Loyola’s 2020 Humanities Symposium to reflect on experiences of war and homecoming
The Humanities Symposium, scheduled for March 12, 2020, is canceled. The event may be rescheduled at a later date.
Loyola University Maryland’s Center for the Humanities will host its annual Humanities Symposium and a theater production event reflecting on the wounds of war.
Phil Klay, award-winning author of Redeployment and veteran of the United States Marine Corps, will give the keynote address titled, “War, Literature, and the Long Road Home” during the Humanities Symposium on Thursday, March 12, at 6 p.m. in McGuire Hall. Copies of Redeployment will be sold at the event following the address.
Redeployment is a collection of short stories focusing on front-line and home-front experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The book has won many awards, including the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, and it was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times. Klay's nonfiction work won the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters in the category of Cultural & Historical Criticism in 2018. He currently teaches fiction at Fairfield University, and Klay's writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. For more information on the speaker, visit www.prhspeakers.com.
Loyola faculty are encouraged to bring their classes to the symposium. Faculty are also welcome to bring their students to colloquia discussions on Redeployment on Wednesday, March 11, and Thursday, March 12, in the 4th Floor Program Room.
Prior to the Humanities Symposium event, Theater of War Productions will present a dramatic reading of Philoctetes by Sophocles on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 6 p.m. in McGuire Hall. Following the reading, a panel discussion will highlight the effects of war on veterans and their families. Faculty workshops will for professors teaching Redeployment will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at noon in College Center 114 and on Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 3 p.m. in College Center 107. To register, please contact Bess Garrett, program assistant for the center for humanities, esgarrett@loyola.edu.
The Humanities Symposium and dramatic reading of Philoctetes are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.loyola.edu/symposium.