Loyola University Maryland

Honors Program

Honors Program Events

Halloween party, local students

Honors enriches its students’ extracurricular experience through an extensive program of cultural events, discussions, social occasions, and excursions both within and beyond the Baltimore-Washington area.

2022 - 2023 Events

This is what we have lined up so far — more to come!

 
AUGUST 2022
Wednesday, 31   Honors Freshmen Orientation
 
SEPTEMBER
Monday, 5   Labor Day (No Classes)
   

Homer and Pizza
5:30 - 7:45 PM

Thursday, 8
 

Odds Bodkin Performance
Book 1, The Iliad
McGuire West
7:00 PM

Odds Bodkin Performance 2018
Odds Bodkin with Honors Students 2018

Monday, 19

 

Honors Fall Dinner
McGuire East
6:00 PM

Wednesday, 21  

Writers at Work Series:
Tania James

Tania James is the author of the novel Atlas of Unknowns, the short story collection Aerogrammes, and the novel The Tusk That Did the Damage, all published by Knopf. Atlas was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an Indie Next Notable, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a Best Book of 2009 for The San Francisco Chronicle and NPR. Aerogrammes was a Best Book of 2012 for Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Her stories have appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, One Story, and A Public Space. Two stories from Aerogrammes were finalists for Best American Short Stories 2008 and 2013. The Tusk That Did the Damage was named a Best Book of 2015 by The San Francisco Chronicle and NPR, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In 2016, Tusk was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and longlisted for the Financial Times/Oppenheimer Award. 

Fourth Floor Program Room
6:00 PM

Friday, 30
  Celebrate the Humanities!
Fourth Floor Program Room
3:00 PM
OCTOBER
     
Thursday, 6
 

Modern Masters Reading Series:
Annette Porter

head and shoulders portrait of a woman outside with face shadowed

Through her film company, Nylon Films, Annette Porter produces content for corporate, broadcast and cinematic audiences on topics ranging from contemporary arts and culture to social and historical issues. Her work has been featured by broadcasters including the BBC and NBC, and her publications include the Washington Post and Vogue. Recently, she produced films for the World Economic Forum and a documentary about Marin Alsop, The Conductor, currently airing on PBS's “Great Performances.”  

In addition to producing films, Porter serves as the Director for the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund and as an Instructor for Baltimore Youth Film Arts - two programs at Johns Hopkins university that are dedicated to nurturing new voices in communities long underserved by the traditional film world. Porter also teaches film production classes at Johns Hopkins and is Co-Director of the JHU-MICA Film Centre.

McManus Theater
6:00 PM

Tuesday, 11
 

Music at Loyola Concert Series
Amadi Azikiwe

Violinist and violist Amadi Azikiwe is the Music Director of the Harlem Symphony Orchestra. He teaches at the Steinhardt School of music at NYU and has performed in recitals in major US cities and has played, as a soloist or orchestral musician, with The Delaware Symphony, Virginia Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Canada’s National Arts Centre. Amadi Azikiwe He will be performing a program of Bach, Ravel, and living composer Jessie Montgomery.

Alumni Chapel
6:30 PM

Friday, 7
 

Center Stage Tickets - Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Re-discover the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic play as you’ve never seen it before, drawing inspiration from our town, Baltimore. Helmed by Obie Award winner Stevie Walker-Webb, Our Town tells the story of a community: in their growing up and their marrying and their living and their dying. This Thornton Wilder masterpiece lifts up the beauty of ordinary human life and reminds us of how extraordinary each moment can be.

8:00 PM
Pearlstone Theater
700 North Calvert Street
Monday, 17
 

Writers at Work Faculty Reading:
Richard Boothby and Bahar Jalali

Dr. Richard Boothby is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. ¬His educational background includes a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University, Ed.M. in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Ph.D. in Philosophy, Boston University. ¬Boothby’s primary research focuses on contemporary continental philosophy, with special attention to psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and existentialism. His books include Death and Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan’s Return to Freud (Routledge, 1991), Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan (Routledge, 2001), Sex On The Couch: What Freud Still Has To Teach Us About Sex and Gender (Routledge, 2005), Blown Away: Refinding Life After My Son’s Suicide (Other Press, 2022), and Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred (Northwestern University Press, 2022). 
 
Dr. Bahar Jalali is an Afghan-American academic. Born in Afghanistan, she fled the country as a child after the Soviet invasion. In 2009, she returned to Afghanistan to work at the newly established American University of Afghanistan where she taught History of Afghanistan and founded the first Gender Studies program in the history of the country. She spent 8.5 years teaching and working towards women's empowerment in Afghanistan. Her research interests include the history of Afghan reform movements in the twentieth century, women and gender in the Middle East, and protecting Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. In 2021, she launched an online protest campaign that garnered widespread international media coverage in an effort to raise global awareness about Afghan women’s rights and protecting the cultural heritage of Afghanistan. She has previously taught History at Wagner College and worked for the University of Texas, Austin. Currently, she is a Teaching Assistant Professor at Loyola University Maryland.

