liberal arts education has helped her grow, learn, serve, and explore — and, most importantly, be open to the possibility of surprise.

“Honestly, the things I didn't expect, or anticipate, have been most valuable,” she said. “They weren't necessarily what I had planned, or what everyone would have done or thought would be the best thing for me. But with the amount of opportunities and experiences available, Notre Dame has been even more valuable than I ever could have expected.”

A&L faculty member and three students earn 2023 Graduate School awards

2023-05-12T07:18:00-04:00

One Arts and Letters faculty member and three students are among the Graduate School's annual award-winners for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Robert Goulding, director of the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science, and director of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, is the winner of the Dick and Peggy Notebaert Award; Susanna De Stradis ’22, Ph.D. from the Department of History, is the recipient of the Shaheen Award in the Humanities; Luiz Vilaça, Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Sociology, is the recipient of the Shaheen Award in the Social Sciences; and Ester E. Aguirre Alfaro, Master of Arts candidate from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, is the winner of the Social Justice Award.

In addition, the Graduate School named the other following award-winners: Monica C. Regalbuto '89 Ph.D., is the recipient of the Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award; Patricia A. Champion, Ph.D., is the recipient of the James A. Burns, C.S.C., Award; Mark Anthony Caprio, Ph.D., is the winner of the James A. Burns, C.S.C., Award; Laura M. Alderfer, Ph.D. candidate from the Graduate Program in Bioengineering,is the winner of the Shaheen Award in Engineering, and Megan Vahsen, Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Biological Sciences, is the recipient of the Shaheen Award in Science.

All the award-winners will be formally recognized for their achievements May 20 at the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony at Notre Dame Stadium. Below are profiles of the A&L winners. For full award-winner profiles, refer to The Graduate School 2023 Commencement Citation Book.

Robert Goulding, Ph.D., is the winner of the Dick and Peggy Notebaert Award which honors a faculty member or administrator who has had a significant impact on graduate studies at Notre Dame. Since 2016, Goulding has been the director of the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), and since 2017 the director of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, of which HPS is a part. In those roles, he has demonstrated outstanding thoughtfulness and creativity in meeting program-specific challenges and in innovating new support structures for graduate students. These include: creation of the Reilly Center Fellowship, an award allowing top-tier Ph.D. students the opportunity to pursue additional study or research at outside universities in the early stages of their dissertation; building a new concentration within the HPS curricula; attracting additional faculty to HPS; and revamping a weekly student reading group colloquium into a forum focused on presentations and discussions about the work of HPS scholars.

Susanna De Stradis ’22, Ph.D. from the Department of History, is the recipient of the Shaheen Award in the Humanities. De Stradis is an award-winning historian of religion whose widely published scholarly work has upended and reframed traditional understandings of the complex interplay between American Catholicism, democratic values, notions of religious freedom, and mid-twentieth-century Vatican authorities. In fall 2020, De Stradis was among the first cohort of scholars to access the newly available records of Pope Pius XII’s pontificate (1939–1958) at the Vatican Archives. Her findings in Rome received a great deal of attention from scholars around the world and led to significant publications in both Italian and American journals, as well as in public-facing venues such as Commonweal and The Immanent Frame. Current University provost Dr. John T. McGreevy served as De Stradis’s adviser and considers her a true rising star in the field. “Few U.S. scholars have her linguistic capacity and intellectual drive,” he said. “Virtually no one is as well positioned to deepen our understanding of both global history and global religion. Eventually, everyone at Notre Dame and the Graduate School will bask a bit in her reflected glory.” She is a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. In the fall, she will take up an appointment as assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University.

Luiz Vilaça, Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Sociology, is the recipient of the Shaheen Award in the Social Sciences. Considered a rising star in his field, sociologist and doctoral candidate Vilaça has directed his research toward explaining the causes of anti-corruption prosecutions. His remarkable success in being published — seven publications in total, with several more on the way — underscores the impact that his research has already had on the field of sociology, as well as on public policy. His mixed-methods dissertation examines the case of Operation Car Wash in Brazil, a series of anti-corruption prosecutions that resulted in the conviction of hundreds of business executives and politicians. In it, he draws on 120 interviews with prosecutors, detectives, judges, and politicians involved in corruption investigations, as well as on survey data and an original dataset of corruption cases from the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice. Erin McDonnell, co-chair on Vilaça’s dissertation, said his research brings a fresh perspective to the issue: “Luiz’s work is at the cutting edge of policy-relevant social science. He moves beyond a decades-long tradition of documenting and lamenting corruption to break new ground on analyzing what can actually be done by organizational actors to tackle corruption where it is endemic.”Following graduation, Vilaça will begin a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. In fall 2024, he will take up an appointment as assistant professor of sociology at Bowdoin College.

Ester E. Aguirre Alfaro, M.A. candidate from the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, is the winner of the Social Justice Award that is given annually to a graduate student in the Notre Dame community who has tackled complex societal issues through his or her scholarship, teaching, and service. Aguirre Alfaro has demonstrated a tireless commitment to fighting for the marginalized — in particular, immigrants and families from Latin America — both during her master’s program at Notre Dame, and in the years preceding it. She has worked for nonprofit groups in Texas to protect and advance the rights of asylum-seeking immigrants at the border and has served as an educator for underserved student populations. While at Notre Dame, Aguirre Alfaro took on a position as assistant project coordinator with the Shaw Center for Families and Children as part of its ongoing Seguimos Avanzando project, one of the largest studies of the Mexican population in the United States. In this role, she recruited families into the study, served as a bilingual assessment coordinator, and assisted in the coding of qualitative interviews about migrant experiences of discrimination and parenting. Vanesa Miseres in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, said Aguirre Alfaro has uniquely fused scholarship and service: “Ester has a distinguished profile of a student who knows how to bring her academic training to a practical sphere and serve the community.” This fall, Aguirre Alfaro will begin a doctoral program in Hispanic studies at the University of British Columbia.

