Upcoming Events

Fr. Clooney on Comparative Theology
September 28, 2023
5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. 
Moskovitz Theater, The Denaples Center
Fr. Clooney will discuss his work in Comparative Theology. In particular, he will talk about: What is Comparative Theology? How is it humanities? How is it Jesuit? How is it Catholic? Why do you (Fr. Clooney) do it, and how have you found that God meets you in this work?
Fr. Clooney joined the Harvard Divinity School faculty in 2005, where he is the Parkman Profesor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology. His recent books include Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics: Why and How it Matters (University of Virginia Press, 2019), Western Jesuit Scholars in India: Tracing Their Paths, Reassessing Their Goals (Brill, 2020), and most recently, St. Joseph in South India: Poetry, Mission and Theology in Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi's Tempavani (Vienna, 2022). He is currently finishing a memoir, Priest and Scholar, Catholic and Hindu: A Love Story. In July 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has served as a Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University. His most recent honorary doctorate was awarded in November 2019 by Regis College, University of Toronto. During 2022-23 he was the President of the Catholic Theological Society of America. 
 
Kevin Soucie - "Chanteur of French Songs"
October 11, 2023
6 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Slattery Center
With guitar in tow, Kevin Soucie has been singing French songs since his college days in Montreal.  What began as a hobby, has developed into a passion for the French chanson. 
Soucie, a native of Milwaukee, has used his craft to entertain and inspire French language students by performing at numerous schools and colleges including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Lawrence University, College of Charleston, and the University of Minnesota-Morris. 
Kevin Soucie has also delighted francophile audiences for the Alliance Francaise organizations in Milwaukee, the Fox Cities, Des Moines, Albuquerque, Phoenix and has performed at the popular Bastille Days festivals in Milwaukee. He is also a regular guest performer on the AF of Milwaukee’s “Rive Gauche” radio program. 
This fall, Soucie will tour the US performing for French organizations and universities in Madison, Sheboygan, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Scranton, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Tucson among others. 
 
J.R. McNeil Lecture - "Bison Hide, Elephant Tusk, and Sperm Whale Oil: The Industrial Revolution and the 'Late Holocene Depletions' ca/ 1800-1920"
October 12, 2023
5:30 pm to 7 pm
Loyola Science Center, 133
Part of the larger theme of Global Environmental History of the Industrial Revolution, this lecture concerns the ecological implications of ramping up the supply of fibers, minerals, lubricants, dyestuffs, and several other ingredients of industrialization, mainly in the 19th century.  British and American industrialization required cotton, wool, lead, copper, whale oil, palm oil, bison hide, elephant ivory, gutta percha among other items, most of which came from afar.  Cheap coal-fired transport made it feasible to harvest, hunt, gather, collect these ingredients, and ship them to industrial centers. This focuses on the impacts on three megafauna species of industrial demand for leather belting, ivory keyboards, and sperm whale oil for machine lubrication and illumination.  Bison, elephants, and sperm whales as keystone species had for millennia helped to regulate ecology on large grasslands or in the deep oceans, but in the 19th century their populations fell sharply, reducing their effectiveness. 
John McNeill was born and raised in Chicago and remains passionately devoted to the professional sports teams of the Windy City. He earned, or at any rate was awarded, a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Duke University. Since 1985 he has cheerfully served two masters, as a faculty member of the School of Foreign Service and History Department at Georgetown. From 2003 until 2006 he held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and International Affairs, until his appointment as University Professor. He teaches world history, environmental history, and international history at Georgetown; and writes books, and directs Ph.D. students, mainly in environmental history. He has served as president of both the American Society for Environmental History (2011-13) and the American Historical Association (2019), and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Europaea.
 
