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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 Reflections: 

Universal Blackness among the Muridiyya and Its Artists, Francesco Piraino

Aryavarta, Land of the Noble Ones, Marina Alexandrova

It Loves to Happen, Michael Prettyman

Discover the CSWR’s flagship publications — bridging rigorous scholarship, creative inquiry, and public accessibility.

Theosis (Annual Publication)
Essays, interviews, art, and photography from our scholarly community. Volume 2 (2024–25) spans diverse spiritual traditions and creative collaborations. 
Explore Theosis

Psychedelic Intersections: Conference Anthology
Interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of psychedelics and religion, featuring 21 chapters from the 2024 conference.
Read the anthology

4T (Texts & Translations of Transcendence & Transformation)
Open-access translations of visionary and mystical texts from across Eurasia and Africa, presented with original languages and interpretive aids.
Explore the 4T series

Om-gnosis is 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

Over the coming months, we are launching the Archive of Mystical Experiences. This collection of primary-source accounts of transcendent experiences—visions, out-of-body experiences, revelations, apotheosis, and more—covers antiquity to the present and world religions to Indigenous and new-age communities. Balanced with long-form articles, these firsthand accounts contextualize and analyze the role of extraordinary experiences in particular geographies, traditions, and eras. The website will launch in early 2026.

Newly featured articles:

Irina Tweedie - In this essay, Naamleela Free Jones explores the life and writings of Irina Tweedie (1907–1999), a key figure in bringing Sufi practice to Western audiences. Drawing on Tweedie’s Daughter of Fire, the piece highlights an intense early stage of spiritual training marked by psychological and physical upheaval, understood as a transformative initiation.

Kundalini - Anya Foxen traces the shifting life of Kundalini, a “serpent power” said to lie coiled within the body, as it travels from its Tantric roots through colonial encounters and modern yoga movements into global spiritual imaginaries. Each retelling reshapes it, not as a timeless essence but as a form continually reimagined in motion.

In advancing its mission to “promote the study of the world’s religions in their classical and contemporary forms,” the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) has highlighted the intersections of poetry, philosophy, and religion.

Since 2017, resident fellow Sherah Bloor—host of the Poetry Series and editor-in-chief of Peripheries—has been central to this work, offering programs, resources, and a creative venue for HDS poets. The Poetry Series rests on three pillars: talks and workshops with visiting poets, in-house workshops, and the journal Peripheries.

Watch the recording: The Invisible Sun: Poetry, Translation, and the Mystical Imagination with Sholeh Wolpé

The “Psychedelics and Spirituality” program, part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, explores religious and spiritual practices aimed at transcending ordinary states of being and consciousness. We take a broad view of “psychedelic,” encompassing psychoactive substances, art, literature, and phenomenology. 

Watch recordings from this year’s Psychedelics & Spirituality events:

Global Ayahuasca: A Book Talk with Anthropologist Alex Gearin

Transcendence, Transformation, and Trans-Psychedelia with Hil Malatino and Susan Stryker

Raving, Recreation, Religion with Michelle Lhooq and Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta

Shamanism: The Timeless Religion: A Conversation Between Manvir Singh and Charles Stang

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 

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 the recording of CSWR’s screening and conversation on the new PBS documentary Henry David Thoreau, where filmmakers, scholars, and a broad public audience explore the enduring force of his thought.

In his response to the new PBS documentary Henry David Thoreau, Russell Powell reflects on the central question the film poses today: What would it mean to inherit Thoreau? Powell’s answer frames Transcendentalism as a politics whose hope resides in our always falling short of, but continuing to pursue, emancipatory ideals. Read: Transcendentalism and the Politics of Failure 

We are pleased to announce the release of the seventh issue of Peripheries, our annual literary and arts journal.

This year’s edition invites readers into poetry—and art—as a habitable space, exploring themes of privacy, containment, exile, alienation, and home.

Peripheries is a nonprofit literary and arts journal that publishes artistic work that is, broadly understood, “peripheral;” work that explores the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, forms, and genres.

Order your copy of Peripheries Volume 7.

“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.

View recorded sessions from the 2025 Conference on YouTube.

Read Thinking with Plants and Fungi Blog posts.