EVENTS AND PROGRAMMING
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The Lepage Center is proud to offer a variety of free lectures, conversations, and workshops that root today's headlines in yesterday's stories.
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LEARN WITH US
Live Programming
At our in-person events, experts discuss topics ranging from global politics to US elections, labor, immigration, cultural history, mass media, healthcare and more.
Digital History Series
In collaboration with Falvey Library at Villanova, the Lepage Center hosts an ongoing workshop series exploring how digital tools can support historical study and increase access to knowledge.
Virtual Seminars
Whether you're local to the Albert Lepage Center or halfway across the world, our virtual webinars give scholars a chance to connect with each other, share expertise and inform the public.
COSPONSORED EVENTS
The Lepage Center often presents programming in collaboration with other Centers and academic departments at Villanova.
Augustine the African: A Revisionist History
Friday, September 12 | 4 p.m.
Larson Auditorium (Room 132), Driscoll Hall
Saint Augustine remains one of history’s most influential theologians. But for centuries, little was known about a key aspect of his life – his African heritage. In her new book Augustine the African, historian Catherine Conybeare, PhD, Bryn Mawr College, uses surviving letters and other evidence to retrace Augustine’s roots, painting a groundbreaking portrait of the wandering saint’s ethnic identity.
Dr. Conybeare will discuss this latest work with fellow historian and classicist James O’Donnell, PhD, Arizona State University. Presented by ĂŰĚŇTV's Augustinian Institute and cosponsored by the Albert Lepage Center.
The Camden 28: A Story of War, Faith, Resistance and Betrayal
Wednesday, Sept. 17 | 5:00 p.m.
Topper Theatre
The John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts
During the Vietnam War, the United States drafted over 2 million young men to the front lines of southeast Asia. By the summer of 1971, over 50,000 of these young men were dead, with nearly 1 million Vietnamese casualties. An unlikely coalition of Catholic priests, laypeople and a Lutheran minister, who became known as the Camden 28, hatched a plan to strike at the heart of America's military campaign—the local draft office. But when they arrived in the dead of night to destroy its records, the group was thwarted by the FBI, tipped off by a mole. Unmoved from their cause, the Camden 28 demanded to be tried for their crimes together in a high-profile case that placed the Vietnam War in the court of public opinion.
Join us for a screening of “The Camden 28,” an award-winning documentary featuring archival materials, first-hand accounts and historical insights. Following the screening, Oscar-winning director Anthony Giacchino ’92 CLAS will be joined for a Q&A by historian Michelle M. Nickerson, PhD, Loyola University Chicago.
Lunch with Lepage: Alan McPherson, PhD
Tuesday, Sept. 23 | 12:00 p.m.
Speakers' Corner, Falvey Library
A president defying Congress. Disrespect for the law. Attacks on the press. Evasion in the courts. The privatization of war. Quid pro quos with foreign nations.
The mounting dangers to American democracy have long been with us. But historian Alan McPherson, PhD, Temple University, argues these perils first emerged together in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush era.
Join the Lepage Center and Dr. McPherson for a lunchtime lecture and discussion of his book "The Breach", a blow-by-blow account of the efforts to illegally trade arms with Iran, fund rebels in Central America and later evade political and legal consequences. ACS approved.
Lunch with Lepage: Menika Dirkson, PhD, ’13 CLAS, ’15 MA
Monday, Sept. 29 | 12:00 p.m.
Speakers' Corner, Falvey Library
During the Great Migration, six million African Americans moved north from southern states to seek new opportunities. As Philadelphia’s demographics shifted, local police, journalists and officials created narratives criminalizing Black people, leading to brutality, segregation and other dehumanizing consequences.
In “Hope and Struggle in the Policed City,” Menika Dirkson, PhD, ’13 CLAS, ’15 MA, Morgan State University, uses newspapers, census records, oral histories and more to connect the racism African Americans faced to the over-policing of their communities.
Join Dr. Dirkson and the Lepage Center for a lunchtime discussion of this work at Falvey Library’s Speakers’ Corner. ACS approved.
THE ANNUAL LEPAGE SERIES
2025 - 2026 Theme: "Crisis Moments"
Each year, the Lepage Center presents a series of virtual and in-person events centered on a timely theme of public interest featuring voices across the humanities and social sciences. In addition to stand-alone events, during the 2025-2026 academic year, we're exploring the concept of “crisis moments.”