Bill McKibben
“Building the Climate Movement”
Wednesday, January 30, 7:30 p.m. Gasson Hall 100
From his first book, "The End of Nature" (1989), to his most recent, “Fight Global Warming Now: A Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community” (2007), Bill McKibben has warned us of the dangers of global warming. Among scientists, consensus is now over-whelming that our planet is close to the tipping point when greenhouse gasses released by the burning of fossil fuels will bring about terrible changes, including the exter- mination of many species, the melting of the polar ice caps (with a consequent disastrous rise in sea level), and intense extremes in climate. |
|
R. F. Foster
“The Strange Death of Romantic Ireland”
Monday, March 17, 7:30 p.m. Gasson Hall 100
R.F. Foster is the biographer of Charles Stewart Parnell and Lord Randolph Churchill, the editor of The Oxford History of Ireland (1989), and the author of Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 (1988), a work generally regarded as the most accurate account of modern Irish history. In 1991 he became the first Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford. His re- cently completed life of William Butler Yeats (Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914; Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939) is regarded as one of the great English-language biographies of our time. Co-sponsor: Irish Studies. |
Cathleen Kaveny
2008 Candlemas Lecture
“Prophets, Priests, and Kings: Christianity, Confidence, and Humility in the Public Square"
Thursday, February 7, 7:30 p.m. Devlin Hall 101
Cathleen Kaveny is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, where her seminars explore relationships among theology, philosophy, and law. Her published essays provide the grounding for full discussion of various issues where Christian ethics and U.S. culture and politics intersect, issues such as abortion, gay marriage, torture, and the cooperation with evil. Often the essays draw upon popular media, for example, The Sopranos and Will and Grace. |
|
Louise Glück
“Reading from Her Poetry”
Tuesday, March 25, 4:00 p.m. Devlin Hall 101
Louise Glück is the author of eleven books of poetry. In 1985 The Triumph of Achilles won the National Book Critics Circle Award; in 1993 The Wild Iris won a Pulitzer Prize. Her essay collection, Proofs and Theories, Essays on Poetry (1994), won a PEN/Martha Albrand Award. In 2001 Yale University awarded Ms. Glück a Bollingen Prize in Poetry for her lifetime achievement. From 2003 to 2004 she served as U.S. Poet Laureate. Her poems often draw from classic myths, fairy tales, and the Bible. Her most recent book of poetry, Averno (2006), is a series of meditations on the mythological Persephone’s descent into Hades. Co-sponsor: Poetry Days.
|
Geraldine Brooks
“Reading from People of the Book”
Sunday, February 10, 7:30 p.m. Gasson Hall 100
Before she was a novelist, Geraldine Brooks was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering crises in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. Her second novel, March, earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006. The novel records the Civil War experiences of the father of the four March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Ms. Brooks’s new novel, People of the Book (2008), is a fictionalized narrative of the perilous history of the Sarajevo Haggadah manuscript, from its origins in Inquisition Spain to its present location in Sarajevo. |
|
Edward P. Jones
“Reading from All Aunt Hagar’s Children”
Wednesday April 9, 7:30 p.m. Gasson Hall 100
Edward P. Jones is the author of three distinguished works of fiction. For the first, Lost in the City (1992), a collection of short stories, he won both the Pen/Hemingway award and a Lannan Grant. For the second, The Known World (2003), a novel whose subject is slavery in ante-bellum Virginia, he won a Pulitzer Prize. His third book, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, (2006), is a collection of short stories presenting lives of Afri- can-Americans in 20th century Washington D.C., his home town. Co-sponsor: Fiction Days.
|
