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Allison and Thomas Franco make transformative gift for Notre Dame institute advancing research excellence and public engagement in the liberal arts

2025-03-19T13:00:00-04:00

Allison and Thomas Franco of New York City have made a transformative gift to the University of Notre Dame to endow an institute in the College of Arts & Letters that provides unparalleled support for faculty and student research and will significantly expand its commitment to catalyzing work that connects broadly and deeply with the public.

The Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, formerly known as the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, will rapidly advance Notre Dame’s existing strength in humanities research through investments in innovative, creative work that will engage the public on the most pressing issues of the modern era.

“At the core of Notre Dame’s identity as a leading global Catholic research university is a deep commitment to excellence in the humanities and the liberal arts,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History.

“In a time when many institutions are divesting from these disciplines, we are uniquely positioned to lead — providing a home where faculty and students can dream up ideas and extend these conversations beyond the classroom. This generous gift empowers us to advance research excellence and public engagement, further strengthening our ability to uncover the truths, ideas and values that shape our world.”

The transformation of the Franco Institute reflects a key theme of the University’s strategic framework — strengthening areas of traditional excellence — and the humanities have consistently been disciplines in which Notre Dame is world-renowned, McGreevy noted.

The Francos’ support significantly enhances a thriving research foundation at the institute, where funding for faculty scholarly pursuits increased by more than 15 percent this year. For 40 years, the institute has been a source of internal grants for research and creative projects; funding, planning and promotion of academic conferences and symposia; and support for developing applications for external funding. In large part due to guidance provided by the institute, Notre Dame leads the nation in National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships won since 2000, and last year, three Arts & Letters faculty won Guggenheim fellowships.

While maintaining and improving its commitment to funding faculty and student research across the arts, humanities and social sciences, the Franco Institute will now add a significant emphasis on public engagement, bringing humanities research to the world in a way that meaningfully shapes discourse on pressing challenges.

“At this moment of transition, the institute is poised to move Arts & Letters research more dramatically into the public view,” said Kate Marshall, founding director of the institute, associate dean for research and strategic initiatives and the Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs Collegiate Chair in the Department of English. “By fostering collaborative research into the great, difficult and enduring questions of our time, the Franco Institute will ensure that the scholarship unique to Notre Dame’s strengths and commitments reaches its full transformative potential.”

In spring 2026, the Franco Institute will launch a key component of its new commitment to public engagement — the Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good Symposium. Named for two of the foremost socially engaged Catholic thinkers of the 20th century, the signature annual event will culminate a year of themed research support at the institute. It will gather speakers across a range of backgrounds — public figures, artists and scholars — to consider an urgent yet enduring question and engage in a dialogue that can guide public conversation on the topic.

The gift from the Francos also provides permanent support for the institute’s Research Innovation Collaboratives program, which launched with five interdisciplinary projects last year and is now seeking proposals for a second round of project funding. The collaboratives serve as research incubators, bringing together pairs of faculty members from across disciplines and departments to tackle major questions in a way that leads to innovative scholarship, pedagogy and outreach. The institute has also created a humanities fellowship program, providing one-semester internal residencies for up to six faculty per year to devote full-time effort to research and writing while also providing a forum for sharing and discussing their work in progress.

Later this year, the institute will launch a Public Fellows Program, designed to ensure that scholarly expertise in the liberal arts does not remain isolated in the academy. Two fellows per year will be accepted from among the Arts & Letters faculty, providing them with time, resources and training to help them adapt, translate and transform their research in a way that reaches wider audiences through media commentary, public speaking opportunities and community engagement.

Thomas Franco — a 1974 alumnus of Notre Dame’s great books major, the Program of Liberal 91��Ƶ — is a senior adviser at private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) in New York City, where he served as a partner. He previously was chairman and CEO of Broadgate Consultants and was a founder of the global publishing business PEI Media. He serves on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences and the board of the Private Capital Research Institute, and he advises several private investment firms and nonprofits, including Commonweal magazine. He holds a Master of Arts degree from Smith College and a J.D. from Fordham University, and he is currently enrolled in an M.A. program at Union Theological Seminary.

“We are living in a time that needs big ideas that can make a difference — and the liberal arts are the disciplines we must turn to to provide those ideas,” Tom Franco said. “Studying the great books shaped not just the course of my career but the course of my life, and I am exceptionally excited about the way humanities research forged at Notre Dame can shape our society for the better.”

Allison Franco, an alumna of Queens College, earned a Master of Social Work degree from Fordham University and is a licensed clinical social worker. In addition to managing the family’s investment activities and charitable activities, she serves on the board of Nazareth Housing, a community-based nonprofit promoting housing stability and economic mobility among vulnerable families and individuals in New York City.

“Our hope is that the institute will help to ensure the humanities continue to be a discipline in which Notre Dame remains world-renowned,” Allison Franco said. “We are especially excited about the Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good annual symposium, which will bring together renowned thinkers, artists, writers and spiritual leaders to engage on the consequential issues of our time.”

Contact: Carrie Gates, associate director of media relations, 574-993-9220, c.gates@nd.edu

Literacy scholar Ernest Morrell elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

2024-04-24T16:55:00-04:00

Ernest Morrell

Ernest Morrell, the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

Morrell — who is also the College of Arts and Letters associate dean for the humanities and equity, a professor of English and Africana studies, and director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives’ Center for Literacy Education — was one of the 250 members of the newest AAAS class announced today. Other notable names among the group include filmmaker George Clooney, Apple CEO Tim Cook, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist and 1993 Notre Dame alumnus Carlos Lozada.

“I am extremely honored and humbled to receive this recognition from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” Morrell said, “and I am indebted to Notre Dame for allowing me to do this work and for being a place that connects cutting-edge academic scholarship with its mission to be a force for good in the world.”

Morrell came to Notre Dame in 2017 after faculty appointments at Columbia University’s Teachers College; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Michigan State University. His scholarly interests include critical pedagogy, English education, literacy studies, postcolonial studies and youth popular culture.

His recent research focuses on how the use of popular culture in the classroom can successfully engage urban youth and communities, with an emphasis on translanguaging — the idea that students can maximize their learning by using the many different languages they use in their everyday lives.

Morrell will be formally inducted to the AAAS in a Sept. 21 ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Education Section, whose roster of current fellows includes Harvard University developmental psychologist Howard Gardner; Louisiana State University President William Tate IV; Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation; and Linda Darling Hammond, the Charles Ducommun Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate 91��Ƶ of Education.

“This honor is reflective of my 30-year relationship with literacy studies,” Morrell said. “I’ve simply tried to learn from the ways that people use language every day to develop ways of teaching formal literacies that are pathways to academic gain, economic empowerment and social engagement for our most vulnerable populations.

“It has been an incredible journey so far, but there is so much left to be done.”

Morrell is the author of more than 100 articles, research briefs and book chapters and 15 scholarly books, including “Educating Harlem: A Century of 91��Ƶing and Resistance in a Black Community” (Columbia, 2019), “Stories from Inequity to Justice in Literacy Education: Confronting Digital Divides” (Routledge, 2021), “New Directions in Teaching English: Reimagining Teaching, Teacher Education and Research” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) and “Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City 91��Ƶs” (Teachers College Press, 2013), which was awarded Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association’s Choice magazine.

An elected member of the National Academy of Education and an elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Morrell has for the past decade been included in the Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual listing published by Education Week that highlights academics who have the biggest impact on educational practice and policy.

“Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a remarkable honor, and it is wonderful to see Ernest Morrell receive this well-deserved recognition for his superb scholarship and innovative leadership in literacy education,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at Notre Dame.

Since its founding during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th.

Morrell is the 30th AAAS fellow elected from Notre Dame. Other Notre Dame fellows include Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.; R. Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs; Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy; Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish 91��Ƶ; George Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus; Dianne Pinderhughes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Africana 91��Ƶ and Political Science; Jean Porter, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology; and James VanderKam, the John A. O’Brien Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Scriptures.

