Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel explores the project of literature from the classical to the modern era, highlighting how stories like Anna Karenina shape the moral imagination through themes of virtue, marriage, culture, and the perennial question of what it means to be human.

This lecture was given on March 11th, 2025, at Trinity College Dublin.

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About the Speakers:

Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel is a member of the St. Cecilia Congregation of Dominican Sisters of Nashville, Tennessee. She has been active in her religious community’s teaching apostolate for over fifteen years and assists with the theological formation of the newest members of her religious congregation, serving as Associate Professor of Theology at Aquinas College. In addition to contributing articles to a number of journals and magazines, including the Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano), The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, The Linacre Quarterly, and the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, her favorite projects have been serving as editor-in-chief of her Congregation’s book, Praying as a Family, directing a television series of the same title with EWTN, co-directing the documentary Undivided Heart, and serving as the creator and founding Director of the University of Dallas Studies in Catholic Faith & Culture Program.

Keywords: Agapic Love, Aristotle, Anna Karenina, Classical Literature, Hans Christian Andersen, Homer, Moral Imagination, Romeo and Juliet, Tolstoy, Virtue Ethics

Anna Karenina and the Project of Literature I Sr. Jane Dominic Laurel, O.P.

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