Bard College Hosts Book Launch for Eden Revisited: A Novel by László Z. Bitó ’60 on October 22
Bard College will host a book launch and colloquium to honor the novel Eden Revisited, written by the late, distinguished alumnus László Z. Bitó ’60. Bitó, granted asylum from his native Hungary in 1956, went on to develop the gold standard drug for glaucoma as he pursued a celebrated scientific career at Columbia University. In later life, he devoted himself to writing and became a force in Hungarian intellectual life and philanthropy, and published numerous works. Eden Revisited is his first book to be published in English in more than a decade.
Bard College Hosts Book Launch for Eden Revisited: A Novel by László Z. Bitó ’60 on October 22
Bard College will host a book launch and colloquium to honor the novel Eden Revisited, written by the late, distinguished alumnus László Z. Bitó ’60. Bitó, granted asylum from his native Hungary in 1956, went on to develop the gold standard drug for glaucoma as he pursued a celebrated scientific career at Columbia University. In later life, he devoted himself to writing and became a force in Hungarian intellectual life and philanthropy, and published numerous works. Eden Revisited is his first book to be published in English in more than a decade.
The colloquium brings together preeminent scholars of religion who will speak to the novel’s themes: Bruce Chilton ’71, director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard, which is copublishing the book with Natus Books, Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, and Claudia Setzer, professor of religion at Manhattan College. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, will introduce the panel. A discussion with audience members will follow the talks.
The book launch and colloquium take place on Saturday, October 22 from 1:45 pm-3:15 pm in the Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space. It will also be livestreamed.
This event is part of Family and Alumni/ae Weekend at Bard College. Visit families.bard.edu for more information.
Alan Avery-Peck is Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts. At Holy Cross, he teaches courses on all aspects of Judaism, ranging from an introduction to Judaism to an upper-level seminar on theological responses to the Holocaust. A specialist in early rabbinic Judaism, Avery-Peck’s research focuses on early Rabbinic Judaism and the relationship between early Judaism and emergent Christianity, especially in the context of contemporary interfaith relations. Among other projects, he is part of a team of scholars and clergy producing a new presentation of the Revised Common Lectionary (http://readingsfromtheroots.bard.edu), that is, the list of Hebrew Bible and New Testament readings used in church worship. He is also a series editor and author for The New Testament Gospels in Their Judaic Context (Brill Publishers), and his commentary on Second Corinthians appears in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press).
Claudia Setzer (Ph. D. Columbia) is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY. Her books include, The Bible in the American Experience (Society of Biblical Literature, 2020 with David Shefferman), The Bible and American Culture: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2011, with David Shefferman), Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Brill, 2004), and Jewish Responses to Early Christians (Augsburg Fortress, 1994). She studies early Jewish-Christian relations, the development of belief in resurrection, women in the Greco-Roman era, nineteenth-century women interpreters of Scripture, and the Bible in American culture. She currently chairs the SBL group “The Bible in America” and is an associate editor for a forthcoming Study Bible from Westminster John Knox Press. In 2006, she founded the Columbia University Seminar on the New Testament. She is currently writing a book on the use of the Bible in progressive movements (abolitionism, women’s suffrage, civil rights, environmentalism, anti-trafficking).
Bruce Chilton ’71 is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College. He received his B.A. from Bard College; M.Div. and ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood from General Theological Seminary; and Ph.D. from Cambridge University. His books include Abraham’s Curse; Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; God in Strength; Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography; Judaic Approaches to the Gospels; Mary Magdalene: A Biography; Revelation; Trading Places; Jesus’ Prayer and Jesus’ Eucharist; Forging a Common Future; Jesus’ Baptism and Jesus’ Healing; Visions of the Apocalypse; and Christianity: The Basics. He was editor in chief of Bulletin for Biblical Research and founding editor of Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Studying the Historical Jesus series (E. J. Brill and Eerdmans).
Hillary A. Langberg, visiting assistant professor of religion, has been named a 2022 Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar. The cohort of scholars, through a fellowship made possible by the American Council of Learned Societies and Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, will spend up to two years “bolster[ing] the capacity of museums and publications in Buddhist art and thought across all traditions and regions in which Buddhism is practiced.”
Hillary A. Langberg Named 2022 Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar
Hillary A. Langberg, visiting assistant professor of religion, has been named a 2022 Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar. The cohort of scholars, through a fellowship made possible by the American Council of Learned Societies and Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, will spend up to two years “bolster[ing] the capacity of museums and publications in Buddhist art and thought across all traditions and regions in which Buddhism is practiced.” Langberg will spend her fellowship at the National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. “Dr. Langberg’s research on our collection will help us design programs and digital experiences that inspire connections between historic and contemporary religious practices,” said Chase F. Robinson, director of the National Museum of Asian Art.
Shai Secunda, Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, has been awarded a NEH Fellowship to support the preparation of his book-length monograph, The Formation of the Talmud in Sasanian Babylonia, on the circa sixth century C.E. formation of the Babylonian Talmud, the almost two-million-word-long foundational Jewish text comprising the diverse traditions of rabbinic Judaism.
Professor Shai Secunda Awarded $40,000 National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship for his Monograph on the Formation of the Talmud
Shai Secunda, Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, has been awarded a NEH Fellowship to support the preparation of his book-length monograph, The Formation of the Talmud in Sasanian Babylonia, on the circa sixth century C.E. formation of the Babylonian Talmud, the almost two-million-word-long foundational Jewish text comprising the diverse traditions of rabbinic Judaism.
“The Talmud is like the Great Sea” so goes an old adage, “it is as it says, ‘All the streams go to the sea’” (Midrash Canticles Rabbah 5:14). Rather than viewing the Talmud’s formation as an abstract textual process, Secunda analyzes its emergence in cultural historical terms by locating it in the minds and mouths of Babylonian rabbis, in their scholarly circles and institutions, and alongside other religious communities in the Sasanian Iranian Empire (224-651 C.E.).
Nabanjan Maitra Joins Faculty of Bard College’s Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program
Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of Nabanjan Maitra as Assistant Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions in theDivision of Social Studies. His tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022-2023 academic year. Maitra’s focus of research and teaching will bein Hindu studies.
Nabanjan Maitra holds the position of Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught courses on the Religions of South Asia and Sanskrit. He has a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago with a focus on Hinduism. His book project, The Rebirth of Homo Vedicus, examines the formulation and implementation of a novel form of monastic power in a medieval south India monastery. He has pieces forthcoming in JSTOR Daily, Journal of South Asian Intellectual History, and edited volumes on monasticism in South Asia. Professor Maitra will join the Bard College faculty in Fall 2022.
Interview: Professor of Religion Bruce Chilton Talks About His New Book, The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession
“Human government is often a negotiation over how divine power is reflected in human governance and also what the instruments of that governance should be,” Chilton tells the Washington Post when asked if religion always accompanies times of political ferment. “It is not reasonable to suppose that people are all going to suspend their religious ideas in order to be governed in a just manner. Rather, it’s the reverse: How do they negotiate their religious ideas in such a way that the government attracts their commitment and they can live justly with people who differ from them?” Bruce Chilton is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College and executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology.
Alumni Spotlight: Tyler Williams Graduates with His Third Bard College Degree
Tyler Williams ’19 MAT ’21 has completed his third Bard College degree. Williams is a graduate of Bard High School Early College Baltimore, the Bard College undergraduate program, and now the Bard MAT program. He graduated from Bard High School Early College in Baltimore, Maryland in 2017 with his associate’s degree. He then enrolled as an undergraduate at Bard College, graduating in 2019 with his BA in religion. In 2020 he joined the Bard MAT program in literature and graduated on May 29, 2021 with his Master of Arts in Teaching degree in literature and a New York State secondary English Language Arts teacher certification.
Sociologist Karen Barkey Joins Bard Faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion
Bard College announces the appointment of Sociologist Karen Barkey to the College faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion for the five-year period 2021-2026, beginning fall 2021. Barkey’s research explores the fields of comparative, historical and political sociology and the sociology of religion. Her research areas span from the rise of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires to the end of these empires in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and nation building in their aftermath. She is the Haas Distinguished Chair of Religious Diversity at the Othering & Belonging Institute, the director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, the co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion and professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
“We are honored to welcome distinguished scholar Karen Barkey to the Bard faculty as well as the Open Society University Network at a moment when renewed efforts to understand cooperation, coexistence, and inclusion as well as conflict across difference have become increasingly critical,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre d’Albertis.
Karen Barkey has been engaged in the comparative and historical study of the state, with special focus on its transformation over time. She has focused on state society relations, peasant movements, banditry, opposition and dissent organized around the state. Her main empirical site has been the Ottoman Empire, in comparison with France, the Habsburg, and the Russian Empires. She also pays attention to the Roman and Byzantine worlds as important predecessors of the Ottomans.
Her work Empire of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008) is a comparative study of the flexibility and longevity of imperial systems. In different chapters, the book explores the key organizational and state society related dynamics of imperial longevity. This book demonstrates that the flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as the control over the economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular “negotiated empire.” In the process, it explores important issues such as diversity, the role of religion in politics, Islam and the state as well as the manner in which the Sunni-Shi’a divide operated during the tenure of the Ottoman Empire. Such topics are relevant to the contemporary setting and the conflicts we endure today.
Barkey is now pursing different projects on religion and toleration. She has written on the early centuries of Ottoman state toleration and is now exploring different ways of understanding how religious coexistence, toleration and sharing occurred in different historical sacred sites under Ottoman rule. She published an edited book, Choreography of Sacred Spaces: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution (with Elazar Barkan) (Columbia UP, 2014) that explores the history of shared religious spaces in the Balkans, Anatolia and Palestine/Israel, all three regions once under Ottoman rule. The book explores the politics and culture of conflict and cooperation over religious sites. It also provides the historical antecedents to help us understand the accommodation and contention around specific sites in the modern period, tracing comparatively areas and regime changes over time. In many places the long history of sharing sacred sites serves as an indicator of the possibilities for pluralism in the context of empire.
Barkey is one of the curators of the traveling Shared Sacred Sites exhibition. She has worked on the exhibition in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Photography and the Yeni Cami in Thessaloniki (2017) and the New York exhibition at the NYPL, Morgan Library and Museum and CUNY Graduate Center (2018). She also runs a website on this topic which brings international participants and expertise on many shared sites around the world. She started this project to promote awareness and understanding of coexistence among religions. You can see more on the site: sharedsacredsites.net.
Barkey was awarded the Germaine Tillion Chair of Mediterranean Studies at IMéRA, for 2021-2022. IMéRA is the Institute for Advanced Studyof Aix-Marseille University, and a member of the French Network of Institutes for Advanced Study. Barkey was born in Istanbul, Turkey. After she graduated from the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, in Istanbul, she moved to the United States for her college education. She got her BA degree from Bryn Mawr College, an MA degree from The University of Washington, and a PhD from the University of Chicago.
About Bard College Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
Bard College Inaugurates the Jacob Neusner Memorial Lectures in Jewish and Religious Studies, with Events October 24 and 27 in Annandale-on-Hudson and New York City
This fall, Bard College will inaugurate the Jacob Neusner Memorial Lectures in Jewish and Religious Studies with lectures by distinguished scholar of Jewish studies Moshe Halbertal October 24 and 27 on the Bard campus in Annandale-on-Hudson and in New York City. An internationally renowned scholar of religion, Neusner, who died in 2016, was Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard. “The Biblical Book of Samuel and the Birth of Politics: Two Faces of Political Violence” takes place Thursday, October 24, at 4:45 p.m. in room 102 of the F. W. Olin Humanities Building on the Bard College campus. “Confronting Loss: The Meaning & Experience of Mourning from the Talmud to Maimonides” takes place Sunday, October 27, at 7 p.m. at the Sixth Street Community Synagogue, 325 East 6 Street, New York, N.Y. The lectures are free and open to the public. No reservations are required.
Professor Jonathan Brent Receives Lithuanian State Award for Preserving Jewish Archives
Jonathan Brent, Bard faculty member and executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, received the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania from H.E. Dalia Grybauskaitė, President of the Republic of Lithuania. The honor recognizes Brent’s work in promoting cooperation between Lithuania and YIVO and for the preservation of the prewar Jewish archives of Lithuania.
“It’s the Religion, Stupid”: Religious Dimensions in Current Crises
White Supremacy in the American Elections Bard Hall12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 After the Cold War ended American politicians became fond of the mantra, “It's the Economy, Stupid.” They were not wrong, although other factors also have their sway. This autumn's series will consider global crises in which religion plays a central role, sometimes overrules self-interest, and needs to be understood for any address of the situation to be productive.
Presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, each lecture will have a different topic on the following Mondays.
September 23: White Supremacy in the American Elections October 7: The Confrontation of Orthodoxies in Ukraine October 21: “From the River to the Sea” in Likud's Presentation November 4: “From the River to the Sea” in the Hamas Charter
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bard Hall
10/07
Monday
Monday, October 7, 2024
“It’s the Religion, Stupid”: Religious Dimensions in Current Crises
The Confrontation of Orthodoxies in Ukraine Bard Hall12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 After the Cold War ended American politicians became fond of the mantra, “It's the Economy, Stupid.” They were not wrong, although other factors also have their sway. This autumn's series will consider global crises in which religion plays a central role, sometimes overrules self-interest, and needs to be understood for any address of the situation to be productive.
Presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, each lecture will have a different topic on the following Mondays.
October 7: The Confrontation of Orthodoxies in Ukraine October 21: “From the River to the Sea” in Likud's Presentation November 4: “From the River to the Sea” in the Hamas Charter
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bard Hall
10/21
Monday
Monday, October 21, 2024
“It’s the Religion, Stupid”: Religious Dimensions in Current Crises
“From the River to the Sea” in Likud’s Presentation Bard Hall12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 After the Cold War ended American politicians became fond of the mantra, “It's the Economy, Stupid.” They were not wrong, although other factors also have their sway. This autumn's series will consider global crises in which religion plays a central role, sometimes overrules self-interest, and needs to be understood for any address of the situation to be productive.
Presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, each lecture will have a different topic on the following Mondays.
October 21: “From the River to the Sea” in Likud's Presentation November 4: “From the River to the Sea” in the Hamas Charter
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bard Hall
11/04
Monday
Monday, November 4, 2024
“It’s the Religion, Stupid”: Religious Dimensions in Current Crises (copy)
“From the River to the Sea” in the Hamas Charter Bard Hall12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5 After the Cold War ended American politicians became fond of the mantra, “It's the Economy, Stupid.” They were not wrong, although other factors also have their sway. This autumn's series will consider global crises in which religion plays a central role, sometimes overrules self-interest, and needs to be understood for any address of the situation to be productive.
Presented by Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology.
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Bard Hall
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Keith Kahn Harris, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College Olin Humanities, Room 2024:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The period since October 7, 2023 has seen the emergence of a "complicity discourse" manifested in injunctions to speak publicly about Israel-Palestine. While this is particularly prevalent in pro-Palestinian activism, pro-Israel groups also associate silence with complicity. This lecture explores the profound implications for Jewish life of competing demands that Jews be public. It is becoming necessary for Jews across the political spectrum to re-consider the value of the private, mundane realms of Jewish existence.
Keith Kahn-Harris is a British sociologist and writer. He is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College. The author of eight books, his next book Everyday Jews: Why the Jewish People Are Not Who You Think They Are will be published in March 2025.
Monday, September 16, 2024
Victoria Hanna Chapel of the Holy Innocents5:45 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Building on ancient Kabbalistic traditions that see language, the voice, and the mouth as tools of cosmic creation, Victoria will reveal the Hebrew alphabet as an instrument for playing with the mouth. By thinking with foundational Kabbalistic texts such as the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah) and the writings of Abraham Abulafia, Victoria will demonstrate how the letters have been, and can be, used for daily work with speech and the body. She will also perform works inspired by the biblical Songs of Solomon, as well as late antique Jewish amulets.
Victoria grew up in Jerusalem in an Orthodox Jewish family with roots in Egypt and Iran. She has performed and taught at universities around the world including Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan University, Virginia Tech, Monash University, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University. Her work combines Jewish mysticism, Dada, surrealism, and feminism.
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Dr. Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Rhinebeck Reformed Church1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Monday, April 22, 2024
Erin Dworkin Sarah Corwith Eckert Olin LC 2104:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Erin Dworkin: “‘I Repel His Blows With a Bare Breast:’ The Conversion of an Early Modern Jewish Woman” Sarah Corwith Eckert: “Hungry for McMindfulness? The Effect of Linguistic Framing on Perceptions of Vipassana (Insight Meditation)”
The Colloquium on the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions: The colloquium is a forum for the presentation of new works in progress, where students and faculty interested in the study of religions and intersecting fields can gather to share and discuss new research and writing.
Following the Lecture please join us for an Open House in the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions. Meet ISR majors and ask questions about moderation and senior project ideas. All are welcome.
Monday, April 22, 2024
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 During the past two millennia, systemic ruptures in the understanding of religion and society have shaped the cultural contours of all the lands that once comprised the Roman Empire. These schisms have of course featured in the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they also have exerted a profound influence on the ways that people in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and later the Americas conceive of themselves of their relations with one another. Our series will deal in order with: (1) the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and the resulting contention, (2) the breach between the Latin West and the Greek East after the conversion of Constantine, (3) the rise of Islam and the proclamation of the Crusades, (4) the Reformation and its consequences, and (5) the opposition between religion and science in the modern period.
This is the final lecture in the series.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Finberg House library10:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 The 2024 Social Philosophy Workshop brings together early career scholars from across the humanities and social sciences who examine contemporary social and political issues. Papers are pre-read, with workshop time devoted to commentators introducing and responding to each paper, followed by general discussion.
Registration is required in order to receive the pre-read papers.
The address for Finberg House is 51 Whalesback Road, Red Hook, New York 12571.
Generous support for this workshop has been provided by the Philosophy, Politics, and Interdisciplinary Study of Religions programs at Bard; Bard's Office of the Dean of the College; the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard; and the American Philosophical Association.
Friday, April 19, 2024
Finberg House library10:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 The 2024 Social Philosophy Workshop brings together early career scholars from across the humanities and social sciences who examine contemporary social and political issues. Papers are pre-read, with workshop time devoted to commentators introducing and responding to each paper, followed by general discussion.
Registration is required in order to receive the pre-read papers.
The address for Finberg House is 51 Whalesback Road, Red Hook, New York 12571.
Generous support for this workshop has been provided by the Philosophy, Politics, and Interdisciplinary Study of Religions programs at Bard; Bard's Office of the Dean of the College; the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard; and the American Philosophical Association.
Monday, April 8, 2024
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 During the past two millennia, systemic ruptures in the understanding of religion and society have shaped the cultural contours of all the lands that once comprised the Roman Empire. These schisms have of course featured in the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they also have exerted a profound influence on the ways that people in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and later the Americas conceive of themselves of their relations with one another. Our series will deal in order with: (1) the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and the resulting contention, (2) the breach between the Latin West and the Greek East after the conversion of Constantine, (3) the rise of Islam and response of the Crusades, (4) the Reformation and its consequences, and (5) the opposition between religion and science in the modern period.
This series will be on the following Mondays at noon: April 8 and 22.
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Professor Yitzhak Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University Bard Graduate Center Lecture Hall, NYC4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He works on Early Modern Philosophy, German Idealism, Medieval Philosophy, and some issues in contemporary metaphysics, and is the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford 2013), and Spinoza’s Labyrinths (Oxford, forthcoming). Currently, he is working on the completion of a book on Spinoza and German Idealism, and on an introduction to Spinoza’s philosophy. His research has been featured in BBC (The World Tonight), LeMond, Ha’aretz, Kan Tarbut (Israeli Cultural Radio).
