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“For Children Who Care to Learn”: Caroline Dall, Self-Culture, and Patty Gray’s Journey to the Cotton Islands
Join us on Monday, November 2, 12 - 1:30 pm, in the CSWR Common Room
Laura Dassow Walls, Visiting Scholar, CSWR Transcendentalism Initiative
There is effervescence here, like, I don't know, bubbling of energy. It feels unfocused to start, because it's just the questions and the sort of passions and the sense. In one of my small group conversations, we were talking about a new humanism. We talked about the loss of meaning. There's this desire for something more. It's incredibly exciting. It feels like that moment in spring when the ice is melting and you're watching water, everything becomes water and the green starts. There's that day when the sun's out and the grass is so incredibly green. I mean, it's a green beyond green, and you just feel the life energy pulsing. And you just want to go out and shout to the world, and the birds start to feel it, and the sap is rising in the trees, and you just know, this is life. Life wants to live, it will live. It is absolutely an expression of vitality and presence. And that's what this feels like, the Initiative, that surging spring moment when the grass is, oh my God, overnight, that intense emerald green, and you'll realize that the buds are starting to swell and the birds are coming back, and you feel like this is going to be amazing.
Thirty Years of The Religions of the World and Ecology series
Thirty years ago, the Center for the Study of World Religions embarked on one of the most consequential initiatives in its history, a multi-year exploration of the relationship between the world's religious traditions and the ecological challenges facing our planet. Launched in 1996 under the Center's director, Lawrence E. Sullivan, and led by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, the initiative brought some six hundred scholars, religious thinkers, environmentalists, and practitioners to Harvard for a series of ten conferences, and gave rise to the ten-volume Religions of the World and Ecology series, published by the CSWR and distributed by Harvard University Press.
The Religions of the World and Ecology series at Harvard University Press
Featured Programs and Activities
Research Reflections
Research Reflections is an ongoing series that features short, thought-provoking insights from the work of our research scholars and affiliates. These reflections highlight emerging questions, overlooked materials, and fresh perspectives in the academic study of religion, often drawing on historical, cultural, and archaeological themes.
Newly featured Research Reflection:
To Hell and Back, Again, Alyson Prude
Archive of Mystical Experiences
Featured article:
Rae Erin Dachille traces the Indian Buddhist roots of the maṇḍala — the celestial palace at whose center the tantric initiate, mirroring Śākyamuni's consecration, takes their seat as Vairocana — and shows how its five Buddha families map the cosmos onto the practitioner, transforming ignorance, desire, and hatred into wisdom.
Publications
Theosis (Annual Publication)
Essays, interviews, art, and photography from our scholarly community.
4T (Texts & Translations of Transcendence & Transformation)
Translations of visionary and mystical texts from across Eurasia and Africa, presented with original languages and interpretive aids.
Thinking with Plants and Fungi
An edited volume examining the entanglements of mind and matter, nature and culture, human and more-than-human.
Psychedelics, Religion, and Spirituality
Between 2021 and 2026, the program and its affiliates developed a psychedelic chaplaincy training program, supported five multi-year research initiatives, produced over 22 publications, hosted two dozen public events, and organized four interdisciplinary "Psychedelic Intersections" conferences.
A review of the program's accomplishments and primary initiatives can be found here.
Transcendentalism
The Transcendentalism research initiative reimagines American Transcendentalism as a living tradition that continues to shape religious, ethical, and political imaginations. Through scholarly research, workshop collaborations, and educational programming, the initiative brings together historians, philosophers, writers, activists, and practitioners to explore the meaning and relevance of Transcendentalism today. Committed to interdisciplinary dialogue across religion, literature, political thought, and environmental ethics, the initiative seeks to expand the canon of Transcendentalism beyond its most familiar figures and forms.
Watch recent research talks:
Choosing Good or Evil—Royce and Emerson on Knowing the Difference with Scott Pratt
Om-gnosis: The Occult South Asia Podcast
Om-gnosis was the first podcast dedicated to the study of Occult South Asia.
Occult literally means “hidden,” but the word has come to mean many things. Today what we call occult often has deep ties to South Asian teachings and practices, including modern yoga, Hindu and Buddhist tantra, and Islamic esotericism. Occult South Asia is full of intercultural transfers, and many authors and practitioners from around the world have played a role in shaping this milieu at local and “translocal” or global levels.
Newest Episode: Epidsode 20: Comparing Magic, Yoga, and Occultism
Poetry
In advancing its mission to “promote the study of the world’s religions in their classical and contemporary forms,” the Center has highlighted the intersections of poetry, philosophy, and religion.
Since 2017, the Center has supported poets and artists through Peripheries, its annual nonprofit literary and arts journal, as well as poetry talks and workshops that bring writers, scholars, and audiences together.
Watch the recording: The Invisible Sun: Poetry, Translation, and the Mystical Imagination with Sholeh Wolpé
Pop Apocalypse: Podcast with Matt Dillon, Lead Research Associate, T&T Database
Pop Apocalypse explores the mystical and the mythic, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture.
The show features interviews with musicians, artists, and writers about how their spiritual experiences and practices inform their work.
Newest Episode: Episode 22: Exploring the Mysticism of Mathematics with Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo
Thinking with Plants and Fungi
“Thinking with Plants and Fungi is an interdisciplinary exploration into how plants and fungi help us rethink the nature of mind and matter, and humans’ relationship to the “more-than-human” world. The program’s offerings include a speaker series, a conference on “Interdisciplinary Exploration into the Mind of Nature,” experiential field trips for theHarvard community, and a bi-weekly reading group.
MISSION
The CSWR seeks to promote the study of the world’s religions in their classical and contemporary forms, serving both as a residential community of students and scholars and an international “think tank” in the study of religion.
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