Notre Dame launches University-wide Democracy Initiative to advance research, education and policy efforts to sustain and enhance democracy

2024-04-17T11:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame has launched an ambitious new Democracy Initiative, an interdisciplinary research, education and policy effort focused on advancing solutions to sustain and strengthen global democracy.

Democracy is in crisis at home and abroad. Polarization is high, trust is low and public discourse is toxic. The level of democracy experienced by the average person in the world today has regressed to the level of 1985, and more than 70 percent of the global population currently lives under autocracy, according to a 2024 report by the Varieties of Democracy Project.

“Notre Dame will leverage its position as a leading global Catholic research university to play a key role in responding to this crisis,” said University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. “We will do all we can as scholars, teachers and leaders to reverse these troubling trends and preserve democracy for generations to come.”

Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, acclaimed journalist and renowned defender of democracy, speaks at the 2023-24 Notre Dame Forum event “Safeguarding Democracy in an Era of AI and Digital Disinformation.” (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

Father Jenkins designated “The Future of Democracy” as the theme for the 2023-24 Notre Dame Forum, bringing to campus national and international experts who were featured in University-wide keynote events. The Notre Dame Democracy Initiative builds on those important conversations.

Emerging from the University’s strategic framework and led by political scientist David Campbell, the initiative will incubate and accelerate research on the health of democracy in the U.S. and worldwide, serve as a convenor for conversations about and actions to preserve democracy, and foster a model for the formation of civically engaged citizens and public servants.

“Notre Dame can — indeed must — be a global catalyst for strengthening faith in democracy,” said Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy.

The University is already a leader in two key areas of the study of democracy in the Department of Political Science, with a strong cohort of scholars of American government in the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and a long legacy of the study of global democracy, especially in Latin America, in the Kellogg Institute for International 91��Ƶ, which is part of Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs. American attitudes toward democratic principles are regularly assessed through the Rooney Center’s Health of Democracy Survey, and Notre Dame political scientist Michael Coppedge has been a key contributor to the Varieties of Democracy Project, an annual assessment of the state of democracy across the world led by an international group of scholars.

Notre Dame’s new initiative seeks to foster deeper and more impactful collaboration between scholars of U.S. and global democracy in these and other Notre Dame centers, institutes and programs, while also providing support for democracy-related research in a wide range of disciplines, from history to law to computer science. This will include interconnected research clusters focused on democratic institutions, democratic culture, and religion and democracy.

While the state of U.S. democracy appears to be on a dangerous precipice, Campbell said, it has weathered similar crises in the past thanks to scholar-driven democratic innovations that are now taken for granted. Ensuring the preservation of American government — and democracy around the world — demands that bright minds come together again to propose innovative solutions to pressing problems.

“Republicans and Democrats agree that there is something wrong with American democracy, and the simple recognition of a problem is the starting point,” Campbell said. “If things are going to change, it will require institutions like the University of Notre Dame to bring brilliant people together to figure out what to do differently.”

University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., moderates a bipartisan conversation between U.S. Senators Chris Coons of Delaware and Todd Young of Indiana as part of the 2023-24 Notre Dame Forum. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

The Notre Dame Democracy Initiative will direct its work toward three areas:

Research: The initiative will support scholarship that proposes solutions to democracy’s biggest challenges, not just by political scientists but by researchers from across the disciplines. It will have a focused interest in developing projects that identify and propose solutions that can be translated to policymakers and the general public.
Education: By creating and enhancing curricular and co-curricular opportunities in South Bend and in Washington, D.C., the initiative will develop Notre Dame undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs into the next generation of principled civic leaders.
Convening: The initiative will serve as a platform through which the University hosts high-profile events with key figures in the fight to preserve and advance democracy, while also bringing together elected officials and policymakers from across the political spectrum to learn from the research done at Notre Dame. The Kellogg Institute’s Global Democracy Conference, being held on campus May 20–22, and the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy’s Keeping the Republic Conference on May 8 are prime examples of the role Notre Dame can play in facilitating and advancing vital conversations among scholars, policymakers and practitioners focused on key questions related to democracy.

“Notre Dame’s Catholic mission, with its ethical commitments rooted in faith that do not neatly align with any one party, gives us a unique platform to credibly engage voices and reach citizens across the political spectrum — a rare prospect in this bitterly divided era,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost. “We are prepared to take on the great responsibility of filling a critical gap in the current political conversation and sharing innovative insights from our research in order to explore how we can work together to strengthen democracy.”

For more information about the Democracy Initiative, visit go.nd.edu/democracy.

Veldman family makes gift to Notre Dame for a mental health research and services clinic

2024-01-09T11:06:41-05:00

Multiple Veldman family foundations, including those of Sharon and Matt Edmonds, Connie and Mike Joines, and Anita and Tom Veldman, have made a gift to the University of Notre Dame in honor of their parents to establish the Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic and to endow several key faculty positions, marking a significant expansion in the quality and availability of mental health care in the South Bend area.

“The need for mental health resources has increased exponentially, in our nation, in the local community and on every college campus in the country,” said University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. “Given our mission to be a force for good in the world, Notre Dame has the opportunity to develop new models for the provision of mental health services and undertake groundbreaking research on how to treat mental illnesses, while also enhancing services for our students and helping to meet the overwhelming demand for more mental health resources in our local community. We are deeply grateful to the Veldman family for their support as we seek to bring hope and healing to those struggling with mental illness and build healthier and more compassionate communities.”

The Veldman Family Psychology Clinic will unite the work of Notre Dame’s William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families, the Suicide Prevention Initiative—Research, Intervention, and Training (SPIRIT), and a major new substance use initiative, while expanding the availability of affordable mental health counseling services to residents of the South Bend area.

The University’s strategic framework includes a commitment to addressing the nationwide mental health crisis as part of a new Health and Well-Being Initiative. The new clinic, a key component of that initiative, will significantly enhance the research of faculty in the Department of Psychology and offer immersive training for clinical psychology graduate students, who will be empowered to share pioneering evidence-based mental health practices with communities across the country.

The Veldman family’s gift will fund a new building for the clinic, to be constructed at the site of the existing Psychological Services Center at 501 N. Hill St. in South Bend’s East Bank neighborhood. The facility will create a centralized hub for faculty and student collaboration as well as an easily accessible service-delivery center for South Bend community members to visit and receive care.

Once constructed and fully operational, the Veldman Family Psychology Clinic will significantly increase evidence-based mental health services available to residents of South Bend and the surrounding area. The need for these services was highlighted by recent research by Daniel Tadmon, assistant professor of sociology at Notre Dame, which found that about 70 percent of Americans have better access to psychiatric care than those who live in the South Bend area.

The clinic will increase the number of senior psychology faculty, triple the number of clinical psychology graduate students and triple the experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate psychology majors.

The current counseling capacity of the clinic will double in the coming years, eventually serving more than 1,500 people in the South Bend community annually through mental health assessment, intervention and prevention services. The clinic will also foster partnerships with community organizations to advance access to mental health care throughout the region.

“Mental health is more than an urgent public health priority — it is a moral imperative that Notre Dame is especially well suited to address,” said Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters. “That work can and should start right here in South Bend as we care for our community while simultaneously developing new prevention, intervention and treatment practices that will inform innovative care across the nation.”

The expansion also marks an important step forward in a partnership between the academy and the Division of Student Affairs focused on a long-term goal of raising the level of mental health care provided to students.

Through the Veldman family’s support, the clinic will now be home to a significantly expanded presence for SPIRIT, accelerating its comprehensive and innovative work on suicide prevention. Led by co-directors Theodore Beauchaine, the William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology and director of primary prevention, and Brooke Ammerman, an assistant professor of psychology and the Dr. Marsha Linehan Director of Secondary Prevention, SPIRIT pursues groundbreaking research on self-injury, suicide ideation and suicide attempts, and provides prevention services to children, adolescents, adults and families.

