Conferences

The Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage offers a variety of conferences as platforms for the exposition and interchange of ideas by specialists in their own field.‌

  • Laudato Si' at 10 Series

    Event Series | Spring 2025

    The Hank Center is proud to be involved in a number of events commemorating the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.

  • Laudato si’@ 10 events at the Climate Change Conference: Panel and Reception

    March 12–15: Climate Change Conference
    March 15: Panel & Reception: Laudato si'@ 10: Pope Francis and Caring for Our Common Home Today

    The Hank Center has supported the annual Climate Change Conference from its inception and is proud to host a special panel this year: Laudato si'@ 10: Pope Francis and Caring for Our Common Home Today. This event includes a hosted post-panel reception with beer, wine, and heavy hors d'oeuvres and is one of the free sessions offered by the conference.

    This panel is free and all are welcome; registration for the conference is not required to attend this final session.

    There is a concert that follows the reception and we hope you are able attend that as well. The concert is a ticketed event, which can be purchased here.

  • Journeys of Dignity: A Lecture series on Migration through the Lens of Catholic Social Teaching and Jesuit Education

    January 15 & February 14, 2025
    Zoom Only

    Sponsored by the Institute for Pastoral Studies, Mission Integration, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics, The Hank Center, and the LUC Dreamer Committee.

  • The Pleasures of Pseudepigraphy Conference

    March 30-31, 2025

    Loyola University Chicago | Lake Shore Campus

    Building on a growing body of recent scholarship on ancient pseudepigraphy and the varied ways in which ancient writers attributed texts to others, this conference will center the genre of the letter with an examination of epistolary fictions. We will consider what features particular to a letter make it particularly well suited for ancient pseudepigraphy, such as the ways it mediates presence across distance and associates itself with a particular personality.

    The event will begin with a pre-conference graduate student symposium, drawing students from the University of Notre Dame and Loyola University Chicago for lightning-round presentations of their research and faculty responses. The conference will officially commence with an invited plenary lecture. On the second day, scholars from the fields of classical studies, ancient Judaism, and ancient Christianity will present pre-circulated papers in seminar format.

    Sponsored by the Hank Center, the Loyola University Chicago Department of Theology and Department of Classical Studies.

  • Panel and Reception at the North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting

    May 24 | 4:00-6:00 PM
    Lewis Towers, Water Tower Campus

    This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicea, the first ecumenical council of the Church. Convened by the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine I, the council’s legacies are as contentious as they are historically and theologically signficant. Seventeen centuries later, what does it mean to teach Nicea? How do we approach it as simultaneously an historical document, a creed, a confession of faith, a cultural artifact, and an eccesial event? The Hank Center is hosting special panel session and reception to end the NAPS annual meeting.
    This event is free & open to the public.

  • Flannery Abroad: A Conference in Celebration of Flannery O'Connor's Centenary

    June 6-8, 2025 | 7pm CST

    Fordham University London, 2 Eyre St Hill, London, EC1R 5ET, United Kingdom

    Call For Paper Proposal Deadline: February 14, 2025

    Flannery O'Connor famously didn't like to travel. Nonetheless, in the tradition of the previous International Flannery O'Connor Conferences, we are taking O'Connor abroad in honor of her 100th birthday and to celebrate O’Connor’s influence on European writers, thinkers, and artists.

    Sponsored by Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, Loyola Chicago's Hank Center, Georgetown University, The Flannery O'Connor Trust.

  • Catholic Media Influencer Summit 2024

    November 12-15, 2024
    University of St. Mary of the Lake | Mundelein, IL

    This summit gathered leading voices in Catholic media and the academy to discuss the challenges of communicating for and about the Church while gathering vital information about the values and practices these influencers are bringing to the digital space. Over four days, participants heard from expert presenters from a variety of fields and engaged with questions surrounding the risks and rewards of digital ministry.

