Events

These are events sponsored wholly or in part by the Center for the Humanities for 2025-2026

• September 
• October 
• November 
• December 
• January 
• February 
• March 
• April 
• May 

SEPTEMBER

 

 

OCTOBER

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3

CFH Annual Celebration of Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities

Nachbahr Award and Presentation
2025 recipient Dr. Ramón Espejo-Saavedra, professor from department of Modern Languages & Literatures

2025 Teaching Faculty Excellence Award
Dr. Aaron Palmore, professor from Classics department

Student Presentations from the CFH Summer Student Research Fellows:
Yassy Ayala
Caitlin Cottril
Fisk Fisk
Liam Holden
Moulai Njie
Elora Paul-Martin
Stephanie Piscal
Melissa Raymond
Eva Retford

Student Summer Humanities Internships:
Ari Acevedo
Evelyn Donovan
Alex Preusser

Digital Humanities Summer Institute student fellows will make a joint oral presentation about a new CFH initiative which funded their participation in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Montreal this past summer:
Catherine Blanch
Abigail Gaughan
Steven Guy
Anthony Loia
Conor Lynch

Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23

WRITERS AT WORK SERIES

R. Eric Thomas

Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10

Center for the Humanities Student Grants Info Session

Join us to learn what grants are available for Loyola students from the CFH! 

We will discuss Student-led Seminars, Summer Research Fellowships, stipends for Summer Study programs, stipends for otherwise unpaid Internships, and our pilot program Digital Humanities Summer Fellows. After the presentation by CFH Student grant coordinator, Dr. Brett Butler and past student recipients, there will be time for pizza and conversation.

Center for Intercultural Engagement (CIE)
Student Center East 317
4:15 PM

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21

Jerome S. Cardin Lecture

“In the Haunted Present: Dara Horn's Dream for Living Jews” 

McGuire Hall
Andrew White Student Center
 7:00PM

 

NOVEMBER

NATIONAL 2025 FRENCH WEEK  - French Out Loud: the Power of the Spoken Word

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 TO SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9

 

Check loyola.edu/frenchweek for times and other details. You may also contact the Department of Modern Languages.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

“Why Museums Matter”

Talk by Dr. Daniel Weiss

Dr. Daniel Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and President Emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will give a public lecture on why art museums matter today.

Knott Hall B01
5:00 PM

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Humanities Symposium Fall Faculty Teaching Seminar - The Great Derangement
Interdisciplinary resource presentations
Faculty members are invited to attend this year's Humanities Symposium Fall Teaching seminar. This seminar will provide information about the Humanities Student-Faculty Colloquia, which will take place on March 12 and 13. It will also offer suggestions and resources for teaching this year's text, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh, this year's Symposium keynote speaker.

Faculty from three different departments will share ideas about how to incorporate this text into your spring courses. This fall's seminar will feature:  
Terre Ryan (Writing) 
Suzanne Keilson (Engineering) 
Mark Sentesy Wagner (Philosophy) 

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to Bess Garrett, esgarrett@loyola.edu by November 1.

College Center Conference Room 105
12:00 – 1:00 PM

DECEMBER

JANUARY

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28

MODERN MASTERS READING SERIES

James MaGruder

Fiction Reading

MaGruder is a playwright, translator, and fiction writer. His adaptations of Gozzi, Moliére, Marivaux, Hofmannstahl, Lesage, Labiche, Giraudoux, Sidney, and Dickens have been performed on and off-Broadway, at regional theaters across the United States, and in Germany, England, and Japan. He has published four books of fiction (Sugarless, Let Me See It, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, and Vamp Until Ready) and wrote, or co-wrote, the books to the Broadway musicals Triumph of Love and Head Over Heels. His first—and last—work of non-fiction, a chronicle of the first fifty years of Yale Repertory Theatre, was published recently by Yale University Press. He lives in Baltimore and has taught at Swarthmore College, Princeton University, and Yale School of Drama.