The clinic will unite these expanded efforts with Notre Dame’s current strength in trauma-focused research housed at the Shaw Center. Led by director Kristin Valentino, a professor of psychology and the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Collegiate Chair, the center advances the well-being of children and families through basic and applied research, improving public understanding of how to improve the lives of children and families, especially those who have experienced trauma.

Born in the mid-1920s, Wilma and Peter Veldman grew up on farms in Holland and lived through the Nazi occupation during World War II. As young immigrants, the couple arrived in South Bend in the early 1950s. They eventually started and operated a variety of automotive-related businesses in South Bend, beginning with a two-bay Standard Oil service station and ending with Tire Rack, an online distributor of automotive and light truck tires and wheels. Over more than 40 years in business, the Edmonds, Joines and Veldman families led Tire Rack to become the largest online tire distributor in the United States. Their faith, family and community were always most important to Peter and Wilma, and their family seeks to honor those values and their parents through this gift.

“Our family sees the great need in our community for better access to mental health care, but we also see the tremendous opportunity to make a difference through supporting Notre Dame’s mental health initiatives,” Tom Veldman said. “This is a moment where we can impact the course of our community by reshaping the trajectory of so many lives, and we hope others will join us in supporting this crucial endeavor.”

Dionne Irving Bremyer named finalist for PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

2023-03-13T10:43:00-04:00

Dionne Irving Bremyer

Dionne Irving Bremyer, an associate professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the country’s most prestigious peer-juried prize for novels and short stories.

The honor is for Irving Bremyer’s short story collection “The Islands,” which follows the lives of Jamaican women — immigrants or the descendants of immigrants — who have relocated all over the world to escape the ghosts of colonialism.

“I feel humbled and grateful to be a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The imagined lives in 'The Islands' carry forward the stories of my community, of my culture and of my life,” she said. “I spent too long wondering if anyone else might even be interested in reading such stories, so this acknowledgment by the PEN/Faulkner judges is a gift of recognition that, to me, bespeaks a hopefulness about how stories of immigration and migration can permeate our cultural and artistic imaginations.”

A trio of judges considered more than 500 novels and short story collections published in 2022 from American authors. Other finalists for the award are Jonathan Escoffery (“If I Survive You”), Kathryn Harlan (“Fruiting Bodies”), Yiyun Li (“The Book of Goose”) and Laura Warrell (“Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm”). The winner will be announced in early April, with all five finalists being honored at a May 11 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Irving Bremyer is Notre Dame’s second PEN/Faulkner Award finalist in the past four years — Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, an associate professor of English, won the award in 2019 for her novel “Call Me Zebra.” Other past winners of the award include John Updike, Philip Roth, Michael Cunningham, Deesha Philyaw and Annie Proulx.

“To have 'The Islands' honored in this way suggests a more hopeful future in part by amplifying stories emanating from places confronting existential threats of environmental obliteration,” Irving Bremyer said. “Perhaps these stories can help save those places, these people and this culture. It is a profound honor to be listed among the other finalists whose work I deeply respect and admire, and I am beyond grateful to the judges of the PEN/Faulkner Award for their attention to and care for my work.”

“The Islands” has received an array of positive reviews — the New York Times Book Review called it “an electric collection” that “teaches us what kinds of respites can be found in diaspora — fleeting, begrudging, but real nonetheless,” while the Chicago Review of Books praised Brymyer’s stories for the way they “sing in their lyricism and complexity—a hallmark of an exciting new voice in literature.

Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Irving Bremyer teaches in Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program and is a faculty fellow of the Initiative on Race and Resilience. She writes fiction and nonfiction that investigates and questions personal, cultural and national hybridity emergent in a postcolonial world.

Her work has appeared in Story, Boulevard, LitHub, Missouri Review and New Delta Review, among other journals and magazines. Two essays, “Treading Water” and “Do You Like to Hurt,” were notable essays in Best American Essays 2017 and 2019. She is the author of the novel “Quint” (7.13 Books), a fictional retelling of the true story of the Dionne quintuplets.

Irving Bremyer has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and has been awarded two Tennessee Williams scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a scholarship and residency from the Voices of Our Nation Writers Conference.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on March 10.

Alumna Tess Gunty wins National Book Award for debut novel

2022-11-17T09:48:00-05:00

University of Notre Dame alumna Tess Gunty, class of ’15, has won the National Book Award for fiction for her debut novel, “The Rabbit Hutch.”

Born and raised in South Bend, Gunty majored in English with a concentration in creative writing. In the novel’s acknowledgments, Gunty thanks Notre Dame faculty Joyelle McSweeney, Orlando Menes, Steve Tomasula and Anne García-Romero.

“My writing professors from Notre Dame uprooted my literary preconceptions and planted far better ideas in their place,” Gunty wrote. “I cherished their generosity as an undergraduate, and I continue to cherish it now.”

Gunty will return to South Bend and Notre Dame for two public events in the coming weeks — “From South Bend to Vacca Vale: A Conversation with Tess Gunty” at the Eck Center Auditorium on Nov. 30, and “An Evening with Tess Gunty: The Rabbit Hutch” at the St. Joseph County Public Library’s main branch on Dec. 1.

Described as surreal, haunting, wickedly funny and full of heart, “The Rabbit Hutch” weaves together the lives of people residing in a low-income apartment complex in the fictional Indiana rust belt town of Vacca Vale, which has never recovered from the collapse of the Zorn Automobile factory. Gunty’s novel explores contemporary malaise, dives into medieval Catholic mysticism and loops through multiple narratives with verve, acuity and deep care.

Leah Greenblatt of the New York Times called “The Rabbit Hutch” “mesmerizing” and “a novel of impressive scope and specificity.”

“The Rabbit Hutch” by Tess Gunty ’15

“One of the pleasures of the narrative is the way it luxuriates in language, all the rhythms and repetitions and seashell whorls of meaning to be extracted from the dull casings of everyday life,” Greenblatt wrote. “[Gunty] also has a way of pressing her thumb on the frailty and absurdity of being a person in the world; all the soft, secret needs and strange intimacies. The book’s best sentences — and there are heaps to choose from — ping with that recognition, even in the ordinary details.”

While at Notre Dame, Gunty spent her sophomore year in Angers, France, studying French language and culture at l’Université Catholique de l’Ouest. On campus, she tutored at the Writing Center, and her play “Taxidermy” won an ND Theater Now Award. During her senior year, the Department of English nominated her for four awards; her poetry collection “Radish Beds” won the Ernest Sandeen Award.

Gunty has written for Notre Dame Magazine both as a student and as an alumna, including an interview with McSweeney, a Notre Dame professor of creative writing, after the faculty member won a Guggenheim Fellowship this year.

Tess Gunty

Upon graduating from Notre Dame, she began an MFA in creative writing at New York University, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. There, she taught undergraduates, helped coordinate the Emerging Writers Reading Series and received a graduate research fellowship to develop her novel in Paris. Throughout graduate school, she volunteered as a mentor at Still Waters in a Storm, a reading and writing sanctuary for children in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

After earning her MFA, she worked alongside her former professor Jonathan Safran Foer, providing research and writing for his book of nonfiction about the climate crisis, “We Are the Weather.” As a freelance writer, editor and research assistant, her experience also includes documenting the history of the Notre Dame Center for Social Concerns; contributing a history of an area of Atlanta to an urban revitalization plan by Thadani Architects + Urbanists; creating science content for the American Museum of Natural History; editing Bruce Rits Gilbert’s debut book, “John Prine, One Song at a Time,”a tribute to the folk musician written in the wake of Prine’s death; and working as a fact-checker on “Mysteries of Mental Illness,” a PBS docuseries about the history of psychiatry in America.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on Nov. 17.

In memoriam: Kenneth M. Sayre, professor emeritus of philosophy

2022-10-13T13:50:00-04:00

Kenneth Sayre

Kenneth M. Sayre, a University of Notre Dame professor emeritus of philosophy and an early leader in the study of artificial intelligence, has died at age 94.

