Guest speaker

Dr. White, Chair; Associate Professor (New Testament and Early Christianity), is a scholar of ancient and modern interpretations of the New Testament, the reconstruction of Christian origins, and the development of early Christianities. He is particularly interested in the figure of Paul in Christian theopolitical discourse, as well as the intersection of memory, historiography, and ideology in the development of Pauline traditions. His first…

This lecture compares ideas of religious and mystical experience in Eastern and Western understandings of the self.  We shall examine models of how the self is constructed, and how visionary experience works.  It explores the question:  How do people perceive God in Western psychology and Indian philosophy? Dr. June McDaniel is Professor Emerita in the field of History of Religions, in the Dept. of Religious Studies at the College…

"The Present and the Future in the Present: Religion, Values, and Climate Change," Joel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Joel Robbins's work focuses on the anthropology of religion and the study of values, ethics, and anthropological theory more broadly. He has for two decades been centrally involved in the development of that anthropological study of Christianity. He is author of the books …

On Tuesday, February 21 at 4:30 in Peabody Hall 115, Jewish Studies is sponsoring a talk "Education against Auschwitz: The Challenge of Learning about- and from- the Holocaust" by guest speaker Doyle Stevick.    Dr. Stevick is the founder and director of the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina. After repeatedly encountering violent racist extremism in 1999-2000, Dr. Stevick pursued a doctorate in…

Prof. Yuval Gadot will deliver this year's Howard Lecture on Monday, Nov 14, 2022, in Peabody Hall 115. New Revelations from Zion: the Archaeology of Jerusalem from the Great Age of Reform In the last 25 years, intensive construction has revolutionized our understanding of Jerusalem’s transition from a royal capital to a metropolis in the kingdom of Judah, mostly around and after the Ten Tribes of Israel were deported.  The lecture…

Dr. Ann Gleig will be delivering this year's Howard Lecture on Feb 23, 2022 at 3:30 via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Please register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cUYNfA1mTYWYO1JhMbFSHA. Undoing Whiteness in American Buddhist Modernism: Critical, Contextual and Collective Turns What is “whiteness” and how has it shaped, functioned and hindered American convert Buddhist modernism? Drawing on ethnography and textual analysis, this…

  Special Information: Register in advance for this online lecture: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrcu6przsqHdXonXwQy7GqybnaTq3WUBOx ABSTRACT FOR “WONDER, MAGIC, AND WHY WE DO PHILOSOPHY":  Several philosophers have regarded wonder as the beginning of philosophy. For example, Aristotle in the Metaphysics speculates that "it is owing to their wonder (to thaumazein) that humans both now begin and at first began to philosophize…

Howard Lecture Series in Religion Please RSVP for this Event Here

Religion Courses, Self-Authorship, and the Pursuit of the Common Good” This workshop begins with a history of American higher education’s view of student ethical development, including the current concern for how students develop a sense of their identity.  Of particular interest is the way that students develop an understanding of how they will contribute to the common good in a pluralistic culture.  Foster and Patterson explore how…