  • American Catholic Philosophical Association, Annual Meeting

    November 14–17, 2024
    InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile

    The Hank Center was proud to co-sponsor the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The conference, hosted by Loyola University Chicago, was held at the InterContinental Chicago on the Magnificent Mile. This year’s conference -- with the theme “Male and Female He Created Them” -- focused on questions of gender, though other topics in the Catholic philosophical tradition were also be considered. The program included keynote addresses, contributed papers, satellite sessions, and posters. For more information, please visit https://acpaweb.org/

  • 2024 Catholic Imagination Conference

    October 31–November 2, 2024
    University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana

    The Hank Center was proud to partner with the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for the Fifth Biennial Catholic Imagination Conference, "Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination.” With a particular focus on the literary arts, this conference explored unique expressions of the Catholic imagination in more than 150 presentations, performances, and discussions across the disciplines including philosophy, theology, ethics, law, history, and the natural and social sciences, as well as the creative domains of film, music, theater, and the visual arts.

  • Philip Metres: Seeking Refuge, Writing Home

    September 24, 2024 | 7-8:30PM
    McCormick Lounge, Coffey Hall

    In his recent Fugitive/Refuge, Philip Metres follows the journey of his refugee ancestors—from Lebanon to Mexico to the United States—in a vivid exploration of what it means to long for home. A book-length qasida, the collection draws on both ancient traditions and innovative forms—odes and arabics, sonnets and cut-ups, prayers and documentary voicings—in order to confront the perils of our age: forced migration, climate change, and toxic nationalism.
    Event video now available.

  • "In Defense of Others, In Defense of Faith: The Camden 28 Trial and the Vietnam War" with Michelle Nickerson

    September 18, 2024 | 4:30pm CDT
    Ceremonial Courtroom, Corboy Law Center, Water Tower Campus

    Historian Michelle Nickerson joined us for the debut of her new book, Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial . Defendant Kathleen "Cookie" Ridolfi (Emerita, Santa Clara School of Law) and expert witness Joseph Daoust S.J. (Red Cloud School) gave reflections.

  • Power of the Word Conference: La Sapienza, Rome

    September 16-20, 2024
    Dipartimento di Studi Europei, Americani e Interculturali, La Sapienza University, Rome

    The Power of the Word: bringing together scholars in literature, philosophy, theology, ethics and religion in conversation with each other and with creative writers and their works. The Hank Center proudly sponsored the Power of the Word International Conference VII, which took place from 16-20 September, 2024, at La Sapienza University, Rome.

  • Peter Maurin Conference

    September 6-7, 2024
    St. Gregory the Great Church
    The Catholic Worker, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933, is network of communities committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. This day-long gathering looked closely at the life and work of Peter Maurin. His program of action consisted of roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought, houses of hospitality where the works of mercy could be performed, and agronomic universities-a return to working the land, where workers could become scholars and scholars workers. These topics were discussed in a roundtable, personalist way-- in the spirit of Peter Maurin.

  • Catholic Studies Consortium, Annual Meeting, Seton Hall University

    September 5–7, 2024
    Seton Hall University

    The Catholic Studies Consortium grew out of a small network of Catholic Studies scholars seeking to be a resource to each other and the growing movement of Centers and Programs in the country. As a movement that explicitly aspires to such an integral and integrating education, Catholic Studies has a vital role to play in the future of Catholic higher education and seeks to cultivate growth of students in the fullness of their being and the integration of knowledge in every discipline and realm of study. The Hank Center is proud to serve on the leadership team of the CS Consortium and provide support for its exciting, needed endeavors.

  • The Way Forward 2024: Laudato Si’: Protecting Our Common Home, Building Our Common Church

    February 22-23, 2024
    The University of San Diego
    The title for this third annual ecclesial gathering was Laudato Si’: Protecting Our Common Home, Building Our Common Church, and was held at the University of San Diego on February 21 - 23, 2024. This year’s event, which brought together a select group of Cardinals, other Bishops, scholars, and journalists, focused on the encyclical, Laudato Si’, the recent exhortation Laudete Deum, and the reception of their themes in the Catholic Church in the U.S.