Originally published by Eric Heath at graduateschool.nd.edu on May 10, 2023.

A&L neuroscience and behavior major Miguel Coste selected salutatorian

2023-05-09T09:27:00-04:00

Kristen Friday of Pittsburgh has been named valedictorian and Miguel Coste from Tampa has been selected salutatorian of the 2023 University of Notre Dame graduating class.

The 178th University Commencement Ceremony will be held Sunday, May 21, in Notre Dame Stadium for graduates and guests. During the ceremony, Friday will present the valedictory address, and as the salutatorian, Coste will offer the invocation.

Friday is a computer science and engineering major with a minor in engineering corporate practice in the College of Engineering where she has accumulated a 4.00 grade point average and has been a member of the Dean’s List each semester. During her time at Notre Dame, she was involved in a project funded by Ford

2023 Valedictorian

Motor Co., which focused on real-time notifications to enhance driver and pedestrian safety measures by assessing user intentions at road intersections. She played an integral role on the project collecting user data to train the machine learning model performance and in automating alerts for vehicles in high-traffic areas.

She completed several internships over the past four years, including as an associate automation engineer intern with Hitachi Rail STS, a software engineer intern at IBM in the Research Triangle in North Carolina and a software engineer intern with Microsoft Corp. in Seattle. She also worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant with computer science and engineering faculty Matthew Morrison teaching Data Structures and Peter Bui teaching both Programming Challenges and Systems Programming.

Outside of the classroom, Friday was co-founder of the Notre Dame Women in Computer Science club, where she served as co-president. Together with her co-president, she was driven to support women in technology majors by hosting career panels, mentorship programs and outreach events paired with Habitat for Humanity. Friday was a two-year member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, and also received the college’s Steiner Award for academic excellence. In the spring of 2022, she studied abroad in London. Friday is also a self-described “avid member of Lewis Hall interhall sports” and was a four-year member of the University’s club tennis team. She also served as a volunteer at a ministry for the homeless in her hometown.

After graduation, Friday plans to work at Palantir Technologies as a software engineer in Washington, D.C. She hopes to continue building innovative technological solutions that will empower users, promote the greater good and improve the human experience.

Coste, a neuroscience and behavior major in the College of Arts and Letters, has compiled a 3.972 grade point average and has been a member of the Dean’s List every semester. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa liberal arts and sciences honor society, he was selected from nearly 900 national applicants in 2022 as one of the organization’s 20 recipients for the Key into Public Service Scholarship for his academic excellence, leadership and commitment to public service. He was also inducted into the Nu Rho Psi neuroscience national honor society.

2023 Salutatorian

In 2021, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant at MIT’s summer research program in biology, where he developed experiments in systems neuroscience. He also served as an undergraduate research assistant with sociology professor Mark Berends studying Indiana schools’ responses to COVID-19. He also spent a semester in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin.

Coste’s honors include being awarded a Gilman Scholarship in 2021 and being named a Notre Dame AnBryce Scholar and QuestBridge Scholar. He was on the advisory board and served as president of First Gen Careers, which is part of the Meruelo Family Center for Career Development. He served as president of 1stG ND and as a sophomore was head mentor of the University’s QuestBridge chapter. He is also a former member of the University’s cheer team, a University Relations intern involved with Cavanaugh Council and the President’s Circle and a member of the National Name Exchange since 2020.

After graduation, Coste will work for Epic Systems as a technical solutions engineer in Madison, Wisconsin. He hopes to work in the public health field to promote and protect the health of people and communities, particularly the marginalized.

As salutatorian, he will be prepared to deliver a valedictory address should the valedictorian be unable to do so.

The Notre Dame valedictorian and salutatorian selection process begins by identifying the top four students among those with the highest grade point averages in each college or school. Those students are then invited to complete an application that includes letters of recommendation from faculty members and a draft of their commencement speech. A selection committee, coordinated by the division of Undergraduate Education in the Provost’s Office, interviews finalists and chooses a valedictorian and salutatorian who are approved by University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.

Originally published by Sue Ryan at news.nd.edu on May 05, 2023.

Schreffler wins Society of Architectural Historians book award for research on colonialization’s impact on Peruvian city

2023-05-04T08:00:00-04:00

Michael Schreffler, a Notre Dame professor of art history and the College of Arts & Letters’ associate dean for the arts.

The first time Michael Schreffler visited the Peruvian city of Cuzco, he noticed the architectural legacy of the Inca civilization still standing next to buildings that represent the European Baroque style.

The visual contrast tells part of the story of Spanish colonization.

“In a way, it’s like Rome, in that you see the layers of history — multiple periods of history through architecture that is still visible,” said Schreffler, a Notre Dame professor of art history and the College of Arts & Letters’ associate dean for the arts. “Why do you see so much of that in a city that was invaded and settled by the Spanish 500 years ago?”