McManus Theater
6:30 PM

FEBRUARY

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3

"Wicked Flesh: Black Women,  Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World"
lecture by Jessica Marie Johnson

Jessica Marie Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020). Her work explores histories of slavery, African diaspora, and Black life in the Americas.

Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center
4:30 PM

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3

ENVIRONMENTAL FILM SERIES

O Rio Negro São As Pessoas (Rio Negro is Its People)
Brazilian Amazon Environmental Film

Screening & Discussion with Filmmakers 

 

 

 

The Anavilhanas National Park, in the Rio Negro Amazon, is the environment for presenting characters living in the tenuous orbit between the city Manaus and riverside communities on the banks of this historic river. The film explores the contemporary meaning of being at and growing up by the banks of a river with the power of Rio Negro, submerged in a dense forest and surrounded by global elements of today; the need to leave, the forgotten desire to return, the choice to stay, the immensity and the time of the river, form an intuitive and imaginary narrative set to suggest deeply local stories that serve the reflection on human life.

Presented in cooperation with the Baltimore Environmental Film Series, the Humanities Symposium, the Loyola Environmental Studies Program, Visual and Performing Arts, and the Dean of Loyola College.

Register to attend.

Loyola Notre Dame Library Auditorium 
6:00 PM
followed by talkback with the film's creators

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5

Humanities Symposium Faculty Teaching Seminar - The Great Derangement

Interdisciplinary resource presentations

Faculty members are invited to attend a Humanities Symposium Teaching seminar. The event will run from 12:00-1:00 PM, but we have the room reserved until 1:30 PM for informal discussion. We hope to create a space for sharing ideas and connecting with colleagues. 

Faculty from three different departments will share ideas about how to incorporate the text into your spring courses and to prepare your students to participate in the colloquia. This seminar will feature:   

College Center Conference Room 105
12:00 – 1:00 PM

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7

Center for the Humanities Student Grants Info Session 

 Join us to learn what grants are available for Loyola students from the CFH!    We will discuss Student-led Seminars, the new Student Conference Grants, Summer Research Fellowships, stipends for Summer Study programs, and stipends for otherwise unpaid Internships. After the presentation by CFH Student grant coordinator, Dr. Brett Butler, and past student recipients, there will be time for pizza and conversation.

Register on The Bridge.

Writing Department Lounge
Maryland Hall 038
4:15 PM

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13

Environmental Art

Artist Stacy Levy meets with students
2:30 -5:00 PM

A chance to take part in the creation of a brand new, site-specific artwork for our campus! Environmental Artist Stacy Levy is returning to campus to do a site visit and engage with the community around her upcoming Public Art piece, scheduled to be installed in mid-March.

Register to come walk the site with her and engage in discussions to begin to finalize the plans for the environmental artwork. We need your voice--you can help shape the final piece!

Note: You do not need to come for the entire time--please answer the question in registration to let us know when you will be there!

Co-sponsored with the Julio Fine Arts Gallery and the Humanities Symposium 2025.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13

MODERN MASTERS READING SERIES

Daniel Deudney

Daniel H. Deudney teaches political science, international relations and political theory at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a BA in political science and philosophy from Yale University, a MPA in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University, and a PhD in political science from Princeton University. His areas of research are general international relations theory, international political theory and republicanism, and contemporary global issues (nuclear, outer space, environment, and energy). His publications include Renewable Energy (Norton, 1983), co-author; and Contested Grounds: Conflict and Security in the New Global Environmental Politics (SUNY, 1998), co-editor. 

