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Faculty Stories

Faculty at Notre Dame come from communities and cultures all over the world. They conduct research and scholarship on topics and issues that span numerous academic disciplines. They share with students not just their areas of expertise but also their questions and concerns about the enduring issues and latest developments that shape our times.

But their role in broadening and sharpening the lenses through which we understand ourselves and the world around us extend well beyond individual research projects, classroom lectures, course syllabi, or a list of academic programs.

The selection of stories below helps illustrate the many other ways Notre Dame faculty foster diversity, support inclusion, and enliven the entire Notre Dame community.

American studies professor wins Frederick Douglass Book Prize — the seventh book award for her research on slaves’ courtroom testimony

American studies professor wins Frederick Douglass Book Prize — the seventh book award for her research on slaves’ courtroom testimony

Carrie Gates

Sophie White, a professor in the Department of American Studies, has won the prestigious 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for her work, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. The prize, sponsored by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, recognizes the best...

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Video: Theatre historian La Donna Forsgren on women’s contributions to the Black Arts Movement

Video: Theatre historian La Donna Forsgren on women’s contributions to the Black Arts Movement

Todd Boruff

La Donna L. Forsgren is an associate professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre; concurrent faculty in the Gender Studies Program; and affiliated faculty in the Department of Africana Studies. Her latest book, Sistuhs in the Struggle: An Oral History of Black Arts Movement Theater and Performance, is the first oral history to fully explore the contributions of...

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Assistant dean's family has welcomed dozens for Thanksgiving each year

Assistant dean's family has welcomed dozens for Thanksgiving each year

New York Times

Dr. Jan Sanders was the first Black pediatrician to have her own practice here. Her husband, Leo McWilliams, is an assistant dean in the University of Notre Dame engineering department and a “quadruple Domer.” For decades, the couple have been the unofficial parents for many Black students at Notre Dame. This year, that family is scattered, reflecting on the year’s crises.

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FTT professor wins theatre society prize for essay on adaptations of The Wiz and is appointed associate editor of prestigious journal

FTT professor wins theatre society prize for essay on adaptations of The Wiz and is appointed associate editor of prestigious journal

Arts and Letters

La Donna Forsgren, an associate professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, has won the American Society for Theatre Research's Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize. The award, given annually to the best essay of theatre research in a scholarly English-language publication, honored Forsgren’s “The Wiz Redux; or Why Queer Black Feminist Spectatorship and Politically Engaged Popular Entertainment Continue...

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Dean Galvin’s impact and legacy

Dean Galvin’s impact and legacy

Tammi Freehling

Mary E. Galvin, the William K. Warren Foundation Dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame since 2015, recently announced she will step down from the position effective December 31, 2020. Notably, Galvin is the first woman to serve as dean in the college’s 155-year history.

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Social design professor receives grant to mitigate youth violence in South Bend through access to arts programming and community engagement

Social design professor receives grant to mitigate youth violence in South Bend through access to arts programming and community engagement

Carrie Gates

Neeta Verma’s teaching and research examines a range of social inequities facing the local community — including homelessness, poverty, and the digital divide. But the issue she finds most pressing is youth violence — and she believes that art and design can play a key role in breaking its vicious cycle. With a grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, she is launching a...

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Having Coffee with Dianne Pinderhughes

Having Coffee with Dianne Pinderhughes

Notre Dame Magazine

Dianne Pinderhughes has been observing protests and marches for racial and social justice since her childhood in segregated Washington, D.C. In 2020, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, things seem different.

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How the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities is fighting to prevent homelessness

How the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities is fighting to prevent homelessness

Notre Dame News

The Homeless Prevention Call Center for the City of Chicago, currently run by Catholic Charities of Chicago, has helped thousands of families stay off the streets. Knowing funding for public programs is never guaranteed, it wanted to prove its method was cost effective and impactful. In 2012, it approached Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) for assistance. Could LEO...

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