2025 Hanna Geldrich-Leffman Colloquium to focus on global perspectives on literature and the environment
This year’s Hanna Geldrich-Leffman Colloquium will focus on the theme “Writing Mother Nature: Global Perspectives on Literature and the Environment.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in the 4th Floor Program Room in the Andrew White Student Center on Loyola’s Evergreen campus.
The colloquium's schedule is as follows:
- 11 a.m.: Laura Di Bianco, Ph.D., assistant professor of Italian studies at The Johns Hopkins University, will speak on “Italian Fables for Our Times: Literary Responses to the Climate Crisis”
- 2 p.m.: Ana MarĂa Mutis, Ph.D., associate professor of modern languages and literatures at Trinity University, will speak on "Eco-Gothic Literature Reimagined: New Perspectives from Latin America"
- 3 p.m.: Mingwei Song, Ph.D., professor of Chinese at Wellesley College, will speak on “Zhuangzi's Butterfly and the Neo-Baroque: A Complex Image of Nature in Contemporary Sinophone Speculative Fiction”
Find more information on the Hanna Geldrich-Leffman Colloquium page.
About the Annual Colloquium
The Colloquium on Language, Literature, and Society was created in 1986 as a way of demonstrating on an on-going and dynamic basis the vitality and diversity of the cultures represented by the department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola. In 2007, the colloquium was renamed to honor Hanna Geldrich-Leffman, long-time chair of the department and, along with Ursula Beitter, one of the co-founders of the colloquium. Conceived as an interdisciplinary event, the colloquium explores ways in which different cultures express certain ideas in various genres and media, such as the novel or film. The aim is to foster discussion and debate on the topics selected by bringing a variety of varying perspectives to bear on each issue.