Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning novelist, essayist, literary critic and advocate and activist for inclusion in the arts, will deliver the 2022 Hesburgh Lecture in Ethics and Public Policy. The event will take place virtually at 4 p.m. EST Feb. 7 (Monday).
The Hesburgh Lecture is a signature event of the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
Evaristo is the author of 10 books and numerous writings that span the genres of fiction, verse fiction, short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism and radio and theater drama. Her writing and projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora.
Her novel “Girl, Woman, Other” won the 2019 Booker Prize, making her the first Black woman and Black British person to win it in its 50-year history. The novel also won many other prizes including the British Book Award’s Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year, as well as the Indie Book Award for Fiction.
“Bernardine Evaristo’s oeuvre as a writer and activist is highly relevant to the mission of the Kroc Institute and we look forward to her talk,” said Asher Kaufman, the John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Kroc Institute. “The invitation for her to deliver the 2022 Hesburgh Lecture is directly related to the institute's focus on intersectionality and justice as well as to our commitment to highlighting literature and, more broadly, the humanities in our work.”
The lecture is titled “The Activist Artist,” and in it Evaristo will explore her life as a writer, theater-maker and activist within the context of British history, society and culture. Audience members will have the chance to pose questions directly to Evaristo.
The Hesburgh Lecture is named in honor of the Kroc Institute’s founder, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., late president emeritus of Notre Dame. The lecture series began in 1995. Each year, a distinguished scholar, policymaker and/or peace advocate is invited to deliver a major lecture on an issue related to ethics and public policy in the context of peace and justice.
Past Hesburgh lecturers have included Angela Davis (2020), world-renowned scholar, activist, educator and leader in the struggle for economic, racial and gender justice; Cornel West (2019), public intellectual and then professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University; Beatrice Fihn (2018), executive director of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Amitav Ghosh (2017), Indian novelist and public intellectual; Bill McKibben (2016), author, scholar and environmentalist; Amartya Sen (2012), 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Lamont University professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University; and Shirin Ebadi (2009), 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, lawyer and human rights advocate in Iran.
The Kroc Institute is an integral part of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. The institute is one of the world’s principal centers for the study of the causes of violent conflict and strategies for sustainable peace.
Register online to attend the 2022 Hesburgh Lecture here.
Contact: Lisa Gallagher, Kroc Institute, 574-631-9370, lgallag3@nd.edu
Originally published by at kroc.nd.edu on January 19, 2022.