Sayre, a member of the Notre Dame faculty for 56 years, was known for his teaching and research across a broad range of areas, including cybernetics, information theory, philosophy of mind, environmental philosophy, Plato and epistemology. He authored 14 books, edited or co-edited five more, and published more than 50 articles in scholarly journals.

“With Ken’s passing, we in the Department of Philosophy lost a remarkable friend and colleague,” Paul Weithman, the Glynn Family Honors Professor of Philosophy, said. “Despite a teaching load that would seem almost unbearably heavy 50 years on, Ken was a prolific publisher from the outset, and was at the leading edge of a cohort of scholars who began to transform the department into the leading center of philosophical work that it is today.

“Those of us who teach philosophy at Notre Dame now owe an incalculable debt to those who effected that transformation, of whom Ken was among the very first.”

Born in 1928 in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Sayre spent two years in the U.S. Navy before graduating from Grinnell College in Iowa with a joint major in philosophy in mathematics. His interest in AI began while earning his doctorate at Harvard University, when he worked in MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory on an air-defense system.

He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1958, and four years later he won a National Science Foundation grant for research on the simulation of mental processes that would blend science with philosophy.

After he received a second grant in support of this research, the University established the Philosophic Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 1965, with Sayre serving as director. That same year, he published “Recognition: A Study in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence,” and began lecturing and making media appearances discussing issues related to cybernetics and automation.

For many years, his research involved developing computer software that could recognize handwriting, based on his theory that “understanding of a type of human behavior and our ability to simulate it go hand in hand." His work led to him recognizing a key problem that became known as “Sayre’s paradox” — a cursive word cannot be recognized without being segmented and cannot be segmented without being recognized — that continued to be a focus of handwriting recognition technology in subsequent decades.

After the Vietnam War, Sayre shifted his focus to ethical and social issues. Sayre led an NSF-funded interdisciplinary team that included 11 Notre Dame faculty from all five colleges, a nuclear engineer, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and others in a deep study of energy companies’ decision-making processes and values. The work resulted in a book on the subject, as well as another volume, “Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century,” containing essays from moral philosophers.

He continued teaching and researching until his retirement in 2014, the same year he published “Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame,” a book detailing the history and development of his department.

Sayre married Lucille M. Shea in 1958, and they had three children together — Gregory, Christopher and Jeffrey. Lucille died in a car accident in 1980. In 1983, he married Patricia A. White, with whom he had a son, Michael.

Condolences may be sent to Patti Sayre, 910 W. Weber Square, South Bend, IN 46617.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to St. Margaret’s House, 117 N. Lafayette Blvd., South Bend, IN 46601, or to Our Lady of the Road Catholic Workers, 744 S. Main St., South Bend, IN 46601.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on Oct. 13.

American studies professor receives NEH fellowship for book on Turkey, Iran

2022-04-20T10:45:00-04:00

Perin Gürel, a University of Notre Dame associate professor of American studies, has won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Research in Turkey, in support of the completion of a book on the international history of comparisons made between Turkey and Iran.

Gürel will spend this fall researching in Turkey and take an additional trip to Iran to complete her second book project, “America’s Wife, America’s Concubine: Turkey, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison.” While abroad, she will delve into the Center for Islamic 91��Ƶ archives in Istanbul, the national archives in Ankara and a Turkish cultural center in Urmia, an Iranian city that borders Turkey.

The book will detail the history of comparisons made between Turkey and Iran, but Gürel also intends to critique the intellectual valorization of comparison itself. Sharp distinctions about areas of the world are often made, she said, despite the relatively arbitrary nature of borders between countries — not to mention the ways in which subjectively comparing one thing to another permeates other aspects of life.

“I hope the book will make us realize that the comparisons we make — whether every day or scholarly — are not natural and objective,” said Gürel, who is also a concurrent associate professor of gender studies. “They’re informed by social constructs, multiple cognitive operations and the element of strategy. I hope we can pause and denaturalize comparativism in our day-to-day lives when assigning merit.”

The title of Gürel’s book is inspired by a 1962 meeting between President John F. Kennedy and Muhammad Reza Shah. The autocratic leader of Iran complained that “America treats Turkey as a wife, and Iran as a concubine.”

It’s but one example of what Gürel calls the “uneven political triangle” between the U.S., Turkey and Iran — American politicians have often compared the two West Asian nations to one another, and leaders of Turkey and Iran themselves make strategic comparisons to their neighboring state to advance their own unpopular policies.

Much scholarship, Gürel said, often focuses on the relationship between “the West” and “the East” — including her first book, “The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey” (Columbia, 2017), which explored how gendered stock figures and tropes associated with the concept of “westernization” in Turkey intersected with U.S.-Turkish relations in the 20th century.

But in her new book, she seeks to examine how the language used by a major player like the U.S. can affect the relationship between two neighboring middle-power states.

Perin Gürel on a research trip in Iran.

Gürel — whose 2019 American Quarterly article, “Amerikan Jokes: The Transnational Politics of Unlaughter in Turkey,” won the Jack Rosenbalm Prize for American Humor 91��Ƶ from the American Humor 91��Ƶ Association — has also received support for her research from a number of Notre Dame organizations.

The Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures helped her learn Persian at an advanced level and meet Iranian researchers and scholars. Grant funding from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and the Kroc Institute for International Peace 91��Ƶ allowed her to visit the National Archives in Maryland, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation in Istanbul and the Tehran University archives in Iran.

“That tells you what a great place Notre Dame is for doing transnational scholarship,” she said. “Plus, my colleagues in the department, across campus and across the disciplines have been very supportive, reading multiple drafts and listening to me rant about comparativism at random moments.”

Beyond just analyzing the relationship between the U.S., Turkey and Iran, Gürel hopes her critique can provide academics in a range of fields with a new perspective on the perils of constantly seeking to compare one thing to another.

“Ultimately, the book demonstrates how scholars in the humanities and social sciences can approach comparative methodologies more critically and creatively,” she said, “highlighting the importance of multilingual, interdisciplinary inquiry.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on April 14.

Notre Dame historian wins NEH grant for project that seeks to disrupt understanding of why the Habsburg Empire crumbled

2022-03-29T14:00:00-04:00

John Deak, a Notre Dame associate professor of history, has won a collaborative research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for an ambitious research project that seeks to reshape perspectives on how and why the Habsburg Empire collapsed after World War I.

Partnering with historian Jonathan Gumz of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, Deak’s three-year grant will support significant archival work across Europe as the scholars explore how the wartime imposition of martial law crushed local political authority and ultimately wiped a 600-year empire off the map.

“This collaboration is full of boldness, and this grant makes all of it possible,” Deak said. “Without it, we’d just be writing about a smaller part of the empire, which is what is normally possible. To write about this monarchy as a real state, falling apart, requires a lot of travel, and we’re grateful for the NEH allowing us to do that.”

Encompassing Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia and other Eastern European nations, the Habsburg Empire dated back to the 13th century but came to an end after its defeat, along with Germany and Turkey, in World War I.

For decades, Deak said, the conventional historical narrative — including school texts, both in the U.S. and even in former Habsburg Empire countries — has been that the Austrian-Hungarian system of government was rife with internal conflict and on its last legs by the early 20th century, and the war was simply the strong wind that blew the crumbling house down.

Deak and Gumz, however, believe the empire was not doomed to fail — except for a fatal flaw in the constitutions of its member-states allowing a wartime declaration of emergency and military takeover of the court system. As the empire went to war, the military began trying civilians and local officials under martial law in order to eliminate opposition or settle petty political scores.

John Deak (right) and Jonathan Gumz in an archive in Trieste, Italy, in June 2019.

“When you disrupt politics, you disrupt the means by which people can talk to one another and work things out — and the military had extreme ideas about how things should be run and forced voters back in a box where they just follow orders,” Deak said. “Austro-Hungarians put the state in the hands of the military, which even bullied the emperor and essentially overran him.

“What the military did while they were in control of much of civilian life actually delegitimized the constitutional state in many corners of the empire. These are important facets of the experience of the First World War that need new attention paid to them.”