Dale Jamieson - Myers Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities and Civic Engagement
October 17, 2023
5:30 pm to 7 pm
Brennan Hall, Rose Room, 509
The Sondra and Morey Myers Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in the Humanities and Civic Engagement advances the University's efforts to bring renowned scholars, artists, and thinkers to Scranton to share their work and enrich cultural and civic activity at the University and in Scranton. This year, we welcome Dr. Dale Jamieson, a scholar of environmental ethics and animal rights, and an expert on contemporary climate change discourse.  
Dale Jamieson, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies; Director, Center for Environmental and Animal Protection; Affiliated Professor of Law, Medical Ethics, and Bioethics; Founding Director of Environmental Studies Program; and former Chair of the Environmental Studies Department, and Professor of Philosophy at NYU.
Patricia Leavy - Lecture and Book Signing
October 19, 2023
5 pm to 7 pm
Brennan Hall, Rose Room, 509
Hollyland follows the love story between Dee Schwartz, a writer and arts researcher, and Ryder Field, a famous actor descended from Hollywood royalty. Bonded by the loss of their mothers and their passion for the arts, the two embark on a love story that explores their search for magic—or “gold dust”—in their lives. Patricia Leavy wove her 20 years of experience as an arts researcher into the novel. Hollyland is a celebration of the arts, with a strong arts narrative explicitly interwoven throughout, and it raises vital questions about the arts in our lives: art in education, distinctions between art and entertainment, whether artists must compromise to be successful, the nature of controversial art, the pleasure and connection to be found making or experiencing art, and who the real movie stars are in our lives. 
Dean Zimmerman - "Explaining the Cosmos: Can the Philosopher Help?"
November 2, 2023
4 pm to 5:30 pm
Brennan Hall, Pearn Auditorium, 228
Why is there anything at all, and why a cosmos even remotely like ours?  Grand questions like these never cease to generate wonder — and, sometimes, confusion.  Answers to them offered by popular science and popular religion generally prove to be a mixed bag.  Recently, scientists and popularizers of science have drawn our attention to wondrous discoveries about the shape of the cosmos, and suggestive new theories about the universe’s origins; while religious apologists have revived some ancient but still appealing arguments for the existence of God.  But these attempts to address the big questions of “life, the universe, and everything” often gloss over subtleties that turn out to be important.  Sometimes they dress up a philosophical confusion in flashy rhetoric.  Philosophers can help uncover these subtleties and confusions, even if we can do no better in providing universally satisfying answers to these questions. 
Dean Zimmerman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, home to what has long been ranked one of the top five philosophy departments in the world. While at Rutgers, Dr. Zimmerman has been won multiple million-dollar Templeton Foundation grants, including a grant to found and direct the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion and a grant to further scholarly work in the growing field of “Science-Engaged Philosophical Theology”.  Dr. Zimmerman has published dozens of influential articles within the fields of contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of religion, and his work is notable for its engagement with contemporary science.  He has also been an editor for many books, including Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford University Press, 2007); twelve volumes of the Oxford Studies in Metaphysics (a leading venue for work in contemporary metaphysics); and several volumes of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (a leading venue for work in contemporary philosophy of religion).  Dr. Zimmerman has given lectures and keynote addresses at universities across the globe, including most recently the 2023 Swindel Lecture in Philosophy of Religion at Biola University. 
Nick Ripatrazone - "The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America"
November 10, 2023
12 pm to 1:30 pm
Brennan Hall, Rose Room, 509

On Friday, November 10 at 12 p.m., the Gail and Francis Slattery Center for Ignatian Humanities welcomes Nick Ripatrazone to give a talk entitled “The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America.” Ripatrazone’s most recent book, The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America, is a work of literary recovery, revisiting the lives of nuns whose poetry was published and acclaimed in secular venues in the twentieth century, though they’re far less well-known than the work of priests. As Ripatrazone says, “[t]he literary creations of poetic priests like Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., and Robert Southwell, S.J. have been both a blessing and a burden—creating the sense that male clergy alone have written substantial work.” The Habit of Poetry traces a “mid-20th century renaissance by nun poets,” which, as Ripatrazone argues, is “more than a literary footnote; it is a case study in how women negotiate tradition and individual creativity.”  

Nick Ripatrazone is the culture editor at Image Journal, a contributing editor at The Millions, and a columnist at Lit Hub. He has written for Rolling Stone, GQ, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Esquire. He lives in Andover Township, New Jersey, with his wife and twin daughters. He is the author of several books relevant to the Catholic literary tradition, most recently The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America(Fortress Press, 2023), Digital Communion: Marshall McLuhan's Spiritual Vision for a Virtual Age (Fortress Press, 2022), Wild Belief: Poets and Prophets in the Wilderness (Broadleaf Books, 2021), and Longing for an Absent God: Faith and Doubt in Great American Fiction (Fortress Press, 2020). 

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Slattery Center Dedication