A message from Associate Director Gosia Sklodowska
Last week marked the beginning of the new academic year at Harvard Divinity School (HDS), which is a natural time to highlight the many ways in which HDS and Harvard students are engaged and can engage with the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR).
In addition to our many lectures, art exhibits and guest talks that all students are invited to attend, there are also multiple opportunities for more direct and applied involvement. There are four reading groups that students can join. The "Plant Consciousness" reading group, now in its second year, brought more than 20 participants, including returning students, for its first meeting last week. We are also launching three new groups that are closely aligned with the CSWR’s programming and research interests: "Psychedelics, Sacred and Subversive: A Reading and Learning Group Exploring the Altering of Religion", which will go hand in hand with our very popular Psychedelics and the Future of Religion series, with four talks planned for this fall; "Enheduanna: Voicing the Feminine Divine", which will lay the foundation for our December 12 event, which will include a lecture on Enheduanna and an operatic performance, by our visiting scholar, Anne Harley, based on Enheduanna’s hymns and poems. The last group, on Paul Tillich, speaks to our Center’s underlying interest in the connections between philosophy and religion, and will lead students in exploring the contributions of Tillich’s Systematic Theology in the understanding of non-Christian religions. CSWR reading groups are open to all HDS and Harvard students, and the first two, are led by HDS Master and PhD students.
The Center also offers unique opportunities that allow students to pursue their own research interests or to engage in the Center’s research activities. Our Greeley International Field Education Grant and Undergraduate Summer Research Grant enabled two students this past summer to engage in internship and research supporting interreligious understanding and social justice, and ethnographic studies. We encourage you to hear Yanqing Cao and Breda Page Violette, our recent grant recipients, share their experience in their own words and reflect on the impact of CSWR grants on their research work.
We should also highlight several openings for student research assistants who will support the CSWR’s new effort, focused on developing a "Transcendence and Transformation Database” (TTD). Students will gain practical experience in researching and compiling the “archive of experiences” from across various religious and spiritual traditions, and will also conduct research across contemporary journals, conferences and publications to identify scholars and sources for database entries.
Finally, we would not be able to speak about students’ involvement at the CSWR without mentioning Peripheries, the CSWR’s annual literary and arts journal, led by Sherah Bloor, a Harvard PhD student and HDS lecturer, and the editorial team, composed of several HDS students. Interest in arts and poetry runs deep through the HDS student community, and Peripheries have always provided a creative outlet for HDS’s talented students, many of whom also actively participate in CSWR’s Poetry talks and workshops. You will be hearing more in future newsletters about the truly inspiring line-up of guest speakers in this series for this academic year.