To get a better sense of the impact that the military takeover had on public life, Deak and Gumz will explore archives in several of the successor states of the former Habsburg Empire. Public administration and court records from the time, many still sealed and not opened for nearly a century, were scattered far and wide after the empire fell. Poland, for example, requested all documents relating to the administration of the provinces that became part of Poland after the war.

Deak and Gumz are searching archives across Europe to find documents like this one, which details the imposition of martial law on civilians, to help explain the impact a military takeover had on life in the Habsburg Empire.

Knowing where documents like these are and how to find them has been part of the fun but also the difficulty of doing research on this subject, Deak said.

Military files, court decisions and planning documents will give the historians a better sense of where these emergency wartime laws came from, how they were implemented and what happened when civilian officials tried to object and push back.

In some cases, opponents were conscripted and sent to the front lines. In others, a protracted battle ensued between civilian officials, local politicians and their military counterparts. All of it was disruptive and added to the already significant sacrifices the peoples of the empire made to the war effort.

The research pair are dividing up the record-hunting based on the languages they know or can learn — Deak reads Czech and Polish and is brushing up on his Italian. Beginning in May, he will spend as much time abroad as EU visa regulations and COVID-19 protocols allow.

The initial phases of Deak’s research project were supported by grants from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and the Nanovic Institute for European 91��Ƶ. That funding allowed him to spend eight weeks getting a sense of what records exist in archives in Vienna, Ljubljana, Warsaw, Innsbruck and Trieste, where he will now return for longer and more focused research.

As Deak and Gumz seek to disrupt and reframe the modern understanding of the Habsburg Empire in a new book and journal articles, their research also offers an opportunity to shed new light on the civilian-military relationship — a tension Deak says has plagued countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries across multiple continents.

“This is a story about what happens when a constitution is suspended and the military is given sweeping control of the administration of justice, of people and of police,” Deak said. “It’s amazing how this stuff can happen in a constitutional state — and even a lot of people who work in this area will think what we’re finding is incredible.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on March 28.

In memoriam: Ava Preacher, professional specialist emeritus and assistant dean

2021-07-20T15:40:00-04:00

Ava Preacher, a professional specialist emeritus who served for 25 years as an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Letters, died Wednesday, July 14, at her residence. She was 67.

Preacher first came to Notre Dame in 1985, teaching in what was then the Department of Communication and Theater for six years, then serving as director of the Gender 91��Ƶ Program for three years. From 1993 until her retirement in 2018, she served in the College of Arts and Letters’ Office for Undergraduate 91��Ƶ as an assistant dean, advising hundreds of undergraduates every year, including students from across campus who were pursuing law school.

“I can’t think of anyone who has had a direct and positive impact on the lives of more undergraduates than Ava did,” said Nicholas Russo, an assistant dean and director of advising in the Office for Undergraduate 91��Ƶ. “As one of our colleagues noted, Ava couldn’t go anywhere without a former student recognizing her and stopping to thank her for her advice, guidance and care during their time at Notre Dame.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Preacher grew up in Iowa, graduating as valedictorian from St. Katharine's 91��Ƶ in Davenport. She spent a year at Vassar College before earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa. She studied for a year in Paris at the Centres des Etudes Cinematographiques, and obtained her master’s degree in comparative literature, also at Iowa. She taught there and at Wayne State University before joining the Notre Dame faculty.

Preacher was the recipient of numerous campus and outside awards throughout her career, including the Notre Dame Presidential Award, the Kaneb Center Teaching Award, the Dockweiler Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising and the American Mock Trial Association’s Congressman Neil Smith Award for outstanding and exemplary contributions to law-related education.

“Ava is one of those amazing individuals who always leaves you feeling optimistic and excited for the future,” one of her advisees, accountancy major Andrea Kochert, said of Preacher in 2010. “She helped me with the entire law school application process — studying for the LSAT, dealing with my score, writing my personal statement and, most importantly, choosing the school that best fit me. Words do not do justice to the high regard that I hold for Ava.”

In addition to her published scholarly work, Preacher was a frequent contributor to and coordinator of national and regional pre-law advisers events, a Notre Dame Academic Council member, Faculty Senate member, Gender 91��Ƶ Executive Committee member and Truman Scholarship interview committee member.

“Ava had tremendous influence on the advising of undergraduates in the college. She possessed a wealth of knowledge about the college, which was greatly appreciated by everyone who worked with her,” said JoAnn DellaNeva, a professor of Romance languages and literatures who served as associate dean for undergraduate studies from 2010 to 2017. “She was a warm and intelligent adviser who cared passionately about the welfare of her students, and they, in turn, did not fail to profess their admiration and affection for her.”

Preacher is survived by her wife, Coleen Hoover; daughters Nell (Max Tolomei) and Ava Collins; stepsons Nathan (Laura) and Dane Hoover; grandson Dashiell Collins; step-grandchildren Lydia, Steven and Samantha Hoover; siblings Mary Ann Beck (David) and Robert Preacher (Joy); and numerous nephews.

At her request, there will be no funeral or memorial service. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Planned Parenthood, the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Heart to Heart Hospice. To send private condolences to the family, visit mcgannhay.com.

“Ava was such a generous, kind person who always had time for anyone – students or colleagues – in need of comfort, understanding and direction,” said Stuart Greene, an associate professor emeritus of English and Africana studies who was associate dean for undergraduate studies from 2005 to 2010. “I know I am a better person having known her.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on July 20.

Political scientist receives Religion and International 91��Ƶ Distinguished Scholar Award

2021-04-22T10:00:00-04:00

Daniel Philpott, a University of Notre Dame professor of political science, has received the 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award from the International 91��Ƶ Association’s Religion and International Relations Section.

Philpott, the section’s awards committee noted, is a key figure in the first generation of scholars to incorporate religion into the study of international relations. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and democracy, ethics, peace-building, reconciliation and religious freedom.

A quarter-century ago, Philpott said, few political scientists were studying religion and global politics — a theory of secularization was dominant, arguing that religion was exiting the stage of history. The 9/11 terrorist attacks changed all of that, he said, and brought religion back to the forefront of the study of world affairs.

“My research, however, has not focused on religion’s capacity for violence, though I have looked at that. Rather, I study religion’s capacity for peace and justice, particularly in the areas of peacebuilding, reconciliation, religious freedom and democratization,” Philpott said. “There is much evidence that religious leaders and communities have made a big difference in all of these ways over the years.”

Beyond research, Philpott has pursued service work and activism around the globe, including working with religious leaders in Kashmir and Central Africa on peace and reconciliation, and he conducted a major study of forgiveness in the wake of armed violence in Uganda.

“The selection committee has high hopes about Professor Philpott’s intellectual influence into the future, on the next generation of [international relations] and religion scholars,” the committee wrote. “The [international relations] discipline is now global, [and] interreligious dialogue on global political issues is a part of a globalizing world.”

Philpott earned his doctorate in 1996 from Harvard University, then spent five years on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara before coming to Notre Dame in 2001. His monographs include “Revolutions in Sovereignty” (Princeton, 2001), “God’s Century: Resurgent Religion in Global Politics” (Norton, 2011, co-authored with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah), “Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation” (Oxford, 2012) and “Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World” (Oxford, 2019).

Philpott was honored by the ISA section at its annual conference earlier this month, which included a panel discussion on Philpott’s work and influence by eight other scholars from the field.

“Receiving an award such as this makes me reflect on all those on whom my studies have depended so thoroughly — parents, family, friends, teachers, students, colleagues, and indeed the grace of God,” Philpott said. “I am immensely grateful to have worked at Notre Dame over the past two decades, an ideal setting in which to study religion and global politics.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on April 21.

In memoriam: Jorge A. Bustamante, the Eugene P. and Helen Conley Professor Emeritus of Sociology

2021-04-14T14:00:00-04:00

Jorge A. Bustamante, the Eugene P. and Helen Conley Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, died March 25. He was 82.