This paper argues that the most significant Jewish contribution to modern Western philosophy - the notion of acosmism, according to which only God truly and fully exists - originated in early Hassidism. I will show that through the mediation of Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) this bold notion was adopted from the school of the Maggid of Mezhrich and introduced into the systems of German Idealism.
The Bard Graduate Center is located at 38 West 86 street, New York, NY, 10024.
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Professor Yitzhak Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University Olin 1025:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He works on Early Modern Philosophy, German Idealism, Medieval Philosophy, and some issues in contemporary metaphysics, and is the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford 2013), and Spinoza’s Labyrinths (Oxford, forthcoming). Currently, he is working on the completion of a book on Spinoza and German Idealism, and on an introduction to Spinoza’s philosophy. His research has been featured in BBC (The World Tonight), LeMond, Ha’aretz, Kan Tarbut (Israeli Cultural Radio).
This talk traces the influence of Spinoza’s early Rabbinic schooling on his writing from the period after he left the Jewish community. It argues that Spinoza is frequently unaware of the formative role of his early Rabbinic education, and that he commonly reads the Bible through Rabbinic eyes without the least being conscious of this fact. If this argument is cogent, it would seem that much more attention should be paid to Spinoza’s early education.
Acosmism: Hassidism’s Gift to the Jews… and the World Sunday, April 7th, 2024 | 4:00 pm Bard Graduate Center Lecture Hall, 38 West 86 street, New York, NY, 10024 This paper argues that the most significant Jewish contribution to modern Western philosophy - the notion of acosmism, according to which only God truly and fully exists - originated in early Hassidism. I will show that through the mediation of Salomon Maimon (1753-1800) this bold notion was adopted from the school of the Maggid of Mezhrich and introduced into the systems of German Idealism. Free and open to the public.
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 During the past two millennia, systemic ruptures in the understanding of religion and society have shaped the cultural contours of all the lands that once comprised the Roman Empire. These schisms have of course featured in the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they also have exerted a profound influence on the ways that people in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and later the Americas conceive of themselves of their relations with one another. Our series will deal in order with: (1) the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and the resulting contention, (2) the breach between the Latin West and the Greek East after the conversion of Constantine, (3) the rise of Islam and the proclamation of the Crusades, (4) the Reformation and its consequences, and (5) the opposition between religion and science in the modern period.
This series will be on the following Mondays at noon: March 25, April 8, and April 22.
Monday, March 11, 2024
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 During the past two millennia, systemic ruptures in the understanding of religion and society have shaped the cultural contours of all the lands that once comprised the Roman Empire. These schisms have of course featured in the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they also have exerted a profound influence on the ways that people in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and later the Americas conceive of themselves of their relations with one another. Our series will deal in order with: (1) the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and the resulting contention, (2) the breach between the Latin West and the Greek East after the conversion of Constantine, (3) the rise of Islam and the proclamation of the Crusades, (4) the Reformation and its consequences, and (5) the opposition between religion and science in the modern period.
This series will be on the following Mondays at noon: March 11, March 25, April 8, and April 22.
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
North end of RKC3:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Tibetan Buddhist Monks from Kumbum Chamtse Ling & Tashi Kyil Tibetan Buddhist Institute will generate a sand mandala dedicated to the aspiration for world peace in the atrium of RKC.
March 1–6 (Friday through Wednesday) the monks will construct the mandala from 10 am – 12:30 pm and 1:30–5 pm Closing Ceremony and Reception: Wednesday, March 6 at 3 pm All are welcome.
Monday, February 26, 2024
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 During the past two millennia, systemic ruptures in the understanding of religion and society have shaped the cultural contours of all the lands that once comprised the Roman Empire. These schisms have of course featured in the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but they also have exerted a profound influence on the ways that people in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and later the Americas conceive of themselves of their relations with one another. Our series will deal in order with: (1) the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and the resulting contention, (2) the breach between the Latin West and the Greek East after the conversion of Constantine, (3) the rise of Islam and the proclamation of the Crusades, (4) the Reformation and its consequences, and (5) the opposition between religion and science in the modern period.
This series will be on the following Mondays at noon: February 26, March 11, March 25, April 8, and April 22.
Monday, February 12, 2024
Erin Atwell, PhD candidate Olin 2055:30 pm EST/GMT-5 While American religious institutions struggle against the rising tide of the “nones,” those who identify as religiously unaffiliated, al-Azhar in Egypt is thriving. Every day, over a million people from around the world come to al-Azhar, the thousand-year-old institution of Sunni Muslim learning. Across its many institutes, schools, research centers, and in its storied mosque, people flock to al-Azhar to hear its scholars preach. While preaching can differ greatly depending on context, location, speaker, and audience, all preaching at al-Azhar shares one crucial characteristic: citation of the early Islamic textual tradition. In this talk, I explore citation as a virtuous practice that cultivates and is cultivated by the central Islamic concept of godfearingness. We will examine this relationship between godfearingness and citation through ethnography among recently appointed women preachers at al-Azhar, and literary analysis of citational content in preacher training manuals. Fear is often understood to be an unpleasant emotion. Tacking between early Islamic texts and the art of citation that articulates them, I invite us to consider how the pious fear of God emerges as a virtue that unfolds into a vibrant form of life.
Thursday, February 8, 2024
Raissa von Doetinchem de Rande, PhD Olin 1025:00 pm EST/GMT-5 The question of our shared human nature has intrigued thinkers since antiquity. However, in times of persistent threats against human rights and just societies on a global scale, the issue of whether there are certain qualities, inclinations, or capabilities that are natural to all and thus bind and dignify each human being continues to animate debates in our societies. While in our search for answers we often turn to the Classics—from Plato and Aristotle, to the Bible and the Church fathers—we lack adequate accounts of the relevant debates and assumptions from Islamic perspectives. Given the contemporary importance and historical centrality of Islamic thought, this is a gap we cannot afford. My talk will focus on the ways Islamic thinkers have engaged the Qur’anic concept of the fiṭra. As I will argue, this concept is an excellent place to begin learning about Islamic perspectives on human nature and allows us to incorporate such perspectives into our present debates.
Monday, December 11, 2023
Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, PhD Olin 1025:00 pm EST/GMT-5 How did medieval Muslims conceptualize science? What kind of a relationship did they envisage between science and other bodies of knowledge, chief among them Islam? This talk will provide some preliminary responses to these questions through a brief examination of a discussion within the science of music pertaining to the apprehension of musical beauty. First, a brief introduction to the cosmology of the medieval Islamic world will be provided. This will be followed by an examination of the question of musical beauty and the growing importance of the human soul in the discussions pertaining to this question. Inheriting the works of Classical Greek philosophers, scholars of music in the medieval Islamic world set about the task of explaining the mechanisms of apprehension of musical beauty according to mathematical rules. In this process, the role of the soul – a metaphysical being – as the link between humanity and the cosmos – with its mathematical underpinnings – grew in importance. Through this analysis we can see how medieval Muslims understood the world around them and how they conceptualized the bodies of knowledge that were tasked with studying the universe.
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Heba Arafa Abdelfattah, PhD RKC 1034:00 pm EST/GMT-5 One of the most popular cultures in Islam is the genre of “hymns” or “invocations” (pl. ibtihalat, sing. ibtihal), which has recently been amplified on social media platforms. The ibtihalat are Arabic short poems performed by a sheikh known as the “supplicator” (mubtahil). They air regularly on Arabic TV stations and more frequently on radio stations, especially those broadcasting about the Qur’an, its recitation, and its interpretation. In Egypt, the Qur’an’s radio station, which has millions of followers, launched a YouTube station that airs ibtihalat before and after dawn prayer daily. The viewership of one ibtihal like that of Sheikh Sayyid al-Naqshabandi’s “My Lord” (Mawlay) reached 11 million on YouTube. The ibtihalat are also integral parts of Islamic festivities during the two Eids and Ramadan. Focusing on al-Naqshabandi’s ibtihal “My Lord” (Mawlay), this paper discusses the genre of Islamic hymns as a popular culture approach to study Islam as a lived experience based on the inclusion, not the elimination, of difference. To that end, I explore how the ibtihal becomes a domain for contemplating the place of the self in the present moment without the gaze of authority and how this reconfiguration of authority within the self has deep roots in the Islamic notion of “unicity of God” (tawhid). Heba Arafa Abdelfattah received her Ph.D. (2017) in Arabic and Islamic studies from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. She recently served as a Postdoctoral fellow at Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, and an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College. Her research brings the fields of religion, history, and popular culture into conversation.
Monday, December 4, 2023
Claire-Marie Hefner, PhD Olin 1025:00 pm EST/GMT-5 This presentation analyzes the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centered on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. Moments of fun and leisure often theorized as challenging or at the margins of religious life. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that the ethnographic study of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviors that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. Based on two years of fieldwork and over a decade of follow up research, I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Although the Gospels are written in Greek, Jesus and his first followers framed their teaching in Aramaic. Their forms of expression were so influential, Aramaic words and phrases are literally quoted in the New Testament. New discoveries of texts, as well as advances in linguistic study, enable us to look into the Aramaic foundations of the Gospels more deeply than at any other time since the first century.
As a result of our discussion during the last lecture, this Monday, Nov. 13th, the discussion will include an analysis of two topics. We will trace how Aramaic traditions regarding Jesus reflect controversies in both Judaism and Christianity concerning (1) how human beings can overcome impurity, and (2) how God intervenes in the world.
This lecture series will take place on the following Mondays at 12:00 pm in Bard Hall: Monday, October 30 Monday, November 6 Monday, November 13
Monday, November 6, 2023
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Although the Gospels are written in Greek, Jesus and his first followers framed their teaching in Aramaic. Their forms of expression were so influential, Aramaic words and phrases are literally quoted in the New Testament. New discoveries of texts, as well as advances in linguistic study, enable us to look into the Aramaic foundations of the Gospels more deeply than at any other time since the first century.
As a result of our discussion during the last lecture, this Monday, Nov. 13th, the discussion will include an analysis of two topics. We will trace how Aramaic traditions regarding Jesus reflect controversies in both Judaism and Christianity concerning (1) how human beings can overcome impurity, and (2) how God intervenes in the world.
This lecture series will take place on the following Mondays at 12:00 pm in Bard Hall: Monday, October 30 Monday, November 6 Monday, November 13
Monday, October 30, 2023
Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and director of the Institute of Advanced Theology Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Although the Gospels are written in Greek, Jesus and his first followers framed their teaching in Aramaic. Their forms of expression were so influential, Aramaic words and phrases are literally quoted in the New Testament. New discoveries of texts, as well as advances in linguistic study, enable us to look into the Aramaic foundations of the Gospels more deeply than at any other time since the first century.
As a result of our discussion during the last lecture, this Monday, Nov. 13th, the discussion will include an analysis of two topics. We will trace how Aramaic traditions regarding Jesus reflect controversies in both Judaism and Christianity concerning (1) how human beings can overcome impurity, and (2) how God intervenes in the world.
This lecture series will take place on the following Mondays at 12:00 pm in Bard Hall: Monday, October 30 Monday, November 6 Monday, November 13
Monday, October 23, 2023
Luis Chávez-González, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and the Arts Hegeman 2013:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 To think about ritual music of Mexico may conjure perceptions that are rooted in assumptions of Indigenous disappearance through miscegenation and scenarios of conquest. These types of imaginations can construct determinist outcomes of mestizaje (racial mixture), while ignoring the myriad of ways Indigenous practices are always already integrated into contemporary Mexican and Chicanx modes of religiosity. Inspired by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s work about the people of the México profundo (1996), this paper explores the audibility of Indigenous ancestry in the negotiation of Mexican subjectivities through fiesta (ceremony) and ritual performances known as danza. I examine Indigenous performativity in Santo Santiago (Saint James) fiestas in the pueblos of Xalpa (Jalpa), Xuchipila (Juchipila), and Moyahua in the southern region of the state of Zacatecas (Caxcan region). These local fiestas and danzas concentrate public and private epistemological articulations of Caxcan Indigeneity, revealing a radical relationship between sound, body, memory, and land. I build on previous Indigenous music research (Diamond 2007; Dylan 2020) and sensory modes of knowing (Mendoza 2015) to illustrate how musicians and dancers synchronously amplify diverse religious alliances through rooted notions of Indigenous density (Bissett-Perea 2021). By sonically crossing, recrossing, and reimagining colonial constructions of borders and policies of Indigenous containment, danza acts as a vehicle for constructing ethno-spatial relationships. Although each pueblo may display different dress, gesture, or ensemble configuration during ceremonial time, they illustrate the cohesive power that the drum-centered style of tamborazo-Zacatecano music has for associating with their Caxcan ancestors, thereby amplifying Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
The Colloquium on the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions: The colloquium is a forum for the presentation of new works in progress, where students and faculty interested in the study of religions and intersecting fields can gather to share and discuss new research and writing. Following the Lecture please join us for an Open House in the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions. Meet ISR majors and ask questions about moderation and senior project ideas. All are welcome.
Monday, September 11, 2023
With Archie Magno, Naomi Miller ’23, and John Speers. Moderated by Dominique Townsend Bard Hall12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Three colleagues at Bard College, working in differing fields, have coincided in an interest in how religious practices and sensibilities influence the way people behave, think, and relate to one another in the course of their development. Archie Magno (Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Bard College), Naomi Miller ’23 (whose Senior Project compares varying forms of mysticism), and John Speers (author of Honest to God), have agreed to address common questions as they engage with one another and the audience to address this increasingly pressing topic.
Monday, April 10, 2023
Naomi Miller and Josh Desetta Hegeman 2014:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Naomi Miller: Looking at mysticism written by women in the central medieval period, my project examines how these women constructed language and retained the agency to write about God. Closely examining the works of four Christian and Hindu mystics (Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeberg, Akka Mahadevi, and Lal Ded), I attempt to pinpoint the styles and strategies which these women adopted in order to make a place for themselves within their religion. Using the philosophy of Julia Kristeva, I suggest that it was these women's use of the semiotic which allowed them to claim an authority on God which men could not claim as easily. Exemplified by their correlation between the body and nature, their internalization of physical rituals, and their conception of unlearnedness as bringing one closer to God, these women had a radically different approach to mysticism and language which granted them an authority to speak on God not typically afforded to women at this time.
Josh Desetta: “The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god,” wrote Nietzsche. Though it wouldn’t sound as witty, I would have to add that the necessities of sleeping and reproduction are equally important in reminding us of our mortality. In my Senior Project, I am exploring the web of symbolism connecting eating, sleeping, reproduction, and mortality which runs through Near Eastern, Ancient Greek, and Biblical texts. What separates man from the gods? What does it mean to mortal? And can this mortality be overcome?
Thursday, March 9, 2023
"In Search of the Once and Future Eden" with Bruce Chilton Bard Hall5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This lecture series is in conjunction with the book launch of Eden Revisited: A Novel by László Z. Bitó ’60. You can find the recordings of past lectures on the IAT website. These lectures and their recordings are made possible by the generosity of a loyal donor.
Eden is both a place in the mythic past and the prospect for a balanced, ecological, and human civilization in the future. Gnostic writers in particular have portrayed how the idyllic garden could have been lost, and why regaining its richness has proven elusive. Laszlo Bito, a Bard alumnus from the class of 1960 investigated these issues in his book Eden Revisited. The series is designed to join in that quest, in order to press the issue of Eden’s deep promise.
All lectures will take place on Thursdays at 5:30 pm in Bard Hall.
Thursday, February 23 - Cain: the first murder, the first city Thursday, March 2 - The Serpent: Language unravels Eden Thursday, March 9 - YHWH Thursday, March 16 - Eden, the garden that exists over our horizon
Thursday, March 2, 2023
"In Search of the Once and Future Eden" with Bruce Chilton Bard Hall5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This lecture series is in conjunction with the book launch of Eden Revisited: A Novel by László Z. Bitó ’60. You can find the recordings of past lectures on the IAT website. These lectures and their recordings are made possible by the generosity of a loyal donor.
Eden is both a place in the mythic past and the prospect for a balanced, ecological, and human civilization in the future. Gnostic writers in particular have portrayed how the idyllic garden could have been lost, and why regaining its richness has proven elusive. Laszlo Bito, a Bard alumnus from the class of 1960 investigated these issues in his book Eden Revisited. The series is designed to join in that quest, in order to press the issue of Eden’s deep promise.
All lectures will take place on Thursdays at 5:30 pm in Bard Hall.
Thursday, February 23 - Cain: the first murder, the first city Thursday, March 2 - The Serpent: Language unravels Eden Thursday, March 9 - YHWH Thursday, March 16 - Eden, the garden that exists over our horizon
Monday, February 27, 2023
Nabanjan Maitra, Assistant Professor of the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Olin 1024:30 pm EST/GMT-5 My research is informed by two principal objectives. First, by comparing specific rhetorical modes of asserting spiritual supremacy in Jain and Vedāntin narratives of spiritual conquests (digvijayas), I hope to show that one of the most recognizable dimensions of modern Hinduism–its universalist vision of absorbing alternative or opposed view–owes a great debt to the discursive strategies that Jains perfected in presenting their accommodationist viewpoint (anekānta-vāda). Second, these nodes of historical and institutional convergence notwithstanding, my research attempts to draw out the differences in the visions of monastic governmentality that these affined rhetorics of universalization generated.On the level of the specific, the paper compares identical rhetorics of universalization employed in Mādhava’s Śaṅkaradigvijaya (a circa seventeenth century text chronicling the spiritual exploits of Śaṅkara, the purported founder of the monastic order at Śṛṅgeri monastery) with Jain inscriptions and texts drawn from contiguous regions in Karnataka in the four centuries that preceded the emergence of Śṛṅgeri as a center of Vedic religion.
The Colloquium on the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions: The colloquium is a forum for the presentation of new works in progress, where students and faculty interested in the study of religion and intersecting fields can gather to share and discuss new research and writing. All are welcome. Light refreshments will be served.
Special note for students majoring in ISR or interested in moderating: After our discussion of Nabanjan's work, we will have an open house reception for students interested in the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion. Please join us!
Thursday, February 23, 2023
"In Search of the Once and Future Eden" with Bruce Chilton Bard Hall5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This lecture series is in conjunction with the book launch of Eden Revisited: A Novel by László Z. Bitó ’60. You can find the recordings of past lectures on the IAT website. These lectures and their recordings are made possible by the generosity of a loyal donor.
Eden is both a place in the mythic past and the prospect for a balanced, ecological, and human civilization in the future. Gnostic writers in particular have portrayed how the idyllic garden could have been lost, and why regaining its richness has proven elusive. Laszlo Bito, a Bard alumnus from the class of 1960 investigated these issues in his book Eden Revisited. The series is designed to join in that quest, in order to press the issue of Eden’s deep promise.
All lectures will take place on Thursdays at 5:30 pm in Bard Hall.
