Director's Letter, Spring 2025

Happy New Year! As always, I am writing at the start of the semester to bring your attention to what lies ahead at the CSWR. But first, permit me a glance backward to the end of 2024, when in early December, we hosted a record-breaking conference, “The Teachings and Legacy of G.I. Gurdjieff,” in collaboration with the Gurdjieff Society of Massachusetts, the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, and the Institut G.I. Gurdjieff in Paris. We hosted over 300 people in person in Swartz Hall and over 2,000 online! You can read more about it here, and please stay tuned for the forthcoming conference papers and video recordings of all the talks.

Back to 2025: I’m delighted to welcome our new cohort of scholars, artists, and poets. Sarah Schorr joins us from Aarhus, Denmark, as our artist-in-residence in January, when she will offer a workshop on “Thinking through Photography”; her own artwork is on display in the CSWR Conference Room through May 18, 2005; the opening of that exhibition, “Climate + Love in Claude Monet’s Garden” will take place on January 27, from 5-6:30 pm. You can also read Sarah’s essay in the "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" blog, where she reflects on how Monet’s garden’s ephemeral beauty and subtle shifts transformed her artistic practice. 

Renowned poet Alice Oswald joins us in February as our first poet-in-residence. We will welcome her on February 4, at 6:30 pm, in the Braun Room, Swartz Hall, where she will offer a reading of her poetry. She is offering a workshop on reading and performance on February 13 (exact time TBD): interested poets should contact Peripheries’ editor, Sherah Bloor, for more details (peripheries@hds.harvard.edu). Alice’s play, The Weighing of Souls, will be performed on February 26 & 27 (time and location TBD). Co-sponsored by the Writer’s Guild in New York, this event explores a lost play by Aeschylus, and the performance concludes her month-long workshop with students.

As part of the “Thinking with Plants and Fungi” initiative, the CSWR is pleased to host two scholars-in-residence: Christina Oakley Harrington (April) and Monica Gagliano (May). Christina is the founder of Treadwell’s Books in London the co-founder and past editor of Abraxas: International Journal for Esoteric Studies, and, published widely on esotericism and spirituality. Monica is a pioneering research scientist recognized for her work on plant communication, cognition, and subjectivity. She is the author of several influential works, including Thus Spoke the Plant (North Atlantic Books, 2018) and The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence (Synergetic Press, 2021), and currently serves as a Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) in evolutionary ecology in Australia. Both Christina’s and Monica’s residences are part of the TWPF initiative—stay tuned for further details about their events and programs.

In addition to Sarah’s and Alice’s, the CSWR is pleased to host other workshops where our affiliates can share their expertise with students, staff, and faculty. Please note the three writing workshops on January 17: one with Aaron Ullrey on peer editing, another with Rachael Petersen on the art of the pitch, and another with Sherah Bloor on revision as a creative act. Aaron Ullrey will also lead a semester-long workshop on magic and the occult—details to follow.

We are looking forward to hosting two conferences in the spring semester. First, on February 15, we will host our third annual “Psychedelic Intersections” conference. This year’s theme is “Betwixt & Between: Chaplaincy, Plant Medicine, and Aesthetics” and our two keynote speakers are Marian Goodell, CEO of the Burning Man Project, and Elías García Méndez, co-founder of Casa Abode Galería in Huautla de Jiménez, Mexico. 

Second, on May 15-17, we look forward to hosting the capstone event of the CSWR’s “Thinking with Plants and Fungi” initiative, a three-day conference or “Interdisciplinary Exploration into the Mind of Nature”—generously supported by the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation and co-sponsored by the Wonderstruck podcast. Keynote speakers include Emmanuele Coccia, Giuliana Furci, Monica Gagliano, Jessica J. Lee, Banu Subramanian, and Merlin Sheldrake. Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light-Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth (Harper, 2024), will host a panel on plant neurobiology. The conference will take place at Harvard Divinity School (the program will soon be announced) but will include an afternoon at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.

The CSWR continues to invest in poetry. In addition to Alice Oswald’s February residence at the CSWR, please mark May 1 on your calendars: we will host a launch party for the next issue of Peripheries, the literary and arts journal edited by Sherah Bloor and published by the CSWR. Stay tuned: in the next newsletter, we will also announce the winner of Peripheries’ inaugural poetry competition. 

Some very important lectures are on the horizon this semester. On January 30, the CSWR will host a panel discussion of Visiting Scholar Elliot Wolfson’s latest book, Nocturnal Seeing, (Stanford University Press, 2024), followed by his evening lecture on “Infinity at the Perimeter of Thought, Silence at the Edge of Language.” We are also looking forward to hosting some of the CSWR’s annual lectures: Ishay Rosen Zvi will give the List Lecture in Jewish Studies on March 27; Gavin Flood will give the Hindu View of Life Lecture on April 1; and Jennifer Hughes will give the Hackett Lecture in Global Christianity on April 8.

Finally, we are proud to announce some forthcoming CSWR publications. In May, the first title in our new series, “Texts and Translations of Transcendence and Transformation (4T),” 4T series will be published. 4T is a new series featuring translations of important pre-modern visionary and mystical texts, hailing from as far west as Morocco and as far east as China, and in between along the Silk Road, including parts of Africa and South Asia. Books in this series will be laid out on facing pages: the source language on the left and the English translation on the right, both accompanied by interpretive aids, all produced with great attention to layout and typography. Each book will be made freely available in an open-access digital format and for purchase as a finely crafted print book with the highest quality paper and binding. It will be published by the CSWR and distributed by Harvard University Press. The first text in the series is The Pearlsong, an ancient poem, sometimes known as the “Hymn of the Pearl,” which survives in Syriac and Greek and tells the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent. The Pearlsong has been edited and translated by Adam Bremer-McCollum, who is my co-editor on this new and exciting series. More titles on Evagrius of Pontus and Porphyry of Tyre will follow in Fall 2025! 

Please also be on the lookout for the publication of two conference anthologies, the proceedings from the 2024 “Psychedelic Intersections” conference (edited by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith) and from our recent conference, “The Teachings and Legacy of G.I. Gurdjieff” (edited by Carole Cusack and Gosia Sklodowska).

Again, I wish you a Happy New Year and hope you can enjoy some of CSWR’s rich offerings next semester.

Sincerely,

Charles Stang

Charles M. Stang, ThD
Director, Center for the Study of World Religions
Professor of Early Christian Thought,
Harvard Divinity School