A sociologist whose research centered on the dynamics of international migration, Bustamante’s work advanced public and academic discourse regarding circumstances at the U.S.-Mexico border. His devotion to advocating for human and labor rights for immigrants worldwide led to his native Mexico nominating him for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Bustamante wrote more than 200 scientific publications on issues of international migration between Mexico and the United States and on the Mexican population living in the U.S. His research was published in sociology magazines and journals in the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain and Mexico. He was quoted as a leading expert in the field of international migration by most major U.S. newspapers and made TV appearances on “Nightline,” “60 Minutes” and the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”

“Professor Bustamante’s scholarship was informed by the experiences of the vulnerable and pointed to ways of making society more welcoming, inclusive and generative,” said Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s assistant provost for internationalization, a Kellogg faculty fellow and an associate professor of political science. “At the heart of his work was the recognition of the inherent dignity of each and every human being regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or immigration status. He had a caring heart and a commanding intellect that together made him a powerful force for good.”

After receiving his law degree from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1959, Bustamante came to Notre Dame to study sociology and anthropology, earning his doctorate in 1975. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1986 and was a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International 91��Ƶ and served as associate director of the Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ.

“For more than 40 years, Jorge Bustamante was the major scholar and public intellectual helping us understand migration from Mexico to the U.S. and migration around the world,” said Luis Ricardo Fraga, ILS director and the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science. “He was an active presence at the Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ. Students loved his seminars. He lived his values of justice, human dignity and human rights. I will dearly miss my friend and colleague.”

Over the course of his career, Bustamante received the American Sociological Association’s Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award, one of the two highest honors granted to a sociologist in the U.S., and the National Jurisprudence Award, presented by the Mexican Bar Association to honor his work for the human rights of migrants. He was honored twice by presidents of Mexico — in 1988, his research on international migration earned the Premio Nacional de Ciencias, the highest national award the Mexican government grants to scientists, and in 1994, he received the National Demography Award.

In 1997, Bustamante was appointed to a new, five-member United Nations committee to study the relationship between international migration and human rights worldwide, and he was subsequently elected the committee’s president. In 2001, he was named to the advisory group on immigration and population policy by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also served as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants from 2005 to 2011.

Bustamante was also a professor emeritus of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research and degree-granting institute in Tijuana, Mexico, which he founded in 1982.

Gilberto Cardenas, a Notre Dame professor emeritus of sociology, recalled Bustamante sharing his commitment to create that border research center in 1971, when they shared an office in the library while working for sociologist Julian Samora.

“Jorge’s contribution to migration and border studies has made a tremendous impact in the entire field of study since that time,” Cardenas said. “It has been an incredible experience for me to have collaborated with Jorge on a wide range of border projects, including sponsorship of arts and cultural programs in Mexico and throughout the United States. Jorge’s leadership throughout the years enabled the development of opportunities for transnational connections between organizations and government institutions in Mexico with the Mexican origin population in the United States, the likes of which were among the first of many that worked to close the gap across borders.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on April 13.

Poet Joyelle McSweeney named finalist for Kingsley Tufts Award

2021-04-07T13:00:00-04:00

Joyelle McSweeney, a University of Notre Dame professor of English and Creative Writing Program faculty member, has been named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a prominent prize honoring work by a mid-career poet.

The honor comes in recognition of McSweeney’s double poetry collection “Toxicon and Arachne” (Nightboat Books, 2020) — the first part written in the years leading up to the birth of her third daughter, Arachne; and the second part written in the spring following Arachne’s brief life and death.

“This double-book is like a double-self-portrait of my mind at its most exuberant and most dismayed, most centrifugal and most collapsed,” McSweeney said. “It reflects everything I've ever learned — though ‘everything I ever learned’ didn't help me when I needed it. It makes an engine from opposites, like all true poetry, and like the universe itself.”

Established in 1992 and based at Claremont Graduate University, the Kingsley Tufts Award both honors poets and aims to provide resources that allow them to continue working toward the pinnacle of their craft. Other finalists this year are Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, T’ai Freedom Ford, John Murillo and Tommy Pico.

“Toxicon” engages with Plato’s notion that writing must be distrusted because it is a poison and a cure. Containing McSweeney’s most formally ambitious poems, she said she wrote “works of such lyric intensity that they would feel almost like toxins, and to formally hone them like poison arrows.”

In the wake of her daughter’s death from an unexpected birth defect, McSweeney reflected on her poems’ thematic concerns with plagues, contaminants, mutations and unintended effects. She wrote the poems of “Arachne” over the span of a few weeks, as she took walks along the St Joseph River in South Bend, filled with anger and grief.

“Springtime returned to South Bend, but Arachne did not return with it,” McSweeney said. “It seemed that ‘Toxicon’ prophesized Arachne, but it's also true that Arachne rewrites ‘Toxicon’ by rendering it a work of prophecy. That's ultimately why the publisher and I decided to publish the two books together — because they co-author or almost co-gestate each other, bring each other to (dark) light.”

The author of six books of poetry and prose, many of which also contain plays, McSweeney won the inaugural Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Playwrights for her 2013 play “Dead Youth, or, the Leaks.” With Johannes Göransson, she founded and edits Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation focused on modern and contemporary works from Latin America, Asia, the United States and Europe.

“The Kingsley Tufts prize is a major award that is designed to recognize and support a poet who is no longer at the outset of her career and yet still has many years of writing ahead,” said Jesse Lander, chair of the Department of English. “This makes the Kingsley Tufts prize truly distinctive, and the English department is very proud that Joyelle McSweeney is a finalist for this award.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on April 1.

Patrick Griffin appointed Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford

2021-02-11T14:00:00-05:00

Patrick Griffin, a scholar whose work explores the intersection of colonial American and early modern Irish and British history, has been named the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford.

The prestigious fellowship, created in 1922, is awarded to a distinguished American historian who then spends a year teaching, researching and leading seminars at Oxford’s Queen’s College and Rothermere American Institute.

Griffin, the Madden-Hennebry Professor of History and director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish 91��Ƶ at the University of Notre Dame, said the honor came as a complete surprise, as it is a fellowship that is bestowed, not applied for.

“It’s really gratifying to receive this award, as so many scholars whose work I admire have won it previously — and it comes from out of the blue,” he said. “There are many colleagues that I work with at Oxford, and they have a vibrant community of graduate students there, so it will be wonderful to get to know all of them better.”

Previous recipients of the Harmsworth professorship include Harvard’s Annette Gordon-Reed, Columbia’s Alan Brinkley and Griffin’s dissertation adviser, T.H. Breen of Northwestern University.

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 and 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). He has won grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is also an honorary professor of the University of Edinburgh.

Griffin has two books nearing publication — “The Ties that Bind: On the Age of Revolution” (Yale University Press) and a volume, “Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty” (University of Virginia Press), which he is editing with Francis D. Cogliano of the University of Edinburgh.

At Oxford, Griffin will begin work on a book on the 18th- and 19th-century working-class inhabitants of New York, especially migrants from Ireland, who helped transform New York from a seaport into the most important city in the world.

“Connecting an island to the rest of the world requires lots of hands, and I’m interested in the hands that did that bridge-building and tunneling, and what their roles were in creating those sensibilities we think of as urban,” he said. “This is not the story of the founding fathers of New York, but of the nameless and the faceless who moved to New York as it was emerging as a global imperial city.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on Feb. 11.

Notre Dame launches interdisciplinary Initiative on Race and Resilience

2021-01-18T10:15:00-05:00

Mark A. Sanders

The University of Notre Dame has launched the Initiative on Race and Resilience, a new interdisciplinary program focused on the redress of systemic racism and the support of diverse communities both within and beyond the Notre Dame campus.

Led by the College of Arts and Letters with additional support from the Office of the Provost, the initiative will bring together scholars and students in the humanities, arts, social sciences and other disciplines to challenge systemic racism and promote racial equity through research, education and community empowerment.