  • Poets of Presence Conference

    In-Person Conference and Workshop
    October 27-28
    Loyola University Chicago
    Beane Hall, Lewis Towers, Water Tower Campus
    Keynote Speaker, Christian Wiman
    All aspects of the conference are solely in-person and registration information will be coming soon.
    This event is co-sponsored by Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry and The Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University.

  • 2022 Catholic Studies Symposium

    We were pleased to host the 2022 Catholic Studies Symposium was held at Loyola University Chicago from September 8, 2022 - September 10, 2022. This event welcomed over 50 national scholars, leaders, and directors of centers in Catholic Studies. You can learn more about the prompts for the symposium here.

  • Pope Francis, Vatican II, and the Way Forward

    Along with our friends at Boston College's Boisi Center and Fordham University's Center on Religion and Culture, the Hank Center was pleased to host “Pope Francis, Vatican II, and the Way Forward.” Over two days, a diverse group of conference attendees were provided a forum where bishops, academics, journalists, and others could speak frankly to each other about important issues affecting the Church today-- all of us working and praying together to carry forward the synodal vision of the Second Vatican Council in the pontificate of Pope Francis, and beyond. We were grateful for our time and conversations together, and grateful to our speakers for providing compelling insights and setting the stage for needed dialogue. The meeting was characterized at once as a living expression of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, a practicum in Catholic Social Teaching, and an example of the kind synodality to which the Holy Spirit calls us today. With the strong support of our respective Jesuit institutions, it was a privilege to organize this meeting, the fruits of which might be described in this shorthand: "unity in essentials, diversity in non-essentials, charity in all things."

  • Catholic Conversion Narratives in Modern Aesthetics

    In collaboration with the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), the Hank Center was pleased to host this international and interdisciplinary conference exploring modern conversion narratives.
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    Andalusia in Andalucía: An International Conference on Flannery O'Connor

    Universidad Loyola Andalucía, in conjunction with the Hank Center, hosted a conference on the American writer Flannery O'Connor in Seville, Spain in June 2017.

  • Instant History: The Postwar Digital Humanities and their Legacies

    In 1949, Jesuit scholar Father Roberto Busa began to collaborate with IBM to build a massive lemmatized concordance to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Our day-long conference explored several aspects of this legacy of Father Busa’s mid-century humanities computing, including the history of natural language processing and digital text processing, systems of textual markup and the creation of digital scholarly editions, topic modeling, and large-corpora analysis.

  • The Challenge of God: Continental Philosophy and the Catholic Intellectual Heritage

    The Hank Center was pleased to sponsor an international conference on the challenge of God. This three day conference featured keynote addresses from major figures in the disciplines of continental philosophy and Catholic thought, as well as paper presentations and panel discussions from junior and senior scholars in these fields.

  • The Third Annual Chicago Catholic Immigrants Conference: The Poles

    The third installation of the Hank Center's Chicago Catholic Immigrants Conference. In 2015, in conjunction with the Interdisciplinary Program in Polish Studies at Loyola University Chicago, the Hank Center looked at the Polish community in Chicago.

  • “this need to dance / this need to kneel”: The Poetry and Poetic Life of Denise Levertov

    In Fall 2015, the The Hank Center hosted an international conference devoted to the life and work of the poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997). “this need to dance / this need to kneel”: The Poetry and Poetic Life of Denise Levertov took place October 23-24, 2015 on Loyola's Water Tower Campus.

  • Chicago Catholic Immigrants Conference: The Mexicans

    In November 2014 Loyola University Chicago’s Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage (CCIH) launched the second in a series of conferences that focused on the historical, cultural, and religious roles that Roman Catholicism played in sustaining ethnic identity for many immigrant communities who came to Chicago in the 20th century. The 2014 Chicago Catholic Immigrants Conference focused on the the Mexican immigrant community here in Chicago.

  • Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience, 1814-2014

    From 16-18 October 2014, the Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago hosted a conference marking the bicentennial of the Restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814.