The religion department hosts a variety of speakers and lecturers on campus, inviting them to address the intersection of religion with politics, architecture, environmentalism, mass media, and more.
Lecture Series
The Department of Religion invites notable speakers to campus as to provide students with additional perspectives.
Past Event Highlights
- Chitra Ganesh (Visual Artist); Exhibition at Clifford Gallery and On-site Mural Workshop
- Professor Brenton Sullivan Participated in an AHUM Panel discussion of the relationship between Tibetan and Himalayan Studies and future Nepal Extended Study
- Professor Jenna Reinbold Works In Progress Brown Bag Session Everywhere and Nowhere: Religion and Secularism in the U.S. Abortion Debate
- Rachel L. Swarns is a journalism professor at New York University and a contributing writer for The New York Times. Lecture: Souls for Sale: How Slavery Fueled the Growth of the American Catholic Church
- Benjamin Schonthal (Univ of Otago, NZ) Author: Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law: The Pyrrhic Constitutionalism of Sri Lanka. Lecture: Finding Buddhist Law in Colonial Ceylon/Sri Lanka
- Robert Garland, Professor Emeritus Lecture: "God against the Gods" Presents a case for polytheism, drawing upon the religious expressions of ancient Greece.
- Professor Steven Kepnes Works In Progress Brown Bag Session: The Climate Catastrophe: What's God Got to Do With It?
- Dr. Anthony B. Pinn (Rice University) Lecture: What is (Black) Religion?
- Javanese Gamelan & Shadow Puppet Performance of Wahyu Cakraningrat An Indonesian art form: a dozen musicians perform an excerpt from the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.
- CLTR Teaching Table with Harold Roth, professor of religion, director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative and Concentration, and co-founder of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University.
- Professor Georgia Frank Works In Progress Brown Bag Session: Lived Religion & Lost Voices
- Dr. Kathryn Santner discussed convent life, self-fashioning, and nuns' portraiture in colonial Peru in my course 'Nuns Having Fun in Colonial Latin America'. Lecture: Mrs. Freyer Presents: Early Collecting and Display of Andean Colonial Art
- Jeff Shore (professor emeritus in Zen Studies, Hanazono University) Lectures: Zen & the Art of Falling in Love and Ten Oxherding Pictures
- Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings Project, Playwrights discus their plays that deal with Ukrainians living through the current war as well as the Holocaust and WWII.
- Dr. Raj Balkaran - Author, Podcaster, Scholar of Sanskrit
- Elizabeth Pérez - UCSB Religious Studies Department
- Masa Madre - Babka-Making Workshop, Cinematographer
- Arthur Jafa and scholar of religion and artist Ashon Crawley
- Zaid Kurdieh of Norwich Meadows Farm and Chefs for Impact, Swastika Arulingam, Human Rights Lawyer and Activist
- Sumith Chaminda, Political Science Colombo University Sri Lanka,
- Marilyn Thie and Mary Canavan,
- Kathryn Lofton Yale Religious Studies and Author
- Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz - Author of Ancient Greek tragedy, Hamilton College
- Arti Dhand - Author, Podcastor, University of Toronto
- Dr. Alia Goehr - University of Chicago
- James Hoesterey - Author, Emory University Professor, Cultural Anthropologist
- Sunny Dooley - Navajo Blessingway Stories
- Magnus Fiskesjö, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.