More than 750 scholars and artists will gather at the University of Notre Dame for the Center for Ethics and Culture’s interdisciplinary Fall Conference, “You Are Beauty: Exploring the Catholic Imagination,” November 10-12. The conference will feature 90 presentations, including the keynote lecture “Beauty Is Part of God’s Creation” by Etsuro Sotoo, the lead sculptor of Barcelona’s Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, and a closing lecture on the poetry of Wallace Stevens by Mary Ann Glendon, former Ambassador to the Holy See. Additional invited speakers include author and philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, art historian Elizabeth Lev, James Beard Award-winning chef John Besh, Center for Ethics and Culture Senior Distinguished Research Fellow Alasdair MacIntyre, producer of Academy Award winning films Steve McEveety, and the director of Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Monsignor Timothy Verdon.
“We are delighted to welcome hundreds of brilliant scholars and imaginative artists to discuss together the enduring values of beauty and creativity at this year’s Fall Conference,” said O. Carter Snead, director of the Center for Ethics and Culture. “Focusing on the true, the good, and the beautiful, wherever we find them, helps us to glimpse God’s transcendence in the midst of a broken world. We look forward to the dialogue and research that the Fall Conference stimulates.”
The conference’s 25 colloquium sessions, chosen from a record number of paper submissions, include presentations on sacred music, education and moral formation, literature, culinary arts, law, theology, architecture, and film. A special addition to the conference this year is the inclusion of a graduate student symposium, moderated by faculty experts who will offer feedback and mentoring.
The Center for Ethics and Culture’s Fall Conference, now in its 17th year, is the most important venue worldwide for fruitful dialogue and exchange among the world's leading Catholic thinkers, as well as those from other traditions, on pressing and vexed questions of ethics, culture, and public policy. Already established as the largest annual academic conference hosted by Notre Dame, this year’s conference will be the best-attended to date. Previous conference themes have included freedom, poverty, the body and human identity, secularism, justice, sin, the family, and intercultural dialogue. Notable past speakers include Jean Bethke Elshtain, Charles Taylor, Rev. Julián Carrón, Jean Porter, James Heckman, Michael Sandel, Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Robert P. George, Lorenza Violini, Peter Edelman, John Carr, Lucy Beckett, John Finnis, Rémi Brague, Eva Brann, and Sr. Helen Prejean.
The keynote lectures and invited sessions will be livestreamed at http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/programs/fall-conference/streamfc/. Major presentations will be available after the conference for on-demand viewing via the Center’s YouTube page at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ndethics. Follow the conference proceedings on Twitter via the hashtag #YouAreBeauty.