Monday, June 9, 2025
4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. CEST
Location: Villa Malta (Rome) La Sala
The fragmentation and collapse of cultural institutions under political pressures has condemned many writers and artists to moral and spiritual isolation, and even creative paralysis. What are the means available today to rebuild “social friendship” (Pope Francis) and shape an alternative public sphere? If not through the symbol-making practices of educated Western elites (whether progressive or traditionalist), what other cultural and spiritual resources are at hand?
Participants
Eva Menasse
Eva Menasse is a journalist, novelist, essayist, and writer of short fiction whose books include The Holocaust on Trial (2000), Dunkelblum (2021), and Quasicrystals (2013). She is the recipient of many awards, including the Heinrich Böll Prize, Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, Jonathan Swift Prize, and Austrian Book Prize. A native of Austria, Menasse lives in Berlin. She is a founding member and a spokesperson for PEN Berlin, which was launched in 2022.
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar, author of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir The Return (2016), explores themes of exile, identity, and belonging. Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo, and has lived most of his life in London. He is also the author of In the Country of Men (2007), shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Anatomy of a Disappearance (2011); and A Month in Siena (2019). His novel My Friends (2024) won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2024, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into over 30 languages.
Paul Tighe
Bishop Paul Tighe is the secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and titular Bishop of Drivastrum. He is also former secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Before that he served as director of the Communications Office of the Dublin Diocese, where he established the Office for Public Affairs. He has taught moral theology at Holy Cross College in Dublin, where he also served as head of the department.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by June 2 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.