The Committee on the Study of Religion

Tuesday, March 16, 2021, 5 – 6:30pm
Buddhism and Race Speaker Series:
"The Karma of A Nation: Racial Reparations From An Asian American Buddhist Perspective"
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. 

Duncan Ryuken Williams will talk about how the teachings of these Asian American Buddhist ancestors offer a way to heal and repair America’s racial and religious fractures that endure to the present. An interned Buddhist priest and a postwar advocate of racial reparations, Rev. Kyoshiro Tokunaga, often spoke about the “Karma of a Nation” in reference to America’s racial legacy while Ta-Nehisi Coates has argued that reparations is more than a recompense of past injustices, but a national reckoning “that would lead to spiritual renewal.” Williams proposes a Buddhist approach to the work of repair and building a nation that values multiplicity over singularity, hybridity over purity, and inclusivity over exclusivity.

March 17, 6 – 7 p.m.
John Duffy Society presents
"Maronem mutatum in melius: The origins of Late Antique biblical poetry"
Hannelore Segers (Harvard University)

Registration required.   

Thursday, March 18, 12-1:00 PM
Vivien Sansour and the Heirloom Seed Library


Vivien Sansour is founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library where she works with farmers to propagate and recover threatened heirloom varieties and creates local and international public awareness campaigns to educate people about Palestinian agricultural heritage and biodiversity. A trained anthropologist, she is currently a Fellow at Harvard's Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which is co-hosting this webinar with API.In this convening of White and williams, they will address sustaining a creative practice that honors  their being and queer blackness, the contemplative arts as muse and form, and how the question of 'who’s your daddy' is not only personal but an opportunity to reflect on the political power and social control that story—the ones we tell ourselves and ones told about us--has on our daily lives.           

Friday, March 19, 10-11:00am
Indigenous Women Convening for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation 

Join us for our Indigenous Women Convening for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation. The Indigenous Women Convening on Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation brings together Indigenous scholars and women leaders from seven indigenous socio-cultural zones of the world to share stories of war and conflicts in their territories and find collective ways of ideating indigenous conflict resolution and peace-making processes.

Cosponsored Webinar with HKS 

FAS Premodern Race Seminar
Monday,  March 22, 1 – 2:30PM

Online via Zoom (contact alexandraschultz@g.harvard.edu for meeting info)
Guest speaker Adam Miyashiro (Stockton University) joins us to discuss a pre-circulated forthcoming article. Tentative topic: indigeneity and medieval environment.

Co-organized by Anna Wilson (Dept. of English) and Rachel Love (Dept. of Classics), this seminar meets every other Monday to discuss pre-circulated readings on race and critical race studies in the premodern world. This semester we have an exciting line-up of guest speakers, including Jackie Murray, Adam Miyashiro, and Nandini Pandey, and we will be tackling issues ranging from the myth of 'Western Civ' to teaching indigeneity.
 

Monday, March 22, 3-4:30pm
Reasonably Irrational: Theurgy and the Pathologization of Entheogenic Experience

In this lecture, Wouter Hanegraaff will be discussing the relevance of entheogens to theurgy and ritual evocation in Roman Egypt, with special attention to the story of Thessalos, the so-called Mithras Liturgy, and the Neoplatonic practice of Iamblichus.

Wouter will be arguing that if we deny or marginalize the clear evidence for entheogenic practice in these contexts- while acknowledging the spectacular visions and experiences that are claimed in the texts- it is hard to avoid traditional pathologizing interpretations of experiential practices that, in fact, can be rationally accounted.

Monday, March 22, 5pm - 7pm
 Not That Far Apart: Black and Jewish Identities in Intersection

Black and Jewish: A Talk Series: Panel 2
Panelists:
Michael Twitty  
Tema Smith (Conversant)   


Co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University

                                                           Tuesday, March 23, 12:30 - 1:30 pm
The Global Merchants:
The World of the Sassoons
     Joseph Sassoon, Georgetown University

Registration required.  Free and open to the public
The colloquium provides a critical forum for graduate students and faculty to present and discuss works-in-progress, thereby fostering an interdisciplinary intellectual community in all areas of modern Jewish studies. The paper will be made available two weeks in advance of the event.

