2026: Humanities Symposium: Life, Liberty, and the Unfinished Work of Democracy
The 2026 Humanities Symposium will address the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence paired with "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass. On March 11th and 12th, classes in which professors elect to participate will gather during their regularly scheduled class times to discuss the readings. The symposium culminates in a keynote address on Thursday, March 12 at 6:30 PM in McGuire Hall.
Keynote Speaker: David Blight
A renowned scholar and public historian, David W. Blight is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom and has written extensively on slavery, the Civil War, and historical memory. Dr. Blight will deliver the 2026 Humanities Symposium keynote on Thursday, March 12th.
Dr. Blight is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He previously taught at Amherst College and has held distinguished fellowships at Cambridge University, the Huntington Library, and the New York Public Library. In 2020, Yale President Peter Salovey appointed him as chair of the Yale and Slavery Working Group. With his Working Group colleagues, Blight authored the book Yale and Slavery: A History, a narrative study of Yale’s historic involvement and associations with slavery and its aftermaths, published by Yale University Press in February 2024. He has served as president of both the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Historians, and continues to shape public history through his books, public lectures, advisory roles, and consulting for documentary films.
Related Events
Constitution Day
"Frederick Douglass and the Nation's 'Saving Principles'"
Public lecture by Dr. Diana Schaub, Professor Emerita of Political Science
Diana Schaub is professor emerita of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a non-resident Senior Scholar in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. She was the Garwood Teaching Fellow at Princeton University in 2011-12 and Visiting Professor of Political Theory in the Government Department at Harvard University in 2018, 2020, and 2022. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Her books include Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters” and His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation.
September 18 at 6:30 PM
McManus Theater
2025 Humanities Symposium: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
Keynote Address, "The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate
Change"
by Amitav Ghosh
In his keynote address, acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh will explore the climate crisis and human migration:
"It has long been predicted that climate change will lead to large-scale displacements of population and mass migration. Is it possible to look at the European ‘migrant crisis’ of recent years through this prism? This, and many other related questions, prompted me to travel to migrant camps in Italy in 2017, to interview migrants whose languages I am familiar with: that is to say speakers of Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. This talk is an attempt to identify some of the underlying patterns in the stories I was told by the migrants, in their own languages."
This year's Symposium text is Ghosh's non-fiction work, The Great Derangement, which explores the climate crisis through multiple disciplinary lenses. In three
short chapters: Stories, History, and Politics, which also address art, colonialism,
and Laudato Si among other topics, Ghosh interweaves reflections on how we are constrained
by our current modes of thinking and how we might find a way forward.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated
into more than thirty languages and he has served on the juries of the Locarno and
Venice film festivals. The Great Derangement was given the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities in 2018. His essays
have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. Amitav Ghosh holds four Lifetime Achievement awards and five honorary doctorates.
In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President
of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David
prize, and 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal.
In 2018 the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, was conferred on Amitav
Ghosh. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.
In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. Headshot
credit: Mathieu Genon.
Listen to Ghosh interview with Sheilah Kast on WYPR's On the Record from March 12, 2025.
Read March 13, 2025 Ghosh Baltimore Banner interview with Adam Willis.
March 6, 2025 Ghosh WEAA interview with Deanna Neal on Morgan Newshour.
Listen to interview with Dr. Billy Friebele, director of the Humanities Symposium, and Nestor Aparicio on Baltimore Positive, about the Symposium Keynote and related events.
Faculty Teaching Seminar
Faculty members are invited to attend a Humanities Symposium Teaching seminar on Wednesday
February 5 in College Center Conference Room 105. The event will run from 12:00-1:00 PM, but we have the room reserved until 1:30 PM for informal discussion. We hope to
create a space for sharing ideas and connecting with colleagues.
Faculty from three different departments will share ideas about how to incorporate
the text into your spring courses and to prepare your students to participate in the
colloquia.
Student-Faculty Colloquia
Faculty from all disciplines and their students attend colloquium sessions together during their regularly scheduled class times.
Please register on the Bridge to let us know when you and your students will be participating on Wednesday, March 12 and/or Thursday, March 13. Use the quantity box in each time slot to tell us how many students you will be bringing during that time.
Faculty members may select multiple time slots if participating with more than one class. Faculty whose classes fall outside the colloquia hours (Wednesday, March 12 from 8-5 and Thursday, March 13 from 8-4:20) may ask students to attend individually as long as the faculty member also attends one session.
For more information about the 2025 Humanities Symposium events, please email Billy Friebele, associate professor of Visual and Performing Arts, at wefriebele@loyola.edu.
Future: EvergreenerFrom Destruction to Abundance
Art Exhibition on Climate Change
January 13 - February 14
Julio Fine Arts Gallery
Andrew White Student Center
Opening Reception on Thursday, January 16 from 6:00 - 8:00 PM in the Julio Fine Arts
Gallery
Artist Panel Discussion on February 5 at 6:30 PM in McManus Theater
Future: Evergreener features art by local artists Andrea Sherrill Evans, Maggie Gourlay, Eileen Wold,
and Jowita Wyszomirska, and is curated and organized by Loyola’s Fall 2024 Museum
Studies Class taught by Kerry Boeye.