Thursday, February 23 - Cain: the first murder, the first city Thursday, March 2 - The Serpent: Language unravels Eden Thursday, March 9 - YHWH Thursday, March 16 - Eden, the garden that exists over our horizon
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Professor Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor and chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium5:15 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Starting in the 1830s, Jews in Europe became prominent scholars of the Qur'an and early Islam. Emphasizing parallels between the Qur’an and rabbinic writings, they developed affirmations of Islam that differed considerably from their more negative views of Christianity. Their scholarship continued, albeit with some changes in tone, until the 1930s, and then migrated to other parts of the world. Theirs was a unique Orientalism that is recognized until today with having established the field of Islamic Studies and viewed Islam as a treasury of profound and helpful insights and as a signal of Judaism’s centrality in the construction of the West. “White Jesus, Black Jesus, Christian Jesus, Jewish Jesus” Sunday, October 30, 2022 at 4:00pm Sixth Street Community Synagogue, 325 E. 6th Street, New York, New York Was Jesus a Jew or a Christian? Theologians on both sides have depicted Jesus either as a pious Jew seeking to reform Judaism or as the first Christian who introduced unique ideas and a new way of being a religious person. The debate between Jewish and Christian theologians over the religious identity of Jesus grew in intensity throughout the course of the nineteenth century and played an important role in the Nazi period. My lecture will review both sides of the debate and ask where we stand in our contemporary debates, including over Jesus as a person of color. Does Christology change if Jesus was Jewish, Black, or Asian? Free and open to the public.
Monday, October 24, 2022
A Work in Progress by Professor Bruce Chilton Olin Humanities, Room 1024:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Gospel according to John is unique in having Jesus say, “Who devours my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” This view of what is involved in Eucharist takes the place of more familiar presentations; “the Last Supper” narrative of other Gospels simply does not appear in John. The new theology is coordinated with unusual structural features of John’s Gospel, raising the questions of why this innovative theology of Eucharist is privileged in literary terms, as well as what it means to assert. Recent research has raised the possibility that awareness of the cult of Dionysos is a factor in John’s composition.
The Colloquium on the Interdisciplinary Study of Religions: The colloquium is a forum for the presentation of new works in progress, where students and faculty interested in the study of religion and intersecting fields can gather to share and discuss new research and writing. All are welcome. Light refreshments will be served.
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space1:45 pm – 3:15 pm EDT/GMT-4 This book launch honors the novel Eden Revisited, written by the late, distinguished alumnus László Z. Bitó ’60. Bitó, granted asylum from his native Hungary in 1956, went on to develop the gold standard drug for glaucoma as he pursued a celebrated scientific career at Columbia University. In later life, he devoted himself to writing and became a force in Hungarian intellectual life and philanthropy, and published numerous works. Eden Revisited is his first book to be published in English in over a decade.
The conference brings together preeminent scholars of religion who will speak to the novel’s themes: Bruce Chilton ’71, director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard, which is copublishing the book with Natus Books, Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, and Claudia Setzer, professor of religion at Manhattan College. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, will introduce the panel. A discussion with audience members will follow the talks. This event will be livestreamed.
This event is part of Family and Alumni/ae Weekend at Bard College. Visit families.bard.edu for more information.
Hillary Langberg Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Bard College Online Event1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 In this talk based on my current book project, we will look at early extant images typically identified as Tara, a goddess renown in Tibetan Buddhism today, who flanks Avalokiteshvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion) in relief sculptures at the rock-cut cave monastery of Kanheri located in Mumbai, India (c. late 5th—early 6th centuries CE). This is a time when the divine feminine becomes increasingly visible and important in all three indigenous religions of India (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain). My focus is on the methods by which Buddhists integrated goddess reverence into Mahayana theology, particularly when many early scriptures tell us those in a female body (whether human or divine) cannot attain an advanced level of understanding without first being reborn as male. By contrast, this is a watershed moment in Buddhist developments as we see a transformation in ritual practices as well as new understandings of the power of Awakening on earth, which over the next centuries develop into the Vajrayana (Diamond Vehicle) Buddhism that continues to be paramount in Tibetan traditions. Female divinities begin to function as Bodhisattvas in this period (i.e. Mahayana practitioners who undertake vows to attain future Buddhahood and aid all beings in attaining Awakening). Yet they do so without typically being explicitly identified as such, I suggest, due to the earlier Mahayana prohibition on female enlightenment. By placing texts and images into conversation with one another to enhance our conceptions of the early tantric Buddhist milieu, I show that goddesses are incorporated into Mahayana contexts through the doctrine of bodhisattva emanation and as embodied mantras (strings of powerful syllables). Join Zoom Meeting https://bard.zoom.us/j/84482866959 Meeting ID: 844 8286 6959
Thursday, March 31, 2022 – Friday, April 1, 2022
with keynote sessions by Dr. Lara Harb Online Event “Forms and Functions of Islamic Philosophy” seeks to highlight how Islamic philosophy (falsafa/ḥikma) was practiced “in conversation”—between scholars, with various audiences, and with different disciplines, approaches, and rhetoric. Islamic philosophy was composed not only in traditional forms of treatises and commentaries but also through narratives written in poetry and prose. For example, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī penned a panegyric poem written in Persian in praise of logic, physics, and metaphysics, alongside his many philosophical prose treatises. Ibn al-ʿArabī’s philosophical mysticism includes prose that reads as Aristotelian commentary alongside succinct poems highlighting his key philosophical concepts through mystical metaphors. In reference to Ibn Sīnā’s allegorical treatise, Ibn Tufayl’s famous Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān provides an intriguing narrative and philosophical thought experiment. What do story-telling, poetry, narrative, metaphor, and allegory reveal about the nature and purpose of philosophy? The conference is organized in conjunction with the “Islamic Philosophy in Conversation” working group. The conference aligns itself with the goals of the working group, and therefore seeks to highlight the work of a diverse group of scholars, including emerging scholars of Islamic philosophy, as well as those who identify as female, non-binary, or as belonging to a historically-marginalized group.
On Thursday, March 31, from 5-6:30 pm, Dr. Lara Harb will lead a discussion of a primary source text (sections 38 and 39 from Averroes' commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics). If you would like to join the discussion, please contact Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed ([email protected]) for the meeting link.
For the full program and details on how to attend see our website.
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Arendt Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 There is an ancient Jewish practice of studying a specific Biblical portion, known as the parsha, each week. We're re-inaugurating the Bard parsha circle, open to everyone (though especially, students) of all religious backgrounds, and meeting weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00pm in the HAC seminar room. As a group, we’ll wrestle with the familiar-foreign biblical text, using Robert Alter’s new (and exquisite) translation. Snacks will be provided! With Shai Secunda and Joshua Boettiger
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Arendt Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 There is an ancient Jewish practice of studying a specific Biblical portion, known as the parsha, each week. We're re-inaugurating the Bard parsha circle, open to everyone (though especially, students) of all religious backgrounds, and meeting weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00pm in the HAC seminar room. As a group, we’ll wrestle with the familiar-foreign biblical text, using Robert Alter’s new (and exquisite) translation. Snacks will be provided! With Shai Secunda and Joshua Boettiger
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Arendt Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 There is an ancient Jewish practice of studying a specific Biblical portion, known as the parsha, each week. We're re-inaugurating the Bard parsha circle, open to everyone (though especially, students) of all religious backgrounds, and meeting weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00pm in the HAC seminar room. As a group, we’ll wrestle with the familiar-foreign biblical text, using Robert Alter’s new (and exquisite) translation. Snacks will be provided! With Shai Secunda and Joshua Boettiger
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
Arendt Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 There is an ancient Jewish practice of studying a specific Biblical portion, known as the parsha, each week. We're re-inaugurating the Bard parsha circle, open to everyone (though especially, students) of all religious backgrounds, and meeting weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00pm in the HAC seminar room. As a group, we’ll wrestle with the familiar-foreign biblical text, using Robert Alter’s new (and exquisite) translation. Snacks will be provided! With Shai Secunda and Joshua Boettiger
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Arendt Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 There is an ancient Jewish practice of studying a specific Biblical portion, known as the parsha, each week. We're re-inaugurating the Bard parsha circle, open to everyone (though especially, students) of all religious backgrounds, and meeting weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00pm in the HAC seminar room. As a group, we’ll wrestle with the familiar-foreign biblical text, using Robert Alter’s new (and exquisite) translation. Snacks will be provided! With Shai Secunda and Joshua Boettiger
Friday, December 17, 2021
Aalekhya Malladi, Doctoral Candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University Ludlow 3014:30 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This presentation explores the dynamic mode in which landscape, ritual and narrative co-create and shape each other in Hindu traditions. Considering several examples of pilgrimage in India, this paper delves into the way that narratives are experienced through rituals that shape and are shaped by sacred landscapes. I end with an example from my dissertation about an 18th century devotional poet, Vengamamba, who was deeply embedded in, and in turn shaped the ritual landscape of, the south Indian pilgrimage site that she inhabited.
Aalekhya Malladi is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her dissertation, “Devotee, Yogini, Goddess: Tarigonda Vengamamba and her Transformations,” explores the texts and the life histories of devotional poet Vengamamba (1735–1817), and conceives of a distinct female perspective on devotion and detachment. This project also examines her hagiographies and the rituals performed at her shrine, which illuminate the way that her at-times transgressive compositions and life histories have been tamed and curtailed by a hagiographical tradition that shapes her life into that of an “ideal female devotee.” She held the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship in 2019-2020. Prior to her doctoral studies, Aalekhya received an MA from Columbia University and a BA from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Swayam Bagaria, postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the College Fellows Program at the University of Virginia Ludlow 3014:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 My talk will comprise two parts. In the first part, I will introduce the audience to the interrelated issues of divinization and individuation in Hinduism. As is well known, the Hindu pantheon is composed of an innumerable number of deities but what does it mean to say that these deities are distinct or separate from each other? Are they really all that different? We may even ask a prior question, what does investing an entity with the properties of a divine being entail? The first part will guide the audience to some of the key issues that arise in the consideration of these questions. The second part will briefly explore the possibilities and limits of this idea of divinization as they emerge in the fraught, but also illuminating, context of the deification of the custom of widow burning or sati in contemporary India. Swayam Bagaria is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the College Fellows Program at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University in 2020. His current book project is on the relation between popular Hinduism and ethnoreligious nationalism in India.
Friday, December 10, 2021
Nabanjan Maitra, Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin Ludlow, 3rd Floor Conference Room1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EST/GMT-5 The word guru comes close to what we might call an empty signifier: a word that is used so variably and in such a diverse array of contexts that it loses all meaning. And yet, to their followers, students and devotees, gurus can signify “life, the universe and everything.” In this talk, I will present an historic case of misapprehension of the figure of the guru in order to reflect upon the guru as a sovereign figure. In examining a colonial-era court case, I will hope to reveal the lineaments of a forgotten history of monastic power in India. The figure of the guru, properly historicized, is a productive site for the understanding of an alternative vision of normative power, wielded by the monastery, that operated through the ethical self-formation of its subjects. In this historical case, we see how the medieval monastery articulated a vision of totalizing religious power that was misapprehended by the colonial state, and indeed continues to be misapprehended to this day. I argue that this misapprehension prevents us from recognizing the monastery as an enduring institution of unparalleled power, and the guru as a particular paradigm of sovereignty. Nabanjan Maitra is Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, where he teaches courses on the Religions of South Asia and Sanskrit. He holds a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago with a focus on Hinduism. His book project, The Rebirth of Homo Vedicus, examines the formulation and implementation of a novel form of monastic power in a medieval south India monastery. The study explains the underlying logic of ethical self-formation as the driver of the totalizing vision of power that the monastery, with the guru as its sovereign head, administered. It shows the primacy of this mode of governance in the emergence of Hinduism in the colonial period. His research and teaching attempt to situate and explicate Hinduism of the present—the local and the global—in longer histories of texts, institutions and conduct.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Magda Teter Fordham University
Campus Center, Weis Cinema6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 The twentieth century, as scholar George M. Fredrickson has noted, brought both the “climax and retreat” of racism and antisemitism. The murder of six million Jews during World War II forced a reckoning with ideas that made this unprecedented crime possible and contributed to broader reconsideration of social and religious values dominating western society. It also forced, as the editor of Ebony would later write in the introduction to the special issue on “The White Problem in America” “a re-examination of the Christian faith which brought forth the idea that skin color was not a true measure of a man’s humanity.” This talk will seek to explain the modern rejection of equality of both Jews and Black people in the West by tracing Christianity’s claim to superiority that emerged in a theological context in antiquity but came to be implemented in a legal and political context when Christianity became a political power. I will argue that the Christian sense of superiority developed first in relation to Jews and then transformed to a racialized superiority when Europeans expanded their political reach beyond Europe, establishing slaveholding empires in the early modern period, culminating in the Holocaust and forcing an ongoing reckoning in the post-WWII era.
Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2006); Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize; and Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), which won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award; and the forthcoming Enduring Marks of Servitude: Christianity’s Stamp on Antisemitism and Racism in Law and Culture. She has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In 2020-2021, Teter was the NEH Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Jewish History.
NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Campus Center, Weis Cinema5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Dr. Nerina Rustomji, Associate Professor of History at St. John's University, will be giving a talk titled The Beauty of the Houri: Images and Interpretations of the Heavenly Virgins.
This talk addresses the images of the pure female companions of Islamic paradise or houris by presenting how the houri was understood from the seventh to the twenty-first century in Arabic, French, and English texts. The houri offered a feminine ideal of purity for a variety of interpreters, including Qur’anic commentators, Latin Christendom theologians, British and French travel writers, eighteenth and nineteenth century poets and writers, and twentieth and twenty-first century interpreters of Islam. The talk considers how an unknowable feminine figure continues to compel, even while signifying the differing aims of spiritual purity, political violence, and gender parity.
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Katherine Sorrels University of Cincinnati Campus Center, Weis Cinema6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This lecture series, held throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, will explore the ongoing phenomenon of antisemitism by examining its myriad historical contexts and relationships to other forms of prejudice and hatred. This talk will discuss the Camphill movement, an international network of intentional communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities that was founded in Scotland during World War II by Austrian Jewish refugees. It will focus on the antisemitism and ableism that forced Camphill’s founders to flee Nazi Central Europe, the antisemitic and ableist immigration policies that they confronted in the US and Britain, and the way their response to these overlapping forms of prejudice informed the mission and identity of the movement they founded. Drawing on her forthcoming book On the Spectrum: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Austria and the Politics of Disability in the Britain and North America, Sorrels will use Camphill to reconstruct the larger story of how Jewish refugees transformed British and North American approaches to disability and, in the process, reshaped the tradition of Viennese curative education.
Katherine Sorrels is Associate Professor of History, Affiliate Faculty in Judaic Studies, and Chair of the Taft Health Humanities Research Group at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Outsiders: Imperial Inclusion, National Exclusion, and the Pan-European Idea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is the co-editor of two forthcoming volumes, Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, and Culture (Camden House, 2022) and Ohio under COVID: Lessons from America's Heartland in Crisis (under review with the University of Michigan Press). Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate
Monday, October 18, 2021
Jonathan Judaken Rhodes College Preston6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 This lecture series, held throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, will explore the ongoing phenomenon of antisemitism by examining its myriad historical contexts and relationships to other forms of prejudice and hatred. This presentation will first consider the recent debate whether anti-Semitism should be considered a form of racism or a unique form of hatred. Framing this discussion within a historical overview, we will consider how Judeophobia was entangled with Islamophobia and what Fanon called Negrophobia. We will unpack the origins of the terms “anti-Semitism” and “racism” and consider how many theorists in the aftermath of the Holocaust and during anti-colonial struggles understood the linkages between these terms. These theorists were opposed by scholars and writers who insist upon the singularity of anti-Semitism. I will suggest that the root of these claims stem from notions of Jewish choseness, Zionist understandings of anti-Semitism, and claims about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. I will argue that the assertions of uniqueness do not hold up to scrutiny, make a case for why exceptionalist arguments lead to a dead-end in efforts to fight anti-Semitism, and conclude that the struggle today demands that we be clear that anti-Semitism is racism and must be combatted as part of the broader anti-racist struggle.
Jonathan Judaken is the Spence L. Wilson Chair in the Humanities at Rhodes College. He is the author of Jean-Paul Sartreand the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Nebraska, 2006) and the editor of Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism (SUNY 2008) and Naming Race, Naming Racisms (Routledge 2009). He recently edited a round table in the American Historical Review titled, “Rethinking Anti-Semitism” (October 2018) and co-edited a special issue of Jewish History (with Ethan Katz) on “Jews and Muslims in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher” (September 2018). He has just finished co-editing The Albert Memmi Reader (with Michael Lejman), a compendium of the Tunisian Franco-Jewish writer’s work (Nebraska, 2020). NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate
Thursday, October 7, 2021
Richard is retiring. We are gathering to celebrate! 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Picnic tables between Albee and the Henderson Computer Center12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please join us for an open-air lunch and informal gathering with students and faculty in the ISR program. We'll provide pizza and drinks and answer all your questions about the study of religion in a liberal arts setting. All are welcome.
When: Wednesday, September 15, 12–1 pm
Where: the picnic tables in the small yard between Albee and the Henderson Computer Center (weather permitting)
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
A Virtual Panel and Discussion with Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathleen Blee Online Event5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Although white supremacist movements have received renewed public attention since the 2017 violence in Charlottesville and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they need to be placed in deeper historical context if they are to be understood and combated. In particular, the rise of these movements must be linked to the global war on terror after 9/11, which blinded counterextremism authorities to the increasing threat they posed. In this panel, two prominent sociologists, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathleen Blee, trace the growth of white supremacist extremism and its expanding reach into cultural and commercial spaces in the U.S. and beyond. They also examine these movements from the perspective of their members’ lived experience. How are people recruited into white supremacist extremism? How do they make sense of their active involvement? And how, in some instances, do they seek to leave? The answers to these questions, Miller-Idriss and Blee suggest, are shaped in part by the gendered and generational relationships that define these movements. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). Kathleen Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. If you would like to attend, please register here. Zoom link and code will be emailed the day of the event.
Monday, March 29, 2021
Online Event12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Bodies and clothing are in exchange and influence each other. Guyanese Hindus describe this interrelationship of clothing and bodies by highlighting that during acts of consuming clothing—when it is worn or gifted—substances and energies are transferred between bodies and dress, creating mutual touch. This touch is facilitated through for example body fluids, which transform used or ‘touched’ clothing into a person’s material likeness. Clothes and other material objects are thus dwelling structures for substances and energies, which have a special capacity to ‘take on’ former consumers.
Used clothes are frequently exchanged within Guyanese Hindu families, a practice that remains relevant in the context of migration and is facilitated by the sending of ‘barrels.’ Gifts of used clothing become a means of recreating transnational families and religious communities. Additionally, gifts of clothing are not only relevant with regard to human social actors, but they furthermore materialize and visualize the relationships between people and deities, as clothes are frequently offered to deities during Hindu pujas (ritual veneration). In this talk I discuss the notions of touch and contact in the context of Guyanese transnational migration: I argue that in transnational networks, gifts of used clothing facilitate a means to literally stay in touch.
Sinah Kloß holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Heidelberg University, Germany. Since February 2020 she is leader of the research group “Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification” at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn, Germany. Her current research project discusses the sensory history of touch and body modification and the interrelation of permanence, tactility, religion and servitude in Hindu communities of Suriname, Trinidad and Guyana. Her most recent books include the edited volume “Tattoo Histories: Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing” (Routledge, 2020) and the monograph “Fabrics of Indianness: The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).Join via Zoom: https://bard.zoom.us/j/82737596363?pwd=ZUpKOUNhYlpjQmwxNHFSS3llY2xkQT09 Meeting ID: 827 3759 6363 Passcode: 614305
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Dr. Jamillah Karim Online Event6:30 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Dr. Jamillah Karim, a foremost scholar of race and gender in Islam, takes us through the rich history of Muslim Women’s legacy in the Black Freedom Movement through storytelling grounded in academic analysis and family history, providing a window into how she interweaves her academic training and personal faith to present true images of American Muslim women and to portray Islam in America as a Black Liberation Faith.
