Painting across the Color-line: Community Muralism and Social Justice with Maureen O’Connell
Moral theologian Maureen O'Connell is associate professor of Christian ethics and chair of the Department of Religion at La Salle University. After earning a Ph.D. in theological ethics at Boston College, she taught at Fordham University before returning to her native city of Philadelphia. Working at the intersections of social ethics and theological aesthetics, she probes the roles of art, imagination, and storytelling in the pursuit of justice. Her current research focuses on racial identity formation, racism, and racial justice.
Her widely acclaimed and award-winning book, If These Walls Could Talk: Muralism and the Beauty of Justice, examines mural-making and murals in Philadelphia. "Philadelphia's walls are talking," O'Connell writes. And the "images have the potential to transform the 'City of Brotherly Love' into the 'City of Just Love.'" In Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization, O'Connell unpacks the meaning of the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan for our times.
O'Connell co-edited, with Laurie Cassidy, She Who Imagines: Contemporary Feminist Aesthetics and Religion, Economics and Culture in Conflict and Conversation.
Presented by the William H. Shannon Chair Lecture Series
For more information, please contact
Christine Bochen at cbochen4@naz.edu or 585-387-2728