Anti-Asian hate spiked 145 percent in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. At the same time, nearly one-third of the COVID deaths among nurses were Filipina nurses. As we look back at the first three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly complex stories continue to emerge. How can religious literacy and a lens of racial justice inform the stories that we and our students hear, tell, and seek out? The Religion and Public Life program at Harvard Divinity School hosted a conversation with...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Throughout millennia, Jews have explored individual and communal consciousness through a variety of techniques and traditions. More recently, Jews have played an outsized role in the “psychedelic renaissance” as researchers, practitioners, and advocates, including prominent leaders. A surge of interest in these substances creates an opportunity to reflect on non-ordinary experiences in Jewish life and theology more broadly. This panel, hosted by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Har...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 32 min
The Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School hosted his conversation with Professor Fadeke Castor. CSWR Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani and Castor discussed multiple subjectivities, ethnographic practices, and being scholar practitioners in the academic context. This event was part of the Gnoseologies: Transcendence and Transformation Today series. Castor is Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at Northeastern University and award-winning auth...
Jun 08, 2023•58 min
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith took part in a poetry reading and craft talk as part of the Peripheries Poetry Series at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator, and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States. Smith is the author of five poetry collections including, Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; and To Free the Captives: A Plea f...
Jun 08, 2023•58 min
Graduating students, members of the HDS community, family, and friends took part in the Harvard Divinity School 2023 Multireligious Commencement Service. The faculty speaker was David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity. The digital program for the Multireligious Commencement Service can also be viewed online (https://hds.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/hds2/files/fin...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 32 min
Professor Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at the Harvard Divinity School led a online conversation with the 2022-23 Yang Visiting Scholars, Dr. Heather Mellquist Lehto, and Dr. Ashok Kumar Mocherla. This conversation showed us how perspectives on the global scene might confirm, yet also challenge, how we think about Christianity and the study of Christianity here in the United States. The Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity p...
Jun 02, 2023•1 hr 30 min
Harvard Divinity School awarded 149 degrees during the 2023 Commencement Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25, 2023. The student speaker was MTS candidate Breana Norris. Full transcript here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/05/25/video-harvard-divinity-school-2023-commencement-diploma-awarding-ceremony Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Jun 01, 2023•1 hr 31 min
What kind of religious and spiritual questions are raised by climate collapse? How might understanding the religious dimensions of climate collapse and responses to it inform scientific, business, policy, activist, and other professional communities seeking to develop sustainable and just climate solutions? Religion and spirituality play a crucial role in shaping drivers of climate change and responses to it worldwide. In this online conversation, Harvard Divinity School faculty members Matthew ...
May 12, 2023•1 hr 2 min
The Center for the Study of World Religions hosted an author discussion (Psychedelics & the Future of Religion Series) with Professor Bill Barnard. Charles Stang, Director of the CSWR, and Barnard discussed his recent book, Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition. Liquid Light offers an in-depth immersion into the complex and fascinating world of the Santo Daime – a relatively new religion that emerged out of the Amazon rainforest region of Brazil in the middle of ...
May 11, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Sherah Bloor, editor of the Peripheries Journal at the Center for the Study of World Religions hosted three exciting new voices in poetry. Bloor invited Tawanda Mulalu, Isabel Duarte-Gray, and Jess Yuan to discuss their latest works. The works discussed include Please make me pretty I don't want to die (Mulalu), Even Shorn (Duarte-Gray), and Threshold Amnesia (Yuan). This event took place on April 10, 2023 Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/
May 04, 2023•1 hr 27 min
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Scien...
May 04, 2023•34 min
This lecture on conjuring, gender, and decolonization was given by Visiting Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and African American Religions and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Xhercis Méndez. This event took place on April 11, 2023 Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/ Full transcript: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/5/11/video-conjuring-nonbinary-futurities-and-decolonizing-methodologies
May 04, 2023•1 hr 10 min
In collaboration with Harvard Divinity School and the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard University, this symposium was designed to give momentum to our efforts to explore, catalogue, and promulgate Dr. Charles H. Long’s enduring intellectual contributions to the academic study of religion, history, and culture. The event featured an opening keynote on the symposium’s theme, critical responses to key passages from Long’s writings, and a closing keynote followed by a cerem...
May 01, 2023•2 hr 44 min
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Scien...
Apr 27, 2023•54 min
“Thank you, George Floyd, for giving your life for justice.” These words, uttered by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, were offered in memory of George Floyd. Pelosi would eventually apologize for her words, but the question remains: why did she make this claim? What was it—what is it—about antiblack state-sanctioned violence that lends itself so easily to justifying this violence? Which is to say, what is it about state-sanctioned antiblack violence that lends itself so easily to theodi...
