The Lin Great Speakers Series

The Lin Great Speakers Series is presented to the public as a community service. The lectures are made possible by an endowment established in memory of Shu-Chi Lin by his widow, Mrs. Chang Le-Chiao Lin, and their son, Vincent Lin, Ph.D., a St. Mary’s alumnus and former faculty member.

Upcoming Lin Lecture Speakers

  • Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Art of Solidarity

    Featuring Nichole M. Flores, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia 

    Friday, Sept. 29
    3:30 to 5 p.m.
    Sarita Kenedy East Law Library, Law Alumni Room

    Latino Catholics have used Our Lady of Guadalupe as a symbol of democratic campaigns ranging from the Chicano and United Farm Workers movements to contemporary calls for immigration reform and anti-abortion laws. Considering these diverse appropriations of her symbol, how ought we make sense of Guadalupe’s place in our common life: our culture, our economics, our politics, our health care? Nichole M. Flores, Ph.D., will offer an account of a “political theology of Guadalupe,” or a theological and aesthetic framework for interpreting Guadalupe’s meaning and significance for our 21st- century democracy in the United States.

    About Nichole M. Flores, Ph.D.

    Nichole M. Flores, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Health, Ethics and Society minor at the University of Virginia. Flores researches the contributions of Catholic and Latiné theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics in pluralistic and democratic political contexts. Her research in practical ethics addresses issues of politics, migration, labor, family, gender, bioethics, race and ethnicity, and ecology.

    She teaches courses on Catholic theology and ethics, religion and democracy, bioethics, and Latiné theology and religion.  

    Flores is the author of The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2021). She has also published essays in the Journal of Religious EthicsJournal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and Modern Theology and is a contributor at America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture

    Flores was the recipient of the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for best essay in academic theology by a junior scholar from the Catholic Theological Society of America. 

Interfaith Friend, Interfaith Kin: Reflections on Fratelli Tutti

In his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis stresses the idea of fraternity as the basis for good interreligious relations. But what does it really mean to call the Religious Other my brother or sister? How does that affect interreligious dialogue and cooperation? Can a broader vision of human kinship help us to heal the various divides — interreligious, interracial, intercultural, interpolitical — plaguing America today?

Speaker:

  • Rita George-Trvrtković, Ph.D.
Past Speakers
Back to top