Tuesday, March 23, 12-1:00pm
Reimagining and Rewriting Jewish Liturgy
RCPI Webinar 

Featuring: Rabbi Brant Rosen and Professor Susannah Heschel
Moderated by RCPI Senior Fellow, Professor Atalia Omer

Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago, a non-Zionist congregation, will discuss with Professor Susannah Heschel his effort to reimagine Jewish liturgy, community, and meanings beyond Zionist frames. They will examine what does it mean to (re)write and write anew Jewish prayers that address the realities of Jewish power and complicity with violence.

Wednesday, March 24, 4:30-6 PM
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Where do our ideas about how the economy works, and our views on economic policy, come from? Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets, among economists as well as many ordinary citizens, is a form of religion. The foundational transition in thinking about what we now call economics, beginning in the eighteenth century, was decisively shaped by the hotly contended lines of religious thought at that time within the English-speaking Protestant world. Beliefs about God-given human character, about the afterlife, and about the purpose of our existence, were all under scrutiny in the world in which Adam Smith and his contemporaries lived. Even today, those long-ago religious debates go far in explaining the puzzling behavior of so many of our fellow citizens whose views about economic policies—and whose voting behavior—seems sharply at odds with what would be to their own economic benefit.

Wednesday, Mar. 24, 12:30pm - 1:45pm
In Battle for the German Mind: Evsei Shor, Rudolf Roeßler, and the Vita-Nova Publishing House
Watch Live on Facebook

Though the names Evsei Shor and Rudolf Roeßler are known only to specialists (of the Russian emigration, anti-Nazi resistance, and international espionage), they were major cultural figures, and their voluminous correspondence is an unwavering testimony to humanist values during an inhuman era. Based primarily on their correspondence, the presentation will concern some of the Vita Nova’s attempts to break through the Nazi propaganda machine, including a multi-authored book on the dangers of anti-Semitism, several volumes of Nikolai Berdiaev’s philosophy, and Walter Benjamin’s Deutsche Menschen. 
Speaker(s):
Michael Wachtel (Princeton University)      
Moderator: Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston College; Davis Center)

Cosponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. The Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry has been made possible with the generous support of Genesis Philanthropy Group.

MIDDLE EAST FORUM
Wednesday, March 24, 12-1:30pm 
Book talk: "The Arab and Jewish Questions:
Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond"


Dirk Moses, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Bashir Bashir, Open University of Israel, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem; Leila Farsakh, University of Massachusetts, Boston; and Derek Penslar, Harvard University

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Confronting a Hostile State: Scholars of the Holocaust in Poland

• Barbara Engelking – Founder and Director, Polish Center of Holocaust Research, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Jan Grabowski – Professor of History, University of Ottawa
• Derek J. Penslar – William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History, Harvard University; CES Resident Faculty & Seminar Chair, Harvard University
• Chair Grzegorz Ekiert – Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Thursday, March 25, 6 – 7 P.M.
"Black Is Queen: The Divine Feminine in Kush"
Solange Ashby, Adjunct Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient Studies, Barnard College

The prominence of powerful goddesses and queens in the Nubian Kingdom of Kush (now Northern Sudan) highlights the unusually high status of women in this ancient African society and serves as a fitting focus for the study of female power in the ancient world. Using temple inscriptions found in Egypt and Nubia, the rich funerary goods found in royal burials, and temple and tomb imagery, Solange Ashby will discuss how ancient Africans of the Nile Valley understood female power and presence. Songs from Beyoncé’s recent production “Black Is King” will be woven into this presentation on Kushite queens to emphasize the power and centrality of the African queen mother in her royal family and kingdom.

March 25, 12-2pm
Workshop on Philosophy, Social Thought, and Criticism in African American Studies
discussion with Jarvis Givens, Harvard University

All seminar sessions will be held on (alternating) Thursdays, 12-2 PM on Zoom and restricted to class participants, Harvard affiliates, and invited guests.  Graduate students may take the course for credit.

Those interested may sign up on the email list via the google docs link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZlEpfv8auKrtToQWXmtjqXA5oiAXYruuzR9WFtjT6ublvGw/viewform

Questions can be directed to:
Professor Terry - bterry@fas.harvard.edu or Kierstan Carter - kic695@g.harvard.edu

Monday, March 29, 5 – 6:30pm
How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others—A Conversation with Tanya Luhrmann and Joseph Prabhu