Dr. Jamillah Karim is an award-winning author, speaker, and blogger. She specializes in race, gender, and Islam in America. She is author of Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (with Dawn-Marie Gibson) and American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah, which was awarded the 2008 Book Award in Social Sciences by the Association for Asian American Studies. She is currently working on a new book, Radical Love, where she explores the depth and beauty of divine and human love. Dr. Karim blogs for Sapelo Square, Hagar Lives, Race+Gender+Faith, NYU Press Blog, and Huffington Post Religion. In 2014, her scholarly activism was recognized by JET magazine, which featured her as a young faith leader in the African American community. Dr. Karim is a former associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Spelman College. She holds a BSE in electrical engineering and a PhD in Islamic Studies from Duke University.
Online Event2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5 While Israeli TV established its international reputation based on terrorist thrillers, it also has developed a rich cadre of programs examining Jewish identity and belonging, many of these shows focus on Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. I propose a three-part typology. The first type of show establishes likeness, calling for the Haredi Jew to be understood as the same as any secular viewer. Series in the second category argue that Haredim are inherently better and more interesting than any secular subject. The third grouping rejects the claims of the first, and instead argues for a more nuanced look into the darker aspects of Haredi life today. We will explore these three types, and what they say about the relationship between Haredim and the State of Israel today.
Dr. Shayna Weiss is the Associate Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Previously, she was the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Israel Studies at the United States Naval Academy. Her research interests converge at the intersection of religion and gender in the Israeli public sphere, as well as the politics of Israeli popular culture. Currently, she is completing a book on gender segregation in the Israeli public sphere and researching the rise of Israeli television in the global market. Join Zoom Meeting https://bard.zoom.us/j/84309541838 Meeting ID: 843 0954 1838
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Dr. Jan Willis, Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University Online Event5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Jan Willis, PhD was raised in the South during the Jim Crow era and marched with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She went on to become a distinguished scholar, author, an award-winning teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. In this talk she will discuss the many resonances she sees between key Buddhist principles and social activism. Jan Willis is Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Born in Docena, Alabama in 1948 and profoundly affected by the Civil Rights movement, she majored in philosophy at Cornell University and met Buddhism while traveling in Asia in the 1970s. She earned her PhD in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for five decades. The author of several books and numerous articles and essays on Buddhist philosophy, meditation, women and Buddhism and Buddhism and race, her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist was first published in 2001 and was re-issued in 2008 by Wisdom Publications. In December of 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium." She has been profiled in Newsweek and Ebony. Her latest book, Dharma Matters: Women, Race and Tantra; Collected Essays by Jan Willis was published in April 2020. Join Zoom Meeting https://bard.zoom.us/j/86771200216 Meeting ID: 867 7120 0216
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Online Event7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST/GMT-5 All of us work and study on a large campus and live in a thinly populated rural area. We tend to inhabit virtual bubbles where we are surrounded by people who see things the way we do. And whether we are newcomers to the Mid-Hudson Valley or longtime residents, we do not always understand the “signs” we encounter. What do yard signs in election season or “thin blue line” flags tell us about the landscape in which we live? What do colonial estates-turned-museums reveal about enduring inequalities? What murals and monuments “hide” in plain sight because they do not match our pre-set ideas about the place we may (or may not) feel we belong to? Who harvests the local crops but cannot afford to shop at the farmers’ market?
In an effort to shine some light on systemic racism and anti-racist alternatives in our everyday surroundings, the Division of Social Studies is organizing a “Reading the Signs” roundtable over Zoom as well as an accompanying online archive. The roundtable will also offer Bard community members an opportunity to reflect on the implications of the election on November 3rd, whatever the outcome happens to be.
Call for Contributions! What signs do you think need reading? What is an image, flag, space, mural, monument, memorial, item of clothing, word/phrase, etc. that points to instances of systemic racism in the past or present? What is a sign that points to anti-racist precedents in the past and/or emancipatory possibilities for the future?
In the days leading up to the roundtable, the Social Studies Division invites all Bard community members (students, staff, and faculty) to send photos, videos, audio recordings, and other documents of systemic racism and anti-racism to [email protected].
All contributions must be accompanied by a brief written statement (anything from a few sentences to a substantial paragraph) that provides initial context, explanation, and interpretation.
The roundtable will feature many of these contributions, which can be made anonymous upon request. The Division of Social Studies will also maintain an online archive of signs that will be available to Bard community members before and after the event.
Join via Zoom Meeting ID: 863 8920 3500 Passcode: 583480
Monday, October 19, 2020
Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike Online Event6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 In the late 1990s, a new genre of Sufi art began to emerge in Dakar, Senegal: the Sufi music video. Drawing on the local traditions of Arabic, Wolof, and Pulaar Sufi poetry, local praise-poetry traditions, as well as local and global genres of music video (especially hip-hop and reggae videos), these music videos have become one of the most popular forms of expression of Sufism amongst youth in Senegal. Many disciples have begun to use these music videos as a form of spiritual practice, deliberately watching and singing along with them as a means of cultivating a particular state of remembrance (dhikr), much as Arabic Sufi poetry was and is used to express and cultivate similar states of spiritual realization. In this talk, I present and analyze two of the most popular contemporary Sufi music videos, which the disciples of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975) brought to my attention during my research in Dakar in 2014. I will analyze the lyrics and the significant visual symbolism of the two videos, explaining and exploring their extensive references to classical and local Sufi doctrines and poetry, local praise-poetry traditions, and hip-hop and reggae, concluding with a theoretical discussion of the ways in which these videos perform, not only particular African Muslim identities but also spiritual realization and sanctity.
Oludamini Ogunnaike is an Assistant Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. His research examines the philosophical and artistic dimensions of postcolonial, colonial, and precolonial Islamic and indigenous religious traditions of West and North Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. His research falls into two general areas: the intellectual history and literary studies of the Islamic and indigenous traditions of West Africa (redressing the general neglect of Sub-Saharan Africa as an important center of Islamic scholarship and literary production and the neglect of the intellectual dimensions of indigenous African religious traditions), and employing the insights and ideas from these traditions to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates relevant to a variety of disciplines.Join via Zoom Meeting ID: 959 2998 3725 / Passcode: 357393
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
A Streaming Lecture-Workshop with Victoria Hanna Online Event2:00 pm – 3:15 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Jerusalem-based, international voice artist Victoria Hanna will discuss the physical and sensual explorations that she has been pursuing in her art. This is a living exploration, anchored in the human voice, its location in the body, and its relation to speech. Building on ancient Kabbalistic traditions that see language, the voice, and the mouth as tools of creating worlds, Victoria will reveal the Hebrew alphabet as an instrument for playing with the mouth. By thinking with foundational Kabbalistic texts, such as the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah) and the writings of Abraham Abulafia, we will come to understand how the letters have been, and can be, used for daily work with speech and the body.
Bill Porter / Red Pine, Translator Online Event3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 No one ever plans to be a translator, and no artist is more poorly equipped or trained. Nor do translators ever find out exactly what they’re doing—or even how—but, except for the fact that there’s no money it, why would they ever want to stop? Bill Porter was born in Van Nuys, California on October 3, 1943, and grew up in northern Idaho. After a tour of duty in the US Army in 1964–67, he attended college at UC Santa Barbara and majored in anthropology. In 1970, he entered graduate school at Columbia University and studied anthropology with a faculty that included Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. While he was in New York, he became interested in Buddhism, and in 1972 he left America for a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan. After three years with the monks and nuns, he struck out on his own and supported himself by teaching English and later by working as a journalist at English-language radio stations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. During this time, he married a Chinese woman, with whom he has two children, and began working on translations of Chinese poetry and Buddhist texts. In 1993, he returned to America, and has lived ever since in Port Townsend, Washington. For the past 27 years, he has worked as an independent scholar. His translations, under the name Red Pine, have been honored with two NEA translation fellowships, a PEN translation award, the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, more recently, the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation, bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Between December 2019 and June 2020 he published a series of seven chapbooks with Empty Bowl Press in Anacortes, including Cathay Revisited, a present for Ezra Pound’s daughter and granddaughter.Join via ZoomMeeting ID: 993 7562 8401 / Passcode: 998992
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Jan Willis; Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University Olin Humanities, Room 2044:45 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Jan Willis PhD was raised in the South during the Jim Crow era and marched with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She went on to become a distinguished scholar, author, an award-winning teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. In this talk she will discuss the many resonances she sees between key Buddhist principles and social activism. Jan Willis is Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Born in Docena, Alabama in 1948 and profoundly affected by the Civil Rights movement, she majored in philosophy at Cornell University and met Buddhism while traveling in Asia in the 1970s. She earned her PhD in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for five decades. The author of several books and numerous articles and essays on Buddhist philosophy, meditation, women and Buddhism and Buddhism and race, her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist was first published in 2001 and was re-issued in 2008 by Wisdom Publications. In December of 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium." She has been profiled in Newsweek and Ebony. Her latest book, Dharma Matters: Women, Race and Tantra; Collected Essays by Jan Willis will appear in April 2020.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Dr. Nerina Rustomji, St. John's University Olin Humanities, Room 1025:00 pm – 6:15 pm EDT/GMT-4 THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
This talk addresses the functions of the pure female companions of Islamic paradise, or houris, by presenting how the houri was understood from the seventh to the 21st century in Arabic, French, and English texts. The houri offered a feminine standard of spiritual purity that was articulated and employed through the centuries. Yet, this feminine figure of perfection has been used as a rhetorical symbol for different political ends—for violence, ethics, and gender parity. The talk considers how the ambiguity of the houri leads to these vastly differing interpretations with implications for the promise of scriptural interpretation in Muslim societies.
Monday, December 9, 2019
A Talk by Dr. Ute Huesken Head of Department, Cultural and Religious History of South Asia Heidelberg University
Olin Humanities, Room 1023:10 pm – 4:30 pm EST/GMT-5 The festival Adi Atti Varadar Utsava is celebrated only once in 40 years. At that time, the original wooden image of Viṣṇu, the main deity of the Varadarāja temple in the South Indian city Kanchipuram, emerges from the huge temple tank and is venerated for 40 days, only to be immersed again in the temple tank for another 40 years. I will talk about the different myths connected to this second statue of Viṣṇu and trace the historical roots of this event, which in summer 2019 attracted more than one million visitors from all over India.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Yinon Cohen, Columbia University Olin Humanities, Room 1024:45 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 In this talk, Yinon Cohen demonstrates that the strategies Israel has deployed to dispossess Palestinian land and settle Jews in the West Bank have been uncannily similar to those used in Israel proper. After briefly analyzing the Judaization of space from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean Sea, he focuses on territorial and demographic processes in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) since 1967. He Shows how the settler population has flourished demographically and socioeconomically, thereby enhancing Israel’s colonial project in the West Bank.
Yinon Cohen is Yosef H. Yerushalmi Professor of Israeli and Jewish Studies in the department of sociology at Columbia University. Before moving to Columbia in 2007, he was a professor of sociology and labor studies at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on labor markets, social demography, ethnic inequality, and immigration. His most recent publications are on Israel’s territorial and demographic politics (Public Culture, 2018), Ashkenazi-Mizrahi education gap among third-generation Israelis (Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2018), and rising inequality in fringe benefits in the US (Sociological Science 2018).
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Professor Moshe Halbertal NYU & Hebrew University at 4:45pm in Olin 102 & Sunday, October 27th at 7PM at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue Thursday, October 24th at 4:45pm in Olin 102
"The Biblical Book of Samuel and the Birth of Politics: Two Faces of Political Violence" The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The lecture will explore the ways in which the book of Samuel understands political violence political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects as it is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies.
Sunday, October 27th at 7PM The Sixth Street Community Synagogue 325 E. Sixth Street New York, NY
"Confronting Loss: The Meaning and Experience of Mourning form the Talmud to Maimonides" The experience of loss and mourning is a painful and ultimately inescapable feature of human life. Jewish law established practices of mourning that prescribe a rather detailed structure of the mourner’s conduct as well as the response of the community to the mourner and its obligation to provide consolation. Maimonides codified this body of regulations in his great code of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah, in the section titled “The Laws of Mourning.” This lecture will focus on the attempt to understand the meaning and practice of mourning in the Talmudic tradition and in Maimonides’ thought. It will explore the relationship of the concept of mourning in the Jewish tradition to other understandings of the dynamics of mourning such as Freud’s seminal essay “Mourning and Melancholia.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Robert DeCaroli, Director of the MA Program in Art History Professor, George Mason University Campus Center, Weis Cinema11:50 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Robert DeCaroli is a specialist in the early history of Buddhism and has conducted fieldwork in India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. He received his Ph.D. in the South and Southeast Asian art history from UCLA. The majority of this work deals with early aspects of South Asian material culture and its interaction with forms of regional religious practice. He is the author of two books: Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (Oxford UP 2004) , and Image Problems: The Origin and Development of the Buddha’s Image in Early South Asia (U Washington Press 2015). He is co-curator of the Encountering the Buddha exhibit at the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently an ACLS/Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Fellow, working on a project entitled “The Gods of Buddhism: Regional Deities and Spirits in Early South Asia.”
Monday, September 16, 2019
From Om to Oprah, Talmud to Trump: Reflections on the Scope and Significance of Academic Religious Studies Olin Humanities, Room 2055:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Professor Kathryn Lofton (Yale University) will lead a panel discussion with Profs. Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, Bruce Chilton, and Shai Secunda on “From Om to Oprah, Talmud to Trump: Reflections on the Scope and Significance of Academic Religious Studies.”
Pizza will be served.
Monday, May 6, 2019 – Friday, May 10, 2019
The Venerable Tenzin Yignyen Hobart and William Smith Colleges Reem-Kayden Center Lobby8:30 am – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 From Monday, May 6, to Friday, May 10, the Venerable Tenzin Yignyen, a Tibetan monk from the Dalai Lama’s personal monastery and professor of Tibetan Buddhist studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will construct a sand mandala of the Buddha of Compassion in the lobby of the Reem-Kayden Center on the Bard College campus. Community members are invited to observe the process of construction and to speak with Lama Tenzin during his work, from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm each weekday. On Friday morning at 9:00am, the mandala will be dismantled, and the sand taken in procession to the waterfall on Bard campus, where it will be sent off toward the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean.
“Mandala is an ancient Buddhist art form used for meditation, as taught by the Buddha Shakyamuni 2,500 years ago,” says Lama Tenzin. “It is said that the seed of enlightenment in each person’s mind is nourished by the dynamic process of visualizing and contemplating a mandala. The mandala is also a visual form of Buddha’s enlightened compassion and wisdom.”
The Venerable Tenzin Yignyen is a monk belonging to Namgyal Monastery, the Dalai Lama’s personal monastery. He was born in the Tibetan village of Phari, and fled with his family to India after the 1959 Chinese invasion of Tibet. Monastery trained, he is a master of sutra and tantra. He has taught and constructed mandalas at many places, including Los Angeles’s Natural History Museum, Windstar Foundation, Cleveland Museum of Art, Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery, The Asia Society, Trinity College, St. Lawrence College, and Cornell University. He has taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges since 1998. He has visited Bard College since 2007; this will be his seventh mandala construction here.
This event is sponsored by the Warren Hutcheson Fund, administered through the Religion and Asian Studies Programs.
Monday, April 15, 2019
Multiple Locations, See Poster11:45 am – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Judaism is often thought of as a religion of the book, and the most influential book in the Jewish canon is the Talmud—a famously complex, genre-defying text that has been at the center of Jewish life and learning since the Middle Ages. Nowadays, the Talmud is most often encountered in book form, typically in large tomes whose pages are imprinted with an iconic, typeset design. And yet the Talmud is considered to be the culmination of Judaism’s Oral Torah, and it was produced and originally transmitted orally by rabbis living in late antique Iraq. This workshop will gather scholars, artists, a printer, a digitalist, and a performer to consider the many manifestations of this classical work and related Jewish textualities, from late antique graffiti and lament; to contemporary fiction, illustration, and printing; to the virtual universes of digitization and the internet, and experimental voice art. These explorations bear relevance not only for Jewish Studies, but also for broader matters such as the study of writing and orality, and the future of the book in the digital age.
Participants Zachary Braiterman is professor of religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University.
Jessica Tamar Deutsch is a New York based artist. In 2017, she published The Illustrated Pirkei Avot: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Ethics.
Victoria Hanna is a Jerusalem based composer, creator, performer, researcher, and teacher of voice and language.
Galit Hasan-Rokem is a poet, translator, and Grunwald Professor of Folklore and Professor of Hebrew Literature (emerita) at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Scott-Martin Kosofsky is an award-winning printer, book designer, and typography expert based in Rhinebeck.
Ruby Namdar is an Israeli novelist based in New York City. His novel The Ruined House (Harper, 2018) won the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious prize in Hebrew literature.
Jonathan Rosen is a writer and essayist, and wrote The Talmud and the Internet (Picador, 2000). He is the editorial director of Nextbook Press.
Karen B. Stern is associate professor of history at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
Shai Secunda holds the Jacob Neusner chair in Jewish Studies at Bard College.
Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld is the director of education at Sefaria.org.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
CFCD Common Room Conversation Supported by the Calderwood Foundation CFCD Common Room4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please join Parul Sehgal and interested faculty members in the Common Room for a conversation about writing and publishing beyond the academy. Discuss how to pitch stories and reviews, techniques for addressing broader audiences, and avenues for publication.
Parul Sehgal is a book critic at the New York Times. She was previously a senior editor and a columnist at the New York Book Review. Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Slate, and Bookforum, among other publications. She has been a featured speaker at TED and was awarded the Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Roger T. Ames Peking University Berggruen Research Center Olin Humanities, Room 2053:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 In the introduction of Chinese philosophy and culture into the Western academy, we have tended to theorize and conceptualize this antique tradition by appeal to familiar categories. Confucian role ethics is an attempt to articulate a sui generis moral philosophy that allows this tradition to have its own voice. This holistic philosophy is grounded in the primacy of relationality, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, a-theistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.
Roger T. Ames is humanities chair professor at Peking University, cochair of the academic advisory committee of the Peking University Berggruen Research Center, and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Hawai’i. He is former editor of Philosophy East and West and founding editor of China Review International. Ames has authored several interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China (1995), Thinking from the Han (1998), and Democracy of the Dead (1999) (all with D. L. Hall); Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011); and, most recently, “Human Becomings: Theorizing ‘Persons’ for Confucian Role Ethics” (forthcoming). His publications also include translations of Chinese classics: Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) (with D. C. Lau); the Confucian Analects (1998) and the Classic of Family Reverence: The “Xiaojing” (2009) (both with H. Rosemont), Focusing the Familiar: The “Zhongyong” (2001), and The “Daodejing” (with D. L. Hall) (2003). Almost all of his publications are now available in Chinese translation, including his philosophical translations of Chinese canonical texts. He has most recently been engaged in compiling the new Sourcebook of Classical Confucian Philosophy, and in writing articles promoting a conversation between American pragmatism and Confucianism.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Hegeman 1061:30 pm – 3:50 pm EST/GMT-5 The New Yorker’s Lizzie Widdicombe joins students in the Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing to discuss interview techniques as well as her work as a writer/editor. This Calderwood Seminar focuses on cultivating writing and editing skills with a focus on writing about death and dying.
Lizzie Widdicombe is a writer and editor for the New Yorker. She has written about subjects ranging from technology start-ups to Taylor Swift, and is currently editing the magazine’s Talk of the Town section.
