Randy Chung Gonzales was leading an ordinary life in his hometown of Lamas, Peru, when his employer, anthropologist Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, asked him to accompany her to an ayahuasca ceremony led by a local shaman. There, to everyone’s great surprise, Randy was initiated by discarnate entities, who instructed him and gave him healing powers. In this unique book, Randy tells his story to Frédérique, who offers cultural context and describes how she herself has been transformed from an academic...
Feb 23, 2023•1 hr 24 min
This lecture, given by Visiting Lecturer on Islam and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Rahina Muazu, discusses awra (an Arabic word that is translated as nakedness, genital organs, private parts, genitalia, blemish, defects, etc.) and the female voice in Islamic law. This event took place on October 27, 2022 Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/ Full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/3/4/what-%E2%80%9C%E2%80%99awra%E2%80%9D-women-gendered-space-...
Feb 15, 2023•45 min
Harvard Divinity School was founded nearly forty years after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, yet many of our school’s founders and early students were intimately familiar with both enslavement and the slave trade. Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery highlights the case of our first dean, John Gorham Palfrey, who was abandoned as a child in Boston when his father moved to Louisiana to establish a plantation. Palfrey’s mentor William Ellery Channing, who was the intellectual founder of the D...
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 30 min
It has long been a historical truism that, in the early modern West, pseudoscientific racial hierarchies replaced religious hierarchies as the dominant framework for understanding human difference and justifying oppressive colonialist practices, including slavery. Recent research has challenged this axiom to suggest how important religious conceptions of difference remained to the racist imagination into the modern period—and, indeed, into our present day. The convergence of racialist and religi...
Feb 10, 2023•1 hr 29 min
As part of Harvard Divinity School's annual William James Lectures on Religious Experience, Professor John Kaag presented "William James and the Sick Soul." This lecture discussed William James's 1895 lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter-century earlier. This lecture showed why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology can still speak so directly and profoundl...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 26 min
This conversation was the first of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speaker was Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at HDS. This event took place on January 30, 2023 Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/ Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/2/2/video-enslavement-formation-earliest-christianity
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 30 min
This fall, Harvard Divinity School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative (BMI). In honor of this anniversary, the community engaged in discussions of Buddhist ministry in the context of HDS. In this audio, Phillip Henderson, the CEO of the Ho Family Foundation, discusses the importance of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative at HDS. This event took place on October 27, 2022 Learn more: hds.harvard.edu Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/1/17/audio-bmi-10t...
Jan 05, 2023•5 min
Peripheries is a non-profit literary and arts journal established in 2017 that publishes artistic work that is, broadly understood, "peripheral"; work that explores the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, forms, and genres. In this spirit, along with publishing poetry, visual art, and short stories, our scope is expansive, including translations, interviews, creative nonfiction, reviews, aphorisms, recipes, instructions, and manifestos. In this video HDS celebrates the launch ...
Dec 12, 2022•54 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•7 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•3 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•56 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•3 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•17 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•1 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•5 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•51 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•4 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•3 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•28 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•6 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•42 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•22 sec
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•4 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•4 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
As the nights grow longer and the days shorter, share in a virtual celebration of Seasons of Light, Harvard Divinity School's beloved annual multireligious service honoring the interplay of holy darkness and light in the world’s religious traditions. Performances include choral and instrumental music, readings by HDS students, the ritual kindling of many flames, and communal prayers and songs. Explore these offerings to the season in part or as a whole. Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divi...
Dec 07, 2022•2 min
