Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
Join us for one of our Fall Open Houses and experience our beautiful, riverfront campus firsthand. Learn more about Marist’s academic experience, the admissions process, and get an inside look at life as a Red Fox! You'll have the opportunity to hear directly from students, faculty, and staff about what makes the Marist Community so special. Register Below:
More lectures will be added once confirmed. Please refer back to this site periodically.
2025-26 Common Read Lecture
Presenter: Rocky Callen and Nora Shalaway Carpenter When: September 17, 2025 at 11:00 am Where: McCann Center Arena
Students taking First Year Seminar are required to attend, but all Marist faculty, staff, and students are welcome
This year’s university-wide common read is Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories that Smash Mental Health Stereotypes, edited by Rocky Callen and Nora Shalaway Carpenter. Carpenter and Callen will be engaging in a discussion with Dr. Patricia Tarantello, Director of First-Year Seminar, about their mixed-genre anthology, which presents short stories, poems, and other works about young people living with mental health challenges, defying stereotypes, and breaking stigmas. The common read is selected each year by a committee of faculty, staff, and students. The mission of the program is to engage the Marist community in important contemporary discussions and to create a common intellectual experience for first-year students. The common read is part of our First-Year Seminar program.
Rocky Callen is a critically acclaimed author, speaker, and writing consultant. She has hosted writing workshops and retreats from Washington, D.C. to Bali and has spoken on regional, national, and international stages on writing and books, mental health, and art and social impact. She is the author of the YA novel A Breath Too Late (Macmillan), which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Year and was featured in The Mujerista's 2020 list of the Ten Best Young Adult Books by Latinx Authors. She was a contributing co-editor for the mental health YA anthology Ab(solutely) Normal: Sixteen Stories that Smash Mental Health Stereotypes (Candlewick). Her latest YA novel, Crashing Into You, received two starred reviews. She recently sold her first two picture books to Simon & Schuster. She founded HoldOn2Hope, a project that unites creatives in suicide prevention and mental health awareness.
Nora Shalaway Carpenter is an award-winning author, writing educator, and audiobook narrator. Her newest novel Fault Lines won the 2024 Green Earth Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, a 2024 Whippoorwill Honor for exemplary rural fiction, and was named to the prestigious Texas Library Association TAYSHAS State Reading List. Her novel The Edge of Anything was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and Bank Street, and was North Carolina Humanities' selection for the Library of Congress's Discover Great Places Through Reading list. Her critically acclaimed anthology RURAL VOICES: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America was named an NPR Best Book of the Year, and her fiction has been written about in both the New York Times and People. Other accolades for her work include the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the Children's Book Council Teacher and Librarian favorites lists, and the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for "better books for a better world."Carpenter holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Handel-Krom Lecture in Hudson River Valley History (In-Person and Zoom)
Back to the Land: Connecting the Hudson River Valley's Agrarian Past and Farming Future Presenter: Pieter Estersohn, photographer and author Date: Thursday, September 25, 2025 @ 7 p.m. Location: The Nelly Goletti Theatre in the Murray Student Center & online via Zoom
Free and open to the public. Registration is required for both in-person and online. Register here.
From its earliest civilizations, the Hudson River Valley has been a fertile environment for planting, harvesting, and producing a wide range of crops and agricultural products that connect the region’s people to its landscape. Today, multi-generational farmers and relocating agriculturalists are combining traditional farming methods and new technologies to redevelop what it means to live off the land. In this talk, Pieter Estersohn will utilize his photographs to provide the backdrop for a presentation on Hudson River Valley agricultural land use, past, present, and future.
Pieter Estersohn is a renowned photographer of architecture and interiors, and the author of two books on the Hudson River Valley, Life Along the Hudson: The Historic Country Estates of the Livingston Family (2018) and Back to the Land: A New Way of Life in the Country (2024). His photography regularly appears in both magazines and books focused on interior design and lifestyle. He serves on the boards of Historic Red Hook in Dutchess County and the Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance.
48th annual Marist University William and Sadie Effron Lecture in Jewish Studies
The Dreyfus Affair: Antisemitism and the Transformation of Jewish Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Presenter: Maurice Samuels, professor of French, Yale University Date: Monday, October 27, 2025 @ 7 p.m. Location: Fusco Recital Hall in the Murray Student Center
Free and open to the public
In 1894, a Jewish captain in the French army was falsely accused of treason and sent to Devil’s Island to serve a life sentence under unbelievably brutal conditions. Meanwhile, back in France, his wife and brother began a campaign to clear his name that wound up dividing France and riveting the world. In this talk, Yale Professor Maurice Samuels describes the significance of the Dreyfus Affair in French and Jewish history, showing how it marked a decisive moment in the evolution of antisemitism and helped create a modern form of Jewish identity.
Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he also directs the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. He is the author of five books on nineteenth-century French literature and culture, with a special focus on French-Jewish history. His latest book, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, was published by Yale University Press in 2024 in the Jewish Lives series.
The annual William and Sadie Effron Lecture, through generous support from the Effron family in Poughkeepsie, was established in 1976 to raise awareness of Jewish history, culture, and current affairs at Marist and in the community.
Marist Contact:Dr. Joshua Kotzin, Chair of English and Jewish Studies Coordinator