Monday, February 18, 2019
Ittai Weinryb Associate Professor, Bard Graduate Center Olin Humanities, Room 2025:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Throughout time and across cultures people have made objects and offered them as acts of faith. Known as votives, these objects are expressions of fundamental human needs and concerns. They may be offered as tokens of desire or gratitude, to make a pledge or fulfill a vow, to preserve a memory or commemorate a miracle. The lecture will explore varieties of votive giving in order to unpack the spiritual concerns and material solutions votives have to offer.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, Lecturer in Philosophy, Purchase College, State University of New York Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 What am I? Am I only the sum of my physical parts, or is there an intangible, essential aspect of myself that survives the death of my body? If there is a soul, then what is its relation to my body, and what can it experience when disembodied after death? The question of the nature of the human being, and thus her relation to the divine, was at the center of philosophical and theological discussions of the medieval Islamic world. With the Muslim theologians al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), we witness what has been termed the “Avicennian turn” in Ashʿarite theology. These thinkers, who have often been wrongly censured as the very theologians who stifled the Islamic philosophical movement (al-falsafa), engaged with the falsafa tradition so deeply that their own theology was fundamentally transformed by it.
This talk will begin with a discussion of the understanding of the human being as developed in mainstream Islamic theology, then turn to al-Ghazālī and particularly Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s engagement with the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 1037) and the fundamental shift that they introduced into Islamic theology with their acceptance of the existence of a noncorporeal soul (al-nafs). With an examination of the development of the concept of the soul in Islamic philosophy and theology, we also find ourselves challenging the very paradigm that held that orthodox theologians dealt a death blow to the falsafa movement in the 12th century. Instead, we witness that Islamic philosophy continued to thrive not only through a rich commentary tradition but also as it was absorbed and transformed in Islamic theological and mystical trends.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Sara Omar, Lecturer in Modern Middle East Studies, Yale University Olin Humanities, Room 1024:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Current discourses within Muslim communities over same-sex intercourse suggest that Islamic law, because Divine, is fixed and immutable. They do not, however, take into account the process of human, and therefore fallible, interpretive reasoning that went into the historical development of legal doctrines. Indeed, Islamic law did not exist in a vacuum but was rather part of an evolving, vibrant discursive tradition. This talk surveys some of the discourses surrounding same-sex intercourse across an array of historical genres. It follows texts, their writers, ideas, and discourses across time, space, disciplines, and occasionally across religious traditions. It seeks to illustrate the ways in which early Muslims’ constructions and suggested punishments for same-sex intercourse were not simply based on self-evident scriptural passages but involved a number of extrapolations and interpretations by early exegetes and jurists. It makes a more general theoretical assertion about the relation between scriptural texts and authoritative religious interpretations, and the ways in which the latter inevitably go beyond the former in a number of historically specific ways.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Pamela Klasova, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Arabic, Bowdoin College Olin Humanities, Room 1024:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 In our modern world, public speech can change the course of history. Public speech was even more powerful in the ancient world when modern multimedia such as the internet, television, radio, and newspaper did not exist and when people relied more on face-to-face communication with their audience to inform, praise, and persuade. Most famously, the Greeks and Romans practiced and systematized the art of public speaking. Like the ancient Greek and Romans, the Arabs after them took immense pride in their oratory. Muslim scholars in the Middle Ages boasted about Arabs’ natural rhetorical abilities and believed that there was something special about Arabic itself. They concluded that because the Qur’an is God’s masterpiece and transcends human imitation, Arabic was a sacred language, the chosen language of God.
What did Arabic public speaking mean before these later opinions of Arabic appeared? In this talk I analyze the role, nature, and effect of Arabic oral performance in the early Islamic period (622–750 CE), when Islamic civilization was beginning to take shape. I specifically engage the Umayyad governor, named al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (d. 714), who was one of the most salient figures of early Islam and directly controlled a large territory from Iraq to India around the year 700. He is remembered both as a notorious tyrant and as an eloquent orator, which creates an interesting paradox. I will solve this paradox and use his figure and speeches to explore the power of oratory in early Islam before Arabic acquired its later “nationalistic” and religious dimensions. I will explain why early Islamic oratory has been neglected in modern scholarship, argue for its recovery as a field of study, and point to the key ideological role of public speech in al-Hajjaj’s imperial project. Al-Hajjaj’s case, furthermore, points to the symbolic, ritualistic, and magical impact of speech in his time, which helps us reimagine the role of Arabic oratory in the building of the newborn Islamic Empire.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Dr. Nathaniel Berman Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture, Brown University Olin Humanities, Room 1024:45 pm – 6:15 pm EST/GMT-5 In the face of our current “Age of Anger,” Nathaniel Berman turns to the poetic mythology of the Jewish esoteric tradition – replete with tales of the crucial role of fury in the formation of divine, demonic, and human subjectivity. The Zohar, kabbalah’s central text, declares, “there is anger – and – there is anger”: foregrounding anger’s often ambivalent role, both igniting destructive hatred and impelling demands for social justice. Examining Zoharic mythology from rhetorical and psychoanalytic perspectives, Berman shows how it provides a productive language for perennial features of the human condition. Dr. Samantha Hill (Political Studies, Hannah Arendt Center) will be responding to the paper.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Dr. Daniel Sheffield, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University Olin Humanities, Room 2034:45 pm – 6:15 pm EST/GMT-5 In 1478, an Indian Zoroastrian named Nariman Hoshang arrived in the village of Turkabad in central Iran, reconnecting the previously isolated Indian and Iranian Zoroastrian communities with one another. Over the course of the next three hundred years, dozens of letters were exchanged between the communities of Gujarat and Iran, along with gifts, ritual materials, and religious manuscripts. In this talk, I will examine the affective dimensions of friendship expressed through letters in constructing a Zoroastrian community. By situating the trade partnerships and networks of patronage that formed between Indian and Iranian Zoroastrians within the framework of friendship, I will try to sketch out new approaches to the formation of transregional communal identity in the pre-colonial period of Indian Ocean history. Finally, the talk will briefly discuss transformations in the connected ideas of friendship and sovereignty that ensued among Zoroastrian intellectuals of the early nineteenth century.
Monday, October 22, 2018
Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, Harvard Divinity School Olin Humanities, Room 2055:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Monday, October 15, 2018
Marcin Wodziński, University of Wrocław, Poland Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Hasidism began as a radical mystical movement whose rapid growth has puzzled scholars until this day. Recent research has used new tools including GIS to explore questions about the origins, spread, and post-Holocaust resurgence of this most important socioreligious movement in modern Judaism. Is it true that Hasidism dominated most of East European Jewry by the end of the 18th century? What were the borders of Hasidic influence and how did they change? Which Hasidic dynasties were strongest and why? How did Hasidism resurrect in the post-Holocaust world and how strong is it today?
Marcin Wodziński is professor of Jewish history and literature at the University of Wrocław, Poland. His books include Hebrew Inscriptions in Silesia, 13th–18th Century (1996), Haskalah and Hasidism in the Kingdom of Poland (2005), and Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1864 (2013). He is the author of three new works on Hasidism: Hasidism: A New History (contributor; 2018), Historical Atlas of Hasidism (2018), and Hasidism: Key Questions (2018).
Monday, April 16, 2018
Dr. Candance Mixon Olin Humanities, Room 2045:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Using some key concepts in Bruce Lincoln's Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11 (Chicago, 2003), this talk will examine commemorations of violent events in modern Iranian and sacred Shi’a history (such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War, and martyrdom of the family of the Prophet Muhammad). It reviews both Iranian and American reporting of holidays marked in the Islamic Republic of Iran to ask how the presentation of commemorations (especially in calendars, media, rituals) uses careful rhetoric and historical contextualization to walk the fine line between celebration and mourning or blur the line between nationalism and religious practice.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Professor Bernard Faure Columbia University
Olin Humanities, Room 2035:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The recent tragedy of the Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar has arguably attracted more attention from the media than the long civil war between Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, and it has led many people to question the traditional image of Buddhist nonviolence. Usually Buddhist violence has been discussed from a sociopolitical or doctrinal viewpoint. Here I would like to address its presence in visual representations and in the Buddhist imagination. If compassion is well expressed by serene images of meditating buddhas, the angry gods of Tantric Buddhism partake, conversely, in a puzzling symbolic violence. I would like to examine the role of such representations in the historical development of Buddhism.
Cosponsored by the Religion Program, Asian Studies, and Art History.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Riga Shakya, Columbia University
TBD11:50 am EDT/GMT-4 The proliferation of social media platforms in China has transformed the way in which Tibetans communicate with each other and their Han Chinese neighbors. The first part of the presentation is an introduction to Tibetan cyberspace through an examination of the diverse and innovative ways in which Tibetans, across the TAR and China proper, engage with social media. The Internet has become the predominant site of cultural production and contestation for Tibetan intellectuals, and the second part of the presentation looks at the conversations and debates that contemporary Tibetan artists, directors, and writers participate in online.
You can have prosperity, victory against the odds, and the enjoyment of a complete life.
All you have to do is sacrifice your child.
Those are the terms of reference set out in the biblical story of the command God gives Abraham, to offer his son on a ritual altar. Genesis 22, known as the Aqedah, or “Binding” of Isaac, since Abraham bound his son in order to slay him, has a rich and often dark history. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have armed themselves over time with the conviction that an innocent victim – Isaac or Christ of Isma’il – models God’s desire for how his people should sacrifice themselves for him.
In the Crusades, those three religions deployed their unique versions of Abraham’s offering as they inflicted violence on one another and suffered violence at one another’s hands.
Our discussion is designed to show how the Aqedah focused violence during the period of the Crusades, and how resources of interpretation within each tradition could lead them out of their mutual confrontation.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Dr. Vincent Gonzalez
Olin Humanities, Room 2045:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Since the early 1980s Christians have created their own video games and game review sites, as well as distinctly Christian ways to play secular games. Like other gamer cultures, these Christians are creatively engaged in an ongoing conversation on the meaning and stakes of video game “violence.” This presentation will offer a history of Christian interventions in the game violence debates, complete with playable encounters with some representative Christian games.
Vincent Gonzalez received his doctorate in religious studies from UNC - Chapel Hill. His research on religion and digital culture can be found at www.religiousgames.org as well as @religiousgames on Twitter.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Dr. Eddy Portnoy in conversation with Prof. Luc Sante
Olin Humanities, Room 1024:45 pm EST/GMT-5
An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Eddy Portnoy's new book Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
Eddy Portnoy received his Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. A specialist in Jewish popular culture, he has taught at Rutgers University and currently serves as academic adviser for the Max Weinreich Center and exhibition curator at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Luc Sante, the author of several award-wining books, is visiting professor of writing and photography at Bard College.
Monday, December 4, 2017
Matthew Lynch, Visiting Professor at Bard
Olin 3015:30 pm EST/GMT-5 The talk will use Michael Taussig’s discussion of the “public secret” in his book, Defacement, as a framing device to analyze issues of contemporary interest. Recent examples of monument destruction, national anthem protests, and other examples related to the topic will be displayed and discussed.
After, join us for a Religion Program Open House. Come discuss the critical study of religion in the liberal arts, learn about majoring and minoring in the Religion Program. We'll discuss course offerings, moderation, and highlights of the major.
Refreshments will be served.
Friday, November 10, 2017
Chapel of the Holy Innocents12:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Karin Roslund and Mehgan Abdel-Moneim
followed by an interview with
Henry O'Donnell from "Sanctuary: Theology and Social Action" (REL 358) and general discussion
Monday, November 6, 2017
Dr. Matthew Mutter Bard College Olin 3015:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Matthew Mutter is assistant professor of English at Bard College. His book Restless Secularism: Modernism and the Religious Inheritance was recently published by Yale University Press.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Olivia Terzian and Acacia Handel from Organizing for Undocumented Students' Rights
Alicia Rodriguez, from Million Hoodies Bard
followed by an interview with Lila Klaus from "Sanctuary: Theology and Social Action" (REL 358) Chapel of the Holy Innocents12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Olivia and Acacia, as two of the heads of OUSR, will be presenting on the creation and history of the Bard Sanctuary Fund, the goals and the trajectory of OUSR, and their perspective as student leaders in immigration justice. Alicia Rodriguez will also be contributing to that conversation, as well as talking about her work with Million Hoodies and the various other Bard student initiatives she is a part of.
The Institute of Advanced Theology sponsors the event as a continuation of the autumn series on Sanctuary.
Monday, October 23, 2017
Yehoshua November & Michael Ives Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Janet Gyatso Associate Dean of Faculty & Academic Affairs Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Hegeman 1024:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This talk will present the speaker’s perceptions and experiences at the recent nuns ordination ceremony, held at the Bodhgaya Mahabodhi Temple in India in March 2017, under the direction of the current H. H. Gyalwa Karmapa. It will contextualize this exciting event in light of the larger female ordination movement in contemporary Buddhism.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Kline, Faculty Dining Room5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Come celebrate the end of the year with fellow MESers. Meet faculty, hear about exciting new courses, study abroad programs, senior projects, and a number of incredible iniatives MES students are working on. Snacks will be served. All are welcome.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Shai Secunda, Jacob Neusner Associate Professor of the History and Theology will speak to the title "A Sea of Text: The Formation of the Talmud and the Zoroastrian Tradition in Late Antiquity."
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Yellow Room in the campus center and RKC 1031:15 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 I. New Connections: The Talmud and the Contemporary Humanities - a Workshop Location: The Yellow Room in the Campus Center (1:15-4:45pm)
Featuring leading scholars of Jewish studies in dialogue with Bard students and faculty.
II. "Make it New": Classical Jewish Texts and Artistic Imagination Location: RKC 103 (4:45-6:15pm)
Nicole Krass: Novelist, author of The History of Love (2005) and Great House (2010) Adam Kirsh: Poet and critic Galit-Hasan-Rokem: Scholar, poet, and translator.
III. Jewish Studies and the Liberal Arts: Institutional Possibilities Location: RKC 103 (6:30-7:30pm)
Featuring President Leon Botstein, Bruce Chilton, and Alan Avery-Peck.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Closing Ceremony and Procession to waterfall: Friday, April 21 at 10:00 a.m. RKC Lobby10:00 am EDT/GMT-4 The Venerable Lama Tenzin Yignen, Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama's home monastery Namgyal and Professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will install a sand mandala, a "cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or "celestial mansion" of the Buddha of Compassion, over the course of five days. Just when it is complete, the mandala will be ritually cut, swept together, and taken in procession down to the river in this performed lesson on impermanence.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Hegeman 1024:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Panel discussion on the past, present, and future of yoga in the United States. Featuring Barbara Boris and Sondra Loring, longtime practitioners and teachers of yoga.Moderated by Richard Davis
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Campus Center, Weis Cinema6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Tanya Erzen Associate Professor, University of Puget Sound Director, Freedom Education Project Puget Sound In prisons throughout the United States, punitive incarceration and religious revitalization are occurring simultaneously. Faith-based prison ministries operate under the logic that religious conversion and redemption will transform prisoners into new human beings. Why are Christian prison ministries on the rise amidst an increasingly punitive system of mass incarceration? How do people in prison practice religion in a space of coercion and discipline? What are theimplications of the state's promotion of Christianity over other religious traditions in some prisons? And, why have conservative Christians, particularly, embraced criminal justice reform?
Monday, March 13, 2017
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 John Spackman Associate Professor of Philosophy Middlebury College In some parts of the Buddhist tradition, meditation and other Buddhist practices are viewed as leading to a state of non-conceptual awareness (nirvikalpajñāna) that is different from our ordinary conceptual mode of awareness. In this presentation I seek to understand the nature of this non-conceptual awareness, draw on several different models of it, and consider several challenges faced by these models. I propose an alternative model of non-conceptual awareness that locates it in a form of non-dual awareness.
Monday, March 6, 2017
Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Gurinder Singh Mann Emeritus Professor of Sikh Studies University of California, Santa Barbara One of the world’s foremost authorities on the Sikh tradition, Gurinder Singh Mann is a historian and former professor of Sikh and Punjab Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published widely on Sikh history, scripture, and literature. His books include Sikhism, The Making of Sikh Scripture, and Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs in America.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Seth Kimmel Assistant Professor of Latin and Iberian Cultures Columbia University Diverse groups of lawyers, linguists, historians, and economists, among other communities of intellectuals, offered their opinions on the legitimacy and legacy of the early modern history of forced conversion to Christianity in the Iberian world. As I have argued in my recent book, Parables of Coercion (Chicago 2015), to participate in these debates about religious coercion and New Christian discipline was also to re-imagine the relationship among the scholarly disciplines themselves. Linking my book project to new research, my talk examines the late sixteenth-century taxonomies of knowledge that emerged from this particularly Iberian intellectual history and, more generally, the rhetoric of universality that characterizes the liberal arts in the early as well as the late modern periods.
Monday, February 20, 2017
Olin Language Center, Room 1157:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Monday, February 20, 2017
Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Travis Zadeh Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Yale University
This talk explores the cultural, linguistic, and mythological dimensions shaping religious conversion among Persians in the wake of the seventh-century Arab conquests. It further interrogates what this process of conversion reveals for the memory of early Islamic history and the spread of Islam along the eastern frontiers.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
A conversation with Israeli-American novelist, Ruby Namdar, and Professor of Hebrew Literature, Haim Weiss. Olin Language Center, Room 1154:45 pm EST/GMT-5
This conversation with Ruby Namdar ("The Ruined House," Winner of 2015 Sapir Prize, English translation due out in 2017) and Haim Weiss (Ben Gurion University of the Negev) will explore universal literary themes of canon and breach, and consider the challenges of writing a contemporary novel in an "anxiety producing" language like Hebrew. We will also look at examples of Namdar's "translation" of ancient sources into a modern literary imaginary, and English translations of Namdar's work.
Moderated by Shai Secunda (Bard, Religion and Jewish Studies)
Monday, February 6, 2017
Dominique Townsend Assistant Professor of Religion Bard College Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Monday, December 5, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 1026:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Please join the Religion Program's faculty for a conversation on the study of religion at Bard, some exciting new curricular developments in the program, and future course offerings. We will gather at 6:30 pm immediately following the religion colloquium (at 5:30 pm).
Light refreshments will be provided. All, especially students, are encouraged to attend.
Monday, December 5, 2016
The Consolation of Christology? Locating the Christological Language of Boethius within his Consolation of Philosophy and its Medieval Vernacular Translations Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Alexander D'Alisera '15, M.A. Religion candidate at Yale UniversityAll too often, Boethius the philosopher is read separately from, or even in contradiction to, Boethius the theologian. Still, the late antique thinker – though indeed most renowned for his prosimetric Consolation of Philosophy – was eminently steeped in Christian doctrine, and possessed a theological understanding that rivaled many of the most learned churchmen of his era. Like his contemporaries, Boethius’ theological agenda sought to defend catholic-orthodox doctrine against the prevailing forces of heresy and dissent. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Boethius employed kataphatic discourse, grounded in an impeccable command of Greco-Roman philosophy, to discuss such potent topics as the Trinity and Christology in affirmative terminology.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 1025:30 pm EST/GMT-5 The Colloquium on Religion is pleased to host a presentation by Myra Young Armstead, Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies, which addresses a concern that the recent election has raised:
"Is There a Bridge? Race, Class, and Evangelicals."
Myra's work is associated with a project sponsored by the Louisville Institute, "Bridging the Hidden Class Divide," an inquiry into connections among socio-economic and religious issues. Those links are frequently overlooked in political discussion, and may provide insight into current divisions in American politics.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Dr. Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina Yarshater Assistant Professor of Avestan and Pahlavi at the University of Toronto Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 This conversation, moderated by Shai Secunda (Religion), will probe the efforts of Zoroastrian theologians to make sense of their ancient Iranian tradition; the distinction between theology and critical scholarship in the study of Zoroastrianism; and the sociology of knowledge in a field where Orientalism, minority identity, and related factors collide.