Schreffler holding his award with Patricia Morton, president of the Society of Architectural Historians. Photo by Luigi D'Astolfo

Schreffler’s first trip to Cuzco 21 years ago — and about 10 subsequent visits — provided the spark for his 2020 book, Cuzco: Incas, Spaniards, and the Making of a Colonial City, which has now won the Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

The award is named for a University of California, Berkeley professor who served as president of SAH in the 1970s. Kostof’s interdisciplinary research was considered novel at the time. He wrote about cities’ infrastructure and architecture, while also informing readers about their settings for human interaction and ritual practices.

“That is the approach I took in my book, so I’m grateful for this recognition named for a person who broke ground in this field,” said Schreffler, who received the honor at a ceremony this month in Montreal. “It validates doing this kind of work and makes me excited that other people who read the book found it interesting and were able to connect a bigger world of ideas to the history of architecture.”

Schreffler’s book addresses how Cuzco transformed after the Spanish invasion in the 1530s. Today, the city is best known as the place where tourists spend time before traveling to Machu Picchu.

While previous research has covered the overall Spanish conquest of Peru, Schreffler wanted “to take a look at that story from the vantage point of one city, arguably the most important city in the Inca Empire in this period,” he said.

The city didn’t experience the destruction seen elsewhere — beautiful, distinctive stone carvings and other examples of Inca architecture remain, while Aztec architecture in Mexico City was erased.

The key, he said, was the way space was repurposed in Cuzco while its cultural reality was forever changing.

“When I teach this material in my classes, I like to ask students, ‘What can we say about long-term consequences of Spanish colonialism in a place like this?’ One of them has to do with the social dimensions of geography. The Spanish government established itself in Lima while Cuzco and its environs were populated largely by Quechua-speaking Andean peoples,” he said, referencing the language of the Incas.

“The social inequalities in Peru today and, in particular, discrimination against speakers of Quechua has its origin in the colonial period. But the visible remains of Inca architecture in Cuzco remind us that the city’s transformation over time is not simply a story of loss. It is also a story of resilience.”

“I’m grateful for this recognition named for a person who broke ground in this field. It validates doing this kind of work and makes me excited that other people who read the book found it interesting and were able to connect a bigger world of ideas to the history of architecture.”

Design professor wins Fulbright Scholar Award to create an interactive, digital Norwegian folktale

2023-05-01T08:00:00-04:00

Sarah Edmands Martin in her studio. Photo by Myriam Nicodemus

Sarah Edmands Martin, an assistant professor of visual communication design, has been named a 2024 Fulbright Scholar and will use the award to design an interactive digital folktale at the University of Bergen in Norway.

“I’m very grateful to receive such a prestigious award at this stage in my career,” said Martin, who joined the Department of Art, Art History and Design in 2022. “I hope this will inspire future artists and designers to apply for this kind of award.”

Martin learned of the honor just before boarding a recent flight to New York City to deliver two papers at a design conference. One paper was about creativity in the age of artificial intelligence — which shares similarities with her Norwegian interactive digital folktale project.

“Design is an exchange of empathy between an artist or designer and an audience. Design builds bridges. I think design is a gift.”

“I like to think I would have nailed that talk without the boost of the good news, but I suspect knowing I’d just been awarded a Fulbright might have helped,” said Martin, who in 2015 earned a Master of Fine Arts in visual communication design at Notre Dame. “Either way, the talks went very well.”

The Fulbright Program’s purpose is to increase mutual understanding between people in the United States and people around the world — and increasing connections among people also is a goal of Martin’s work.

“Design is an exchange of empathy between an artist or designer and an audience. For example, you don’t need to know German to understand the beauty of Mozart,” said Martin. “Design builds bridges. I think design is a gift.”

Her gift as a Fulbright Scholar will be a responsive folktale that “digitally entangles” ancient buried folklore, computer learning, and Bergen storytelling techniques.

Martin working with archival materials in her design studio. Photo courtesy of Ethan Gill, Indiana University Office of the Provost

It’s too soon to know the precise form the folktale will take, Martin said. That will depend on what she finds after a computer scrapes two vast electronic literature archives in Norway and the contemporary folktales that people in Bergen share with her.

Martin will design the tale — with illustrations, photography, and typography — after analyzing recurring motifs and ideas within the archival folklore and the collected contemporary stories.

She said the project will elevate the strange, the eerie, and the magical — where the darkness sits just outside of what is considered ordinary.

“Often we define what is normal by defining what is the other, or the darkness, or the cave, or the witch’s hut in the dark forest,” she said. “I wanted to explore that.”

Folk tales perform an important educational function in society, Martin said — they explain and explore both the horrific and the unknown from a safe distance. Northern Scandinavian folktales, in particular, explain people’s relationship to the Earth, land, and water.

Bergen, which is surrounded by fjords, is an ideal place to do such an examination in the age of climate collapse and rising sea level, Martin said. And the University of Bergen is a natural location to pursue this project since the interdisciplinary, digital storytelling work being done there is world-class.

Martin will exhibit the folktale in Norway and, when she returns to Notre Dame, in the United States. Because it will be web-based and interactive, Martin wrote in her proposal that it “will be endlessly shaped by participatory tellings and re-tellings, mirroring the way mythologies adapt to contemporary moments.”

