CSWR Today

Charles Stang looking contemplatively into the camera

Director Charles Stang Welcomes in the Spring 2024 Semester

January 16, 2024

As we bid farewell to 2023, I wish to highlight two outstanding events from the final weeks of the fall semester: the launch of the latest issue of Peripheries, the literary and arts journal published annually by the CSWR; and a celebration of the life and writings of Enheduanna (c. twenty-third century B.C.E.) – Akkadian princess, priestess, and poet, and the first named author in human history. Our focus...

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Tree in the forest

Plant Consciousness Reading Group: A Conversation with Co-founders Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien

July 24, 2023

Over the years, the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) has encouraged student-led reading groups that center around a topic, author, or text. Groups meet twice monthly throughout the academic year. Reading groups have included, The Divine Feminism and Its Discontents, Animism, Orientalism and Religion, and Modern Psychedelic Spirituality in Historical Context. The 2023-24 academic year will host the continuation of the Plant Consciousness Reading Group and will be adding Psychedelics, Sacred, Subversive: A Reading and Learning Group Exploring the Altering of Religion. Last year, Plant Consciousness drew a particularly robust and enthusiastic gathering. The CSWR spoke with co-founders of the group, Natalia Schwien and Rachael Petersen.... Read more about Plant Consciousness Reading Group: A Conversation with Co-founders Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien

CSWR Director, Charles Stang looking into the camera

Message from the Director, Charles M. Stang, 2022-23 Year in Review

June 20, 2023

It has been another rich year of programming at the CSWR, much of it centering around the Transcendence and Transformation initiative – about to enter its third year. We were pleased to host a fascinating cohort of T&T affiliates, including visiting scholars, post-doctoral fellows, and research associates.  

David Abram joined...

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Choosing a Vocation: An Essay on Agency

Choosing a Vocation: An Essay on Agency

May 11, 2014

 

There were a couple of things Cristina knew for sure. She did not know which path her life would take, but she knew that either she would get married and establish a family or she would lead a (lay) consecrated life devoted to God: 

There is that clarity that I started to have when I had the encounter with Christ. Around me society is full of people who don't have a definite form of life, right? So many people who are not married, for a thousand reasons, who are not married but also not consecrated. [Before,] this wasn't clear to...

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