Participants are strongly encouraged to read Dr. Vevaina's article “Theologies and Hermeneutics,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism (2015), 211-234, in advance.
Contact Shai Secunda for a pdf of the article.
Friday, November 4, 2016
St. John, the Evangelist Church12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2016 Autumn Luncheon Lecture Series with Bruce Chilton at St. John, the Evangelist Church located at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. The Lecture Series will begin on Friday, October 7 and will continue on October 14, 21, 28, and November 4th.
A brief description follows:
Herod the Great Herod and his family defined Israel at the start of the Common Era. They shaped the political and cultural climate in which Jesus lived and the Gospels were written, extending the Temple of Jerusalem to the point that it became a pilgrimage site for Jewish *and* gentile tourists all over the world. They also inspired a reaction against their rule in the bedrock of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which warns against mixing politics and religion—from “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” to key teachings in the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism.
The presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will begin at noon and consist of soup, bread, dessert, and a beverage. The lunch will cost $7.00. Lunch reservations are required by emailing [email protected] or by calling 845-758-7279.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call 845-758-7279. Thank you.
Friday, October 28, 2016
St. John, the Evangelist Church12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2016 Autumn Luncheon Lecture Series with Bruce Chilton at St. John, the Evangelist Church located at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. The Lecture Series will begin on Friday, October 7 and will continue on October 14, 21, 28, and November 4th.
A brief description follows:
Herod the Great Herod and his family defined Israel at the start of the Common Era. They shaped the political and cultural climate in which Jesus lived and the Gospels were written, extending the Temple of Jerusalem to the point that it became a pilgrimage site for Jewish *and* gentile tourists all over the world. They also inspired a reaction against their rule in the bedrock of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which warns against mixing politics and religion—from “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” to key teachings in the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism.
The presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will begin at noon and consist of soup, bread, dessert, and a beverage. The lunch will cost $7.00. Lunch reservations are required by emailing [email protected] or by calling 845-758-7279.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call 845-758-7279. Thank you.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Discussion & Snacks Olin Humanities, Room 1027:45 pm EDT/GMT-4 Come watch Shtisel, an Israeli television drama series that follows the intersecting story-lines of a large ultra-Orthodox Jewish family living in the present-day Jerusalem, followed by comments from Yuval Elmelech (Sociology), Cecile Kuznitz (History), and Shai Secunda (Religion). Meet other Jewish Studies faculty and students, hear about spring courses, and enjoy a snack.
Friday, October 21, 2016
St. John, the Evangelist Church12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2016 Autumn Luncheon Lecture Series with Bruce Chilton at St. John, the Evangelist Church located at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. The Lecture Series will begin on Friday, October 7 and will continue on October 14, 21, 28, and November 4th.
A brief description follows:
Herod the Great Herod and his family defined Israel at the start of the Common Era. They shaped the political and cultural climate in which Jesus lived and the Gospels were written, extending the Temple of Jerusalem to the point that it became a pilgrimage site for Jewish *and* gentile tourists all over the world. They also inspired a reaction against their rule in the bedrock of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which warns against mixing politics and religion—from “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” to key teachings in the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism.
The presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will begin at noon and consist of soup, bread, dessert, and a beverage. The lunch will cost $7.00. Lunch reservations are required by emailing [email protected] or by calling 845-758-7279.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call 845-758-7279. Thank you.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 2025:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Professor Mar Gómez Glez "Teresa of Ávila’s Secrets"Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) is one of the most influential figuress of European history, a Spanish mystic nun who lived during the religious turmoil of the sixteen century. Through the lenses of the secret, her texts can be read in a new light. During this talk I will try to show that Teresa of Avila’s uses of secrecy illuminate important questions of the interior self and our relationship with the other.
Friday, October 14, 2016
St. John, the Evangelist Church12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2016 Autumn Luncheon Lecture Series with Bruce Chilton at St. John, the Evangelist Church located at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. The Lecture Series will begin on Friday, October 7 and will continue on October 14, 21, 28, and November 4th.
A brief description follows:
Herod the Great Herod and his family defined Israel at the start of the Common Era. They shaped the political and cultural climate in which Jesus lived and the Gospels were written, extending the Temple of Jerusalem to the point that it became a pilgrimage site for Jewish *and* gentile tourists all over the world. They also inspired a reaction against their rule in the bedrock of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which warns against mixing politics and religion—from “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” to key teachings in the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism.
The presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will begin at noon and consist of soup, bread, dessert, and a beverage. The lunch will cost $7.00. Lunch reservations are required by emailing [email protected] or by calling 845-758-7279.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call 845-758-7279. Thank you.
Friday, October 7, 2016
St. John, the Evangelist Church12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2016 Autumn Luncheon Lecture Series with Bruce Chilton at St. John, the Evangelist Church located at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. The Lecture Series will begin on Friday, October 7 and will continue on October 14, 21, 28, and November 4th.
A brief description follows:
Herod the Great Herod and his family defined Israel at the start of the Common Era. They shaped the political and cultural climate in which Jesus lived and the Gospels were written, extending the Temple of Jerusalem to the point that it became a pilgrimage site for Jewish *and* gentile tourists all over the world. They also inspired a reaction against their rule in the bedrock of Judeo-Christian philosophy, which warns against mixing politics and religion—from “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” to key teachings in the Mishnah, the foundational document of Rabbinic Judaism.
The presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will begin at noon and consist of soup, bread, dessert, and a beverage. The lunch will cost $7.00. Lunch reservations are required by emailing [email protected] or by calling 845-758-7279.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call 845-758-7279. Thank you.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Shehriar Fazli Olin Humanities, Room 2015:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 While extremism in South Asia has been a major focus of debate since the 9/11 attacks, in media, academic, and policymaking circles, there remain common misdiagnoses and weak or incomplete explanations about the key drivers of recruitment, radicalization, and violence. This has in turn yielded inadequate policy responses. Fazli will draw from his experiences covering extremism and politics in South Asia for over a decade, to discuss causes and trends of extremist violence in the region, and examine the successes and failures of both state and civil society efforts to address it.
Shehryar Fazli is a Pakistan-based political analyst and author. He is Senior Analyst and Regional Editor, South Asia at The International Crisis Group, and the author of the novel Invitation (2011), which was the runner-up for the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival's first book award.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Whether from the perspective of insider or outsider, religions are often described as static phenomena. Yet features regarded as traditional have often emerged quickly, and disruptively; obvious examples include Fundamentalism and the doctrine of Mary’s Assumption into heaven. The purpose of the presentation is to apply an analysis of systems to the issue of religious change.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Olin Hall8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 World premiere of Noach Lundgren's Misah Ivrit. An unprecedented approach to the Mass, yet one deeply rooted in it's origins, Misah Ivrit presents a full setting of the Mass text in Biblical and Modern Hebrew, along with supplemental texts taken from Jewish liturgy.
Conducted by Noach Lundgren
Performed by Students of Bard College and Conservatory, Bard alumni, and members of the area community
Preceded by new solo music performed by the composer and a guest appearance by local trio Waterdove.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 2026:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Shai Secunda The Martin Buber Society of Fellows Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Monday, May 2, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 1026:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 D. Max Moerman Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures Barnard College
Monday, April 18, 2016
Peter Fry
Olin Humanities, Room 2015:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Peter is a scholar, social commentator and public intellectual with an unusual range of research experience. Born in England and educated at Cambridge University, his career has taken him to Southern Africa and to Brazil, where he has lived and taught for forty years. He is one of Brazil’s most distinguished anthropologists, a former Vice-President of the Brazilian Association of Anthropologists, and editor of the leading anthropological journal Vibrant.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Matthew Melvin-Koushki (PhD Yale) Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina Western—i.e., Islamo-Christian—understandings of nature have long been logocentric: the world as text. For medieval and early modern thinkers, this logocentricity was mandated by the common neopythagorean doctrine that the uncreated, all-creative divine Word is expressed in twin Books—revealed scripture on the one hand (the Bible or the Quran) and the book of nature on the other. The commensurability of the two Books encouraged, in turn, the application of the hermeneutical methodologies that scripture elicits to the physical and metaphysical worlds, giving rise in Europe to Newtonian “scientific modernity” in its drive to mathematize the cosmos.
This early modern neopythagorean turn is exemplified by the emergence of Christian kabbalah in Renaissance Italy; yet the Arabic science of letters ('ilm al-huruf), or lettrism—the primary expression of Islamic neopythagoreanism—, was even more widespread and intellectually mainstream throughout the contemporary Islamicate world than its Hebrew cognate was in Europe. Due to persistent scholarly positivism and occultophobia, however, this basic problematic has been wholly elided in the literature to date. I therefore introduce lettrism as a primary methodology for mathematizing the cosmos, with a focus on thinkers in 15th- and 16th-century Iran, and propose it as an essential node for comparative early modern Islamo-Christian history of philosophy-science.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Hegeman 2045:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Allan Nadler Professor of Religion Drew University
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 1026:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Alexandre Caiero Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies Hamad Bin Khalifa University Since the turn of the millennium, state and non-state actors in the Middle East have energetically sought to regulate and reform Islamic authority in order to counter the fragmentation induced by mass literacy, new media technologies and global jihad. Various proposals have been formulated targeting state institutions, religious scholars, and wider publics. The call to incorporate social scientific knowledge into Islamic normative deliberation, notably through what is known as the jurisprudence or understanding of reality (fiqh al-wāqi'), and the emphasis on ethics rather than law have emerged as increasingly popular solutions. In this talk I ask what social scientific insights and conceptions of ethics are invoked in these debates, and how they relate to the modes of reasoning that characterize traditional Islamic law. I argue that the debates prompted by these proposals can be best understood as attempts to move beyond the jurists' methodological individualism in order to account for the impersonal powers of modern institutions.
Alexandre Caeiro is Research Assistant Professor at the Center for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies located at Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies. He studied sociology and Islamic studies in France (Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales) and the Netherlands (ISIM). He has taught in the Netherlands, Germany, Egypt and Qatar and is currently working on two book projects. The first deals with jurisprudence of minorities and the integration of Islam in Europe. The second examines debates about the chaos of fatwas in the Arab World.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Hegeman 2045:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Shaul Magid Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Olin Humanities, Room 2035:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Elliott R. Wolfson Distinguished Professor of Religion University of California, Santa BarbaraMartin Heidegger (1889-1976) powerfully transformed the philosophical landscape in the twentieth century and exercised an inordinate influence on a wide variety of other disciplines. His personal shortcomings and ethical transgressions attested in his explicit complicity with National Socialism are well known and cannot be easily justified or dismissed as miscalculations based on inadequate knowledge or lack of savvy. In spite of Heidegger’s explicit anti-Judaism and his deplorable political judgment vis-à-vis Jews, there are themes in Heidegger’s oeuvre that bear a striking affinity to and can be utilized philosophically to elucidate the phenomenological aspects of kabbalistic esotericism and hermeneutics. My lecture will explore three Heideggerian themes that can be profitably compared and contrasted with some rudimentary tenets of the kabbalah: the depiction of truth as the unconcealedness of the concealment; the construal of language as the house of being within which all beings are disclosed in the nothingness of their being; and the understanding of the origin of timespace arising from an inceptual act that is, concomitantly, a contraction and an expansion, a withholding of the boundless ground that results in the self-extending delineation of boundary. The comparative analysis of Heidegger and kabbalah is justified hermeneutically by the principle that things belong together precisely because of the unbridgeable chasm that keeps them separate: what is the same is the same in virtue of being different.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Olin Humanities, Room 2046:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Andy Rotman Professor of Religion Smith College
Monday, November 2, 2015
A talk on issues of sexual identity and Jewish tradition featuring two leading queer rabbis. Olin Language Center, Room 1158:00 pm – 10:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Rabbi Kerry Chaplin of Vassar College and Rabbi Steve Greenberg will speak about the complicated relationships, past, present, and future, between Judaism and the LGBTQ world. This event is co-sponsored by Religion, Jewish Stduies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the JSO, the QSA, Trans Life Collective, and the Center for Spiritual Life. Dessert will be served.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Trans-Pacific Visions in Asian American Art Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This talk focuses on the Asia Pacific region and selected works by contemporary U.S.-based Asian American artists that engage themes of trans-Pacific circulation and global systems of cross-cultural exchange. Based on Dr. Machida’s current research in Hawai’i, this talk draws attention to islands as a generative framework to analyze and to compare art in the Asia Pacific region and the Americas. The Pacific, with more islands than the world’s other oceans combined, is above all an island realm. Accordingly Islands and associated oceanic imaginaries exert a powerful hold on works by artists who trace their ancestral origins to coastal East and Southeast Asia and Oceania. All are invited to this talk about these exciting contemporary artists.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Robert Rozehnal Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies, Lehigh University Within the 'spiritual marketplace' of American religious life, Cyberspace offers tech-savvy Muslims an alternative platform for narratives, networking and ritual experience. Since the adoption of the printing press, Sufis have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adopt and adapt to emerging media technologies. Even so, the use of the Internet by global Sufi communities remains largely unexplored by academic scholarship. Drawing on new research, this presentation examines how several distinct American Sufi orders utilize Cyberspace as a unique mediascape for the refashioning of authority, identity and ritual performance.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Dennis Dalton Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Barnard College, and author of Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action and several other books.
The value of forgiveness was central to Gandhi's teaching as well as to his effectiveness as the leader of India's independence movement. The lecture will describe specific cases where Gandhi demonstrated its power throughout his career, from 1919 to 1947. In the broadest sense, the virtue of forgiveness has an enduring and universal meaning so the lecture starts with its recent expression by members of Emmanuel Church in Charleston and includes commentary on Martin Luther King's teaching. This shows its relevance to conflict resolution in America today. From this cross cultural narrative comes the question of what we may learn from Gandhi's example about the redeeming force of forgiveness?
Thursday, September 3, 2015
RKC 103 Interested in applying for a Fulbright Grant, a Watson Fellowship, or another postgraduate scholarship or fellowship? This information session will cover application procedures, deadlines, and suggestions for crafting a successful application. Applications will be due later this month, so be sure to attend one of these two sessions!
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center, Room 101 Shobhana Xavier PhD Candidate at Wilfrid Laurier-Waterloo University in the Religion and Culture DepartmentSufism in America forms a formative current of Islamic and non-Islamic spirituality and religiosity. In the American context Sufism was present ritually among some early African American indentured slaves of the 17th century, while Sufism’s Persian poetic traditions were influential in the circles of American literary masters, such as the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. But the systemic proliferation of Sufism is often cited as emerging with the arrival of Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927) in 1910. Sufi communities have now institutionalized and are seminal manifestations of Islam and spirituality across America. As the demographics of Sufi communities transform in the 21st century in America, these movements are also contending with issues of authority, gender and legitimacy. How are issues of legitimacy of Sufism within Islam or the role of women in Sufi American movements being negotiated? How is the role of the classical Sufi shaykh (master) unfolding in the American context? As a means to explore these questions within the development of Sufism in North America, this talk situates the historical development of Sufism in America and then uses the case study of the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, which is headquartered in Philadelphia with transnational connections to Sri Lanka, to explore how these negotiations are unfolding in one particular Sufi community and what this can tell us about Sufism in America, but also Sufism in contemporary global contexts.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Screening of Tibetan Stories, followed by a panel discussion, with film maker Russell Avery, Lama Tenzin Yignyen, who is creating a sand mandala in the RKC, Tuesday April 7-11, Rae Erin Dachille-Hey, Instructor of Religion, and Kay Larson, art critic and author. Moderated by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, Buddhist Associate Chaplain
Thursday, April 9, 2015
with Seema Golestaneh Olin Humanities, Room 101 As the Iranian authorities continue to frown upon public gatherings, Sufi Orders have sought alternative methods of convening while still complying with city regulations. One informal Sufi group in the city of Isfahan does so by meeting in private homes and rotating locations each week. Rather than circulate the specific address of a meeting place, however, the mystics instead instruct the others to meet at a nearby intersection, and then broadcast music from a courtyard or house to alert the members to the exact location. This in turn allows them to locate the site by listening for and ultimately “following” the sounds. It is in this way that the Sufis utilize the practice of intentional listening (sama) and mystical ideals of wandering to navigate the politics of Iranian urban space. This talk will hence examine the utilization of mystical epistemologies to lead to the emergence of an alternative Islamic space in post-revolutionary Iran.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center Tuesday, April 7 - Saturday, April 11 RKC Lobby Closing Ceremony and Procession to waterfall: April 11 at noon
Screening of short films from "Tibetan Stories" Thursday, April 9, 7-9 pm. Weis Cinema followed by a panel discussion with film maker Russell Avery, Lama Tenzin Yignyen, Rae Erin Dachille-Hey and Kay Larson.
Free and open to the public
The Venerable Lama Tenzin Yignen, Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama’s home monastery Namgyal and professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will install a sand mandala, a “cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or celestial mansion” of the Buddha of Compassion, over the course of six days. Just when it is complete, the mandala will be ritually cut, swept together, and taken in procession down to the river in this performed lesson on impermanence.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room As the next installment of the Center for Civic Enagegment panel discussion series we will be unpacking the possible issues surrounding and arising from the portrayal of American Muslims in the media.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Kline, Faculty Dining Room This year's Passover seder will take place on Friday evening, April 3, at 6:15 pm in the Faculty Dining Room. There is no charge and all are invited, but you must sign up by Tuesday, March 31. To sign up, click on the following link and answer the six simple questions: Bard College Passover Seder Registration 2015
Chag samneach (happy holiday)!
Friday, April 3, 2015
worship service Chapel of the Holy Innocents Good Friday worship service
Friday, March 27, 2015
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us for an informal evening service at 6:30 and a home-made vegetarian Shabbat dinner at 7:30. All are warmly invited to attend -- no experience necessary!
NOTE: Next week, Friday April 3, there will be NO reguilar Shabbat. Instead we will celebrate Passover with our Passover Seder. Register for the Seder by using this link: Bard College Passover Seder Registration 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Passing Ellenville is an indepent flim by Gene Fisher that was screened at the 2014 World Wide Film Festivals. The film features two transgendered young adults in Ellenville in Ulster County. The filmakers and Film stars will be in attendance for a brief Q & A after the film.
Movie trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzsbuGYCTJc
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Erin Johnston Department of Sociology Princeton University Olin 307 Perceived failures and shortcomings abound in the process of spiritual formation: spiritual experiences are few and far between, progress is difficult to evaluate, and the lofty ideals of the aspired-to spiritual identity are unachievable for the majority of practitioners. In addition, training programs in spiritual disciplines such as yoga and meditation explicitly encourage practitioners to identify and acknowledge their failures and shortcomings both within and outside of formal practice. Given the frequency of these experiences and the well-known tendency for repeated failures to elicit exit, why do people continue to engage in these practices? Drawing from case studies of two organizations dedicated to the transmission of personal spiritual disciplines – an Integral Yoga studio and a Catholic prayer house – I examine how teachers and students interpret, account for, and respond to perceived shortcoming in the course of training. In this talk, I will argue that these communities encourage what I call a compassionate growth model in relation to experiences of perceived failure: an ideal typical discourse which normalizes, universalizes, and even valorizes failure, and which balances internal and external attributions in accounting for these experiences. In addition, I will show how practitioners struggle to not only enact but to fully internalize this perspective, and demonstrate the important role that interaction with fellow journeymen plays in the iterative process of failure, interpretation and persistence. Finally, I will argue that the official, socially-sanctioned approach to failure becomes a key element in the definition, performance, and identification of the spiritual self, serving as a marker of commitment and authenticity and distinguishing members and the community from culturally relevant others.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Campus Center, Multipurpose RoomThe panelists will include:
Iskandar Atajanow, Bard College Muslim Chaplain
Ian Buruma, Bard College Human Rights and Journalism professor
Sarah Egan, Bard College Science, Technology, and Society professor of sociology
Dr Umar Ahmad, one of the Presidents of Masjid an Noor in Poughkeepsie
Refreshments Provided!