One of Martin's previous projects, Where the Shadow Falls, is a stop-motion animated installation at the Wylie House Museum at Indiana University focusing on the creative practice of Maggie Wylie Millette. Photo courtesy of Ethan Gill, Indiana University Office of the Provost

In a letter to Martin, Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board chair Donna Brazile wrote that the prestigious award is a reflection of Martin’s leadership and contributions to society. Since the program’s 1946 inception, Fulbrighters have also won multiple Pulitzer and Nobel prizes and MacArthur Genius Fellowships.

Martin’s design work has been recognized by the Paris Design Awards, London International Creative, and the Creative Communication Awards. Her client portfolio includes AMC’s The Walking Dead, Herman Miller, and Whirlpool.

As a designer, Martin strives to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

“I need to be working just outside of what I think I know,” she said. “The journey of design is finding the answer. There’s a lot of discomfort in not knowing along the way.”

That’s a lesson she imparts to students, alongside lessons in typography and branding, and the importance of responsibly and ethically leveraging the power of design.

“Design at Notre Dame is really special,” she said, “because it aligns so beautifully with the Catholic social tradition and with the mission of the University, which is to do good in this world.”

“Design at Notre Dame is really special, because it aligns so beautifully with the Catholic social tradition and with the mission of the University, which is to do good in this world.”

From Dublin to London to D.C., American studies major pursues research, internships, and coursework focused on improving affordable housing for urban communities

2023-04-10T08:00:00-04:00

In just the past year, Notre Dame junior Jasmine Mitchell has studied in Dublin, London, and Washington, D.C.

“Notre Dame has pushed me to expand my horizons, and given me the opportunity to push beyond my own context,” Mitchell said.

In each location she’s traveled to, Mitchell has studied how localities are addressing affordable housing, and she hopes to eventually bring innovative solutions back to urban communities in the United States. Because no matter how far her travels have taken her, she’s never lost sight of the problems facing her home community of Atlanta.

By using her diverse academic interests — American studies, business economics, and public policy — to study this pressing issue, she’s striving to make the difference that others have failed to.

“Being raised in Georgia, seeing the issues of gentrification, food insecurity, things like that, I've always been like, ‘This is wrong, this is not OK,’” she said. “No one's addressing it now, but give me some time — I'll get there.”

“Being raised in Georgia, seeing the issues of gentrification, food insecurity, things like that, I've always been like, ‘This is wrong, this is not OK.’ No one's addressing it now, but give me some time — I'll get there.”

The draw of community

Mitchell first heard about Notre Dame while browsing through the list of institutions partnering with QuestBridge, a scholarship program that matches low-income and first-generation students with universities. As Mitchell began to research the culture at Notre Dame, the strong community became evident almost immediately.

“As a first-generation student, I knew I wouldn't know anything about college, and I knew I needed that strong backbone,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell (front row, right) with students and faculty at an AnBryce Scholars Initiative holiday gathering.

She found support in the QuestBridge community and the AnBryce Scholars Initiative, a program offering mentorship to first-generation students. Eventually, Mitchell became part of this backbone for others — she served on the board of 1stGND, a community for first-generation students, and she performed in Show Some Skin, an annual production of student monologues highlighting marginalized voices and experiences on campus.

Mitchell was also drawn to Notre Dame’s commitment to being a force for good in the world — and though her academic passions evolved over time, she always kept this mindset at the center. She entered her first year as an intended finance major, inspired by the importance of financial literacy and a few high school internships in consulting and finance at The Intersect Group, FTI Consulting, and the USPS. Mitchell registered for Introduction to American Studies solely to satisfy the university’s history requirement, but the class with Associate Professor Jason Ruiz quickly sparked a deep love for the discipline.

“Every class, I was super excited to get there,” Mitchell said. “I loved the discussions, our readings. I found myself talking to my friends like every day about what we learned, what we talked about, and all the readings that we did.”

Mitchell was fascinated by American studies’ exploration of how identity shapes perceptions and realities, delving enthusiastically into the breadth of the department’s course offerings.

“American studies pushed me to think about identity in a different way,” she said, “and it's also helped me to consider the certain systems within society and how they're structured, and how we can change them and make them better for everyone.”

Opening doors to the world

Growing up in Atlanta, Mitchell had seen how these systems of power affected urban communities, particularly regarding the lack of affordable housing. Mitchell’s passion for this issue led her to add minors in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service and business economics, building practical skills needed to confront this problem.

Then, she turned her knowledge and skillset into action when she went abroad. After taking a trip to Ireland over spring break with her fellow AnBryce students, she was inspired to return to the country for a longer exploration. She applied for Notre Dame’s Irish Internship Program, which connects students with summer internships and research opportunities in Ireland.

Mitchell (front row, center) while abroad in Ireland.

Mitchell spent eight weeks in Dublin researching how affordable housing for single individuals is impacted by financialization (how housing is seen as an economic opportunity rather than a right).

“Notre Dame has impacted me by opening doors to the world,” Mitchell said. “Coming to Notre Dame, I didn't know that I was going to study abroad. It was always a dream.”

Mitchell utilized research databases at the National Library of Ireland and spoke with professors at University College Dublin and Trinity College to learn about how the country was addressing its housing crisis. On top of the academic resources, some of the best research came from the everyday conversations Mitchell had by living amongst the people of Dublin.

“Just being able to walk up to people in Ireland and ask them what they think — it was a really personal experience to talk to people about the issues that they care about, the current housing crisis, and how they're affected,” Mitchell said.

She’s planning to expand this analysis into her senior thesis next year, applying lessons from Ireland to the situation in the United States.

