Sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the show is free and open to the public.

The productions are the culmination of work conducted in two Spanish courses that provide an opportunity for students to explore Hispanic culture while improving their Spanish language skills. “All of this is …done for a grade, and I would say that, especially in the last weeks, a substantial amount of time is devoted to both projects,” says Elena Mangione-Lora, assistant professional specialist in Romance languages and literatures.

The live theater project is open to all levels of Spanish speakers. This year the project features selections from “Fuente Ovejuna,” a play by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega.

The film class, by contrast, is geared toward more advanced Spanish speakers, and operates under the direction of Mangione-Lora and Kevin Barry, associate director of the Kaneb Center. This years film, “Locura y Pasión,” is a student-run telenovela, or Hispanic soap opera. The film has some adult themes and is not recommended for children.

Donations will be collected at the show, and all proceeds will be donated to La Casa de Amistad in South Bend.

Isabel Ferreira Gould, assistant professor of Portuguese and Brazilian studies at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD).

The grant will support and promote the University’s Portuguese Program and its Kellogg Institute for International 91��Ƶ from 2006 to 2009. This is the first time FLAD has awarded a grant to Notre Dame.

“This new funding will allow us to enhance undergraduate enrollment in Portuguese language classes, to provide support for student research, to increase awareness in the broader community of Portuguese studies, and to nurture scholarly research on Portugal,” said Gould, a faculty fellow of the Kellogg Institute and the Nanovic Institute of European 91��Ƶ.

Included in the activities that Gould will pursue are library acquisitions, speakers, an artist-in-residence, faculty and graduate research grants, and prizes for undergraduate excellence in advanced courses.

The grant also will provide funding for an international conference titled “African Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa,” planned for spring 2008. The two-day conference will cover various subjects, ranging from anthropology to film, and intends to challenge an exclusively Anglophone-centered conception of multiculturalism.

FLAD is a private, financially autonomous Portuguese institution that aims to contribute to the development of Portugal by motivating cooperation between Portuguese and American civil society and providing support to innovative projects in accordance with this goal.

An interdisciplinary symposium titled “White Privilege: Implications for the Catholic University, the Church and Theology” will be held March 26 to 28 (Sunday to Tuesday) in McKenna Hall at the University of Notre Dame. Sponsored by Notre Dame’s Department of Theology, the symposium is free and open to the public.

Designed to raise consciousness about the dynamics of white privilege as a form of racism, the symposium will seek to identify structures of white privilege within the church, the academy and society. Various theologians will engage the work of prominent scholars of race theory in the fields of law and the social sciences. The format of the symposium will encourage discussion among all participants.

Jon Nilson, professor of theology at LoyolaUniversity, will deliver the keynote address, “Seeking Sadness: Unmasking the ‘Blessings and Bearing the Burdens of White Privilege,” at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. A full schedule is available online at . To register online, visit on the Web.

The event is sponsored by Notre Dame’s Departments of Psychology, Sociology and Africana 91��Ƶ; Institute for Latino 91��Ƶ; Institute for Church Life; Office of Student Affairs; Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism; Center for Social Concerns; Catholic Social Tradition Program; Pre-College Program; Graduate 91��Ƶ; Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts; College of Arts and Letters; Henkels Lecture Series; and Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.