Program of Liberal Studies

For those of you with fond memories of Lysistrata from Sem I, consider auditioning for this forthcoming production!

Auditions - LYSISTRATA A comedy adapted by Ellen McLaughlin Inspired by the play by Aristophanes Directed by Lucy Barron '23 Performances: September 30 - October 2 i...

All PLS alums are invited to a continental breakfast reception on Saturday, June 4, from 9 - 10 am in the PLS suite, 320 O’Shaughnessy Hall. Starting at 10:00 am, Professor Phil Sloan will lead a seminar discussion of Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark”

Please join us tomorrow at noon for the performance of PLS's own Megan Meyer '22!

Fridays at Noon
Friday, February 11, 12:00 PM
LaBar Recital Hall
O'Neill Hall of Music

Please join us for a free recital featuring Department of Music students, Megan Meyer '22, soprano, and Katelyn Turner '25, soprano. Featuring works by Sondheim, Schubert, Porter, Handel, and Schumann.

This recital is free and not ticketed. The next Fridays at Noon will be on February 25.

On Tuesday, February 8th, John Ruskin's 203rd birthday, please join us for the annual Ruskin Lecture. The event starts at 5 pm in the Oak Room of the South Dining Hall; reception to follow.

Our speaker, Gabriel Meyer, is the executive director of the Ruskin Art Club, the oldest Ruskin society in North America (now based at USC). Gabriel is a poet, war journalist, and Catholic theologian by avocation. He is a deep thinker and wonderful speaker, who will be talking about "Ruskin, Laudato Si', and the Big Ecological Picture."

Moderated by PLS professor Jenny Martin, organized by the Reilly Center (directed by PLS professor Robert Goulding), and sponsored by the Environmental Humanities Initiative, Sustainability Studies, the departments of English and Theology, and the Program of Liberal Studies. For more details:

The Ruskin Birthday Lecture | John J. Reilly Center | University of Notre Dame The John J. Reilly Center at the University of Notre Dame offers graduate and undergraduate programs and fosters scholarly conversation at the intersections between the humanities and social sciences, and the sciences and medicine.

Author Lauren Groff to give public lecture at Notre Dame Notre Dame News gathers and disseminates information that enhances understanding of the University’s academic and research mission and its accomplishments as a Catholic institute of higher learning.

The Program invites all alumni to a breakfast tailgate with current PLS students from 9 am - 11 am this coming Saturday prior to the Cincinnati game. We'll be on the west side of O'Shaughnessy with a tent near the Woman at the Well statue, ready to supply you with bagels, breakfast pastries, fruit, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. We have also arranged for a tour our new PLS office suite and student lounge!

Please join your colleagues and professors for our first, in-person PLS Coffee Social of the academic year!

We will gather at the "Woman at the Well" tomorrow from 2 pm - 3 pm. If it rains, we will gather in the PLS lounge.

Expect stirring conversation, steamy beverages, delicious goodies, and, most importantly, a well-earned respite from the harrowing stresses of the life of a PLS major.

Read about Lauren Groff's collaboration with PLS's own Prof. Katie Bugyis in Harvard's electronic alumni magazine today.

Novelist Lauren Groff tells the origin story behind ‘Matrix’ While spending a year at Radcliffe working on her latest book, Lauren Groff switched gears after attending a talk by a fellowship classmate — and started a project focused on a medieval nun.

Notice of the Death of Father Gerard Carroll

Father Carroll, who taught in the Program of Liberal Studies from 1978 to 1983, died on Monday, July 5, 2021 in Ireland. His nephew Turloch, who is also a priest wrote: “Last night my uncle Fr Gerard Carroll passed away after a number of years living with ill health. The youngest of my mother's family, and the youngest of four brothers ordained to the priesthood. Gerard was a priest to his finger tips, with an amazing broad sense of spirituality. He was most at home in St. Sulpice in Paris, where he would spend hours hearing confessions and giving spiritual direction, in French, Italian, English, German and Spanish. As teenagers my sister and myself would enjoy our trips to Paris and the long walks around the city that was his home. His walking tours of Rome were also well known, from his student days in the Irish College. We have been so fortunate to have been enriched by his life. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.”

Father Carroll had two doctoral degrees, an S.T.D. in Sacred Theology from the Lateran University in Rome and a Ph.D. in 1981 from Trinity College, Dublin on the priesthood in seventeenth-century France. His publications include his translation of You Looked at Me: The Spiritual Testimony of Claudine Moine (James Clark, 1989).