After the support she received from the University’s Dublin Global Gateway, Mitchell was eager to take advantage of the opportunities at another of the Global Gateways, leading her to study abroad in London in the fall of 2022. She built on her past research experiences by taking a class called At Home with the Victorians, which focused on housing in London throughout history.

“It was really interesting seeing how housing changed and how support for affordable housing kind of evolved,” Mitchell said. “So that really gave me another perspective in the context of the UK.”

A foundation for every path

Mitchell is now gathering a new point of view through the Washington Program, where she’s spent the semester interning at the Neighborhood Development Company, a real estate development company that focuses on creating affordable housing for the D.C. community. Mitchell has been assisting with researching, grant-writing, and more for the organization, giving her hands-on experience to complement her research and academic exploration of housing solutions.

“Coming to Notre Dame, I didn't know that I was going to study abroad,” Mitchell said. “It was always a dream.”

Her exposure to D.C. has been invaluable, she said, as she plans to work in real estate development, urban planning, or public policy with the goal of creating affordable housing and helping agencies engage with the communities they serve.

To Mitchell, her liberal arts education — specifically the exploration of identity through the humanities — is integral to her future career destinations.

“It's embedded in the business, it's embedded in policy,” Mitchell said. “In business, you use identity to decide how you advertise yourself, what your brand is, and what your values are. In policy, you’re asking questions about how you make policies that support the identities in your community.”

No matter which sectors she enters across her career, the College of Arts and Letters has prepared Mitchell with a spread of transferable skills — from critical thinking, communication, and more — that she can leverage across every opportunity.

“A liberal arts education,” she said, “allows you to build very foundational skills that can really be applicable to anything that you want to do.”

“A liberal arts education allows you to build very foundational skills that can really be applicable to anything that you want to do.”

Team effort: Through new Rome Fellows Program, sociologist and students take on pressing research question, present findings to Vatican officials

2023-04-05T08:00:00-04:00

Christian Smith (right), the inaugural Pizzo Family Rome Senior Research Fellow, with his students outside Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway.

Fewer Americans have identified as a member of a religion over the last 30 years, and Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith is working to explain why.

With the help of five undergraduates and one graduate student, this research is the centerpiece of a first-of-its-kind class at the University’s Rome Global Gateway that is culminating with a two-day symposium in April with Vatican officials and European scholars.

“We know from survey data and other studies that younger adults in the United States have become detached from traditional religion — even in ways Baby Boomers have not,” said Smith, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology. “This project tries to understand what happened.”

The research effort to examine contributing factors of this new religious reality is supported by the inaugural year of the Rome Fellows Program, a College of Arts & Letters initiative designed to pair intense undergraduate research experience with an ongoing question a faculty member is interested in exploring further.

The 12-month program, led by the Pizzo Family Rome Senior Research Fellow, will annually give students the chance to work collaboratively on a significant research question, spending time in a class on campus in the fall and advancing research in Rome in the spring.

“Much of what undergrads usually consume is the final results of research. Here, they’re getting thrown in from the beginning to see the process unfold over time,” Smith said. “Very few undergraduates in the country get this big-picture, long-term experience.”

“Much of what undergrads usually consume is the final results of research. Here, they’re getting thrown in from the beginning to see the process unfold over time. Very few undergraduates in the country get this big-picture, long-term experience.”

‘A huge phenomenon’

The research effort began last year on campus, with students conducting 200 in-person interviews focused on the human side of what people believe and how the world shapes religion through politics, families, and communities.

For the historical perspective of this trend, the team has been analyzing 30 sociological developments. The early 1990s is a key starting point, as that timeframe covers the post-Cold War world and the rise of the internet. Another focal point is the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 — a time when religion and violence intersected in news coverage, and the mass casualties and subsequent overseas conflicts shaped beliefs.

Smith’s research effort began last year on campus, with students conducting 200 in-person interviews focused on the human side of what people believe and how the world shapes religion.

“Traditional religion started to bomb out with younger adults — beginning with Gen Xers and Millennials and continuing with Gen Z,” Smith said. “This involved the growth of Americans identifying as ‘not religious.’ That’s grown since 1991, and especially in young Americans. The growth of ‘spiritual but not religious’ has become a huge phenomenon.”

To explain the drop-off, Smith and the students are examining music, pop culture, and the public fascination with vampires, werewolves, witchcraft, and UFOs. The growing interest in mindfulness, which is now part of corporate culture and mental-health support, will also be explored.

The team is also considering how the internet’s creation and rapid growth changed the way people think about authority, communication, news, information, and what it means to have a community.

“Nobody has put it all together, but I hope our research and its findings will help the Church come to grips with the profundity of the situation, the dire straits it’s in,” Smith said. “There is a pope right now who seems to have some sense that things need to change. As a sociologist, I’m not here to tell the Church what it needs to do. I’m just trying to provide fact-based information on what’s going on in the world.”

‘The more brains … the better’

Smith has especially enjoyed the opportunity that serving as the inaugural Pizzo Family Rome Senior Research Fellow has provided to work with the same group of students over a 12-month period.

“They’re just so good,” he said. “It’s fun to teach in a class for 14 weeks, but then the semester is over, and we have a whole new class of students. That’s university life. But this is a great opportunity to get to know undergrads, and they see what a professor’s life is like. The Rome program is already amazing as it is. This just adds a whole other dimension and layer.”

The research team at one of its favorite restaurants in Rome.

