Past Rome Seminars

Past seminars have explored a variety of topics that show the centrality of Rome to multiple disciplines and scholarly methodologies.

2011: Glocal Italy explored both the history and the contemporary reality of Italy as a culture grappling with the need to construct a unified national imaginary while at the same time preserving regional and local distinctiveness, identity, difference.

2012: CineRoma explored ways in which film genres and traditions (comedy, the fantastic, silent and popular cinema, realism) address and represent Rome.

2013: Dante's Theology took place in Jerusalem instead of Rome and brought together Dante scholars and theologians for an interdisciplinary engagement with the theological underpinnings of Dante's poetry and philosophy.

2014: American Catholicism in a World Made Small was the first of the seminars to take place in Notre Dame's new building in Rome and explored the interaction between a European (and particularly Italian) institutional church and American culture.

2015: Philology Among the Disciplines examined the role and relevance of philology in its relations to archaeology, anthropology, history, art history, classics, law, philosophy, and theology.

2016: Rome and the Jubilee, 1300-2015 used the study of Jubilees, past and present, as a focus for tracking Rome’s changing fortunes as a religious and political capital, to discover how its mission as a destination for tourists and pilgrims shaped the face of the city and the growth of its public institutions.

2017: Ireland & Italy investigated the complex set of connections between Ireland and Italy, from medieval monasticism (and earlier) to the contemporary European Union.