Catholic Culture Series on "Catholic Literary Heritage"
David DeavelUniversity of St. Thomas
Jennifer Newsome MartinUniversity of Notre Dame
The Lumen Christi Institute's West Suburban Catholic Culture Series returns in 2021-22 with a monthly series on the theme of Catholic literary heritage. We will survey the history of literature written by Catholics from the early middle ages to the late twentieth century.
What is Catholic literature? What is our Catholic literary heritage? St. John Henry Newman has informed us that Catholic literature is more than “religious literature” or “the literature of religious men.” Rather, Catholic literature is literature of “all subjects whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat them.” Not only doctrine, controversy, and history; but all of human life, as seen from the perspective given by Revelation and the life of the Church.
Participants will receive a booklet with extracts from the authors covered in the lectures. No advance reading is required, but our speakers will refer to the extracts in their lectures. The selections will offer an accessible foray into authors like Dante, Shakespeare, Anselm of Canterbury, and the author of The Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight.
SPRING SEMESTER SCHEDULE
6:30 p.m. cocktails | 7:00 p.m. dinner, lecture, & Q&A | 8:30 p.m. end
MAR 2: English Catholic Revival of the 19th-20th Centuries
Prof. David Deavel (University of St. Thomas, MN)
APR 6: 20th Century American Catholic Literature
Prof. David Griffith (University of Notre Dame)
MAY 11: The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry *Livestreamed on Zoom*
Prof. James Matthew Wilson (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
FALL SEMESTER SCHEDULE
SEP 15: Medieval Catholic Literature
Prof. Rachel Fulton Brown (University of Chicago)
OCT 13: Shakespeare
Prof. Michael P. Murphy (Loyola University Chicago)
NOV 10: Dante
Prof. Jennifer Newsome Martin (University of Notre Dame)
David P. Deavel is Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, where he is also Co-Director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. He holds an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Fordham University. He is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture. With Jessica Hooten Wilson, he edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (Notre Dame, 2020). With Liz Kelly, he co-hosts the Deep Down Things podcast and his writing has appeared in many publications, including Catholic World Report, First Things, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal.
Jennifer Newsome Martin is Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she also received a PhD in 2012. She is a systematic theologian with areas of research interest in 19th and 20th century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought, trinitarian theology, theological aesthetics, religion and literature, French feminism, ressourcement theology, and the nature of religious tradition. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), was one of 10 winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (formerly the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise). She is also the co-editor of An Apocalypse of Love: Essays in Honor of Cyril O’ Regan (Herder & Herder, 2018). Other work has appeared in Modern Theology, Communio: International Catholic Review, and in a number of edited volumes and collections of essays.