McGuire Hall
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14

Douglass Day Events, 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM - Humanities Café

• Stop by and warm up with hot chocolate, treats, and swag
• Play Frederick Douglass trivia to win Starbucks gift cards

12:00 - 3:00 PM - Humanities Café

• Celebrate Douglass's 207th birthday with treats from a local Black-owned bakery
• Make history by participating in the Transcribe-a-Thon:
  • Crowdsourcing the recovery of 19th century black activism with the Center for Black Digital Research and the Library of Congress

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14

ENVIRONMENTAL ART

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17

Phantasmagoria!
An Evening with Magic Lanternists Melissa Ferrari and Emma Straus

Melissa Ferrari, an experimental animator and professional magic lanternist speaks about and performs her work at Loyola along with a companion talk and performance by Emma Straus (Loyola '24) who, inspired by Ferrari's example created and performed her own magic lantern show during her senior year. Straus has gone on to write about the importance of studying antique technologies such as magic lanterns in order to develop a critical awareness of our own contemporary systems of understanding.

Loyola Notre Dame Library
4:30 - 6:00 PM

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18

WRITERS AT WORK SERIES: Faculty Reading and Q & A

Professors Oghenetoja Okah and Peggy O'Neill

Dr. Oghenetoja Okoh is an Assistant Professor in the History Department here at Loyola University, Maryland. Her current research focuses on the development of minority identity and citizenship in the oil-rich region of the Niger Delta, Nigeria. This research is captured in a forthcoming book, entitled Minority Identities in Nigeria: Contesting and Claiming Citizenship in the Twentieth Century, which is being published by Cambridge University Press. Her areas of expertise include the history of colonialism and decolonization, gender identity, minority politics, and 20th century cultural flows between Africa and the African diaspora. 

Dr. Peggy O’Neill, a professor in the Writing department, is an active scholar and academic writer. She writes primarily about teaching writing and learning to write for other scholars and writing teachers. While she has been the sole author of many publications, she enjoys writing collaboratively and has many co-authored works. Over the last 26 years, she has co-authored three books, edited or co-edited four books, and published over 30 academic journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent book, written with Dr. Sandy Murphy from University of California Davis, is Assessing Writing to Support Learning: Turning Accountability Inside Out (2022). Beyond writing scholarly pieces for publication, she, like most academics, writes a lot of other things such as reports, grant proposals, presentations, blogs, reviews, policy statements, letters, recommendations, and all types of teaching material.

Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21

Toxic Tour of Curtis Bay and Community-Led and Controlled Development

• Bus will depart from Loyola (Boulder stop) at 8:30 AM
• Visit to the CSX Coal Terminal and garbage incinerators
• Hear from scientists about trail cameras and air monitoring
• Meet with community organizers
• Learn about the Free Your Voice youth activist movement in Curtis Bay
• Lunch provided (Red Emma's Co-Operative)
• Learn about Land Trust and passive home
• Bus will arrive back at Loyola by 3:30 PM

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24

Roundtable on Environmental Justice with Nicole Fabricant

Monday following the toxic tour, Loyola students will have an opportunity to plug into roundtable discussions about the ongoing work in South Baltimore. One table will focus on legislation and policy, another will focus on alternative housing and the third table will focus on environmental justice and youth education. These three roundtables will allow students to explore the ongoing work in South Baltimore. There will be popular education and activities to get them thinking about their own interests and talents and how this can feed into the grassroots organizing work. 

If you're interested in this event, please consider registering for the Toxic Tour on Friday February 21  Attendance at both events is not required but strongly encouraged.

Nicole Fabricant is Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland.  She teaches courses on resource extraction, environmental justice, and the climate crisis. Her most recent book, Fighting to Breathe Race, Toxicity and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore (University of California Press 2022) looks at the cumulative impacts of industrial stationary toxic facilities in South Baltimore, Maryland. The book follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality of industrial expansion.

Register to attend the Roundtable

Humanities Café (main floor of the Humanities Building)
6:00 - 7:00 PM

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26

MODERN LANGUAGES TEATIME TALKS

“Of Pigs, Cows, and Men: Critique of Industrial Farming in Contemporary French Literature”
Dr. Salvador Lopez Rivera, Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of French

Coffee, tea, and snacks provided!