“Our University mission calls on us 'to assist the world to create justice grounded in love,' and so we have a unique responsibility to support the study of race and to amplify the voices, gifts and talents of people of color,” said Mark A. Sanders, the inaugural director of the initiative and a professor of English and Africana studies at Notre Dame. “This initiative marks the creation of a think tank on race — an intellectual and physical space at Notre Dame where people will come together to address issues of race and racism, both systemic and interpersonal.”

Dean Sarah A. Mustillo

Sarah A. Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, said addressing issues of race in an academic and community context is closely tied to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission — which calls for respecting the dignity of every person and standing in solidarity for the pursuit of peace and justice.

“This is an opportunity for Notre Dame to be a significant voice in the challenging, ongoing conversation about racism and the role it currently plays and has historically played in our society,” said Mustillo, who made creating the Initiative on Race and Resilience one of her top priorities when she became dean in 2018. “The College of Arts and Letters is determined to fight inequality through research, education and outreach, and this new initiative is an essential component of that goal.”

The initiative’s research endeavors will include annual internal grants for race-centered research, a scholar-in-residence position, postdoctoral and dissertation fellowships, a visiting scholars program, lectures and a biannual conference with rotating themes.

In the 2021-2022 academic year, the initiative will host two fellows in partnership with the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study — Scott Alves Barton, a food scholar from New York University named by Ebony magazine as one of the top 25 African American/Diaspora chefs, and Reginald Dwayne Betts, an acclaimed author, National Magazine Award-winner, Guggenheim Fellow, and Yale Law 91��Ƶ graduate.

Academic programs developed through the initiative will emphasize interdisciplinarity and comparative studies of race and ethnicity. It will offer course development grants, pedagogy workshops with the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and the Center on Literacy Education, a faculty-student mentorship program for students of color and educational outreach efforts.

The initiative also seeks to empower African American communities and other communities of various racial and ethnic backgrounds through engagement opportunities, especially through the arts. It will sponsor a community book club and host or co-sponsor anti-racist programming such as art exhibits, theatrical productions and film festivals.

Sanders said the initiative plans to create campus-community dialogue events, develop programming for K-12 classrooms and host a summer program for potential first-generation college students. An artist-in-residence and practitioner fellow program will bring creators, policymakers and community organizers to campus for collaborative sessions with scholars and students.

“Our approach will be to celebrate communities of color and all they have to offer — and the arts are a means by which those communities assert a recuperative sense of identity,” Sanders said.

Research and education pursuits will be organized around a series of rotating themes, with topics changing every two to three years. A theme on race and the environment, for example, would include hosting a visiting scholar conducting research in that area, a practitioner fellow addressing environmental racism, undergraduate courses covering global warming’s economic impact on communities of color or the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and arts exhibits or events that address those themes.

“In every facet of the initiative, we will attend to the critical tension at the heart of the concept of race — race as a tool of colonization and race as a site of resistance and resilience,” Sanders said. “Through all of our work, we will strive to cultivate an atmosphere of inclusiveness and scholarly excellence.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on Jan. 18.

In memoriam: Klaus Lanzinger, professor emeritus, German and Russian languages and literatures

2020-12-17T10:00:00-05:00

Klaus Lanzinger, professor emeritus in the University of Notre Dame's Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures, died Dec. 5. He was 92.

A native of Austria whose research focused on American-European literary and cultural relations, Lanzinger served as chair of the department from 1989 to 1996, and served as acting chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages in 1987.

In the early 1960s, he was instrumental in creating one of Notre Dame’s two inaugural study abroad programs — in Innsbruck, Austria. Lanzinger later served as resident director of that program on three occasions throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

“Klaus was extraordinary in his hospitality and graciousness, which surely came in part from his Austrian background, but which he and his wife, Aida, also made their own,” said Mark Roche, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of German Language and Literature, who succeeded Lanzinger as department chair upon his retirement. “His pioneering work on behalf of the Innsbruck program left a lasting legacy and influenced the pivotal years of hundreds of Notre Dame students.”

Lanzinger was the author of “Epik im amerikanischen Roman” and “Jason's Voyage: The Search for the Old World in American Literature,” and he was the editor of five volumes of “Americana-Austriaca,” published between 1966 and 1983.

In 1993, he received the Thomas Wolfe Society’s Zelda and Paul Gitlin Literary Prize for the best article on Thomas Wolfe.

He began his academic career at the University of Innsbruck, and immigrated to the United States when he was hired at Notre Dame in 1967. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1979. Lanzinger reflected on this time — as well as important chapters in Notre Dame’s and America's history — in his book “A Transatlantic Diary 1961-1989,” which he published in German and then translated to English.

Vera Profit, a professor emerita of German language and literature and longtime colleague of Lanzinger, remembers him as the “essence of civility and collegiality.”

“He truly believed you could bring out the best in people through honey and not through vinegar,” she said. “He was a kind person. He allowed you to flourish. That was his legacy.”

His wife, Aida, preceded him in death in 2013. They had two children, Franz and Christine. A funeral is planned for summer 2021.

Notre Dame anthropologist elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

2020-05-19T10:15:00-04:00

Agustín Fuentes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Chair in Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

He is among more than 250 members of the 240th AAAS class, which includes singer-songwriter Joan Baez, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and filmmaker Richard Linklater.

A prominent figure in the field of anthropology and a National Geographic explorer, Fuentes is interested in the roles of creativity and imagination in human evolution, multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory and the structures of race and racism.

Fuentes joins 27 other AAAS fellows from Notre Dame, 25 of whom are also affiliated with the College of Arts and Letters. Recent elections include Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish 91��Ƶ; Dianne Pinderhughes, chair of the Department of Africana 91��Ƶ and a professor in the Department of Political Science; Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.; R. Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs; and Robert Audi, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy.

Fuentes’ books include "Why We Believe," which examines how religion became an essential aspect of human evolution; "The Creative Spark," which argues that creativity and collaboration are the most important explanations for why humans are the way they are; "Evolution of Human Behavior," which focuses on how and why humans evolved behaviorally; and "Health, Risk, and Adversity," which provides a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability and examines the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes.

Fuentes was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and has served as chair of the association’s anthropology section committee. He is a fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian 91��Ƶ, the Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ, the Kroc Institute for Peace 91��Ƶ and the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on May 15.

Notre Dame launches new BA in computer science major

2020-03-04T13:00:00-05:00

The University of Notre Dame is launching a bachelor of arts in computer science (BACS) major, offering undergraduate students the opportunity to obtain rigorous training in the rapidly-advancing areas where computer science intersects with the arts, humanities or social sciences.

Housed in the College of Arts and Letters, the program will involve significant coursework in the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering while offering enough flexibility for students to enroll in an Arts and Letters program — a major, supplementary major, minor or 15-credit-hour course sequence of their own design.

The BACS major will be based in the newly-established Computing and Analytics Program Office in the College of Arts and Letters, which will house the major together with two thriving tech-focused minors — data science and the Idzik Computing and Digital Technologies Program.

“We are very excited to partner with the College of Arts and Letters on this new major, which will offer a distinctive program of study for students intending to integrate and extend their interests in computing and other fields,” said Patrick Flynn, the Fritz Duda Family Professor of Engineering and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

“We expect the bachelor of science in computer science degree to continue to be one of the largest at the University, and its graduates will continue to enjoy a strong set of employment opportunities. But students who combine deep studies in computer science with focused study of another field, as required in the BACS program, will be trailblazers as society continues to see integration between computing technology, all professions and all walks of life.”

The program will include 35 hours of coursework in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, mathematics requirements, College of Arts and Letters requirements and at least 15 credit hours in an area of interest within Arts and Letters.

The new program will include 35 hours of coursework in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, including 23 hours of required courses — such as Data Structures, Systems Programming and Design and Analysis of Algorithms — and 12 hours of electives.

In addition to mathematics requirements, College of Arts and Letters requirements and the University Core Curriculum, students will complete 15 or more credit hours in a “cognate area of study” — an area of interest within Arts and Letters. Students will be encouraged to develop and complete a senior thesis project that explores a topic at the intersection of computer science and their cognate area of study.

