Harvard Divinity School

For many years esoteric and occult practices in art have been sidelined as marginal and even taboo within art historical discourses. However, the recent cultural explosion of interest in esotericism and the occult is redefining the contributions of esotericism to the development of visual art, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward. In this illustrated talk and conversation, Dr. Amy...

This presentation chronicled the evolution of the collaborative art exhibition, "Ye Shall Inherit the Earth & Faces of the Divine." The exhibition, featuring works of artists from the African Diasporic and Palestinian exilic communities, attempts to gesture towards some commentary about both the universality and specificity of conversations ranging from human rights, human dignity, and artistic pr...

What is the paranormal? How can we make sense of out-of-the-ordinary experiences? How can we study the paranormal—anthropologically? In this talk, Dr. Jack Hunter and Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani discussed the anthropology of the paranormal. This event took place on March 23, 2022. Learn more: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/

In this talk, Vivien Sansour shared excerpts of her upcoming autobiographical book weaving a poetic narration of people, plants, and other food stories from Palestine to South America, taking us on her journey of establishing the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and the projects that resulted from it. Professor Bahhur explored how stories inform our political and social realities on a global level...

This event featured seven poets from Gaza-Palestine who in May 2021 were working to submit their poems to "Peripheries" while under Israeli attacks. Five of the poets write in Arabic while two, the co-editors of the special folio in 2021, are bilingual poets, writing in Arabic and English. The poets include Mosab Abu Toha, Tayseer Abu Odeh, Nasser Rabah, Waleed Al-Akkad, Hamed Ashour, Ne’ma Hasan,...

On February 24-25, a convening of Religion and Public Life and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University brought together a small group of scholars and activists to assess the normative frameworks that shape how U.S. foreign policy thinks about the role of religion in world affairs. This public follow-up event, moderated by Peter Mandaville, George Mason and Georgetown U...

This event is part of the RCPI Fellows' Spring Series, "Disrupting Injustice and Promoting Moral Imagination in Israel/Palestine." Conflict and Peace Fellows at Religion and Public Life (RPL) talk about their projects illuminating transnational solidarities, reimagining Jewish identity, Palestinian steadfastness (Sumoud), and cultivating moral imagination and creative possibilities for a just peac...

“The Writing of Wisdom: Divine Sophia in Russia” is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation". In this presentation, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt analyzed ancient icons of Divine Wisdom along with many other influences on the pivotal religious philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov and, through him, on his heirs in Russian religious thought in the 20th century. This event t...

This conversation is part of a ten-week series of online conversations with poets, writers, public servants, theologians, biologists, scholars, and activists who are engaged in the spiritual reckoning and awakening surrounding climate collapse, sacred land protection, and planetary health. Kim Stanley Robinson’s thriller "The Ministry for the Future" (2020) is science fiction that reads as hard-ed...

Vladimir Putin's invasion and war on Ukraine is a crisis. It's a crisis that is unfolding before our very eyes across social media and cable and online news, and it's more than just a political crisis, though that's likely what most of us are hearing about. Putin's war is crisis of humanity. It's a crisis of conscience … and it's a crisis with deep religious ties. I'm Jonathan Beasley, and in toda...

Virtual Voices of Divinity is an ongoing conversation series that showcases the unique impact of HDS alumni in the world. This talk featured Palwasha Kakar, MTS ’04, Interim Director of Religion and Inclusive Societies at US Institute of Peace, Rick Santos, MTS ’92, President and CEO at Church World Service, and Karen Tse, MDiv ’00, Founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice. This event t...

In this talk, Sapir Sluzker Amran and Dr. Yali Hashash explored the role of powerful civic grassroots movements in Israel/Palestine that center feminist-queer-class-race intersectionality and solidarity while challenging secular liberal thinking about feminist leadership. They discussed the role of alternative and community archives by showcasing feminist activism from the 1950s onwards and highli...

Yeshe Tsogyal, the leading female presence of Tibet, appears in two distinct genres of literature, autobiographical and ritual practice texts (sādhana). In this talk, Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma drew on recent practice texts related writings to conclude that this sādhana is at core a conversation about one’s own relation to a divine feminine, which gradually reveals a wholistic divine, a non-...

Ever since Columbus reported he was hailed as "a celestial being" in 1492, stories of unexpected apotheoses have haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie to Prince Philip, men unwittingly turned divine have much to reveal about empire, race, and the relationship between politics and divinity, as HDS alumna Anna Della Subin argues in her recent book "Accidental Gods". In conversation with Charle...

n this talk, Dr. Elizabeth Pérez discussed practices of embodied knowledge production and transmission in such Afro-Diasporic religions as Cuban Lucumí, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomblé. In conversation with CSWR Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani, she connected the insights from her first book on sacred food preparation with current scholarship on gut feelings, knowing, and beings i...

Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice The after-effects of the 1/6 Insurrection continue to reverberate across America. Since that fateful and disturbing day, pushbacks against the teaching of race in America, abortion rollbacks, and Covid denialism have swept across the country. What has been the role of evangelical Christianity in fueling these issues? Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. S...

In this event, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow Oriel Eisner, activist Neomi-Nur Zahor, and journalist Basil al-Adraa discussed their experience engaging in immersive solidarity work and shared resistance in the last year as a part of a renewal of efforts in joint struggle against the Occupation. This event took place on February 15, 2022. Learn more: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/pro...

Heather R. White, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Gender and Queer Studies and 2021-22 Women's Studies in Religion Program Research Associate, delivered the lecture, "Safe, Sacred, Free: Queer Movements and Religious Spaces." This event took place on February 15, 2022. Learn more: https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/

Diana Espírito Santo is associate professor of social anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In this lecture, she examined the ambiguous, dark spaces of paradox from the point of view of two distinct ethnographic sites: Brazil and Cuba, with Umbanda and creole espiritismo respectively. In exploring the various vignettes—of a self that must forget itself in order to retain it...

Did you know that Christmas was illegal in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681, and anyone caught celebrating the holiday would be subject to a fine of 5 shillings? And who was responsible for canceling Christmas? Was it pagans, or liberal policymakers, or the anti-religious? Nope, it was one of the most pious groups of people at the time: the Puritans. "Puritans abided by what's sometimes been called...

This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was writer Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan has been educating us with illuminating prose on “the botany of desire” for a very long time. He discusses his latest book "This Is Your Mind On Plants" and his landmark bestseller "How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Tea...

This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was poet Victoria Chang. Victoria Chang writes in her New York Times Notable Book of 2020, Obit, “I always knew that grief was something I could smell. But I didn’t know that it’s not actually a noun but a verb. That it moves.” After the deaths of her parents, she refused to write elegies...

This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School. We are not the only species that lives and loves and grieves on this planet. Janet Gyatso focuses on the phenomenology of being not just among humans but...

This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speakers were climate activist Morgan Curtis, MDiv '24, and brontë velez, Black-latinx transdisciplinary artist. Morgan Curtis and brontë velez discuss the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and climate collapse, and how seeing the world whole through the lens of relationships creates comm...

This conversation was part of the fall 2021 series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker was Gwich’in activist Bernadette Demientieff. Bernadette Demientieff, Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, discusses why sacred land protection matters to indigenous communities. Learn how her community in Alaska is standing strong to protect the Arctic National Wildlife...