2009-2010 Academic Year :: Spring Wyant Lecture

"We are especially delighted to welcome Sister Helen back to Emmanuel," said Sister Janet. "It was very significant to me when ‘Dead Man Walking' was performed here at Emmanuel, with our own students playing the roles of Sister Marie Augusta and Sister Helen. Seeing this play produced here was very moving because we know these two people so well. They have a very special place in our hearts."

2009-2010 Academic Year :: Spring Wyant Lecture

The Wyant lecture marked Sister Helen's second visit to the campus, as she previously spoke at one of Emmanuel's annual Sister Marie Augusta Neal Lectures. Sister Marie Augusta Neal, SND served as an inspiration for Sister Helen along both her spiritual journey and career as a writer.

2009-2010 Academic Year :: Spring Wyant Lecture

Sister Helen opened her lecture with a brief background of her life and what led her to "wake up" to social justice issues. Growing up in the south in a rather privileged family, she alluded to her life as "a goldfish swimming in a fishbowl." She explained that she did not see, therefore she did not understand, the injustices of the world surrounding her. She acknowledged that at this early stage in her life she was asleep to the world around her and when you are not awake, you do not act.

2009-2010 Academic Year :: Spring Wyant Lecture

Since 1984, Sister Helen has divided her time between campaigning against the death penalty and counseling individual death row prisoners. This experience raised her concerns that some of those executed were not guilty, which inspired her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, released in 2004. Today Sister Helen works with the Death Penalty Discourse Center, the Moratorium Campaign and the Dead Man Walking Play Project. She is presently at work on another book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey to Death Row.

2009-2010 Academic Year :: Fulbright Scholar Tripat Narayanan

Through an affiliation with the U.S. Department of State and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), Emmanuel College is hosting Fulbright Scholar Dr. Tripat Narayanan from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the spring 2010 semester. Narayanan is a part-time lecturer, free lance writer/film critic and a published author whose expertise lies in the fields of film, radio and television.