Apr 27, 2023•1 hr 22 min
This panel presented an opportunity to learn from the critical work being done by students to advance justice through analysis, reflection, and action at the intersection of race and climate. Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, will offer an opening address. This event was part of HDS's Climate Justice Week. It took place April 11, 2023. Panelists Phil Scholer, MTS '24 Tracey Robertson Carter, HDS Special Student Nathan Samayo, MDiv '23 Eve Woldemikael, MDiv ...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr
How does religion shape the political, social, and economic systems that have contributed to climate collapse, in both explicit and embedded ways? How can a critical understanding of religion help us reimagine and develop effective responses to climate collapse? RPL Fellows with expertise in policy, environmental science, Native and Indigenous rights, and education discussed the ways religious and spiritual literacy can enhance policy and scientific efforts to understand the drivers of climate c...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Join Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani in a conversation with Dr. Natalie Dyer. Dr. Dyer is a Research Scientist with Connor Whole Health at University Hospitals, the President of the Center for Reiki Research, and a practicing Reiki master. In this discussion they talk about the role of Reiki and energy healing in improving health and well-being, the possibility of a non-materialist scientific paradigm, and Dr. Dyer’s latest research on universal love. This event took place on April 5,...
Apr 21, 2023•1 hr
In this conversation Catherine Brekus, Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion, discusses the process and possibilities when applying to doctoral programs in religion. This event took place on April 14, 2023 Transcript available here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/4/14/2023/applying-doctoral-programs-religion Learn more: https://hds.harvard.edu/
Apr 20, 2023•35 min
What role does religion play in the movement for climate justice? How can religious communities serve as sites of organizing and activism? Panelists will discuss these questions through the lenses of religious literacy, climate grief, climate ministry, and practices to guide communities through the perils of climate catastrophe. This panel will feature: Terry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-Residence Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and the Plummer Professor of Chri...
Apr 19, 2023•42 min
The question of Palestine and the Palestinians is shifting more and more from an external matter to an internal question of Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people writ large. Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict and Peace Raef Zreik interrogates the ways questions of war and peace, borders, security, or the ‘two state’ solution become more and more internal to Israel. Related intimately to the state's identity, character and constitutional structure and democratic nature, these ...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 9 min
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Scien...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 29 min
Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, talks about Buddhist Studies at Harvard, his path to teaching, and the beauty of the world. Faculty Focus is a special new podcast series from Harvard Divinity School, where we speak with HDS professors about their courses and research interests. Full episode transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/4/14/faculty-focus-charles-hallisey-beauty-world-buddhist-studies-harvard Learn more about HDS: hds.harvard.edu/ Music tra...
Apr 14, 2023•25 min
Black Studies and Critical Race Theory constitute some of the most theoretically sophisticated conversations in the Humanities today on issues of individual and collective identities. The results have not yet been brought to bear on Jewish Studies, in general, or research on antisemitism, in particular. This talk, delivered by Shaul Magid and part of the Albert & Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture Series at the Center for the Study of World Religions, makes the case that antisemitism ...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 26 min
The Harvard Psychedelics Project at Harvard Divinity School, a student organization, presented this conference to gather faculty, researchers, and students from across Harvard University to explore their diverse, interdisciplinary, and promising research on psychedelics. Speakers came from across the University’s Schools, units, and departments, including the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Scien...
Apr 13, 2023•1 hr 59 min
This lecture is the third of a four-part series this academic year. This series explores the moral and ethical questions surrounding the global climate crisis and the role of religious institutions, organization and members of the general public, outside the scientific community focused on saving the planet. Dekila Chungyalpa is a religion and ecology expert, having worked with faith and Indigenous leaders around the world on developing faith-led environmental and climate projects for 15 years. ...
Apr 08, 2023•1 hr 5 min
This lecture on Jewish midwives was given by Visiting Assistant Professor of Judaism and Women's Studies in Religion Program 2022-23 Research Associate Jordan Katz. This event took place on March 22, 2023 A full transcript can be found online: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/06/07/video-rachel-salomons-and-world-jewish-midwives-early-modern-europe Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 11 min
In this special episode of Faculty Focus, HDS professors John P. Brown and Charles Hallisey talk about why this summer’s Making Change Professional and Lifelong Learning program is such a valuable experience for those looking to make an investment in themselves and gain a new perspective on the challenges they face. Held across five lively and concentrated days of collaboration, close reading, and multilayered exercises, a team of faculty members from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Business...
Apr 05, 2023•28 min
There are two distinct concepts of translation at work in the encounter between an Amazonian Indigenous people, the Wari’, and the New Tribes Mission evangelical missionaries. While the missionaries conceive translation as a process of converting meanings between languages, conceived as linguistic codes that exist independently of culture, for the Wari’, in consonance with their perspectivist ontology, it is not language that differentiates beings but their bodies, given that those with similar ...
Apr 02, 2023•1 hr 26 min
This conversation was the last of the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery | A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speakers were HDS professors Karen L. King, David F. Holland, Dan McKanan, Terrence L. Johnson, and Tracey Hucks. This session was a discussion among presenters reflecting upon the insights shared throughout the series. In addition to identifying themes and throughlines among sessions, we returned to the overarching questions that framed this collabor...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 28 min
