Annual Lectures
Upcoming Lectures
Our annual lectures for the 2025–26 academic year have now concluded. We invite you to check back in late summer for the upcoming 2026–27 lecture lineup.
All lectures are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Events will be hosted in the CSWR Common Room.
Past Annual Lectures
Video: Hackett Lecture: "The Light from the Other Shore”: The Rise of Public Christianity in Contemporary China, with Xi Lian
In this year’s Hackett Lecture, Xi Lian (Duke Divinity School) explored the rise of public Christianity in post-Mao China. Tracing developments since the 1980s, the lecture examined how a homegrown Christian movement emerged amid a broader crisis of...
Video: List Lecture: “Forging the Monotheistic Triangle: Jews, Arabs, Christians and the Promises of European Modernity”
In this year’s List Lecture, Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) examined how Jews, Arabs, and Christians engaged the promises of European modernity in the nineteenth century. Focusing on parallel moments of optimism and eventual disillusionment, the...
Video: Hindu View of Life Lecture: Recasting the Hindu Goddess in an American Landscape
In this year’s Hindu View of Life Lecture, Tracy Pintchman (Loyola University Chicago) explored how Hindu traditions have been reinterpreted in the United States, focusing on the Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan. The lecture examined how the Hindu...
Video: Greeley Lecture: Reconciling the Loss of Indigenous Eden
At this year’s Greeley Lecture, Blair Stonechild (First Nations University of Canada) reflected on the concept of an “Indigenous Eden,” its loss, and how processes of Truth and Reconciliation can help bridge perspectives and point toward more just futures...
Video: Hackett Lecture: “Toward a Counter-history of Global Christianity”
Spanish imperialism in the Americas gave birth to competing visions of a global church. This talk returns to the difficult origins of Mexican Catholicism, arguably the oldest extant expression of Christianity in the Americas, to reflect on the global...
Video: Hindu View of Life: Beneath the Texts: Tantric Views of Person, Community, and the Sacred
The early medieval period in north India witnessed significant new developments in religion regarding theology, practice, and social impact. A new revelation of texts calling themselves Tantras emerged, generating new communities of practice and being...
Video: List Lecture: What is Midrash? with Ishay Rosen-Zvi
The nature of Midrash has perplexed scholars since the very inception of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline. This systematic analysis of midrashic terminology presented by Ishay Rosen-Zvi, offers a perspective that stands in sharp contrast to the...
Video: Swami Medhananda, A Hindu Vision of Religious Cosmopolitanism: Theologizing with Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda
The Center’s “Hindu View of Life Annual Lecture” evokes the memory of Dr. Radhakrishnan’s book of that title, which is comprised of his well-known 1926 lectures on “Religious Experience,” “The Conflict of Religions,” and two lectures on “Hindu Dharma.”...
Video: List Lecture in Jewish Studies: Adam Afterman: Kabbalistic Neoplatonism: Divine Emanation and Mystical Integration
Center for the Study of World Religions hosted our annual List Lecture Speaker Adam Afterman. Dr. Adam Afterman is a Professor at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University, specializing in Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah. He is...
Video: Dis/appearing: Black Life, Theodicy & the Study of Religion with Biko Mandela Gray
Thursday, April 6, 2023 - Center for the Study of World Religions held its annual Greeley Lecture in Peace and Social Justice (Race, Religion, and Nationalism Series), welcoming Biko Gray, Assistant Professor of American Religion at Syracuse University to...
Video: Judeopessimism: Antisemitism, History, and Critical Race Theory with Shaul Magid
On April 3, 2023, Shaul Magid delivered the Albert & Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture at the Center for the Study of World Religions. In this talk Magid explored the relationship Critical Race Theory and Black Studies have with Jewish Studies, in...
Video: Peril to Democracy: Racism and Nationalism in America
The after effects of the 1/6 Insurrection continue to reverberate across America. Since that fateful and disturbing day, pushbacks against the teaching of race in America, abortion rollbacks, and Covid denialism have swept across the country. What has...
Video: Transcending Transcendence: Repentance and Hypernomian Transformation of Law
This lecture by Elliot Wolfson will examine the viability of a kabbalistic ideal of transformation from the vantage point of identifying repentance as the hypernomian foundation of the nomos, the grounding of the law in the ground that exceeds the law of...
