McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture

4:30 - 5:45 p.m. | March 17, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

Science and religion remain at odds today, despite the insistence of Saint John Paul II and Pope Francis to reconcile these areas toward an integrated worldview. Ilia Delio, Franciscan sister and Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, explores the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and scientist who developed a cosmic vision of Catholicity, and reflects on whether or not his vision can provide hope in light of the technological challenges of the twenty-first century.

A Deitchman Family Lecture on Religion and Modernity.

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4:30 - 5:45 p.m. | March 24, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

From the end of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth, Irish Americans opened doors for Jewish immigrants and other newcomers to the United States. Hasia Diner, Professor Emerita at New York University and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History, considers how and where this allyship played itself out and what each group, the Jews and the Irish, had to gain from it.

Part of the Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding. 

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March 28 and 29, 2025

Seelos Theatre, Kimball Hall

Penned in 1984 by an ecumenical group of ten deaf and hearing women and men from North America, the Claggett statement was an early expression of Deaf Liberation theology produced at a time of cultural awakening and creativity among Deaf people. This symposium spotlights this important statement on its 40th anniversary, by bringing together scholars and practitioners from the United States and beyond to examine the past, present and future of the Claggett Statement for Deaf Christians across the world.

This conference is co-organized by Audrey Seah (Religious Studies) and Kirk VanGilder (Gallaudet University).

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4:30-5:45 p.m. | March 28, 2025

Seelos Theatre, Kimball Hall

R.A.R. Edwards, Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology, discusses historiography using the Deaf Catholic Archives as a model to demonstrate the opportunities and advantages, as well as the challenges and obstacles, that researchers encounter when using archival collections.

Co-sponsored with the Archives & Distinctive Collections department.

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4:30-5:45 p.m. | March 31, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

Known for his eloquence as a survivor of the Holocaust, his accomplishments as a literary master, his advocacy of Jewish causes and study, and his unstinting activism as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Elie Wiesel also made "celebration" a key term in his personal lexicon of life and work. Alan Rosen, Kraft-Hiatt Scholar in Residence, will aim to show how Wiesel’s passion for celebration, cultivated over decades, served as a driving force behind his vocation and message.
 

Part of the Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding. 

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4:30-5:45 p.m. | April 1, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

Emily Wilson, Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses what we might learn from the Homeric poems about ethics and empathy, moral and poetic challenges of studying, & engaging with and translating the distant past.

A Thomas More Lecture on the Humanities.

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4:30-5:45 p.m. | April 3, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

Historically, the United States has preferred to fight its wars by substituting technology and money for manpower. Kate Epstein, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers-Camden, will explore the implications of the US “way of war” for the nation’s commitment to liberal capitalism—that is, to norms of representative government, due process, and democratic accountability, on the one hand, and to free markets and private property rights, on the other.

Co-sponsored with Peace and Conflict Studies.

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5:15-6:30 p.m. | April 8, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

Ruha Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, presents the concept of the “New Jim Code” to explore a range of discriminatory designs that encode inequity into technology. She will also consider how race itself is a tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice and discuss how technology can be used toward liberatory ends. In doing so, Ruha challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we manufacture ourselves.
Co-sponsored with Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

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4:30-5:45 p.m. | April 10, 2025

Rehm Library, Smith Hall

In the late nineteenth century, a formal overseas American empire rose while the long unwinding of the "Second American Republic" began. Manisha Sinha, James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut, argues that the fall of Reconstruction paved the way for the West’s conquest and a formal and informal American empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific. 

Co-sponsored with the Department of History.

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