For those driving to campus for the symposium but not staying at the Morris Inn, you have a few options for free parking. First, you can see an interactive campus map here. Enter “McKenna Hall” in the search bar at the top right to identify the symposium building. On the left sidebar, click Overlays and select Visitor Parking to highlight those options.

Also, this parking lot graphic should be helpful:

The lot marked with a W is a visitors’ lot: the Walsh Lot next to the Architecture building on Holy Cross Drive. You can park there for free after 4pm on Friday and all day Saturday. The lot marked BKW is just west of the bookstore. McKenna Hall visitors can park there for free on either day, but it requires obtaining a hang tag and gate code from the Morris Inn parking attendants first; tell them you’re attending a McKenna Hall event and you want to park in the Bookstore West lot. If you have any uncertainty about where to park in general, those parking attendants should be able to help direct you.

As the symposium schedule outlines, Friday’s session will close with a pair of keynote addresses, and Saturday will round out with a roundtable discussion.

Offering a little more info about each, we’re honored to have two exciting speakers for the keynote session. Up first will be Helena Lourdes Donato-Sapp, who, quoting from her website, “is a 16-year-old national and global award-winning activist, educator, peace builder, artist, poet, and speaker who believes that it is urgent for young people like her to understand and be empowered to confront critical issues like anti-Blackness, ableism, misogyny, homophobia, and climate change.” In her talk, which will be delivered remotely from an auditorium in California seating the entire student body of her school, Orange County School of the Arts, she will implore scholars and guardians to have critical conversations about media literacy with youth early and often.

The second keynote address will be delivered in person by Alison Trope, Clinical Professor of Communication at USC and founder and director of Critical Media Project, a web-based media literacy resource focused on representation and identity (gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, religion, age). Her talk will delve into her work at Critical Media Project, which has been using the frame “stand up and speak out” to think through some of its latest work and findings in working with youth.

On Saturday afternoon, the roundtable will present an invigorating finish to the symposium’s events by featuring people who work in media and entertainment and have great interest in the intersection of industry and education. These are the speakers:

• Conor Hanney, TV and theater writer, lyricist, and composer
• Traci Paige Johnson, co-creator of Blue’s Clues and Gabby’s Dollhouse
• Jim Poyser, founder of Youth Environmental Press Team and director of Advancement, Earth Charter Indiana
• Lyn Pusztai, Student Success Manager: TV and Film Programs at The Second City
• Christine Swanson, film and TV director and screenwriter

There is an underlying logic to how these folks were chosen, and it ties in with the anniversaries the symposium is dedicated to, which you can read more about here. (Three of the roundtablers were part of Beyond Our Control, while two are graduates from Notre Dame’s Dept. of Film, TV, and Theatre.) We will toast to those anniversaries and to all symposium participants at a reception following the roundtable.

As a reminder, we have an attendance registration form here, so please get in there by August 12th if you want to make sure you get a share of the food on offer. (The deadline for the reception is later, so still mark yourself down for that if it’s after the12th.)

If you are attending the symposium remotely, all of the sessions will be streamed, with a dedicated Zoom link available as the event gets closer.

If you are planning to attend any part of the Beyond Our Screens symposium in person, please fill out this form, ideally by August 12 to help us get a rough headcount for ordering food for the meals.

There will be no registration fee thanks to the generosity of the event’s sponsors: the University of Notre Dame’s Franco Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, Henkels Lecture Fund; American Studies; Institute for Social Concerns; Education, Schooling, and Society; English; Film, Television, and Theatre; and Gender Studies, and Drexel University’s Communication and Media Department.

Shout-out to Heidi Henke, Visual Brand Manager for Arts & Letters Comms at Notre Dame, for her great design of the poster for our symposium!

We have a draft of the symposium schedule, which you can see here in Google Sheets.

Please email cbecker1@nd.edu if you have any changes to make to your name, affiliation, presentation title, or abstract. It is difficult to make scheduling changes at this point since this already reflects the requests numerous participants have made, but email the address above if you have an unavoidable conflict with your scheduled time.

Remote presenters will be able to livestream all symposium events (except for meal breaks).

There won’t be a registration fee, but we’ll have participants fill out a registration form closer to the event so we can ensure an accurate headcount for meals.

All of the symposium events will take place on the second floor of McKenna Hall on the Notre Dame campus.

We have reserved hotel rooms for presenters at the Morris Inn, which is located directly across the street from McKenna Hall. The symposium room rate is $169 per night, and you can reserve Thursday, Friday, and/or Saturday night stays. To book your room, use this dedicated link to get the symposium room rate on our reserved block of rooms. The deadline to book is July 28th; after that date, unbooked rooms will be released to the general public at the standard rate.

For information about getting to the Morris Inn by car, train, or plane, please visit this page.

Food will be provided for presenters, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Friday; breakfast, lunch, and reception canapes on Saturday; and coffee and snacks during panel breaks on both days.

The Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame will host a symposium titled Beyond Our Screens: Reimagining Critical Media Literacy on August 29th and 30th, 2025. As AI transforms our media landscape and misinformation challenges public discourse, traditional fact-checking approaches to media literacy have become insufficient. Today’s citizens require sophisticated critical thinking skills to navigate an increasingly complex digital environment, creating an urgent need and an opportunity to reimagine educational approaches. This symposium will explore innovative approaches to media education that address both the intellectual and emotional impact of media technologies while emphasizing user agency and ethical responsibility in digital spaces.