The University of Notre Dame: A History - Hardcover

Blantz C.S.C., Thomas E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268108218 ISBN 13: 9780268108212

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020

Synopsis

Thomas Blantz’s monumental The University of Notre Dame: A History tells the story of the renowned Catholic university’s growth and development from a primitive grade school and high school founded in 1842 by the Congregation of Holy Cross in the wilds of northern Indiana to the acclaimed undergraduate and research institution it became by the early twenty-first century. Its growth was not always smooth―slowed at times by wars, financial challenges, fires, and illnesses. It is the story both of a successful institution and of the men and women who made it so: Father Edward Sorin, the twenty-eight-year-old French priest and visionary founder; Father William Corby, later two-term Notre Dame president, who gave absolution to the soldiers of the Irish Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg; the hundreds of Holy Cross brothers, sisters, and priests whose faithful service in classrooms, student residence halls, and across campus kept the university progressing through difficult years; a dedicated lay faculty teaching too many classes for too few dollars to assure the university would survive; Knute Rockne, a successful chemistry teacher but an even more successful football coach, elevating Notre Dame to national athletic prominence; Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, president for thirty-five years; the 325 undergraduate young women who were the first to enroll at Notre Dame in 1972; and thousands of others.

Blantz captures the strong connections that exist between Notre Dame’s founding and early life and today’s university. Alumni, faculty, students, friends of the university, and fans of the Fighting Irish will want to own this indispensable, definitive history of one of America’s leading universities. Simultaneously detailed and documented yet lively and interesting, The University of Notre Dame: A History is the most complete and up-to-date history of the university available.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C., is professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of George N. Shuster: On the Side of Truth (1993) and A Priest in Public Service: Francis J. Haas and the New Deal (1982), both published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Father Hesburgh often stated that a Catholic university was where the Church did its thinking, and indeed it is. The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies sponsor scholarly conferences; faculty publications examine critical Church issues;. and controversial topics―from Evolution under Father Zahm through the Vagina Monologs during Father Malloy’s presidency to Governor Cuomo’s wrestling with abortion ―have been presented and debated, and issues were clarified and beliefs strengthened from the discussions. Father Hesburgh’s “fifteen-minute rule” and the Land O’ Lakes Statement were discussed for decades, and Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal is given national, and even international, publicity each year. Thousands of graduates have entered seminaries and convents, and numerous alumni have been elevated into significant positions in the hierarchy and have influenced Church policy at home and abroad.

The University had accomplished much throughout its history but, as a living institution, it had no plans to stop when Father Malloy left office in 2005. His successor, Father John Jenkins, declared in his Inaugural Address:

With respect and gratitude for all who embraced Notre Dame’s mission in earlier times, let us rise up and embrace the mission for our times: to build a Notre Dame that is bigger and better than ever―a great Catholic university for the 21st century, one of the pre-eminent research institutions in the world, a center for learning whose intellectual and religious traditions converge to make it a healing, unifying, enlightening force for a world deeply in need. This is our goal. Let no one ever…say that we dreamed too small.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0268108218
• ISBN 13: 9780268108212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 500