Literary Scholar Cynthia L. Haven Named 2025 McDermott Lecturer
Author, journalist and literary critic Cynthia L. Haven will speak at the next event
in the McDermott Lecture Series.
Haven has held visiting fellowships at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and at Stanford University, which continues to host her blog, The Book Haven.
She is a prominent articulator of the work of René Girard, the French-born American historian, literary critic and philosopher whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. He is best known for his theory of mimetic desire. Haven wrote the award-winning Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard in 2018 and edited a Penguin Classics anthology of Girard’s writings, All Desire Is a Desire for Being, which was published earlier this year. She is also the author of 2021’s Czesław Miłosz: A California Life, about the Polish poet.
“In 2022, I visited the University of Dallas for the first time to speak at the Catholic Imagination Conference,” said Haven. “This year, I am privileged to return to this campus to share the wisdom and vision of someone I am honored to call a mentor and dear friend, the French theorist René Girard, who gave the McDermott Lecture in 1994. He is one of the truly great thinkers of our times.”
This year’s McDermott Lecture will take place on Feb. 27, 2025, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of SB Hall.
The McDermott Lecture Series began in 1974 when Mr. and Mrs. Eugene McDermott endowed the Eugene McDermott Lectureship, established to honor the vision of early University of Dallas leaders Donald and Louise Cowan. The series brings public intellectuals to the university each year.
The McDermott Lectureship
In 1974, the university established the Eugene McDermott Lectureship, an endowed lecture series created in honor of Eugene McDermott, the late scientist, businessman, civic leader, and philanthropist. It was established on behalf of Mrs. and Mr. Eugene McDermott in 1974 to honor Donald and Louise Cowan's vision and leadership at the University of Dallas and the city. Beginning with the venerable historian Jacques Barzun, the McDermott Lectureship continues to bring notable public intellectuals to the University for short courses and seminars.
Through the McDermott Lectureship, the University of Dallas and the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts hosts exceptional guest lecturers and distinguished faculty members on thought-provoking topics within the Western tradition. Prominent scholars have spoken on Homer, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, Locke, Tocqueville and Leo Strauss, to name a few.