The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy will host a roundtable discussion on the electoral college Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 11:45 on WebEx.

The electoral college was one of most innovative and contentious components of the Constitution that came out of Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. And it still remains contentious to this present day, provoking questions and debates about fairness and the nature of America’s democratic principles related to presidential elections.

With the country quickly approaching the 2020 election, join the Salve Regina community for a timely discussion of this controversial American institution. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. William Leeman, associate professor in the department of history, program director for the Pell Honors Program and a faculty fellow with the Pell Center.

To register for this event, attendees should email pellcenter@salve.edu. Once confirmed, participants will receive the WebEx login link.

Featured image by Getty Images/Electric_Crayon

Dr. Anthony Clark Arend, professor of government and foreign service and chair of the Department of Government at Georgetown University, will deliver Salve Regina’s annual Constitution Day lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17. This lecture will be held virtually via Facebook Live on the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy’s Facebook page. To RSVP for the lecture, visit the Pell Center’s Eventbrite page.

The constitution says very little about the exercise of foreign affairs powers. Yet some of the most contentious disputes between the legislative branches of the U.S. government have been related to foreign affairs. How are we to understand these foreign affairs powers? Can these conflicts be resolved? Dr. Arend will address these questions in his lecture entitled “The Constitution and Foreign Affairs.”

Dr. Anthony Clark Arend

Dr. Arend’s research and teaching is in the fields of international law, national security law, international legal theory and human rights. He has published seven books, including “Legal Rules and International Society,” “International Law and the Use of Military Force” and “Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions.”

Dr. Arend is a university affiliate at the Center for National Security and the Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and has also served as an adjunct professor of law. He’s a faculty liaison to the Georgetown Institute for Politics and Public Service, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a senator on the Board of Governors of the Georgetown University Alumni Association.

Dr. Arend received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs of the University of Virginia. He received a B.S.F.S., magna cum laude, from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Constitution Day became a national observance in 2004, when Congress passed a bill designating Sept. 17 as the day for citizens to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution and learn more about the nation’s founding document. This event is in partnership with the Pell Honors Program.

To register for the lecture, visit the Pell Center’s Eventbrite page. For more information, call (401) 341-2927 or email pellcenter@salve.edu.

Featured image by Getty Images/giftlegacy

McKillop Library’s will host the first of its faculty lecture series for the 20-21 academic year, this time online. The lecture, entitled “Breast is Best in Early Modern Spain,” is by Dr. Emily Colbert Cairns, associate professor of modern languages, and it will be held on Thursday, Sep. 17, from 4-5:30 p.m.

To register for the online event, to go the library’s event page, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Begin Registration” button.

Dr. Emily Colbert Cairns

“Breast is Best in Early Modern Spain” is on the topic of women’s bodies, wet-nurses and early modern Spain. Maternal milk is the first food practice that serves to control the female body, enabling certain women but not others from nursing infants.

In this presentation, Dr. Colbert Cairns shares her research from a sabbatical her took in Spain during the fall of 2019. While in Spain, Dr. Colbert Cairns conducted primary research in hospital archives regarding the use of wet-nurses and their orphan charges in Seville, Spain.

Establishing a primary residence in Seville, Spain, allowed Dr. Colbert Cairns to visit and study first-hand some of the important artistic representations of the lactating virgin in the Museum of Bellas Artes, within the Cathedral of Seville and in the Archbishop’s Palace. These paintings comprise a key aspect of the research — they reflect the widespread and popular appeal this topic had for an early modern Iberian audience.

In addition, this discussion will focus on two of these paintings found within Seville’s Cathedral: “Virgen de los Remedios,” painted anonymously in 1400 A.D., and “The Purification of the Virgen,” by Pedro de la Campaña in 1555 A.D.

“The Purification of the Virgen,” by Pedro de la Campaña in 1555 A.D

Dr. Colbert Cairns specializes in gender, converso and crypto-Jewish identity in the early modern period and has published with eHumanista, Chasqui, Cervantes Journal and Hispanófila. She is the co-editor of “Confined Women: The Walls of Female Space in Early Modern Spain” by “Hispanic Issues Online 2020,” and she is the author of the book “Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas.”

Register for the online faculty lecture at the library’s event page, and find a listing of upcoming events from McKillop Library here. For any additional questions, please contact Gretchen Sotomayer at gretchen.sotomayor@salve.edu.