Sociology Ph.D. student Matt Coetzee described the program as an unparalleled opportunity for students to be involved in a project that is this expansive in scope.

“It’s really unique for undergrad exposure,” said Coetzee, a native of South Africa who appreciates that his daily commute in Rome leads him past the Colosseum. “It’s so great for critical thinking and their engagement in really tackling bigger sociological and life questions. This is how knowledge gets generated. It’s a messy process and a creative process that gets filtered. And the more brains you have working on it, the better.”

For sophomore Mary Grace Walsh, the project has been a perfect blend of her theology and sociology majors and reshaped the way she thinks about research. The experience has helped her develop many valuable skills and build strong relationships with mentors and friends, and she’s now already planning her senior thesis on disability and religion.

“I didn’t realize that academic research could be so formative, even for a student who has little interest in a future career in academia,” Walsh said. “This program has profoundly shaped my academic life and my Notre Dame experience for the better.”

The research project will vary every year, based on the research question the Pizzo fellow chooses to explore. As designed, it will conclude with a symposium that brings together Church officials, journalists, and scholars throughout Rome and the rest of Italy and Europe.

“We’re engaging people in the Church — especially in the Vatican — for a day to have a big conversation about what the research project is about,” Smith said. “If this succeeds, Notre Dame faculty, as scholars, are learning things that can contribute to the knowledge of leaders in the Church — things they should know and be interested in learning about and hearing about.”

“If this succeeds, Notre Dame faculty, as scholars, are learning things that can contribute to the knowledge of leaders in the Church — things they should know and be interested in learning about and hearing about.”

Notre Dame psychologists collaborate to develop support program for Palestinians impacted by violence in Gaza, West Bank

2023-03-08T12:00:00-05:00

Mark Cummings

Laura Miller-Graff

Notre Dame psychology professors Laura Miller-Graff and E. Mark Cummings have developed an intervention and support program to support Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza who are affected by ongoing conflict there.

The Promoting Positive Family Futures (PPFF) program includes strategies to strengthen the mental health of parents and children, and fortify emotional security and healthy communication in households.

Cummings and Miller-Graff have worked in partnership with Palestinian organizations for years to develop a program that’s sustainable and culturally and evidence-based, and now hope it can benefit families in other high-risk areas around the world.

“It started with an interest in what could be done to help children and families affected by political violence and armed conflict,” said Cummings, the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Professor of Psychology. “There was really no strong model for how to do that.”

Youth who encounter sociopolitical violence and trauma are at risk for significant and long-lasting repercussions, including anxiety, behavior problems, and depression. And while intervention programs for children do exist in the territory, there are few evidence-based programs that focus on families.

“What we know in settings that are conflict-affected is that everybody, the whole society, is impacted,” said Miller-Graff, an associate professor of psychology and peace studies. “And families are living together in these settings. There’s really a significant gap in comprehensive family-focused services that approach care more holistically.”

“What we know in settings that are conflict-affected is that everybody, the whole society, is impacted. And families are living together in these settings. There’s really a significant gap in comprehensive family-focused services that approach care more holistically.”

To address this critical need, the Notre Dame colleagues crafted the ground-breaking PPFF program in collaboration with the Palestinian Counseling Center/Arab Counseling Center for Education, Catholic Relief Services, Palestinian scholars, and experts in global mental health. It’s funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, and includes Notre Dame psychologist Peggy Wang and Eric Dubow (BGSU/University of Michigan) and Khalil Shikaki (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research) as co-investigators.

Bolstering family and community support, the researchers said, is key to promoting healthy functioning in households exposed to conflict on multiple levels, from bombings, to movement restriction, to lack of food, clean water, and health care. Miller-Graff said it’s important to note that it’s normal for people experiencing chronic violence and injustice to be distressed.

“We have to make sure that psychological care provides support without pathologizing distress in that context,” she said, “or normalizing the violence that’s happening.”

Three hundred households — 150 in Gaza and 150 in the West Bank — will take part in the sustainable, culturally attuned, and family-based PPFF.

The 12-hour program includes one 90-minute session per week for eight weeks; six sessions will be group-based and two will be family-based. Participants will be taught basic skills of cognitive behavior therapy and communication strategies for how to engage about a variety of topics.

During group sessions, fathers will meet together in one space while mothers and children will gather together concurrently in another. That’s because in an early pilot, fathers were reluctant to participate in group sessions. When a group was created exclusively for them, engagement skyrocketed from zero to 100 percent, Cummings said.

“It truly speaks to the importance of having an iterative process that includes feedback from the key stakeholders — both practitioners and families,” said Miller-Graff, who also is director of undergraduate studies of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and director of the BRAVE (Building Resilience After Violence Exposure) Research Lab.

A subsequent pilot program implemented with 68 families at the end of 2020 in Gaza City yielded promising benefits.

“In a fraction of the time, our program had just as much impact on the adolescents as those in a very strong adolescent-based program and had additional unique benefits for mothers and fathers,” said Cummings.

Adolescents in the PPFF pilot achieved comparable positive results with counterparts who took part in a longer (50-hour, 25-session), well-established, locally administered, adolescent program. Youth in both programs demonstrated significant improvement in adjustment problems, resilience and security within the family.

The PPFF program also resulted in distinct, positive outcomes for parents and familywide adjustment. Notably, through the use of cognitive strategies, parents were better able to regulate their emotions, which was associated with lower levels of depression.

The researchers have built time into the five-year project to evaluate its effectiveness. The resulting data will guide their next steps.

