The group—a professor, a psychologist, and three students—gathered in a classroom in Duane Library on Feb. 14, where they spoke to members of the Fordham community about how love appears in their professional work.  

Literature on Love

Some of them shared their favorite literature on love. Thomas O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate professor of English and medieval studies, printed out three poems and passed out copies to the audience: a joyful poem written by Comtessa de Dia, a 12th-century French noblewoman; a mournful poem by Umm Khalid, an Arabic poet from the 8th or 9th century; and a funny poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th-century English poet. 

“[Chaucer] says he is so in love that he feels like a piece of roasted fish in jam sauce,” O’Donnell said, to laughter from the audience. 

Asher Harris, a Ph.D. student in theology, talked about American jazz musician John Coltrane, who expressed love and gratitude to God for saving him from his heroin addiction. The most open expression of this love appeared in his album A Love Supreme, particularly in the song “Psalm,” said Harris, who played a recording for the audience. 

Another scholar, Christopher Supplee, FCRH ’25, a creative writing major, shared a poem he wrote and recited in honor of the event: “A World Without Love.” 

“There are matters that cannot be mended by mortal hands alone,” he said to the audience, reading from his poem. “That only miracles may fix, assuming they still exist.” 

Supplee said that when he was writing his poem, he was inspired by the question “What is love?” 

“It made me want to sit down and think about what love means to me—what are my experiences, what I’ve read, what I’ve been taught from scholars, writers, and entertainment,” Supplee said. “Love can be expressed in many different ways, whether it be through justice, romance, or friendship.” 

Queer Love at Fordham

Other scholars shared their own research on love. Benedict Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies theology, discussed the theme of love from his book Queer Prayer at Fordham. He started the book project two years ago, interviewing LGBTQ+ members of the Fordham community about how they pray. During those conversations, he learned about the connection between prayer and love. One interviewee said that she learned to love herself through prayer. Another interviewee—an asexual and aromantic woman who longed to have a child of her own—spoke about how she found love and comfort through a Hail Mary. 

“I’m sharing all of these with you because I want you to think about different prayers or songs that might be helpful to you all as you fall in love,” Reilly said. 

The final invited speaker, Sarika Persaud, Ph.D., a supervising psychologist in Counseling and Psychological Services who specializes in love and relationships, spoke about what her work has taught her about love. 

“When I’m sitting with a person and helping them heal, I’m not only opening them up to love as a feeling, to feel love again, but to love as who you are—to exist in the world as love,” said Persaud, who added that her Hinduism philosophy informs her work. “All of your desires, whatever relationships you enter into, whatever relationships come your way, whatever challenges come your way, they’re all opportunities … to love more.”

What Love Means to a Jesuit

After each guest spoke, event host and theology professor Brenna Moore invited the audience to reflect on what love means to them. 

Among them was Timothy Perron, S.J., a Jesuit in formation and doctoral student in theology. 

“As somebody who has taken a vow of celibacy, a lot of times, people think, ‘What could that person know about love, especially romantic love?’” Perron said. “But actually, I’ve thought about it a lot.” 

Before he decided to become a priest, he wondered if he could commit to that vow. After much thought, he said he realized that every human has the same needs and desires, but they appear in different ways. 

“I still have a need for close friendship, intimacy, love, and care for others … [but there are]all of these different ways that love could be understood,” Perron said. “If I see somebody who is looking for money or something, I’ll often stop and talk to them or take them to the nearest deli … Just stuff like that, where you feel that love and that connection … intentionally developing close relationships with people, keeping in close touch, calling them—all of those sorts of things, I think, are part of what love means.” 

Babich often peppers her lectures with pop culture references, and this lecture was no different. She began her talk deferring to colleague’s specialties as they relate to wisdom and Harry Potter.

“I am grateful to everyone who is here not just today, but at Fordham—always,” she said. She couldn’t help herself in adding in an aside: “I cannot say ‘always’ without thinking of Alan Rickman’s Severus Snape and his asseveration, his enunciation in Harry Potter,” she said, referencing the moment Snape acknowledges his enduring love for Harry’s mother, Lily. “Fordham is, of course, the Harry Potter school.”

She noted that one of her students once asked her if she was the Harry Potter teacher, but she said that distinction belongs to Judith Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy who taught a Harry Potter course in London last year. In the audience, Jones beamed at the acknowledgment.

She was to begin her talk by mentioning that philosophy was the love of wisdom, but on the fly decided to scrap the wisdom segment of her talk. She acknowledged that Professor Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., who was also in the audience, is the resident expert on wisdom, and so she moved on to love.

With citations and mentions that included Homer, Heidegger, and Hugh Grant, Babich framed the many kinds of love by referencing not only ancient and modern texts, but also the contemporary films Love, Actually and The Children Act. She said she derived her title based on the theme of love of wisdom, which could be more succinctly described as “love, actually.”

“My theme concerns ‘the love of wisdom’ or love, actually,” she said. “Beyond inclusive disjoint substitutions, my talk is inspired, as I tend to be inspired, by the comma:  love, actually.”

Her references to Emma Thompson in The Children Act went beyond the title to aspects of love that included different kinds of love, including agape and philia, though with less focus on eros.

She added that she’d skip the notion of erotic love, because it was “easy.”

“Erotic love never stays and typically things begin badly as well,” she said. “Thus, Eros knocks us over with a hammer, as [ancient Greek lyric poet]  Anacreon writes, leaving us in a wintry ditch; Cupid’s [Eros’ Roman counterpart]  dart is fatal, overcoming us with longing.”

But this was not the kind of love she wanted to focus on. She said that her interests centered on hermeneutics, “that is, the art of reading even films with love, forbearance, [and]  generosity.” It’s the kind of love that which includes “the benefit of the doubt we lend to speakers at Faculty Day,” she quipped.

Using Love to Approach New Things

Babich asserted that philosophy is about love, and like love, “it is difficult to keep up.” She said that she’s still recoiling from the “shock takeover by analytic philosophy” of her beloved “continental philosophy,” which springs from the 19th- and 20th-century European traditions. She said that analytic philosophy can be characterized by its nastiness and denunciation.

“You can indeed read a text with hostility, looking for flaws, tracking an author’s mistakes, but you will miss a great deal,” she said. “Nietzsche recommends love as a method to get to know new things, anything in fact, ‘no matter whether a person, an event, or a book.’”

She said the technique (or German is known as Kunstgriff) is to set out to treat something “with all possible love,” which required setting aside all negative responses in order to allow the person or event “every benefit of hope on their behalf.”

“We all do this in teaching,” she said. “Indeed, love is the prerequisite for scholarship of any kind.”

Loved Back

With their minds fed, the faculty left the lecture to celebrate and dine. As in years past, awards for teaching excellence were presented during dinner.

The Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in Science and Mathematics went to Joan Roberts, Ph.D., professor of chemistry.

“I wish to thank my students for allowing me to teach creatively and the faculty at Lincoln Center for making it a pleasure to come in each day,” she said later.

Johanna Francis, Ph.D., associate professor of economics, received the Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring; Diana Heney, Ph.D., assistant professor of philosophy, received the Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Humanities; and the Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Social Sciences went to Mark Chapman, Ph.D., associate professor of African and African American studies.