Harvard Divinity School

Dr. Luis Eduardo is the Director of Wasiwaska, a research center in Brazil for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary art and consciousness. Dr. Luna spoke about the ethnobotanical research at his Center, learning with and from the local communities and speaking with and to the plants. He also explored the relationship between his research work and art and how the greater-than-human world has informed his approach to being an artist and an exhibition director.

This event took place on February 16, 2024.

For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/

A transcript is forthcoming.

This is the third event is a six-part series that took place live on Zoom discussing religion in times of earth crisis.

Across the Indian Ocean world, communities have shared stories while encountering legacies of modern state-centrism, colonial capitalism, post-colonial environmental destruction, and religious reform. Muslim communities, among others, have shared stories of religious environments and animals that were inherited, transmitted, and reinterpreted in light of evolving ecological crises. These stories of multispecies ancestors and colonizers, Islamic conceptions of the environment, and narrative traditions of Islamic ecological care have confronted cycles of crises with visions of pasts and futures. In this session, Teren Sevea will discuss the question, “Can listening to these stories compel us to re-evaluate our academic approaches to religion and environments and the relationship of religious pasts and presents, in our time of crisis?”

Speaker: Teren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

Moderator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life

Teren Sevea is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Currently, Sevea is coordinating the project “The Lighthouses of God: Mapping Sanctity Across the Indian Ocean,” which investigates the evolving landscapes of Indian Ocean Islam through photography, film and GIS technology.

For more information on the full series, "Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: A Series of Public Online Conversations," see: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/religion-times-earth-crisis

This event took place on February 12, 2024.

For more information, generally: https://hds.harvard.edu

Full transcript: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/02/12/video-religion-times-earth-crisis-animal-stories-crisis

Full event title: Religion, Conflict, and Peace Book Series Spring 2024: The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance & End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel

This joint book talk will feature “The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance” by Shaul Magid and “End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel” by Mikhael Manekin.

“The Necessity of Exile” is a progressive collection of essays on the Jewish relationship to Zionism and exile. Magid invites us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition.

“End of Days” is a meditation on Jewish morality in the age of Israeli Jewish power, and a cri du coeur by an Orthodox Israeli Jew and former combat officer in the IDF. Manekin calls on fellow Israelis to examine the Jewish religious ethical tradition for an alternative to the secular and religious Zionism that sanctifies power, statehood, and sovereignty.

Featuring:

- Shaul Magid, Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative Affiliate, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College

- Mikhael Manekin, Religion and Public Life Fellow in Conflict and Peace, and director of the Alliance Fellowship program

- Moderated by Atalia Omer, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding

This event took place on February 7, 2024.

For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu

Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/06/17/video-necessity-exile-essays-distance-end-days-ethics-tradition-and-power-israel

This is the second event in a six-part series about religion in times of earth crisis.

Two hundred years ago, the residents of metropolitan Boston faced a climate crisis. White settlers had destroyed the region’s pine forests, triggering dangerous disruptions to both water and carbon cycles. Activists responded by creating forest parks on previously disrupted landscapes. But many of these activists were themselves descended from the settlers who had caused the harm they sought to heal. In imperfect yet instructive ways, they blended ecological care with new forms of ancestral devotion. Gradually they learned what indigenous communities had long known: that care for the more-than-human world is inseparable from care for our ancestors. In this session, Dan McKanan will discuss these stories and how they can help contemporary Bostonians, and others, recognize that what makes a place wild is not the absence of humans but the presence of ancestors.

Speaker: Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity

Moderator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life

Dan McKanan, AB '89, joined the HDS faculty in 2008. He researches religious and spiritual movements for social transformation in the United States and beyond. McKanan serves on the Unitarian Universalist Panel on Theological Education and the board of the Unitarian Universalist Studies Network. At Harvard, he serves as chair of the MTS Curriculum Committee and as faculty director for the Divinity School’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality.

This event took place February 5, 2024.

For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/

Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-religion-times-earth-crisis-ancestors-and-climate-our-boston-backyard

This is the first event is a six-part series that will take place live on Zoom and is free and open to the public.

Environmental catastrophes can create a break in the experience of time, they can rupture the possibility of collective meaning. Yet, for communities shaped by colonialism and racism, this rupture can only be understood in relation to the past, as an event in the “unceremoniously archived procession of our catastrophes,” to use Édouard Glissant’s words. Histories of colonial and racial devastation teach us that environmental futures are linked to our pasts. We may describe them as “ancestral catastrophes,” as Elizabeth Povinelly suggests. In this session, Mayra Rivera explores the question, “How may we engage those stories in ways that honor our pasts and open possibilities for different futures?”

