On the evening of December 12, 2023, the James room at Harvard Divinity School's Swartz Hall played host to the engaging and thought-provoking event, "Enheduana: Voicing the Feminine Divine." Attracting an audience of close to 200 in person and over zoom, the evening’s presentations and world premiere performance explored the literary contributions and religious history of Enheduana, the earliest known poet, author and high priestess to Inana, the goddess of war, sex, change and destruction in the ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur.... Read more about Enheduana: Voicing the Feminine Divine - A Movement of Ancient Insight and Modern Interpretation

by Gosia Sklodowska

Peripheries, our annual literary and arts journal, occupies a special place at the CSWR. The journal publishes poetry, prose, visual art, and music that is, broadly understood, "peripheral"; work that, in form, explores the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, art forms, and genres; and, in topic, explores the marginal, the incidental, the tangential, and boundary- and limit-experiences, such a mystical experiences on the margins of religious traditions. In this, the journal is consistent with the Center’s focus on the...

On March 8, 2023, Research Associate Dr. Giovanna Parmigiani sat down with Dr. Grace Nono to discuss Dr. Nono’s work as an ethnographer and performer, shamanism in the Philippines, and some of the possible connections between sound and healing. This event was part of the Gnoseologies Series and focused on ways of knowing that are often labeled as “non-rational.” Traditionally referred to as gnosis in Western philosophical and religious traditions, and often understood in contraposition to science (episteme), these ways of knowing are becoming more and more influential in contemporary societies, popular culture, and academic research.

The Center plays a number of roles in the life of the School and University, ranging from the academic study of religions to explorations of religion in relation to practice, including in the living context of the Center as community.... Read more about Summertime at the Center