O Rio Negro São As Pessoas (Rio Negro is Its People) Environmental Film Screening & Discussion with Filmmakers
The Anavilhanas National Park, in the Rio Negro Amazon, is the environment for presenting
characters living in the tenuous orbit between the city Manaus and riverside communities
on the banks of this historic river. The film explores the contemporary meaning of
being at and growing up by the banks of a river with the power of Rio Negro, submerged
in a dense forest and surrounded by global elements of today; the need to leave, the
forgotten desire to return, the choice to stay, the immensity and the time of the
river, form an intuitive and imaginary narrative set to suggest deeply local stories
that serve the reflection on human life.
Presented in cooperation with the Baltimore Environmental Film Series, the Loyola
Environmental Studies Program, Visual and Performing Arts, and the Dean of Loyola
College.
Daniel Deudney - Modern Masters Reading Series
Thursday February 13
McGuire Hall
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM
Daniel H. Deudney teaches political science, international relations and political theory at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a BA in political science and philosophy from Yale University, a MPA in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University, and a PhD in political science from Princeton University. His areas of research are general international relations theory, international political theory and republicanism, and contemporary global issues (nuclear, outer space, environment, and energy). His publications include Renewable Energy (Norton, 1983), co-author; and Contested Grounds: Conflict and Security in the New Global Environmental Politics (SUNY, 1998), co-editor.
Toxic Tour of Curtis Bay and Community-Led and Controlled Development
Friday, February 21
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM
(Bus transportation will be provided)
Students will have an opportunity to see, to hear, to witness the environmental violence of 77+ stationary toxic facilities in Curtis Bay. Due to the cumulative impact of stationary toxic facilities, this community has some of the highest cases of respiratory illnesses in the entire country.
We will go back in time to 2012 when youth from the community heard about a plan to build the nation's largest trash to energy incinerator a mile from their high school. This youth group has grown from stopping one polluting industry to now thinking about longer term community-led and controlled development.
- Bus will depart from Loyola (Boulder stop) at 8:30am
- Visit to the CSX Coal Terminal and garbage incinerators
- Hear from scientists about trail cameras and air monitoring
- Meet with community organizers
- Learn about the Free Your Voice youth activist movement in Curtis Bay
- Lunch provided (Red Emma's Co-Operative)
- Learn about Land Trust and passive home
- Bus will arrive back at Loyola by 3:30pm
Register by Friday February 14 in order to participate in the Toxic Tour.
This is a two-part event. Please consider also registering for the follow-up meeting on campus described below. This Roundtable on Environmental Justice will build on the Toxic Tour and provide students with opportunities for advocacy and action.
Roundtable on Environmental Justice with Nicole Fabricant
Monday, February 24
Humanities Café (main floor of the Humanities Building)
6:00 PM
Monday following the toxic tour, Loyola students will have an opportunity to plug into roundtable discussions about the ongoing work in South Baltimore. One table will focus on legislation and policy, another will focus on alternative housing and the third table will focus on environmental justice and youth education. These three roundtables will allow students to explore the ongoing work in South Baltimore. There will be popular education and activities to get them thinking about their own interests and talents and how this can feed into the grassroots organizing work.
Nicole Fabricant is Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland. She teaches courses on resource extraction, environmental justice, and the climate crisis. Her most recent book, Fighting to Breathe Race, Toxicity and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore (University of California Press 2022) looks at the cumulative impacts of industrial stationary toxic facilities in South Baltimore, Maryland. The book follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality of industrial expansion.
If you're interested in this event, please consider registering for the Toxic Tour on Friday February 21 Attendance at both events is not required but strongly encouraged.
We are Guardians Environmental Film Screening and Discussion
Monday, March 10
Loyola Notre Dame Library Auditorium
6:00 PM
Plant a Spiral of Native Plants with Artist Stacy Levy!
Wednesday March 19 and Thursday March 20
The Gardens, near the Volleyball Court
Get your hands dirty and help us plant "Spiral Cafeteria": a living artwork for humans, birds & insects; future supplier of the birds’ lunch and the bees’ breakfast; and a place for our Loyola community to find some time to walk up-close with nature.
To Hold Paramount the Safety, Health, and Welfare of the Public: An investigation A Humanities & Engineering Panel
Wednesday, March 26
Cohn Hall 133
6:00 - 8:00 PM
- The Opportunity Cost of Ecosystems
- Era Centric Ethics and Morals
- Defense Technology Development
Can't Stop Change - Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines Environmental Film Screening and Discussion
Hanna Geldrich-Leffman 2025 Language, Literature, and Society Colloquium: “Writing Mother Nature: Global Perspectives on Literature and the Environment”
AWSC Fourth Floor Program Room
11:00 AM
“Italian Fables for the Anthropocene”
Dr. Laura Di Bianco, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
2:00 PM
"Eco-Gothic Literature Reimagined: New Perspectives from Latin America"
Dr. Ana María Mutis, Ph.D., Trinity University
3:00 PM
“Zhuangzi's Butterfly and the Neo-Baroque: A Complex Image of Nature in Contemporary Sinophone Speculative Fiction”
Dr. Mingwei Song, Ph.D., Wellesley College
Event Information
Theme: Life, Liberty, and the Unfinished Work of Democracy
Keynote Address:
Thursday, March 12, 2026
McGuire Hall
6:30 p.m.
Texts: The Declaration of Independence and "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass
Questions? Please contact Billy Friebele, Associate professor, Visual and Performing Arts
wefriebele@loyola.edu