Friday, March 20, 2015
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2015 Lenten Lecture Series, "Jesus: in his own terms," led by Bruce Chilton. A brief descrition follows.
Research during the past two decades has brought Jesus into focus as a rabbi within Judaism, whose influence produced a new religious system. The series this Lent will identify five new insights, confirmed by the most recent scholarship, which illuninate the emergence and the future of Christianity as never before.
The IAT Lenten lecture series will be held on the following five Fridays: February 27, March 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
The presentation is free and will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Lunch will be at noon. For lunch, we will be providing box lunches, and there will be a cost that will be determined at a later time. Lunch reservations are required and can be made by calling 845-758-7279.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2015 Lenten Lecture Series, "Jesus: in his own terms," led by Bruce Chilton. A brief descrition follows.
Research during the past two decades has brought Jesus into focus as a rabbi within Judaism, whose influence produced a new religious system. The series this Lent will identify five new insights, confirmed by the most recent scholarship, which illuninate the emergence and the future of Christianity as never before.
The IAT Lenten lecture series will be held on the following five Fridays: February 27, March 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
The presentation is free and will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Lunch will be at noon. For lunch, we will be providing box lunches, and there will be a cost that will be determined at a later time. Lunch reservations are required and can be made by calling 845-758-7279.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2015 Lenten Lecture Series, "Jesus: in his own terms," led by Bruce Chilton. A brief descrition follows.
Research during the past two decades has brought Jesus into focus as a rabbi within Judaism, whose influence produced a new religious system. The series this Lent will identify five new insights, confirmed by the most recent scholarship, which illuninate the emergence and the future of Christianity as never before.
The IAT Lenten lecture series will be held on the following five Fridays: February 27, March 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
The presentation is free and will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Lunch will be at noon. For lunch, we will be providing box lunches, and there will be a cost that will be determined at a later time. Lunch reservations are required and can be made by calling 845-758-7279.
Monday, March 2, 2015
A lecture by Dr. Jyrki Kallio Hegeman 102 What is behind the revival of tradition in modernizing China?
The presentation discusses the various interpretations of Confucianism which have prevailed during different historical eras, as well as the contemporary significance of Confucianism in China, East Asia, and the world.
Confucianism is enjoying a revival in China. During the last century, it was rejected by the revolutionaries as reactionary, but recently the Chinese government has started promoting traditional values associated with Confucianism, such as harmony, decency and law-abidingness. At the same time, signs of a more spontaneous revival can be seen on the grass-roots level, such as parents sending their children to Confucian "Sunday schools" to study the classics by rote. Many academics have started researching the roots of Confucianism, some arguing that its "true" nature is not in line with the collectivist values which the government advocates, but in individual self-enlightenment, instead.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will host the 2015 Lenten Lecture Series, "Jesus: in his own terms," led by Bruce Chilton. A brief descrition follows.
Research during the past two decades has brought Jesus into focus as a rabbi within Judaism, whose influence produced a new religious system. The series this Lent will identify five new insights, confirmed by the most recent scholarship, which illuninate the emergence and the future of Christianity as never before.
The IAT Lenten lecture series will be held on the following five Fridays: February 27, March 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
The presentation is free and will begin at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Lunch will be at noon. For lunch, we will be providing box lunches, and there will be a cost that will be determined at a later time. Lunch reservations are required and can be made by calling 845-758-7279.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Najam I. Haider Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion Barnard College The Shi‘i School represents one of the two major divisions within Islam, the other being the majority Sunni school.The Sunni-Shi'a division first materialized in the 8th century in the important Iraqi city of Kufa. This talk will explore the birth and development of Shi'i identity. Specifically, it will explore how the early Shi‘a carved out an independent communal identity through distinctive ritual practices and within separate sacred spaces. In doing so, it will address two seminal controversies in the study of early Islam, namely, when and how the Shi‘a came to see themselves as a distinctive community. It will also address the important connection between narrative and memory in the history of religious communities.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
A Service of Celebration and Remembrance Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Community Church at Bard will host a worship service in honor of Black History Month - "Make a Joyful Noise!: A Service of Celebration and Remembrance” - on Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 4pm in the Bard Chapel of the Holy Innocents. This program will feature readings and music drawn from a range of Africa-American church and social justice traditions. Following the service there will be a community pot-luck supper. All are welcome!
Guest speaker for this event will be Jason Craige Harris.
An educator, speaker, writer, and minister, Jason Craige Harris specializes in matters related to spirituality, ethics, justice, and knowledge activism. He is an instructor at Friends Seminary in NYC where he teaches the craft of written expression and how to observe religious and ethical systems critically. Mr. Harris also serves on the board of Postcolonial Networks, where he facilitates conversations on religion, violence, decolonization, and democracy.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Chaplaincy: Center for Spiritual Life – Embellishment Resnick Commons The Center for Spiritual Life is located in the basement of Village Dorm A and hosts a space used by the Jewish community celebrating Shabbat and other activities, the Buddhist Meditation Room, the Luqman Hall for the prayer of Muslim students, the Center for the Study of James the Brother, and a kosher/halal vegetarian kitchen. The space is also used by other spiritual groups like the Bard Christian Fellowship, the Hindu Student Organization, Earth-based practices, for the discussion series “What do you believe?” and A Space Underground, a substance-free social space Friday and Saturday nights.
The chaplaincy is seeking to decorate the walls of the common area in order to reflect the various spiritual paths on campus. We are welcoming any media and size (please visit the space in order to find out about possible dimensions), but are looking for an active reflection of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and any other faith tradition – covering the range from explicit symbolic depiction to abstract collages incorporating various faiths.
Ten art works will be selected with an award of $500 each. Funding for the awardees is provided by the Anna Jones Fellowship. The works will be displayed during the Baccalaureate in May, prior to their installation at the Center for Spiritual Life.
Deadline for proposals is April 1, 2015. Please submit a digital photo of the artwork, plus an artist statement (500 words) explaining your approach and intention.
The judges include Hap Tivey, artist in residence at the Fine Arts Department, the Bard chaplaincy, and student representatives from the spiritual groups. The competition is overseen by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, Buddhist Associate Chaplain, who graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies in 1999, worked there as a Curatorial Archivist for almost 10 years, specialized in her PhD on spiritual, contemporary art, and who is also an artist.
Come build a palace in time! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) A great 20th century Jewish thinker (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel) said that all week long we focus on "stuff" -- building it, acquiring it, fixing it, obssessing over it. Shabbat, he said, is dedicated to ignoring stuff and focusing on time. Join us for Shabbat services (6:30) and a home-cooked vegetarian dinner (7:30) as we luxuriate in spending time with one another, and relish the warmth of a very caring community! All are welcome to attend!
Friday, February 13, 2015
Village G On Tuesday, February 10th, 3 Muslims were shot and killed at Chapel Hill in North Carolina. A woman, her husband, and student. The local and national news were exceedingly slow to react on the tragedy and only began to give the story minor attention after Muslims non-Muslims took their frustration to social media and tweeted "#MuslimLivesMatter". Their outcries were heard across the country and despite this, so many are still silent. When a Muslim is being accused of a terrorist attack, it makes national news in seconds, however when Muslims are killed who speaks up?
Many students have spoken up about wanting to bring this issue to attention and we've come together to organize a peaceful walk on campus this Friday (February 13th) at 6 pm.
We will meet in front of Village G on Central Campus where we will then walk, holding signs and posters, to the front of the Campus Center. Here we will have a candle lighting and gather in a few minutes of silence for the victims who were murdered. Students may speak up and share their thoughts and after we will orderly disperse. The whole demonstration will be less than an hour. We encourage faculty and students to join together and show that Muslim Lives Matter.
Feel free to make posters, flyers, etc and share this event with everyone you know on campus.
Please contact the people below if you are interested in helping.
Hegeman 102 Jonathan A. Young, Ph.D. College of the Holy Cross
"Guardians of the Refuge: Monks, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka"
When considering the relationship between religion and violence, Buddhism is often noted as an exception. Yet, evidence from various regions of the Buddhist world reveals that the tradition, unfortunately, shows no immunity to violence. This talk explores the careers of politically engaged Buddhist monks in contemporary Sri Lanka, discusses the conflicts they have perpetuated, and considers what the Sri Lankan case contributes to a broader understanding of religion, politics, and violence in our world.
Monday, February 2, 2015
An opportunity for students, staff, and faculty to discuss personal beliefs of all sorts Center for Spiritual Life (Basement of Village A) Join us for the next round of "What do YOU believe" in which all members of the Bard community have an opportunity to share and discuss their personal beliefs, be they religious, philosophical, artistic, political, or anything else. This session's special guest will be Kolrick "Kole" Greathouse. Refreshments will be served! This monthly event is sponsored by the Chaplaincy.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Olin Humanities, Room 101 Annabella C. Pitkin, Ph.D. Barnard College, Columbia University will give a talk
“THE MEMORY OF MIRACLES: MODES OF TIBETAN BUDDHIST POWER”Accounts of holy individuals who display miraculous abilities appear frequently in Tibetan Buddhist literature, and remain popular among Tibetan Buddhists today. This talk examines the significance of miracle narratives in the life story of one twentieth century Tibetan Buddhist master. Contemporary Tibetan Buddhists remember and interpret his miracles in ways that reveal multiple Buddhist understandings of faith, reason, and power, and suggest the potential of Buddhist contributions to debates about religion and secularism in the modern world.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Beginning at this season last year, our community suffered brutal losses. Evelina Brown, Sarah McCausland, Mark Becker, and Lizzie Stimson all gave of their vibrant talents and passions in a way that helped the rest of us grow. The loss to their families exceeds ours, but our recognition of them helps to heal all those who loved them.
We invite you to join the Chaplaincy in a Vigil of Remembrance on Saturday, 31 January at 6:00 in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents. If you cannot attend, please take a moment at that time to recollect those whom we have lost.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Join us for each of the first three nights of the holiday! All over campus Come light Hanukkah candles, sing, and enjoy holiday snacks!
Tuesday, Dec. 16, 5:30 p.m. in (and sponsored by) the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Wednesday, Dec. 17, 4:15 p.m. in the lounge of Village Dorm C (sponsored and hosted by the Dean of Students Office) Thursday, Dec. 18, 5:30 p.m. in (and sponsored by) the Admissions Office.
Happy Hanukkah to all!
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, December 12, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, December 12, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, December 8, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, December 7, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, December 5, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, December 5, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, December 1, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, November 30, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, November 28, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, November 28, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, November 24, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, November 23, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, November 21, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, November 21, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, November 17, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Monday, November 17, 2014
"In Search of Mandalas: An Artist's Journey Through the Indian Himalayas" Hegeman 106 Eva Lee (Bard class of 1987) "Mandalas in the Himalayas" MFA, Hunter College, 2000 Visual artist and filmmaker Current Fulbright project on Indo-Tibetan Mandalas
In this talk, artist and experimental filmmaker Eva Lee will share experiences from her 2013-14 Fulbright research on 10th-12th c. Buddhist mandalas in ancient Tibetan monasteries of Spiti, Lahaul, and Ladakh. Her presentation will include examples of these Indo-Tibetan mandalas, as well as contemporary Tibetan ones, with discussion on their aesthetic structure and sacred purpose. Also shown will be exclusive video of the astonishing interior of Tabo Monastery's main temple, the famed Tsug Lhakhang . The artist will screen her latest experimental work--a five minute long abstract short--to show how her research and experience with Buddhist philosophy inspires her animations.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, November 14, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, November 14, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, November 10, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Monday, November 10, 2014
Barry Flood, Professor of Humanities, Institute of Fine Arts and College of Arts and Sciences, NYU Olin Humanities, Room 102 Although recent controversies about the historical representation of the Prophet Muhammad have focused on figural paintings, these were relatively rare and circulated in a limited milieu. More commonly, the Prophet was represented metonymically, by depictions of his footprint or sandal, for example. The most famous relic of the Prophet's sandal was kept in Damascus; from the twelfth century onwards, images of this sandal relic were generated by tracing its outline. Such tracings were believed to circulate the blessings (baraka) conferred by this cherished vestige through contact with the body of the Prophet. The copying of the sandal relic continued into modernity, when new print technologies and photography were applied to the reproduction of its image. The deployment of modern technologies of mass (re)production to the circulation of the relic as an image may be related to debates within Islam about the acceptability of relics, shrine veneration and mediation, debates that continue until the present day. However, the ability of mass-produced images to transport and transmit the charisma of the original relic also raises interesting questions about the nature of images, copies and mediation.
Sponsored by Art History, Middle Eastern Studies, and Religion Programs
Sunday, November 9, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, November 7, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, November 7, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, November 3, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Monday, November 3, 2014
Olin 101 Valerie Doescher (Bard class of 2011) "Religion Alums on Life after Bard" Program Associate, Coalition for the International Criminal Court
Sunday, November 2, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 2, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, October 31, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, October 31, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will be hosting the Fall 2014 Advent Luncheon Lecture Series, "Futures of Christianity and the Role of Rabbi Jesus," led by Bruce Chilton.
Last year our series dealt with the historical development of Christianity; we deployed systems analysis to understand the radical changes that have marked that history. This autumn, our foucs will be on how differing systems of Christianity interact today, and the likely results of their dialogue and conflict.
There will be a five lecture series beginning on Friday, October 3 and continuing on October 10, 17, 24, and 31st. The lecture series will be held at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch is at noon and the cost of lunch will be determined at a later date. There is no cost for the lecture.
If you have any questions, please call 845-758-7279 or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Postwar Systems Theory, Cybernetic Gurus, and Postmodern Stories of the Worlds to Come Reem-Kayden Center Room 103 Guest lecturer R. John Williams (Yale)
From the mid-1940s to the late-1950s, a new mode of ostensibly secular prophecy emerged from within the authoritative sphere of the American military-industrial-academic complex, spreading quickly throughout the world in technocratic and managerial organizations. This new mode of projecting forward was marked by assumptions about the inherent multiplicity of possible futures as distinct from more powerfully singular visions of “the” future. This presentation tracks the development of this transformation in two phases: the first computational, secular, and cybernetic, and the second, narratological, quasi-religious, and generally committed to various "oriental" philosophies. Questions addressed will include: Is the postmodern era, as some have described it, an “end of temporality”? Or is the postmodern narrative condition, rather, an intense multiplication of temporal experience? Is it possible that the sheer number of stories we tell ourselves about the future may not be as progressive a practice as we tend to assume it is? How did we arrive at a present with so many possible futures?
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Written and Directed by Matt and Erica Hinton Campus Center, Weis Cinema Come learn about one of the oldest forms of American music, shapenote singing, which is still practiced in many parts of the United States and abroad. This documentary features interviews with longtime singers in this tradition, as well as many minutes of sound and footage of the songs themselves.
The screening will be followed by a brief Q & A period.
Sponsored by Bard Ethnomusicology
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, October 27, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, October 26, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, October 24, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, October 24, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will be hosting the Fall 2014 Advent Luncheon Lecture Series, "Futures of Christianity and the Role of Rabbi Jesus," led by Bruce Chilton.
Last year our series dealt with the historical development of Christianity; we deployed systems analysis to understand the radical changes that have marked that history. This autumn, our foucs will be on how differing systems of Christianity interact today, and the likely results of their dialogue and conflict.
There will be a five lecture series beginning on Friday, October 3 and continuing on October 10, 17, 24, and 31st. The lecture series will be held at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch is at noon and the cost of lunch will be determined at a later date. There is no cost for the lecture.
If you have any questions, please call 845-758-7279 or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, October 20, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Monday, October 20, 2014
Olin 101 Amanda Gott (Bard class of 1996) "Religion Alums on Life after Bard" MDiv, Illiff School of Theology, 2001 Rector, Grace and St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Hamden, CT
Sunday, October 19, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, October 17, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, October 17, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will be hosting the Fall 2014 Advent Luncheon Lecture Series, "Futures of Christianity and the Role of Rabbi Jesus," led by Bruce Chilton.
Last year our series dealt with the historical development of Christianity; we deployed systems analysis to understand the radical changes that have marked that history. This autumn, our foucs will be on how differing systems of Christianity interact today, and the likely results of their dialogue and conflict.
There will be a five lecture series beginning on Friday, October 3 and continuing on October 10, 17, 24, and 31st. The lecture series will be held at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch is at noon and the cost of lunch will be determined at a later date. There is no cost for the lecture.
If you have any questions, please call 845-758-7279 or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, October 16, 2014
The LAST (but not least!) of the fall Jewish holidays Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Simchat Torah (literally "Rejoicing in the Torah") is the holiday on which we end, and immediately re-commence, the reading of the Torah. Come dance with the Torah, eat sweets, and celebrate with us! Music provided by the incomparable Bard Klezmer Ensemble! All are invited!
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, October 13, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, October 12, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, October 10, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, October 10, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will be hosting the Fall 2014 Advent Luncheon Lecture Series, "Futures of Christianity and the Role of Rabbi Jesus," led by Bruce Chilton.
Last year our series dealt with the historical development of Christianity; we deployed systems analysis to understand the radical changes that have marked that history. This autumn, our foucs will be on how differing systems of Christianity interact today, and the likely results of their dialogue and conflict.
There will be a five lecture series beginning on Friday, October 3 and continuing on October 10, 17, 24, and 31st. The lecture series will be held at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch is at noon and the cost of lunch will be determined at a later date. There is no cost for the lecture.
If you have any questions, please call 845-758-7279 or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Enjoy the Jewish harvest festival in the Bard Sukkah! Outside Kline The festival of Sukkot (a.k.a. "Booths," "Tabernacles") starts Wed. evening Oct. 8 and runs through Wed. evening, Oct. 15. It is celebrated by eating meals in a sukkah, a temporary outdoor structure with an open roof through which we can see the stars. All are invited to eat, study, relax, and hang out in the Bard sukkah, outside Kline Dining Commons!
Monday, October 6, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Monday, October 6, 2014
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Join the discussion with this panel on the events surrounding Ferguson and issues of police militarization, race and the justice system.
Panelists:
Alexandra Cox, Assistant Professor of Sociology, SUNY New Paltz Quinton Cross, President and Executive Director of Staley B.Keith Social Justice Center Simon Gilhooley, Assistant Professor of Political Studies Allison McKim, Assistant Professor of Sociology Delia Mellis, BPI Director of College Writing
Moderated by Shari Stiell-Quashie '16
Event followed by a discussion on campus climate culture in the George Ball Lounge at 7PM, sponsored by the Multicultural Diversity Committee.
Photo by David Broome, UPI.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, October 3, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, October 3, 2014
All are invited to join for any part of our observances Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, will start at sundown this Friday, October 3, and will end Saturday, Oct. 4 at 7:15 pm. We would love to have you participate! Here's what you need to know in advance:
*Evening services start PROMPTLY at 6 pm (not 6 pm "Bard time"!). The fast begins then, so plan an early dinner accordingly!
*Morning services start at 10 a.m. and run about 3 hours. After that, well be hanging out, chatting, reflecting, remembering, and laughing (and most likely talking about food!) all afternoon. At 5:30, we'll start a brief memorial service (Yizkor) followed by Ne'ilah (concluding service) that will end promptly at 7:15.