Fourth Floor Program Room
6:30 PM

Wednesday, 19
 

Humanities in Action - Lecture by Elie Mystal
"The Constitution and the Right to Privacy"
man with gray hair and folded arms
Mystal will discuss Supreme Court jurisprudence over the years and especially the right-ward lurch that the current Roberts Court has taken most recently with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and its impact on First Amendment rights. Known for writing about the law and politics, breaking down Supreme Court decisions and presenting up-to-the-minute coverage of Supreme Court confirmation battles, Mystal is the justice correspondent for The Nation, where he writes about politics and social and racial justice. He also is a legal contributor to the More Perfect podcast on WNYC and a former executive editor of Above the Law – a website with about 2 million unique visitors. His first book, Allow Me To Retort – A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution was on the New York Times’ Best Seller list in April 2022.  

McGuire Hall
6:00 PM

Saturday, 22  

First-year Eloquentia Perfecta trip to Washington, DC
facade of National Musuem of African American History & Culture
Your EP professor will provide the details you will need!

Saturday, 29
  First-year students' trip to Metropolitan Museum in New York City
building facade at twilight with red banners
Your HN 201 professor will provide the details you will need!

 

 
NOVEMBER
Thursday, 3
 

Modern Masters Series:
Ocean Vuong

head and shoulders portrait of an unsmiling man

Ocean Vuong is the author of the recently released poetry collection, Time is a Mother, (Penguin Press 2022), and the The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press 2019) which has been translated into 36 languages.  A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working-class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study International Marketing. Without completing his first term, he dropped out of Business school and enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in Nineteenth Century American Literature. He subsequently received his MFA in Poetry from NYU. He currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where he serves as an Associate Professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.

McGuire Hall
6:00 PM

Friday, 4
 

Center Stage Tickets - Ain't No Mo' by by Jordane E. Cooper

Fasten your seat belts— it’s going to be an outrageous ride. Jordan E. Cooper’s masterful no-holds-barred comedy is a surreal journey through Black America as Peaches, a narrator and flight attendant, invites Black Americans to board African American Airlines’ one-way Flight 1619 back to Africa for a mass exodus. She guides the audience through a mosaic of vignettes that use satire, allegory, and speculative fiction to explore the value of Black lives in a country so intertwined with them in this “campy, shrewd, mortifying, scary, devastating, and deep” play (The New York Times).

8:00 PM
Head Theater
700 North Calvert Street

Saturday, 5- Sunday, 13  

NATIONAL FRENCH WEEK

NATIONAL FRENCH WEEK  -  FRENCH GASTRONOMY, HON!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Student quiche-making competition
The Refectory
1:00 PM
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6
Lunch at Marie Louise Bistro.
Check loyola.edu/frenchweek for time and other details. Or contact the department of Modern Languages.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Presentation by Dr. André Colombat, entitled “Haute Cuisine: great chef.fes”. Dr Colombat will talk about what "Haute Cuisine" means for French people and will discuss great chefs, in particular those in his hometown of Lyon. He will also speak about women cheffes and Anthony Bourdain’s love of French cuisine. At the talk, there will be a cheese-tasting with various cheeses, such as Roquefort, Brie, Comté and goat cheeses some made locally.
7:00 PM
Fourth Floor Program Room
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9
Patisserie Poupon will send a chef to present and talk about all the different pastries sold at their store and teach students how to make macarons. And of course, there will be a selection for students to enjoy and some to purchase.
4:00 PM
Fourth Floor Program Room
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AND THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10
French club members will offer students crêpes made on the spot and teach those interested about crêpe-making.
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Quad in front of Maryland Hall
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12
Bilingual Mass in French and English.
1:00 PM
Alumni Memorial Chapel

Friday, 11
 

BSO Tickets - Marin Alsop Conducts Beethoven's Fifth!