Language Learning Center
Maryland Hall 443
3:00 PM

MARCH

MONDAY, MARCH 10

ENVIRONMENTAL FILM SERIES

"We Are Guardians"

Film Screening and Discussion

TUESDAY, MARCH 11

MODERN MASTERS READING SERIES

Carlene Bauer

Bauer earned a B.A. from Loyola University Maryland and an M.A. in Nonfiction Writing from the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars. She has worked in and around New York publishing for years. Her work has been published in The Village Voice, Salon, Elle, and The New York Times Magazine, and on the website of n + 1.  She’s the author of the memoir, Not That Kind of Girl and two novels, Frances and Barnard and most recently, Girls They Write Songs About. 

Fourth Floor Program Room
6:30 PM

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 and THURSDAY, MARCH 13

Student-Faculty Colloquia for the 2025 Humanities Symposium

“Cry of the Earth: Cry of the Poor”

Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement:Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Two days during the official Symposium week are set aside for Loyola student/faculty colloquia. During each scheduled class period, faculty and their classes will meet with faculty and students from other classes. These colloquia have traditionally been led by panels composed of faculty members from different disciplines who lead informal discussion, posing questions to stimulate the participation of students, and to engage the Symposium text across narrow disciplinary boundaries. This year’s text is The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh.

The colloquia will be in-person. Faculty members should register their classes on The Bridge.

For more information about the colloquia and registration, please consult the Symposium webpage.

McManus Theatre
9:00 AM- 5:00 PM on both days

THURSDAY, MARCH 13

LOYOLA'S 2025 HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE ADDRESS:

“The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change”

Amitav Ghosh

In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh explores the climate crisis through multiple disciplinary lenses. In three short chapters: Stories, History, and Politics, which also address art, colonialism, and Laudato Si among other topics, Ghosh interweaves reflections on how we are constrained by our current modes of thinking and how we might find a way forward. 

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the juries of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. The Great Derangement was given the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities in 2018. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times.  Amitav Ghosh holds four Lifetime Achievement awards and five honorary doctorates. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. In 2018 the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, was conferred on Amitav Ghosh. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. Headshot credit: Mathieu Genon.

McGuire Hall
6:30 PM

Keynote Registration

For more information, please consult the Symposium webpage.

If you require additional accommodations, please contact Disability and Accessibility Services at das@loyola.edu.

MONDAY, MARCH 17

“‘Before Color Prejudice?’ The Construction of Race in Classical and Ancient Mediterranean Studies 1947 - Present”

Lecture by Dr. Najee Olya, Assistant Professor of Classics, William and Mary University

Frank Snowden of Howard University was the Black first scholar to collect the evidence and publish on the representation of Blacks in antiquity and argued that the ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t discriminate against skin color. Scholarship since Snowden's publication has tended to complicate his findings. Prof. Olya, who is an acknowledged expert in Greek art, will discuss the developments in current scholarship. Professor Olya publishes widely on various topics concerning race in Greco-Roman antiquity. 

Knott Hall B03
5:00 - 6:00 PM

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19

“Narratives of Disasters in Sinophone Literature”
Lecture by Dr. Fang Xie, Associate Professor of Chinese at VMI

Each spring semester, the Asian Studies program collaborates with the Chines program and/or the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures to invite a distinguished scholar to engage with the Loyola community. This talk will explore the intersections of media, culture, and society with a focus on environmental concerns as viewed from the perspectives of the Sinophone community.

