Events

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A Body of Knowledge: Reperformance and Embodiment as Rigorous Historical Method

Steven Northrop Dunning Memorial Lecture on Religious Thought
Lauren Mancia (Brooklyn College/Grad Center at CUNY)
Jan 23, 2025 at -

This talk critiques how, in order to understand the beliefs of historical people, scholars do not DO…



Wehshat: Or, the Poetry and Ethics of Living with the Unbearable.

RELS Colloquium
Anand Vivek Taneja (Vanderbilt)
Feb 13, 2025 at -

This talk centers on the social, political, and affective consequences of living with growing Islamophobia for Indian Muslims. In the years after 2014, memories of riots and…



Modern Day Abolitionism: Carcerality and Black Radical Resistance through Grassroots Organizing, Prison Activism, and Spiritual Liberation

Africana Studies Spring Symposium, Co-sponsored by Religious Studies
Timothy Malone, Rima Vesely-Flad, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Laura McTighe
Feb 13, 2025 at -

Meet the Speakers

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Premeditated Indifference: Shadowboxing the Ridiculous

American Lectures in the History of Religions
Emilie M. Townes, Boston University School of Theology
Feb 19, 2025 at -

The University of Pennsylvania Department of Religious Studies is thrilled to host the first of three Philadelphia-area lectures as part of the American Academy of Religion's prestigious…



Intelligent Artifice: Seduction Algorithms, Magic, and Computational Modernity

RELS Emerging Scholar Colloquium
Suzanne van Geuns (Princeton)
Feb 27, 2025 at -

For much of the early 2000s, seduction forum users struggled with magic. They had gathered online to perfect methods for persuading women to have sex with them. Having perfected…



The Scopes Trial at 100: Secularism, Race, and Education

2025 Boardman Symposium
Mar 20, 2025 - Mar 21, 2025 at -

Further details and registration for this event are now available here.



Reconfiguration and Revival: Newar Buddhist Traditions in the Kathmandu Valley (and Beyond)

RELS Colloquium
Todd Lewis (Harvard/Holy Cross)
Mar 27, 2025 at -

Most scholars for the past century have assessed the state of Newar Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley as “decadent,” “corrupted by Hinduism,” and predicted its withering away, most…



"Toward the Human, After Man": A Sylvia Wynter Schematic

RELS Colloquium
Nathan Snaza (Richmond)
Apr 10, 2025 at -

This event provides a schematic introduction to the thought of Sylvia Wynter, a Jamaican theorist whose work has become enormously influential in contemporary theories of race,…



Coincidence, Contradiction, Affect: On Spirited Knowing

RELS Colloquium
Emily Ng (Penn Anthropology)
Apr 17, 2025 at -

Emily Ng is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research centers on themes of madness, religiosity, and cosmopolitics, with…



An Ethics of Completion: Russian Coloniality and Islamic Tradition in Kyrgyzstan

RELS Colloquium
Usmon Boron (Wolf Humanities Center)
Apr 24, 2025 at -

Amid the Soviet assault on Islamic practices and institutions, the Islamic funeral prayer (janaza…