If the PPFF is successful, area counseling centers and organizations could administer the program to additional families in the West Bank and Gaza, where about 5.3 million people live.

Cummings said there’s also a possibility the program could be replicated anywhere — with adjustments for cultures and norms — that is impacted by chronic violence.

There’s no shortage of possibilities; in 2022, the United Nations indicated that 2 billion people worldwide live in conflict-affected zones.

“Every context is different,” he said, “and we can adapt the program to the context.”

“In a fraction of the time, our program had just as much impact on the adolescents as those in a very strong adolescent-based program and had additional unique benefits for mothers and fathers.”

Women Lead 2023 — Alison Rice: Discovering the voices leading a literary revolution

2023-03-06T12:00:00-05:00

Alison Rice, chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and a professor of French and Francophone studies.

Throughout Alison Rice's career, her research, writing and teaching have amplified the voices and experiences of women, including those from underrepresented communities, on campus and around the world.

Her latest work elevates the creative writing of women who come to Paris and publish prolifically in French, despite it not being their native language — a “literary revolution,” she says, that deserves to be celebrated, as they deploy stylistic and thematic innovations derived from their diverse, and sometimes common, past experiences.

In honor of International Women's Day, read more about Rice's work here, as well as the story of six other Notre Dame women who are innovating in their fields to help the University become a powerful means for doing good in the world.

For biology major Jack Heatherman, taking English classes sparked a passion for writing — and an exciting new career path

2023-02-16T08:00:00-05:00

Jack Heatherman started studying English because he wanted to improve his chances of getting into medical school.

It was a decision that ultimately led the senior to a second major, a new career path, an internship that became a job offer, and a passion for writing that inspired him to write a nonfiction travelog and a coming-of-age novel for his senior thesis project.

“I’ve always had the mentality that I don’t want a simple career. I want to enjoy my work, and create something new and exciting with it,” he said. “Writing gives me that sense of fulfillment and challenge. I write almost every day now, for the sake of the craft and my own sanity. It’s become my passion — and, I really believe, my future.”

Heatherman arrived at Notre Dame as a biology major, and started taking English classes because he heard that medical school applicants who study the liberal arts do better on the analytical portion of the MCAT exam. He had a passion for writing and the arts stemming back to high school, but his initial sole focus was one becoming a doctor.

“Writing gives me that sense of fulfillment and challenge. I write almost every day now, for the sake of the craft and my own sanity. It’s become my passion — and, I really believe, my future.”

As he took more classes and added English as a second major, however, he enjoyed the work enough that his aspirations began to shift.

“Within about a year or two, I started talking with my professors about my growing interest in writing and that argumentative factor within English that I really enjoyed,” he said. “And I said I really want to be in the sciences but I don't think med school is for me. I wanted to be able to use both the skill sets I've learned here at Notre Dame.”

His biology advisor then encouraged him to explore law school opportunities, noting that a niche group of College of Science students go to law school, often involving issues related to medical technology and devices.

“I’m really intrigued by patent law and the potential for being able to help people discover new ideas and control where those ideas go from start to finish,” he said. “Now that’s exciting — that sounds like me.”

A tale of two fields

Heatherman conducting ecological research in St. Mary's Lake.

Balancing two majors in two different colleges at Notre Dame was a challenge, he said, both in terms of scheduling required classes and time management in completing readings, exams, and papers. The bonds he formed with faculty, however, helped him work through it all.

“Something the College of Arts and Letters does very, very well, is being open. Professors have that personal relationship with a student,” he said. “You feel like you have a friend as well as a mentor in your professor, and they’re dedicated to pushing your unique strengths toward success.”

He loves both of his majors, but said he found that after long hours of memorizing terms and working in the lab for science classes, his English coursework often felt like a respite. In wide-ranging classes on topics from international literature to American “weird” culture, he found himself invigorated by the writing and discussion he was involved in.

His majors complement each other well, he said, with biology training his mind to be innovative, while English helps him develop strong communication skills.

“The ability to argue, the ability to speak in public and write and really express your thoughts I think comes directly from Arts and Letters,” Heatherman said. “But that passion and drive towards innovation comes from science. So together, they work very well.”

A formative experience

As a first-year, Heatherman combined his science and writing passions when he began writing for Scientia, the College of Science’s undergraduate journal, then became an editor in his sophomore year.

“The stereotype is that scientists aren’t very good writers, but I think the reality is that good scientists are incredible writers. It’s just a different kind of writing,” he said. “Being an editor was one of the harder things I’ve done at Notre Dame — it made me a better writer, in addition to exposing me to all this research.”

Heatherman in front of the Oxford home of J.R.R. Tolkein, his literary hero.

In the spring of his junior year, Heatherman traveled abroad to London, where he grew an affection for the neighborhood he stayed at and even wrote his first book, a nonfiction “love project toward my time abroad,” which he is now talking with publishers about releasing.

Heatherman is currently working on his creative writing senior thesis project, an epic coming-of-age story about a young South African boy trying to find himself in a place of tremendous cultural intersection. He’s also planning to spend his spring break in Cape Town, South Africa, researching the religion and culture of the Zulu tribe, a trip made possible through a grant from the College of Arts & Letters’ Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

Working on his thesis has helped him further grow as a writer, helped develop stronger relationships with faculty in the Department of English, and reconsider what type of writing he might want to do in the future.

