Happening on Campus Today

Welcome to the new and improved version of Read Me, I'm Irish.

It's a busy time at Notre Dame: the dreaded Midterms Week. Students in sweatpants, with sleepy eyes,  laptops, and tall cups of coffee, fill every campus study spot. Good luck getting a table in the Coleman-Morse Center study lounge. Better luck at the library, where you can usually find an open table upstairs. If you're lucky enough to have a light midterms schedule (or to be taking only 4 classes, like me), check out the following great events:

"It is the test of a good religion," G.K. Chesterton once said, "whether you can joke about it." Chesterton, a Catholic author and journalist, joked about his faith in order to show its truth - and the twentieth century's funniest Catholic writer was a guest lecturer at Notre Dame back in 1930. In remembrance of that visit, The Center for Ethics and Culture is hosting Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, to talk about Chesterton's life and work: https://sites.google.com/a/nd.edu/the-notre-dame-center-for-ethics-and-culture/programs/occasional-events/gkc-nd I'm biased toward this event because I did an independent research project on Chesterton while studying in London last semester. In any case, it should be a great lecture on a very great man.*

Notre Dame's Center for Children and Families is holding a symposium on early childhood development, or "the baby conference" as I call it: http://ccf.nd.edu/symposium/ I might be the only undergraduate who is attending this conference just for fun (and for the free lunches). I've found it very interesting, although rather technical for my amateur understanding.

France and Modern Art come together in this lecture from the Nanovic Institute: http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/2010/10/11/4130-an-art-historian-in-france-thoughts-and-methods/ I've never been a fan of modern art myself, but art history students and French-culture enthusiasts will likely enjoy this event.

Thanks for reading and Go Irish!


*If you are unfamiliar with Chesterton's works and would like to get to know them better, I recommend this website: http://www.chesterton.org/ and Chesterton's book Orthodoxy, which is "the trunk of the tree from which all the other branches of Chesterton grow."