Video: The Jew as Migrant: From Theory to Poetry
On February 25, Vivian Liska, Professor of German literature and director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, delivered the annual List Lecture in Jewish Studies at the CSWR. The Jew as archetypal migrant is a...
Video: Faith and Faustian Bargains: Compromise, Complicity, and Courage in Leadership
Race and religion are among the best predictors of how Americans choose a president. Race and religion are also bases for political compromises that call into question our moral credibility on issues ranging from voting rights to police brutality. Cornell...
Video: Claiming God's Peace When Whiteness Stands Its Ground
The Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice was delivered by the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, and examined the social/political and theological implications of whiteness as an impediment to living God’s justice. Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas...
Video: Truth for Children: Suffering and Election in Postwar French Jewish Thought
Professor Sarah Hammerschlag delivered this year's Albert and Vera List Jewish Studies Lecture on the topic "Truth for Children: Suffering and Election in Postwar French Jewish Thought." In her lecture Hammerschlag considers the role of biblical...
Video: The Pragmatics of Embodied Solidarity in Theopolitical Space
Larycia Hawkins, Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow at University of Virginia, discussed the meaning of solidarity in the context of political and theological spaces during the 2017 Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice. Listen
Video: Christianity and the God of Israel
Professor Guy Stroumsa delivered the 2016 Albert and Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture on the topic “Christianity and the God of Israel: Henri Bergson, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas.” Listen on SoundCloud
The 2015 Greeley Lecture: Dr. Richard Grounds on the Fragility of Native American Languages
The Center for the Study of World Religions is privileged each year to host the Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice. This lecture highlights issues of peace, social justice and inter-religious dialogue, such as reach a broad audience...
Video: Reparations for Native American Languages?
Richard A. Grounds, PhD, explores the appropriate responses for social justice and the case for reparations for Native American languages. Grounds delivered the Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice at the Center for the Study of World...
Reparations for Native American Languages?
On Monday, October 19, Richard Grounds, executive director of the Yuchi Language Project, delivered the Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice at the Center for the Study of World Religions. Below, Grounds spoke about his talk,...
Our Visitor from Colgate: Stephen Kepnes, List Lecturer and Director of Chapel House
On Thursday, October 1, 2015, we were fortunate to have with us at the Center Professor Steven Kepnes, Professor of World Religions and Jewish Studies at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. He is also chair of the religion department at Colgate. On Thursday...
Video: Jewish Liturgy as Jewish Theology
In the fourth annual List Lecture in Jewish Studies, Professor Steve Kepnes outlines a number of ways in which Jewish liturgy can be seen as "Theo-Drama" with specific analyses of the Kedushah, (Holiness) and Hallel (Praise) liturgies.
Video: "Would You Impugn My Justice?"
Joel S. Kaminsky, Professor of Religion and Morningstar Family Professor in Jewish Studies at Smith College, delivers the 2015 Albert and Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture. Much recent scholarship has portrayed the book of Job as sweeping away an...
Video: 2014 Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice
"Refiguring American Jewish Identity through Solidarity with Palestinians: A Relational Approach to Religious Innovation" by Atalia Omer, Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society and Associate Professor of Religion, Conflict and...
For Peace's Sake
Based on in-depth interviews with Jewish Palestine solidarity activists and a study of Jewish solidarity movements on social media, Atalia Omer demonstrates in When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and...
Video: To Forgive Is Human—Jewish Reflections on the Meaning and Practice of Forgiveness
On April 4, Louis Newman delivered this year's Albert and Vera List Fund for Jewish Studies Lecture at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS. Newman is the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies and director of Judaic...
Video: New Rooms in the House of Religious Pluralism
Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago, delivered the 2012 Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice. Eboo's core belief is that 'religion is a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.' He has...
Video: Beyond Distinction, Beyond Difference: Transforming Lives in Delhi's Slum Communities
The second annual Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice was presented by Kiran Martin, founding director of Asha, which works for urban health and development and women's empowerment and education in 50 slum colonies of Delhi, India...
