FAll 2024 Lectures

Fall 2024 Speaker Events

Stephen Meredith is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Departments of Pathology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Neurology. He is also an associate faculty member in the University of Chicago Divinity School. Dr. Meredith works on the biophysics of protein structure, concentrating on amyloid proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases. He teaches courses, including ones on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, and on the problem of evil, focusing on St. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine.

His main theological interest is in the problem of evil. In this connection, he is currently writing a book on philosophical (especially metaphysical) and literary perspectives on disease. His current interests also center on the impact of biotechnology and the genetic revolution on the definition of human nature.

Hochschild completed her Ph.D. in theology from Durham University in the United Kingdom in 2007 with highest distinction. She joined the Mount Theology Department in 2011. Prior to that, she was an adjunct professor at Mount St. Mary's Seminary. Professor Hochschild teaches a variety of dynamic theology courses at the university and at the seminary including natural theology, philosophical anthropology, Christology and history of Christian thought. Her areas of specialization are St. Augustine, Latin patristics, historical and systematic theology and ancient and medieval intellectual history.

Professor Hochschild lives with her four children and her husband Joshua. She enjoys road-biking the beautiful Frederick County countryside, traveling to visit family in Canada and playing soccer and frisbee with her children.

Paul Gondreau is a professor of theology at Providence College, where he has taught for 26 years. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, doing his dissertation on Christ's full humanity (Christ's human passions/emotions) under the renowned Thomist scholar Jean-Pierre Torrell.

He specializes in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and has published widely in the areas of Christology (focusing on Christ’s full humanity and his maleness), Christian anthropology, the moral meaning and purpose of human sexuality and sexual difference, the biblical vision of Aquinas' theology, the theology of disability, the sacrament of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and the Catholic vision of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.