“This new program is a transformational opportunity for students who are passionate about technology and the liberal arts,” said Sarah A. Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy dean of the College of Arts and Letters. “The world needs ethical, critical thinkers making decisions about how technology will impact our daily lives, and the College of Arts and Letters will produce the tech leaders of tomorrow who are prepared to face those pressing challenges.”

The widespread value of communication and critical thinking skills has led to software development becoming the third most popular type of job for liberal arts graduates, according to LinkedIn, and liberal arts majors are joining the tech industry more rapidly than traditional STEM graduates.

Examples of liberal arts majors making an impact in tech are abundant — the CEOs of Slack, Alibaba, YouTube and Airbnb all majored in the arts or the humanities. And media sources such as Fast Company and CNBC regularly quote executives from tech companies such as Carbonite, MediaAlpha and Vidyard about their desire to hire liberal arts graduates because of the valuable skills they bring to their professional roles.

Jay Dettling ’93, the CEO of global marketing agency Ansira and a former executive at Adobe and Accenture, said he foresees graduates of the program standing out in the job market because of their ability to approach problem solving from a broader perspective.

“Today’s business challenges require that future leaders be versed in the art of storytelling — and the liberal arts background is invaluable in forming those skills,” said Dettling, who majored in economics and computer applications at Notre Dame. “Diversity in thinking is really important in the formation of teams, and the students who complete this degree will have those qualities, coupled with a foundation in computer science.”

More information is available at bacs.nd.edu or by emailing bacs@nd.edu.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on March 04, 2020.

In memoriam: Richard Lamanna, associate professor emeritus of sociology

2019-05-24T14:00:00-04:00

Richard “Dick” Lamanna, an associate professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology, died Wednesday (May 22) at his home in Holy Cross Village. He was 86.

A University of Notre Dame faculty member for more than 35 years who served as department chair on multiple occasions, his research focused on urban sociology, race and ethnic relations, religious beliefs and practices, and urban poverty.

“Dick Lamanna was a great contributor to everything in which he involved himself,” said Kevin J. Christiano, an associate professor of sociology. “He had a knack for working mostly behind the scenes, so he did not always get the full credit that he deserved for his accomplishments — and he was not vain enough to covet that type of recognition.”

The author of numerous books, articles and research studies, he won the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership’s 1998 Award for Excellence in Research as co-author of "Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides Catholic Americans."

Lamanna did extensive research on residential and educational segregation and on racial discrimination in housing for the South Bend Human Rights Commission. With Notre Dame’s Julian Samora, he co-authored a study on Mexican Americans in East Chicago, Indiana, and assisted in a statewide study of Catholics in Indiana. His efforts earned him Notre Dame’s Rodney F. Ganey Community-Based Research Award and the Urban League of South Bend and St. Joseph County’s Community Service and Civil Rights Award.

His 1964 paper on how anti-Catholic prejudice was influencing young, educated voters choosing between presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy received renewed attention during the 2016 presidential election.

Lamanna was known for organizing annual trips to ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago and South Bend, helping his students see ways of life they had not previously encountered. He also organized community internships for students to work in legal aid centers, women and children’s shelters, and other social organizations.

“Dick was a great friend and mentor to me,” said Richard Williams, a professor of sociology. “He was the person who informed me that the Department of Housing and Urban Development was giving out grants for housing studies, which led to a major line of research for me. He did his own studies of housing discrimination in South Bend, some of which I still refer to in my classes.”

Born in Little Falls, New York, to Italian immigrant parents, Lamanna was the first in his family to attend college. He graduated from Fordham University in 1954, served in the Air Force from 1955 to 1957, then earned his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lamanna at the March on Washington in 1963.

While in North Carolina, he became active in the civil rights movement, attending Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

Lamanna was a member of the Holy Cross parish, serving in multiple roles on the parish council. He served weekly meals at the Hope Rescue Mission for more than 20 years, was a founding member of the Women’s Care Center of South Bend advisory board and was a campaign manager and organizer for former South Bend mayor Roger Parent.

“He was a friend to so many of us who came to Notre Dame without knowing anyone locally,” Christiano said. “He was an abundant source of advice, encouragement, introductions to the city, rides to events and even hearty home-cooked Italian meals.”

He is survived by his sister, Teresa Moretti; his children, Larry (Janice) Lamanna and Valerie Lamanna; a nephew, grandniece and nephew; and step-grandson. A visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday (May 24) at Kaniewski Funeral Home on Bendix Drive in South Bend. An additional visitation and prayer service will be held from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Dujarie House at Holy Cross Village for friends from the Schubert Village, Dujarie House and Holy Cross Village community.

The funeral Mass will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Joseph’s Chapel at Holy Cross College with a reception to follow at Andre Place Holy Cross Village. A memorial service and the burial will be held later in the summer in Little Falls, New York.

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on May 24.

English professor wins 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction

2019-04-29T15:05:00-04:00

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, has won the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the country’s largest peer-juried prize for novels and short stories.

Van der Vliet Oloomi has been so honored for her second novel, "Call Me Zebra," which follows a young heroine as she leaves New York and retraces the path she took with her father from Iran to the United States. Literature is at the heart of the novel, and the protagonist, Zebra, considers books central to her identity and at times literally devours pages of books.

"'Call Me Zebra' represents an homage to the great writers of the past and present who have had the courage and intellectual stamina to think with their hearts about what it means to be human in a world where justice and equality remain scarce for so many," Van der Vliet Oloomi said. "Winning the PEN/Faulkner Award at such a delicate and trying juncture in our nation’s troubled history is an honor I am infinitely grateful to carry. It is, for me, a reminder from our mysterious universe that honest writing can allow us to speak humbly with one another, an intimation to love and to listen deeply each time I set pen to paper.”

She added: “After seven years of writing in near-complete solitude, of working through what it means to be from the Middle East in our contemporary world and of considering the emotional and psychological impact of losing and searching for home, it feels incredibly fulfilling to see 'Call Me Zebra' — a book about books — find its place in the literary landscape at large."

This year's judges — Percival Everett, Ernesto Quiñonez and Joy Williams — considered more than 400 novels and short story collections from American authors.

In a statement on the 2019 winner, the PEN/Faulkner judges wrote: "Once in a while a singular, adventurous and intellectually humorous voice appears that takes us on an inescapable journey. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s 'Call Me Zebra' is a library within a library, a Borges-esque labyrinth of references from all cultures and all walks of life. In today’s visual Netflix world, Ms. Van der Vliet Oloomi’s novel performs at the highest of levels in accomplishing only what the written novel can show us.”

Van der Vliet Oloomi will receive the $15,000 prize at PEN/Faulkner Foundation's Saturday (May 4) ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Recent previous winners of the PEN/Faulkner award include Joan Silber's "Improvement," Imbolo Mbue's "Behold the Dreamers" and James Hannaham's "Delicious Foods."

"Call Me Zebra" has received wide and prestigious critical acclaim — including being deemed “ferociously intelligent” by the New York Times Book Review and a “filthy love note to literature unabashedly luxuriating in its bookishness” by the LA Review of Books.

“Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a new breed of erudite, conceptually ambitious authors,” author Steven Felicelli wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Above and beyond the sociopolitical undercurrent, ‘Call Me Zebra’ is about the dead we love and communicate with each time we open a book (or access a memory).”

Other honors for "Call Me Zebra," published in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018 and recently released in paperback, include being longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award — intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary community — and being named a finalist for the Indiana Emerging Authors Prize.

In 2015, Van der Vliet Oloomi was named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 and was a 2015 Whiting Award winner for “early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.” Previous Whiting Award winners include Jonathan Franzen, Alice McDermott and David Foster Wallace.

Van der Vliet Oloomi’s 2012 debut novel, "Fra Keeler," earned critical acclaim for its “chilling,” “surreal” and “humorously associative meditation” about a man who investigates the death of the former owner of his newly purchased house.

An earlier version of this story was published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on March 20.