“It’s been a very formative experience for me,” he said. “The workshopping, the primary research, the learning about the literary world and the world I’m building in the novel, it becomes more than just a hobby to write.”

A bright future

Heatherman has been an involved member of his residence hall, Knott Hall, serving as president his junior year and as a resident assistant this year.

Heatherman also gained real-world professional experience at Notre Dame through several internships in biotech. He credits the Meruelo Family Center for Career Development for helping him find his most recent one, a summer internship with the Michigan-based medical technology company Stryker. Working in the global regulatory division, he wrote briefs about why certain devices were ready to go to market, and why others weren’t. He also helped them develop a new system for analyzing the market impact of new versus accessory devices.

The feedback he received at the job, Heatherman said, was reflective of the impact of a Notre Dame education.

“People who have been there for 20 years were like, ‘I’ve never met someone who is able to communicate, to bring people together like you,’” he said. “And that was directly correlated to my Notre Dame experience.”

Heatherman credited his classes, workshops, and science labs at Notre Dame as all factoring into his collaboration skills and his high performance, which earned him a return offer to the company for after he graduates from Notre Dame.

“All it took was saying yes to those two majors and letting the rest fall into place,” he said. “I’ll be a writer for life, whether it becomes my full-time career or not. I never would have thought that possible before. At the end of the day, I feel better prepared for my job and, eventually, law school thanks to my time studying English.”

“I’ll be a writer for life, whether it becomes my full-time career or not. I never would have thought that possible before. At the end of the day, I feel better prepared for my job and, eventually, law school thanks to my time studying English.”

Historian Patrick Griffin named honorary member of Royal Irish Academy, Ireland’s highest academic honor

2023-02-09T08:00:00-05:00

Patrick Griffin

Patrick Griffin, the Madden-Hennebry Professor of History and director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, has been named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy, considered the highest academic honor in Ireland.

Established in 1785, the RIA is an independent learned society of about 650 members selected for their contributions to research in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and public service.

Membership is limited to residents of Ireland, but a small number of honorary non-Irish members are elected each year, a distinction typically reserved for academics who have made a major international contribution in their discipline.

“I am honored and humbled to have been elected to one of the world’s great scholarly academies,” Griffin said. “Being an American and an American historian with close ties to Ireland makes my election that much more meaningful. It suggests that, maybe, my work has made some sort of mark.”

Griffin is the author of a number of books including The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (Yale, 2017), America’s Revolution (Oxford, 2012), American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (Hill & Wang, 2007) and The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World (Princeton, 2001).

His most recent book is Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty (University of Virginia Press, 2021), co-edited with Francis D. Cogliano of the University of Edinburgh. His next book, The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World, will be published in May by Yale University Press.

He has won grants and fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is also an honorary professor of the University of Edinburgh, and in 2021 was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford.

Four Notre Dame faculty members have previously been named to the RIA — English and Irish studies professors Declan Kiberd and Seamus Deane, Irish professor Breandán Ó Buachalla, and philosophy professor Alasdair MacIntyre.

Foreign Language Week returns to Notre Dame from Feb. 11–19, celebrating language learning and cultural engagement

2023-02-08T09:39:00-05:00

The LaFortune Ballroom came alive last year during Foreign Language Week 2022 with the smell of food, the beating of drums, the sound of music, and the grace of the dancers from different cultures. Events transported attendees to different parts of the world, from graceful and elegant classical Chinese dance to the energetic and lively Irish jig performance.

Foreign Language Week (FLW) is making a return this year, starting on Saturday, Feb. 11, with a special Chinese New Year celebration, and more than 90 other events across campus celebrating different languages and cultures from around the globe.

Featured during the week will be a variety of activities and events, including cultural demonstrations, language masses, discussion panels, language tables, cooking events, games, film screenings, dance performances, and more.

Hands-on workshops will offer a chance to learn about the customs, traditions, and history of different countries and cultures. Academic presentations will provide in-depth inquiry into aspects of careers, intercultural development, and international politics. Performances will include traditional music, dance, singers, and storytelling from around the world. Guest speakers include interdisciplinary scholars, film directors, Notre Dame graduate students, and faculty from other universities. Events will be held across campus.

The highlight of the week will be the Culture Fair on Wednesday, Feb. 15 in the Dahnke Ballroom on the 7th floor of Duncan Student Center. The culture fair will feature opportunities to learn traditional crafts from around the world, music and dance performances (some of which are interactive), games from a variety of cultures, and food from around the globe.

The events during FLW were coordinated by the CSLC’s Eva Hoeckner, program manager of language initiatives, who also serves as faculty in the German program at Notre Dame.

Events were planned in conjunction with the Program in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Irish Language and Literature, East Asian Languages and Cultures, German and Russian Languages and Literatures, Romance Languages, and Literatures, a variety of student clubs on campus, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Career Services, the Alliance for Catholic Education, the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, the Department of Music, Sacred Music at Notre Dame, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, and the Notre Dame Alumni Association, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, Institute for Latino Studies, Campus Ministry, Residential Life, and Notre Dame’s Dining Services.

All events aim to promote the importance of learning foreign languages and fostering a greater understanding of other cultures. The Culture Fair, and the entirety of FLW events, are open to all students, faculty, and staff. All events are open to the public. Some events require registration or free ticket reservation, so check the calendar events linked below for more information.

February 11-19, 2023

Complete list of FLW Events

Originally published by Luke Van de Walle at cslc.nd.edu on February 01, 2023.