woman in a chair in front of orange wall
STILL, In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy
SHOSTAKOVICH, Violin Concerto No. 1
BEETHOVEN, Symphony No. 5
Amid the pain of World War II, William Grant Still memorialized his fellow Black Americans and their long-overlooked sacrifices. The Violin Concerto that Shostakovich wrote after Stalin's death revels in the freedom of self-expression. This performance will feature soloist Augustin Hadelich. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony turns mere notes into articles of faith, charting an iconic course into hope.
8:00 PM Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Tuesday, 22    Thanksgiving Break begins after last class
Wednesday, 23 - Sunday 27   Thanksgiving Break
Tuesday, 29
  Plays Through Playbill: Snapshots of Broadway Theatre history, 1947 - 2011 
Selections of the collection of Playbills from the Loyola Notre Dame Library Archives and curated by the FA 2022 the students of Loyola's Introduction to Theatre History course (DR-250).
4:30 PM Loyola Notre Dame Library First Floor Gallery
Wednesday, 30
  Aperio Project Student Presentations
Students participating in the CFH 2022 – 2023 Aperio project, directed by Dr. David Carey and Dr. Lisa Zimmerelli, will present their original historical research and creative writing regarding Loyola's relationship to slavery and its legacies. Topics will range from analysis of black face in Loyola's theatre productions (even as the first African American student Charles Dorsey was attending the school), to Loyola’s financial ties to slavery via the Jesuit sale of 272+ enslaved Africans in 1838 and the financial ties of its private donors thereafter. Student research will also include the extent to which Loyola students, faculty, and alumni participated in the Civil War on both the Confederate and Union sides. Contemporary analysis will include a student who has interviewed black students on campus and scoured the Baltimore Sun, Afro American, and Greyhound to understand black students' experience on Loyola's 21st century campus.
5:00 PM Fourth Floor Program Room

DECEMBER
Friday, 2 
 

BSO Tickets -  Tchaikovsky X Drake
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5
DRAKE
Tchaikovsky X Drake is a symphonic synthesis that blends the music of two composer-romanticists separated by almost a century. 15 songs of Drake are woven into Tchaikovsky’s epic Fifth Symphony in every way imaginable. We hear Drake’s melodies soaring in tandem with Tchaikovsky’s; his raps motoring almost impossibly with Tchaikovsky’s rhythmic figures; then vignettes of Drake’s music with Tchaikovsky’s motives and melodies are superimposed over top. Joining the full symphony orchestra are three singers and a rapper.
8:00 PM Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Wednesday, 7  

Honors Holiday Party

A festive occasion to eat, drink, and be merry!
Hug Lounge & Refectory
5:00 - 6:30 PM

Monday, 12 
  Last Day of Classes
Tuesday, 13   Study Day
Wednesday, 14 - Thursday 22   Exam Period
Friday, 23 - Monday, January 2   University Closed
JANUARY 2023
Tuesday, 3
  University Reopens
Monday, 16
  Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Commemoration (University Closed)
Tuesday, 17
  Classes start 
Friday, 20  

BSO Tickets - Verdi Requiem
woman in black before a gray wall
When Verdi, the king of Italian opera, turned his talents to the Latin mass for the dead, he created a Requiem of unrivaled drama and power that has shattered the norms for sacred music. Drawing on a cast of today’s vocal stars, artistic advisor James Conlon brings potent new insight to this musical meditation on faith and perseverance. Pictured above is Michelle Bradley, soprano.
8:00 PM Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

FEBRUARY    
Friday, 10
   BSO Tickets - Black Panther (movie with Orchestra)
human in black animal armor and mask
In 2018, Marvel Studios’ Black Panther quickly became a global sensation and cultural phenomenon, showing a new dimension of what superhero films could be. Now you can relive the excitement of T’Challa becoming king and battling Killmonger all while the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performs Ludwig Göransson’s Oscar® and Grammy®-winning score live to picture.
Anthony Parnther, conductor
8:00 PM Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Thursday, 16
 

Writers at Work Series:
Jason Parham

Jason Parham is a senior writer at Wired where he covers a range of subjects, including black creative labor, emerging trends, and the digital culture of sex. Prior to joining Wired, he was an editor at The Fader and Gawker. He lives in New York City.
Raised in LA, Jason’s essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, The Awl, and the Los Angeles Times style magazine Image, where he is a regular contributor. He performs regularly in Pop-Up, the live magazine show.
In 2012, Jason founded Spook, a literary journal by and for creatives of color. Upon its debut, it was hailed by the Los Angeles Review of Books as “an invaluable contribution to the cultural conversation.” 

Fourth Floor Program Room
6:00 PM

Monday, 20
 

Modern Masters Series:
Robin Wall Kimmerer

woman with gray hair standing next to birch tree

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. She is the author of “Gathering Moss” which incorporates both traditional indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives and was awarded the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing in 2005. Her latest book “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” was released in 2013 and was awarded the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. 