Speaker: Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies

Moderator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life

Mayra Rivera works at the intersections between philosophy of religion, literature, and theories of coloniality, race and gender—with particular attention to Caribbean postcolonial thought. Her research explores the relationship between discursive and material dimensions of existence in shaping human embodiment and socio-material ecologies. She is the author of The Touch of Transcendence (2007) and Poetics of the Flesh (2015). Rivera is currently working on a project that explores the relationships between coloniality and ecological thought through Caribbean thought.

This event took place on January 29, 2024.

For more information: https://hds.harvard.edu/

Full transcript: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-religion-times-earth-crisis-procession-catastrophes

Join this author discussion about the book "Decolonizing Religion and the Practice of Peace." The book is an investigation of what consolidating religion as a technology of peacebuilding and development does to people's accounts of their religious and cultural traditions and why interreligious peacebuilding entrenches colonial legacies in the present.

Throughout the global south, local and international organizations are frequent participants in peacebuilding projects that focus on interreligious dialogue. Yet, the effects of their efforts are often perverse, reinforcing neocolonial practices and disempowering local religious actors. This book is based on empirical research of inter- and intra-religious peacebuilding practices in Kenya and the Philippines.

Featuring Atalia Omer, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding; Senior Fellow in Conflict and Peace

Moderated by Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life; Lecturer on Religion, Conflict, and Peace; and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions

This book event is the first event in our Religion, Conflict, and Peace Spring 2024 Book Series.

This event took place January 25, 2024.

For more information: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/

Full transcript here: https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/03/04/video-rcpi-book-series-decolonizing-religion-and-practice-peace

Pop Apocalypse, hosted by Matthew J. Dillon, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.

For our sixth episode, we welcome the spirit channel, teacher, and playwright Paul Selig.

We explore Selig’s early career as a playwright and professor, his spiritual awakening during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, how he cultivated his mediumship abilities, and the twelve books Selig has channeled from “the Guides.” On the way, we explore what happens to Selig in the channeling state and the metaphysics of mind that make these states possible.

Full transcript: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/02/06/video-pop-apocalypse-inside-mind-spirit-channel-%E2%80%93-conversation-paul-selig

Learn more: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/

We invite you to listen to the special evening celebrating the life and writings of Enheduana, also En-hedu-Ana; (c. twenty-third century B.C.E.) who is the first named author in human history.

Enheduana, an Akkadian princess and daughter of King Sargon I, was appointed high priestess of the moon god Nanna (Sîn) in the holy city of Ur. Her poems and hymns offer unique, first-hand accounts of her personal experiences of the goddess Inana, and provide insights into issues of gender, sexuality, theology, and goddess-worship in early Mesopotamia. Reception following the event from 6 to 7 pm.

Celine Debourse, Assistant Professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard presented on “Women in Mesopotamian Temples: Priestess, Slaves, Weavers” and Dr. Sophus Helle, historian and translator of Enheduana’s poems, gave a talk on “Introducing Enheduana’s World: Grief and Gender.” Their presentations were followed by a musical performance, drawn from inspiration from Enheduana’s writings. The world premiere of “To the Stars,” composed by Douglas Knehans, featured CSWR’s Scholar in Residence, Anne Harley (soprano), Maggie Finnegan (soprano), Gabby Diaz (violin), Amy Advocat (bass clarinet), Matt Sharrock (percussion) and Evan Ziporyn (conductor).

This event took place December 12, 2023.

For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/home

A transcript is forthcoming.

Peripheries Journal: A Journal of Word, Image, and Sound is celebrating the release of Issue 6.

This 2024 edition includes work from Victoria Chang, Angie Estes, Aracelis Girmay, Joanna Klink, Sam Messer, Geoffrey Nutter, Sharon Olds, Alice Oswald, Rowan Ricardo Philips, Tracy K. Smith and many more. General pages are joined by a folio, “Anti-Letters,” that comprises the “personal” writings (ephemera, letters, lists, notes, recordings, photographs etc.) of poets such as Cody-Rose Clevidence, David Grubbs, Susan Howe, Jill Magi, and Jane Miller, among others.

This year’s publication featured readings from Victoria Chang, Jorie Graham, and Alice Oswald.

This event took place November 30, 2023.

For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/

A transcript is forthcoming.

Watch an interview with author Mike Jay about his two most recent books, "Psychonauts: drugs and the making of the modern mind," and "Mescaline: a global history of the first psychedelic."

"Mike Jay has written widely on the history of science and medicine, with a specialist interest in the mind sciences, mental health and psychoactive drugs. Alongside Mescaline and Psychonauts, his books include High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture and This Way Madness Lies: The Asylum and Beyond, both of which accompanied exhibitions he curated at Wellcome Collection in London. He writes regularly for New York Review of Books and London Review of Books and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Humanities, University College London." More at his website, mikejay.net

This event took place on November 27, 2023.

For more information, https://hds.harvard.edu/

Full transcript here: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/01/02/video-psychedelics-and-future-religion-mescaline-and-psychonauts-mike-jay