10:00 AM
Cohn Hall 133
followed by coffee at 11:00 AM in the Humanities Cafe

MONDAY, MARCH 31

MODERN LANGUAGES TEATIME TALKS

“Two Woman Warriors in the Changing Mulan Narrative: From Princess Dou Xianniang in Historical Romance of the Sui and Tang to Witch Xianniang in Disney's 2020 Mulan”
Dr. Jinghua Wangling, Associate Professor of Chinese

MONDAY, MARCH 31

"Loyola's Legacy of Desegration:
Charles Dorsey: Student, lawyer, civil rights advocate"

PANEL DISCUSSION

When Charles Dorsey enrolled in Loyola College in 1949, he was the first full-time Black student to do so. Loyola graduate Ikia Robinson (class of 2024) researched and wrote about his time at Loyola and his life and career thereafter in an essay published in Untold Truths. As Loyola looks for ways to celebrate its past and chart a path for a more inclusive, anti-racist culture on campus, three of Dorsey’s children will participate in a panel discussion exploring their father’s legacy.

APRIL

TUESDAY, APRIL 1

"Contextualizing Crisis in Gaza, Palestine, and Israel"

Dr. Kimberly Katz, Professor of History and coordinator of the Human Rights & History Minor at Towson University, will lecture on the history of Palestine and Israel and the development of the current crisis in Gaza.

McGuire West
5:00 - 6:30 PM

MONDAY, APRIL 7

ENVIRONMENTAL FILM SERIES

“‘Can't Stop Change’- Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines”

Film Screening and Discussion

As Florida's violent legislation dominates headlines, LGBTQ2S+ communities are also on the frontlines of accelerating climate change. Can't Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines weaves interviews with 14 LGBTQ2S+ artists, organizers, and educators across Florida (and the new Florida diaspora) into an intersectional climate justice narrative.

Amidst so much unknown, Can't Stop Change shares an emergent hope: Moments of disaster create opportunities for immense transformation, where what once seemed impossible becomes possible. As we look towards the next hurricane season and next legislative cycle, how can we work with the changes to come to shape the futures we want?

Register to attend.

Loyola Notre Dame Library Auditorium
6:00 PM

TUESDAY, APRIL 8

WRITERS AT WORK SERIES

Emma Dries

Emma Dries is a writer and editor, and an agent at Triangle House Literary. She has worked on bestselling and award-winning books in editorial at Alfred A.Knopf, Doubleday Books, Ecco, and Flatiron Books. She has a B.A.in History from the University of Chicago and an M.F.A in Fiction from Johns Hopkins University. She grew up in Lower Manhattan, above the Fulton Fish Market, and now lives in the Hudson Valley.

Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9

2025 Hanna Geldrich-Leffman Colloquium on Language, Literature, and Society:
“Writing Mother Nature: Global Perspectives on Literature and the Environment”

 
The purpose of this colloquium is to explore the relationship between the environment and humanity in different literary traditions from the perspective of ecocriticism. The negative effect of human actions on Nature is, undoubtedly, one of the major concerns of our time, and ecocriticism examines our global ecological crisis through the intersection of literature (among other cultural productions and humanities disciplines) and the physical environment. In presenting fictional writings from different cultures that engage with this crisis, our speakers will illustrate the variety of imaginary standpoints from which this major change of dynamics between human beings and nature can be expressed. 
 
11am 
“Italian Fables for the Anthropocene”
Dr. Laura Di Bianco, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
 
2pm   
“Eco-Gothic Literature Reimagined: New Perspectives from Latin America”
Dr. Ana María Mutis, Ph.D., Trinity University
 
3pm 
“Zhuangzi's Butterfly and the Neo-Baroque: A Complex Image of Nature in Contemporary Sinophone Speculative Fiction”
Dr. Mingwei Song, Ph.D., Wellesley College

Wednesday, April 9
Fourth Floor Program Room
Andrew White Student Center

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16

MODERN LANGUAGES TEATIME TALKS

"The Effects of Spanish-English Virtual Language Exchange on Student Foreign Language Anxiety"
Sarah Tyler, Teaching Professor of Spanish

THURSDAY, APRIL 24

"Politics and Memory in the United States of Amnesia"
P.J. Brendese, Johns Hopkins University

Cohn Hall 133
4:30  PM

MAY