Lecture Series

The Ann O'Hara Graff Lecture Series

About this Lecture Series

The Ann O'Hara Graff Lecture Series is a memorial series named in honor of Ann O'Hara Graff, a professor in the department 1995 - 1996 after teaching for many years in the graduate program of Loyola University in Chicago. Speakers in this series have included Sr. Simone Campbell, Sallie McFague, Susan Ross, Diana Hayes, Ivonne Gebarra, and Richard McBrien.

This year, we are proud to host Dr. Imperatori-Lee, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. Additionally, M. Shawn Copeland, Professor of Systematic Theology at Boston College, is confirmed for 2020. 

2018 Ann O’Hara Graff Lecture

Dr. Imperatori-Lee, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College, will offer the Theology and Religious Studies Department’s Ann O’Hara Graff Lecture on “The Latinx Catholic Imagination and the Future of American Catholicism" on November 8th, at 7:00 p.m. in Pigott Auditorium.

Ann O'Hara Graff

The Namesake of the Ann O'Hara Graff Lecture Series.

About Ann O'Hara Graff

Dr. O'Hara Graff, who received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, was well known for her commitment to the vitality of the Church, the role of women in Catholicism, and diversity in the Church and the academy. In general, she sought to bring together academic theological insights and lived experience. She was the editor of and a contributor to In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthropology. Dr. O'Hara Graff was one of the founders of the Women's Seminar for Constructive Theology in the Catholic Theological Society of America. This Seminar now presents an annual award in her honor.

Edited Volume

In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthropology (Maryknoll, NY : Orbis, 1995), which includes her own essay, “The Struggle to Name Women's Experience” and “Strategies for Life, Learning from Feminist Psychology”

Publications in Journals and Edited Volumes

“Ecclesial Discernment : Women's Voices, New Voices, and the Revelatory Process” in Women and Theology, edited by Mary Ann Hinsdale and Phyllis Kaminski, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995

“The Practice of Compassion and the Discipleship of Equals” in Ex Auditu, 10 1994, pp. 105-112

“The Struggle to Name Women's Experience: Assessment and Implications for Theological Construction” Horizons, 20 no 2 Fall 1993, pp. 215-233

“Catholic feminist theologians on Catholic women in the Church” in New Theology Review, 6 May 1993, pp. 6-19

“Women in the Roman Catholic ministry: new vision, new ethics” in Clergy Ethics in a Changing society: Mapping the Terrain, Louisville, Ky : Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991, pp. 215-230

“Women and Dignity: Vision and Practice,” in Prophetic Visions and Economic Realities, ed. Charles R. Strain (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 219-228

Ph.D. Dissertation

Vision and Reality: Discernment and Decision-Making in Contemporary Roman Catholic Ecclesiology, the University of Chicago, 1986