Students host Edith Stein conference to address healing in women

Author: Shannon Roddel

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A group of University of Notre Dame students is hosting a two-day conference to address healing for women who have been victimized in body and spirit and to discuss the manner in which contemporary culture imperils the dignity of women.

The conference, titledThe Edith Stein Project: Toward Integral Healing for Women and Culture,will be held Feb. 23 and 24 (Friday and Saturday) in McKenna Hall on campus, and is open to the public.

Seeking to address the way individuals are victimized, whether by sexual assault, rape, abortion, domestic violence or the way that both men and women are objectified by others, the conference will examine personal experiences with attention to the psychological, spiritual, societal and emotional aspects of hurt and healing.

Body image, Internet sexual addictions and family dynamics will be among the topics discussed by a variety of speakers, including Paolo G. Carozza, associate professor of law at Notre Dame and a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Kathy Gibney, an assistant professional specialist in Notre Dames Department of Psychology; Pia de Solenni, director of life and womens issues for the Family Research Council; Janet Smith, professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas; and Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University.

For a complete schedule of speakers or to register online, visit https://marketplace.nd.edu/cce/The_Edith_Stein_Project_P216.cfm .

BornOct. 12, 1891, to a Jewish family inBreslau,Germany, Edith Stein studied philology and philosophy at the Universities of Breslau and Goettingen and earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from theUniversityofFreiburg, where she was a friendand collaborator with Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.She converted to Catholicism when she was 30 years old and 12 years later entered the Carmelite convent inCologne.Fleeing persecution, she moved to a Carmelite convent in Echt,Holland, in 1938 but was arrested by the Nazis in 1942 during a nationwide retaliation following the Dutch Catholic bishopsdenunciation of the deportation of Jews and the expulsion of Jewish children from the Catholic school system.She died atAuschwitzonAug. 9, 1942.Known in the Carmelite order as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein was canonized, or proclaimed a saint, by Pope John Paul II in 1998.

* __ * __ AnamarĂ­a Scaperlanda-Ruiz, 405-706-3224 or _ Scaperlanda-Ruiz.1@nd.edu
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