Literature
On Good Stories and Coming Along for the Science
A New York Times bestselling author, Sam Kean has written four books on science—books with titles like The Disappearing Spoon and The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons. So...
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Why ‘Frankenstein’ Matters at 200: Rethinking the Human through the Arts and Sciences
Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Frankenstein, is the most widely taught novel at the university level around the world. Upon the novel’s bicentennial, this talk addresses the...
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On Writing and Saying Something True
For our season two premiere, host Ted Fox sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson, a professor emerita at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their...
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On the Opposite Shore
As a fisherman, there comes a time in your life when you will go fishing without the one who taught you how to fish. A time when you can never fish with him again. If you are...
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On Henry David Thoreau of Concord, Mass.
Here in the show’s season one finale, Laura Dassow Walls, William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at Notre Dame, discusses her book Henry David Thoreau: A Life, which...
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Writing Thoreau: A ‘Masterpiece’ Biography
Hermit, gadfly, scientist, crank, teacher, saint—and one of America’s greatest writers: even Thoreau’s closest friends said he was too many-sided and mischievous to fit...
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Contemplative Spiritiuality for Socially Challenging Times
St. John of the Cross’ idea of the Dark Night of the Soul is often understood as a classic of mystical literature focused on the personal experience of desolation leading to...
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Words On Play: Baseball Literature before 1900
Over the course of the nineteenth century, American baseball evolved from a localized folk game of English origin to a codified sport of broad popular appeal, commonly cited as...
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Fighting Words: English and American Boxing Literature from the Joyce Sports Collection
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections is home to perhaps the strongest institutional collection of boxing-related books and periodicals in the United States. A...
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The Writings of John Henry Newman by Rev. Ian Ker
Rev. Ian Ker (Faculty of Theology, Blackfriars, Oxford University) is generally regarded as the world’s authority on John Henry Newman, on whom he has published more than twenty...
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Renaissance Dante in Print
This exhibition presents Renaissance editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the John A. Zahm, C.S.C., Dante Collection at the University of Notre Dame, together with...
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Inter Folia Fructus: Recent Acquisitions in British Medieval Studies
This online exhibit reflects a physical exhibit that was prepared by Dr. Brian McFadden (Notre Dame class of ‘99) and displayed in the Rare Book Room during the summer and fall...
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