Related: The Future of the Humanities Project
Launched in fall 2023, the Future of the Humanities Project is sponsoring a series of lectures on cultural encounters in collaboration with the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.
In a world increasingly divided along national, religious, and cultural lines, Pope Francis has called for a "culture of encounter" that promotes communication and builds trust while acknowledging the inevitability of conflict. Cultural encounters that entail the recognition of others in their otherness are a contemporary imperative with a rich thematic history in literature and the humanities. This series will bring leading scholars together, across disciplines, to explore themes of encounter both in classic literary works and in contemporary cultural debates. The hour-long virtual events will include a Q&A with the audience. Following the launch event, all subsequent events will take place at 11:00 a.m. ET/4:00 p.m. UK.
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In 1891, Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, a ground-breaking encyclical on social justice in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. However, its import was not immediately recognized, and it…
Written 100 years ago by a writer who died believing himself a failure, The Great Gatsby (1925) is now considered by many readers and critics to be the “Great American Novel.” In this talk, Maureen…
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1595-1596) was written at a time when England was embarking on economic development through trade. Venice is an example of how such an economy can flourish, but…
In Don Quixote (1605), the unreliable narrator of the first volume names a Moor, Cide Hamete Benengeli, as a source for the story he is about to recount—although he warns readers that Moors are often…
Lucy Beckett’s A Postcard from the Volcano: a Novel of Pre-War Germany (2009) is a great intellectual novel situated in a time of massive geopolitical changes. Set in…
Willa Cather’s most famous book Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), based on the true story of two nineteenth-century French missionaries to New Mexico, is regularly listed among the greatest…