Dr. Kimmerer has taught courses in botany, ecology, ethnobotany, indigenous environmental issues as well as a seminar in application of traditional ecological knowledge to conservation. She is the co-founder and past president of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America.  Dr. Kimmerer serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Nature and Humans. Of European and Anishinaabe ancestry, Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. 
via Zoom
7:00 - 8:00 PM


 
MARCH
   
Monday, 6 - Sunday, 12
  Spring Break
Wednesday, 15 - Thursday, 16   Student-Faculty Colloquia for the 2023 Humanities Symposium
Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor was Divine 
Two days during the official Symposium week are set aside for Loyola student/faculty colloquia. During each scheduled class period, faculty and their classes will meet with faculty and students from other classes. These colloquia have traditionally been led by panels composed of faculty members from different disciplines who lead informal discussion, posing questions to stimulate the participation of students, and to engage the Symposium text across narrow disciplinary boundaries. This year’s text is When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka.
The colloquia will be in-person. They are open to Loyola faculty, staff, and students. Registration will be required.
McManus Theater.
Thursday, 16   Humanities Symposium Keynote Address - Julie Otsuka
woman in leather jacket sitting on bench
Award-winning novelist Julie Otsuka will deliver the 2023 Humanities Symposium keynote address. Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine (Knopf) is this year's Humanities Symposium text. This novel, set during World War II, follows a Japanese-American family from their home in Berkeley, California to internment camps in the Utah desert. Otsuka draws on historical research as well as her own family's history to create a spare and imagistic novel told in an inventive style. The novel won the 2003 Asian American Literary Award and the 2003 American Library Association Alex Award. Photo credit: Jean-Luc Bertini.
McGuire Hall
6:30 PM
Friday, 17
 

Center Stage Tickets - Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Based on the best-selling book by Cheryl Strayed (Wild) and brilliantly adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), Tiny Beautiful Things is a funny and cathartic play about reaching when you’re stuck, healing when you’re broken, and finding comfort in shared humanity. In this fantastical interpretation of Strayed’s real-life experience as online advice columnist “Sugar,” three performers invade the struggling writer’s toy-cluttered living room as embodiments of a multitude of readers navigating grief, love, and forgiveness in this theatrical hug of a show.

8:00 PM
Head Theater
700 North Calvert Street

Friday, 24  

BSO Tickets - Angel Blue and Rach 2
portrait of woman touching her throat
JANÁČEK (arr. Talich, rev. Smetáček): Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen
BARBER Knoxville: Summer of 1915
TERRENCE BLANCHARD Selections from Fire Shut Up In My Bones
RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 2
Fresh off her role in the celebrated Metropolitan Opera production of Terrence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra welcomes Angel Blue, one of the opera’s stars who “soared impressively” (The New Yorker), “bringing her luminous soprano voice and unforced charisma” (The New York Times). Barber’s Knoxville and Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony bask in the beautiful, bittersweet glow of nostalgia, while Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen shines in all its fantastical glory under the baton of the accomplished opera conductor Oksana Lyniv.
8:00 PM Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

 

 
APRIL

   

 

 
Thursday, 6 - Monday, 10
  Easter Break
Tuesday, 11
  Classes resume
Friday, 21
 

BSO Tickets -  Joshua Bell Plays Mendelssohn
man wearing a black shirt and black suit carrying a violin
ELLEN REID When the World As You’ve Known It Doesn’t Exist
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto
ELGAR Variations on an Original Theme, “Enigma”
You can always count on the superstar violinist Joshua Bell to perform Mendelssohn’s deeply poetic concerto with “huge tenderness, rendering the audience to jelly” (Bachtrack). The young Russian conductor Anna Rakitina navigates the mysteries and charms of Elgar’s fascinating Enigma Variations, and she introduces one of the most compelling voices in contemporary music: the Pulitzer prize-winning composer and sound artist Ellen Reid, who weaves the intimate tones of three wordless sopranos into a score that reflects on women’s suffrage.

8:00 PM Meyerhoff Hall

Saturday, 29
  HN Seniors' Wine Tasting
details to follow!
Fourth Floor Program Room
6:00 - 8:00 PM
MAY
Monday, 1   Last Day of Classes
Tuesday, 2   Study Day

Wednesday, 3 - Thursday 11

  Exam Period

 
Friday, 19   Academic Honors and Departmental Awards Ceremony
11:00 AM McManus Theater
Friday, 19   Baccalaureate Mass
1:30 PM
Reitz Arena
Saturday, 20  

Commencement,
Location tbd
11:00
 AM






































































































































































Sarah Haley
Alumni

Sarah Haley

Meet Sarah, a physician who calls upon her liberal arts education to build purposeful connections with her patients

Biochemistry, Philosophy
Honors students posing for a group photo on a wooded trail during a hike
Honors Program

Why I'll always be glad I joined the Honors Program

Faculty mentors, engaging intellectual discourse, and opportunities for academic enrichment like excursions and field trips characterize the Honors Program, Loyola's learning community for high-achieving students.