The San Clemente Seminar: Media, Culture and Living Tradition
Student Immersion and Public Media Panel in Rome, Italy
Presented by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and Notre Dame Rome
How does a tradition maintain an enduring identity while continually translating itself through new communicative forms? “The San Clemente Seminar” is a place-based intensive in Rome, Italy, for Notre Dame students that results in a public panel featuring Catholic artists, journalists, and communication professionals examining the Church's evolving media practices from manuscript to social media.
With the Basilica of San Clemente as their textbook, students examine how the Catholic Church has communicated itself across historical epochs through art, architecture, literature, and media technologies. The basilica presents a rare historical record spanning nearly two millennia, from the twelfth-century basilica still in liturgical use, through a fourth-century Christian church, to a second-century Mithraic temple, and finally to a first-century Roman domestic building. These visible archaeological strata provide a model for understanding how cultures persist through processes of adaptation, reconfiguration, and creative reinterpretation.
Credits
Brett Robinson
Dr. Brett Robinson is Director of Angelicum Media and Professor of Rhetoric and Culture at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and former Associate Director at the McGrath Institute for Church Life. He holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Georgia and serves as consultor to the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and the Dicastery for Culture and Education. His scholarship focuses on religion, technology, and culture, including three published books, dozens of articles and invited lectures at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the Vatican, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture
The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture is committed to sharing the richness of the Catholic moral intellectual, and aesthetic tradition through teaching, research, and public engagement, at the highest level and across a range of disciplines—both on campus at the University of Notre Dame, and as Notre Dame in the public square. Through its research and publications, student formation programming, mission stewardship, and initiatives to support a culture of life the de Nicola Center strengthens Notre Dame’s Catholic character on campus and brings the University’s voice into the public discussion of the most vital issues of our day.
Notre Dame Rome
Notre Dame Rome is part of Notre Dame’s global network across nine countries worldwide. These global locations create unique opportunities for Notre Dame to engage with the world and for the world to engage with Notre Dame through scholarly collaboration, undergraduate and graduate studies, and cooperative programs with governments, foundations, corporations, alumni, parents, and friends of the University.
Notre Dame Rome is a research and study center where the expertise of Notre Dame meets the knowledge of the city of Rome. It is open to Notre Dame faculty, researchers, postdocs, and graduate students and offers a variety of undergraduate programs for hundreds of students every year. In 2019, it was recognized by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca) as an Italian research institution.
Funding & Support
This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.
This project is also made possible with funding from Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, Notre Dame Rome, and the Global Catholic Research Initiative.
Images
Notre Dame students at the Basilica of San Clemente, Rome. Photos courtesy of Margaret McManaway.