Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies 2009-2010 Lecture Series
All events will be held at the USC Davidson Conference Center
4:30 pm Reception -- 5:00 pm Lecture
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September 22, 2009 An Evening with
Kevin Starr
Most
people know that Kevin Starr, University Professor of History at
the University of Southern California and former State Librarian,
has written an extraordinary seven volume history of the State of
California, his America and the California Dream Series, the latest
volume of which was, Golden Dreams: California
in an Age of Abundance, was published just this year. What most people do not know is that
Professor Starr is now hard at work on another book, one that he
has been thinking about literally for decades-a history of American
Catholicism, tentatively entitled Lift Up Your
Hearts!, to be published
by Knopf. In this evening's lecture, Professor Starr described this
project, and why he believes his next book tells an important story
that has yet to be told.
Kevin Starr was born in San Francisco in 1940. He served two years as lieutenant in a tank battalion in Germany. Upon release from the service, Starr entered Harvard University where he earned a degree in 1965 and in 1969 a PhD in American Literature.
He also holds a Master of Library Science from UC Berkeley and has done post-doctoral work at the Graduate Theological Union. Starr has served as Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Eliot House at Harvard, executive assistant to the Mayor of San Francisco, the City Librarian of San Francisco, a daily columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and a contributing editor to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times.
He has authored numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Starr’s latest work is Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963. Here, he details the dominant economic, social and cultural forces in post-World War II California. Starr has written and/or edited fourteen books, six of which are part of his American and the California Dream series.
His scholarship has garnered much acclaim, including a prestigious
Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the Society of American Historians,
and the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California. Starr served
as California State Librarian from 1994 to 2004, after which Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger named him State Librarian Emeritus. In November
2006 he was awarded a National
Humanities Medal.
October 21, 2009 Peter Steinfels: A Catholic Approach to American Public Life
Trying
to understand a world where neither religious faith nor secularization
show any signs of diminishing, scholars have been exploring the notion
of the “post-secular.” A review of different understandings
of secularization suggests that the U.S., in fact, can be called a
post-secular society, preeminently and irreversibly secular in some
respects, intensely religious in others. But what does this in turn
mean for American public life and specifically for its politics?
How should religious traditions, organizations, and leaders speak
to questions with profound moral implications, from war and economic
security to health care and abortion? Should they couch their arguments
strictly in secular terms? Should they be politically “bilingual”—addressing
the faithful with one language and the general citizenry with another?
What is needed is a new ethic of “post-secular citizenship” involving
both religious literacy and enlarged sensibilities on the part of believers
and non-believers.
Peter Steinfels is co-director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture and writes “Beliefs,” a biweekly column on religion and ethics for The New York Times. The senior religion correspondent of The Times from 1988 to 1997, he is also the author of A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America. He has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University, Notre Dame, and the University of Dayton; and earned a Ph.D. in European history at Columbia University.
November 11, 2009 Michael Perry: The
Political Morality of Liberal Democracy
In
a liberal democracy, what are the fundamental moral convictions and
commitments that should govern decisions such as these: should we (the
citizens of a liberal democracy, acting through our elected representatives)
retain capital punishment, or abolish it? Should we ban abortion or
permit it? Should we ban physician-assisted suicide or permit it? Should
we refuse to extend the benefit of law to same-sex unions, or should
we create civil unions for same-sex couples? Should we call such unions "marriages"?
And, what is the proper role of religiously grounded morality in a
liberal democracy?
Michael John Perry specializes in three areas: (1)
American constitutional law and theory, with an emphasis on constitutional
rights and on the courts’ role—especially the U.S. Supreme
Court’s role—in protecting constitutional rights;
(2) law, morality, and religion, with an emphasis on the role of religiously
based morality in the law and politics of liberal democracy; and (3)
human rights theory.
Perry is the author of over sixty articles and essays and eleven books, including Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2003), Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge, 2007); Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court (Cambridge, 2009). His eleventh book, The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.
Perry has held, since 2003, a Robert W. Woodruff University Chair at Emory University, where he teaches in the law school. A Woodruff Chair is the highest honor Emory University bestows on a member of its faculty. Before coming to Emory, Perry was the inaugural occupant of the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law at Northwestern University (1990-97), where he taught for fifteen years (1982-97). Perry then held the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University (1997-2003).
During the 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 academic years, Perry is splitting his time between Emory University and the University of San Diego, where, as the University Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law and Peace Studies, he is teaching a course on the law and morality of international human rights both to law students and to graduate students at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.