Angela Knobel is no stranger to South Bend. The de Nicola Center’s 2025–26 Myser Visiting Fellow received her doctorate in philosophy from Notre Dame and considers the University a second home. “I’ve always loved Notre Dame,” she says. “From the moment I set foot on campus as a prospective graduate student a million years ago, Notre Dame has felt like home to me. I remember walking around campus all those years ago thinking, ‘I can be happy here.’”

Now an accomplished professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, Knobel is spending this year as the de Nicola Center’s Myser Fellow researching and reflecting on the theme of motherhood in preparation for a new book, Other Selves: Motherhood and the Moral Life.

The de Nicola Center’s Myser Fellowship provides extraordinary scholars the opportunity to conduct a year of research at the University of Notre Dame while engaging deeply in the intellectual life and scholarly community of the Center—its faculty, student Sorin Fellows, and the wider tri-campus community of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. “The events for the Center and the other events that I have been able to do have helped me refine my thinking,” she says. “They have given me opportunities to think through and clarify ideas and chapters in my book in a more rigorous way.”

Knobel describes her current book as a different kind of project than the technical philosophical works she has previously published, while maintaining the tight argumentation that the Thomistic philosophical tradition demands. An expert in ethics and bioethics, she considers the current book as a new challenge, filling a gap in philosophical discussion of motherhood.

“There are lots of books on motherhood,” Knobel explains, “but almost nothing that tries to understand motherhood in light of the ethical naturalism of Aristotle and Aquinas. In some sense, it has more original philosophical thinking than my other work, because it’s an application of a kind of philosophical school of thought to something that very few philosophers in that school have had much (or anything) to say about.”

In addition to her research and writing, Knobel has offered several lectures and seminars during her time as the Myser Fellow. She delivered the annual McMahon Aquinas Lecture at Saint Mary’s College in September, a talk entitled “Motherhood and the Meaning of Self-Gift: Reflections on The Giving Tree,” which she says helped her develop the central thesis of her book, “whether and to what extent motherhood involves a loss or fragmentation of the self, and in what sense motherhood requires self-sacrifice and self gift.”

“Angela Knobel is one of the most important Thomistic ethicists of our generation,” said Michael Waddell, McMahon Aquinas Chair in Philosophy at Saint Mary’s College and himself a former de Nicola Center Myser Fellow. “Her book on Aquinas and the infused moral virtues is the definitive work on the subject, and her forthcoming book on motherhood promises to be just as important. Her innovative use of literature—including children’s literature—along with the writings of Aquinas and other philosophers to address existentially pressing and perennially important themes related to motherhood is breaking new ground both in Thomistic studies and in the growing field of philosophical reflection on motherhood.”

Knobel also presented a paper exploring artistic representations of motherhood at the de Nicola Center’s 25th annual Fall Conference this past November and has led several reading groups and seminar-style discussions with Sorin Fellows on themes of motherhood and family through the lens of classic literature. This past January, she led a public discussion with Rev. Gregory Pine, O.P., about his book on the practice of virtue in conversation, illuminating themes found in Thomistic moral philosophy. Most recently, she offered a webinar hosted by the de Nicola Center on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which drew registrants from across the country for a conversation around motherhood and happiness in one of the great novels of the Western tradition.

Knobel explains that Anna Karenina is a particularly rich source of literary reflection on many of the topics she is exploring in her research. “Dolly is described as having been utterly used up by motherhood—made old, ugly before her time—while Anna’s rejection of motherhood keeps her beautiful and alive,” she says. “Some scholars describe Anna and Dolly as equally tragic. And it is true that Dolly does seem to be unhappy. But she’s not unhappy in all respects, and there’s a good case to be made that she does find happiness and peace in the love and care she feels for her children. So thinking about what goes on with Dolly seems like an important piece of thinking about the respects in which motherhood helps us flourish.”

“The Myser Fellowship has given me time to devote uninterrupted and focused attention to my project,” says Knobel. “It has allowed me to do in months what would normally have taken years. Today I had a conversation with Notre Dame professor David O’Connor about a single line in Aristotle I’d been thinking about. He was able to point me to an entire book that carefully works out an intuition I’ve had about that line, and then I was able to pull up the book on the Hesburgh library website and read the relevant material right away. This is an example of something that simply would not have been possible for me without the Myser Fellowship.”

More information on the Center’s Myser Fellowship is available here.