*At 7:15 we will have a community-wide, pot-luck, vegetarian break-the-fast. Bring vegetarian food if you can, but come whether you have food to contribute or not (there will be plenty for everyone!)
ALL members of the community are warmly invited to attend any parts of the day's observances! It all takes place in Beit Shalom-Salaam, Basement of Village A.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Institute of Advanced Theology will be hosting the Fall 2014 Advent Luncheon Lecture Series, "Futures of Christianity and the Role of Rabbi Jesus," led by Bruce Chilton.
Last year our series dealt with the historical development of Christianity; we deployed systems analysis to understand the radical changes that have marked that history. This autumn, our foucs will be on how differing systems of Christianity interact today, and the likely results of their dialogue and conflict.
There will be a five lecture series beginning on Friday, October 3 and continuing on October 10, 17, 24, and 31st. The lecture series will be held at the Bard College Chapel of the Holy Innocents. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period. Lunch is at noon and the cost of lunch will be determined at a later date. There is no cost for the lecture.
If you have any questions, please call 845-758-7279 or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, September 29, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, September 28, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, September 26, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, September 26, 2014
Join the Muslim Jum'ah prayer every Friday at 1pm Center for Spiritual Life: Village Dorm A Jum'ah will be held at the Islamic room in the basement of Village Dorm A.
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
"Two Cheers for Corporate Social Responsibility" A Talk in the Social Studies Divisional Colloquium Olin Humanities, Room 102 As “corporate social responsibility” enters the mainstream, itsinitials "CSR" have become a dirty word for a broad segment of the engaged public. The voluntariness, vagueness, and uncertainty of enforcement – not to mention blatant propaganda by companies – overwhelm any positive value, they argue. At the other end of the spectrum, CSR enthusiasts insist that it is leading to a new paradigm, even challenging traditional forms of corporate governance. Oft overlooked in the debate over CSR is the way in which public campaigns have driven change and, even more importantly, shaped the mechanisms that emerge. CSR continues to be as much the story of savvy activists leveraging global networks as it is the monitoring mechanisms and codes of conduct -- maybe more so. Peter Rosenblum will explore the current debate, drawing on his recently completed research on Indian Tea plantations and a soon-to-published chapter addressing advocates and critics of CSR.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
All are invited to join us as we welcome the Jewish New Year! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Rosh Hashanah Evening Service and Dinner, Wed., Sept. 24, 6:30 pm, in the MPR -- All are welcome, but sign-up in advance is required.Rosh Hashanah morning service, Thurs., Sept. 25, 25, 10:00 am, in Beit Shalom Salaam (Basement of Village A). Morning prayers, Torah reading, shofar-blowing, followed by kiddush (wine, grape juice) and apples and honey.Tashlich, Thurs., Sept. 25, 4:00 pm. We'll meet in the parking lot of the water treatment plant for a lovely walk to the waterfall where we'll do some singing, blow the shofar, throw some bread into the water, and eat apples and honey. NOTE: The walk is short, but it's on rocky, uneven ground. Those with mobility challenges might want to sit this one out. If it rains, we'll try again on Friday, Sept. 26Second evening of Rosh Hashanah, Thurs., Sept. 25, 7:00 pm, we'll meet for our regular Thursday evening cooking and baking for Shabbat, but we'll start with wine, grape juice, challah, and apples and honey for the new year! Beit Shalom-Salaam, Basement of Village A.
Questions? Contact Rabbi David Nelson, [email protected] or 201 956-8228.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, September 21, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, September 19, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, September 15, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, September 14, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, September 12, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Monday, September 8, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, Basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Sunday, September 7, 2014
A ritual with celebration of the light with prayer, music and a multitude of candles Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Catholic Mass is a sacred act of worship for students on campus.
Friday, September 5, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Buddhist Meditation Space, basement of Village Dorm A Two meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents The Bard Community Gospel Choir is a group founded to celebrate the Spirit in song. Drawing from the rich tradition of African-American gospel music, the ensemble will also perform Spiritual songs inspired by global music, musical theater, and popular music traditions. The Community Gospel Choir is a “come all” chorus that is open to all members of the Bard community and beyond. All are welcome!
Friday, August 29, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Discover how connections are made and friendships evolve in the kitchen. Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Every Thursday evening, we meet in the kitchen (Center for Spiritual Life, a.k.a. Basement of Village A) to bake challah and cook for Friday's Shabbat dinner. You do NOT need kitchen experience or skill! Just come over and lend a hand, and discover why communities are rooted in their kitchens!
Friday, August 22, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Friday, August 15, 2014
All are welcome! Beit Shalom-Salam (Basement of Village A) Join us every Friday evening at 6:30 pm for a relaxed, informal Shabbat service and a home-cooked, vegetarian Shabbat dinner. All members of the Bard community are invited, and there's no need to reserve or sign up in advance. Just show up, ready to enjoy an evening of warm conversatioon, good food, and a caring community!
Monday, May 12, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, May 11, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, May 5, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, May 4, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, April 28, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, April 27, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, April 21, 2014
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Featuring Gina Salá: kirtan vocals ... the heart and soul of bhakti Steve Gorn: bansuri flute ... melodious yoga sound Daniel Paul: tabla ... a spiraling river of time
Gina Salá ..."is a kirtan singer who captures the sweet silky essence of traditional Indian singing with a tenderness that draws the listener into the heart of devotion." —Yoga Journal Magazine
Monday, April 21, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, April 20, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Chapel of the Holy Innocents
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, April 14, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, April 13, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Campus Center, Weis Cinema6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Panel discussion with Roger Berkowitz, Bruce Chilton, Nicholas Lewis, Ann Lauterbach, and Matthew Mutter.
Please join us for a panel on Faith and Politics as seen through the lens of Marilynne Robinson's writing. Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, penned Housekeeping, the book chosen for the Bard Big Read.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, April 7, 2014
Hegeman 204 Leslie Peirce Silver Professor of History, New York University
What is it like to write a biography of someone about whom there is not much concrete evidence but an abundance of innuendo and blame? Known to Europe as Roxelana, “the Russian woman”, she was the slave concubine of Suleyman I (“the Magnificent”), who freed her and made her his wife, breaking multiple precedents to do so. Known as Hurrem among the Ottomans, she was blamed for Suleyman’s most controversial acts, while at the same time she was a great patron of charitable foundations built across the empire. This presentation will discuss some of the challenges and the pleasures of writing for a non-academic audience. All are welcome!
Sunday, April 6, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 31, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, March 30, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 24, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, March 23, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 17, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 17, 2014
Max Zahn, founder of "Buddha on Strike" Olin Humanities, Room 201 In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof declared, “There is an income gap in America, but just as important is a compassion gap.” He, like many on the left, invokes compassion as a precondition for moderate reform, let alone societal transformation. Is he right? If so, what might a truly more compassionate America look like? Activist and Buddha On Strike founder Max Zahn will explore how compassion functions in mainstream politics, and explain how a particularly Buddhist notion of compassion can move radical politics beyond demonizing elites and toward altering the structures that empower them. To demonstrate a case study in the efficacy and challenges of intentionally compassionate political action, he’ll draw upon his recent 42-day meditation protest outside Goldman Sachs headquarters.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 10, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, March 9, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, March 3, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, March 2, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
A poignant drama about arranged marriage in traditional Muslim and Jewish families Campus Center, Weis Cinema A film about a young Orthodox Jewish woman and a young observant Muslim woman who work together at a Brooklyn school and are both in the process of having marriages arranged for them by their families. Discussion to follow led by faculty from Religion, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Chaplaincy.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, February 23, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, February 17, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, February 16, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, February 10, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, February 9, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, February 3, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
A celebration of light in the evening Chapel of the Holy Innocents An ancient celebration of the Light (lucernaium) from the second century. Join us for liturgy, song, worship and a multitude of candles.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Mondays (7:00-8:30) & Thursdays (5:00-6:30) Center for Spirtual Life, basement of Village Dorm A Monday, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Thursday, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
=> 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and kinhin, walking meditation. First timers’ instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.
Buddhist Meditation Room, Center for Spiritual Life, Basement of Village Dorm A
Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz Buddhist Associate Chaplain at Bard College student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper & at Toshoji, Okayama (Japan)
Monday, December 16, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, December 9, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Brought to you by the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative and the Middle Eastern Studies Department Preston Over the course of two weekends the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative and the Middle Eastern Studies Department will be screening four incredible Palestinian films that present a complex, vivid portrait of Palestine that goes far beyond the headlines. These two documentaries and two narrative films capture the beauty, heartbreak, and spirit of Palestine. Join us for four nights of visiting Palestine without leaving Annandale-on-Hudson.
Friday, December 6, 2013
With Hudson Valley Balinese Gamelan Orchestras Giri Mekar and Chandra Kanchana
Olin Hall Featuring Guest Artists and Balinese Aficionados Dr. Pete Steele and Shoko Yamamuro; Artistic Director I Nyoman Suadin; and a cast of 40+ musicians.
Dr. Dorcinda Knauth and her Javanese Degung & Kacapi Suling ensembles: Gamelan Sekar Mawar and Sekar Ligar
Suggested donation $10. Bard staff, students & faculty: free of charge with ID.
Students 16 & under are free. Reservations are not necessary.
This concert is made possible by the Music, Asian Studies, and Religion Programs at Bard College. Also supported in part by The Woodstock Chimes Fund and Ulster Publishing.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, December 2, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, November 25, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Gabriel Blau, who graduated from Bard in 2002, now serves as the executive director of the Family Equality Council. Join us as he speaks about his journey as an LGBT activist, which started at Bard College.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Andrew Nicholson '94 Associate Professor Stony Brook University
Monday, November 11, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, November 4, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Friday, November 1, 2013
St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Rd. Barrytown, NY When the Roman Empire changed its view of Christianity, from persecuting it as a *superstitio* to accepting that it was a *religio*, the Church acclaimed Constantine as an agent of God. He returned the favor by a steady increase of privileges for Catholics, until the Empire became a Christian preserve. Once the connection between Church and State was forged, however, it provoked a series of unintended consequences that included the Reformation. That process saw the emergence of a Protestant empire at odds with Catholic claimants to the mantle of Constantine.The lecture series begins on Friday, October 4, and continues on the following Fridays: October 11, 18, 25, and November 1. All lectures in the series are sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology and take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. Lunch is at noon consisting of soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea at a cost of $6.00. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, October 28, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Friday, October 25, 2013
St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Rd. Barrytown, NY When the Roman Empire changed its view of Christianity, from persecuting it as a *superstitio* to accepting that it was a *religio*, the Church acclaimed Constantine as an agent of God. He returned the favor by a steady increase of privileges for Catholics, until the Empire became a Christian preserve. Once the connection between Church and State was forged, however, it provoked a series of unintended consequences that included the Reformation. That process saw the emergence of a Protestant empire at odds with Catholic claimants to the mantle of Constantine.The lecture series begins on Friday, October 4, and continues on the following Fridays: October 11, 18, 25, and November 1. All lectures in the series are sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology and take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. Lunch is at noon consisting of soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea at a cost of $6.00. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Olin Humanities, Room 104Pandit (or maestro) Sugato Nag is one of the finest contemporary artistes in the North Indian classical music tradition. A sitar virtuoso, his style presents a unique synthesis of the austere classicism of the Shahjahanpore Sarode Tradition in which he was trained and the intricate beauty of the more modern Imdadkhani Style. His lecture-demonstration will focus on introducing the audience to Hindustani or North Indian classical music, especially with respect to its implementation on the sitar.
All are welcome.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Friday, October 18, 2013
St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Rd. Barrytown, NY When the Roman Empire changed its view of Christianity, from persecuting it as a *superstitio* to accepting that it was a *religio*, the Church acclaimed Constantine as an agent of God. He returned the favor by a steady increase of privileges for Catholics, until the Empire became a Christian preserve. Once the connection between Church and State was forged, however, it provoked a series of unintended consequences that included the Reformation. That process saw the emergence of a Protestant empire at odds with Catholic claimants to the mantle of Constantine.The lecture series begins on Friday, October 4, and continues on the following Fridays: October 11, 18, 25, and November 1. All lectures in the series are sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology and take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. Lunch is at noon consisting of soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea at a cost of $6.00. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, October 14, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Friday, October 11, 2013
St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Rd. Barrytown, NY When the Roman Empire changed its view of Christianity, from persecuting it as a *superstitio* to accepting that it was a *religio*, the Church acclaimed Constantine as an agent of God. He returned the favor by a steady increase of privileges for Catholics, until the Empire became a Christian preserve. Once the connection between Church and State was forged, however, it provoked a series of unintended consequences that included the Reformation. That process saw the emergence of a Protestant empire at odds with Catholic claimants to the mantle of Constantine.The lecture series begins on Friday, October 4, and continues on the following Fridays: October 11, 18, 25, and November 1. All lectures in the series are sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology and take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. Lunch is at noon consisting of soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea at a cost of $6.00. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, October 7, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Friday, October 4, 2013
St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Rd. Barrytown, NY When the Roman Empire changed its view of Christianity, from persecuting it as a *superstitio* to accepting that it was a *religio*, the Church acclaimed Constantine as an agent of God. He returned the favor by a steady increase of privileges for Catholics, until the Empire became a Christian preserve. Once the connection between Church and State was forged, however, it provoked a series of unintended consequences that included the Reformation. That process saw the emergence of a Protestant empire at odds with Catholic claimants to the mantle of Constantine.The lecture series begins on Friday, October 4, and continues on the following Fridays: October 11, 18, 25, and November 1. All lectures in the series are sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology and take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 1114 River Road, Barrytown, NY. Lunch is at noon consisting of soup, bread, dessert, coffee and tea at a cost of $6.00. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. followed by a question and answer period.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, September 30, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, September 23, 2013
Bito Conservatory Performance Space in Blum One of the best Odissi (Indian) dancers in the world, Rahul Acharya and partner Donia Salem will perform "Sanjoga: The Dance of Cosmic Balance." This dance "explores Prakriti and Purusha, masculinity and femininity, the energy and the energetic, and movement and stasis within the context of Odissi dance." The performance will include discussion/demonstration of gender roles in this classical Indian devotional dance.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, September 16, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Meditation Room, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Mondays, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday, September 9, 2013
Sacred Space, basement of Village Dorm A 2 meditation rounds (each 30 min) and "kinhin," walking meditation.First timers' instructions for the initial 30 min, meditation following.All meditative traditions welcome!Led by Tatjana Myoko v. Prittwitz, student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper and Toshoji, Okayama, Japan.The meditation group also meets on Thursdays, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Catholic Mass Chapel of the Holy Innocents From the beginning to the end of the semester we have Catholic Mass every Sunday at 12:30 pm in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Bard Hall François Demange In conversation with Abou Farman (Department of Anthropology)François Demange (MA Anthropology) has been training with indigenous medicine people and practicing their healing methods since 1996 in both the Peruvian Amazon and in North America. He is considered one of the most experienced Westerners in the practice of the traditional Amazonian medicine called Vegetalismo, which is defined as the plant spirit medicine practice of that region. François is also a follower of the Red Path; he is a pipe carrier, a Sundancer, and has been adopted by the Dakota Nation. He uses a combination of spiritual and energetic methods to read, diagnose and address the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual imbalance in his patients. He is a Reiki Master and Co-Founder of Sacred Medicine Foundation.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Kline, College Room Irfana M. Hashmi New York University will give a talk Religion, Ethnicity, and the Economy of Space: Locating al-Azhar in Ottoman Cairo
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Campus Center, Weis CinemaEnglish Vinglish is a 2012 Indian comedy-drama film directed by Gauri Shinde and produced by R. Balki. It was made simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil and released on 5 October 2012.All films are free and open to the public.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Tejaswini Ganti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and its Program in Culture & Media at New York University. A visual anthropologist specializing in South Asia, her research interests include Indian cinema, anthropology of media, production cultures, visual culture, cultural policy, nationalism, neoliberalism, capitalism, ideologies of development and theories of globalization. She has been conducting ethnographic research about the social world and filmmaking practices of the Hindi film industry since 1996 and is the author of Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition, 2013).
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 AuditoriumDabangg is a 2010 Indian action film, directed by Abhinav Kashyap and produced by Arbaaz Khan under the Arbaaz Khan Productions. The lead actors include Arbaaz’s elder brother Salman Khan and Sonakshi Sinha.All films are free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Elizabeth Macy, Candidate for Ethnomusicology László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building
Monday, April 8, 2013
Procession to Waterfall RKC Lobby The Venerable Lama Tenzin Yignen, Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama’s home monastery Namgyal and visiting professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will install a sand mandala, a “cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or “celestial mansion” of the Buddha of Compassion, over the course of five days. Just when it is complete, the mandala will be ritually cut, swept together, and taken in procession down to the river in this performed lesson on impermanence.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
RKC Lobby The Venerable Lama Tenzin Yignen, Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama’s home monastery Namgyal and visiting professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will install a sand mandala, a “cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or “celestial mansion” of the Buddha of Compassion, over the course of five days. Just when it is complete, the mandala will be ritually cut, swept together, and taken in procession down to the river in this performed lesson on impermanence.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Mayanthi Fernando University of California & Wesleyan UniversityHow does the public/private distinction so central to secular-liberal democracy inflect the secular state's regulation of sex and religion? Focusing on contemporary France, this talk analyzes how political and legal practices aimed at securing secularity by rendering both sex and religion private paradoxically compel Muslim women to reveal in public the innermost details of their sexual and religious lives. That dual incitement to hide and to exhibit, and the grim consequences of exhibiting that which must be hidden, constitute "the cunning of secular power." Mayanthi Fernando is Assistant Professor Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently a visiting professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University for Spring 2013. Her first book is Asymmetries of the Republic: Islam, Secularism, and the Future of France, forthcoming from Duke University Press.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
RKC Lobby The Venerable Lama Tenzin Yignen, Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama’s home monastery Namgyal and visiting professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will install a sand mandala, a “cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or “celestial mansion” of the Buddha of Compassion, over the course of five days. Just when it is complete, the mandala will be ritually cut, swept together, and taken in procession down to the river in this performed lesson on impermanence.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 1994 Film Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, also known as HAHK, is a 1994 Indian musical romantic comedy family drama film directed by Sooraj R. Barjatya, and produced by Rajshri Productions. It is a remake of Rajshri’s earlier film Nadiya Ke Paar.All films are free and open to the public.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Maria Sonevytsky, Candidate for Ethnomusicology Talk Rescheduled for Original Date of April 2nd László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building This is a talk based upon doctoral research in the Ukraine among the Sunni Muslim indigenous group of Crimea.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 AuditoriumOm Shanti Om is a Bollywood musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Farah Khan. It stars Shahrukh Khan and Deepika Padukone in the lead roles while Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade, and Kirron Kher feature in supporting roles. 2007 Film.All films are free and open to the public.
Monday, March 11, 2013
“Memo to the Papal Conclave: The Crisis in Catholicism Beyond the Headlines”
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room The Center for Civic Engagement and the Religion Program at Bard College present Peter Steinfels, professor and co-director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, in a talk titled “Memo to the Papal Conclave: The Crisis in Catholicism Beyond the Headlines,” on Monday, March 11, at 7 p.m. in the Bertelsmann Campus Center Multipurpose Room. Admission is free and no reservations are necessary. For more information contact Karen Sullivan at [email protected], or call 845-758-7571.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Study the book of Esther, eat pizza, and Hamantaschen, and celebrate Purim! Kline, Faculty Dining Room Join us for intensive study of the biblical Book of Esther, plus food and much Purim levity. All are invited but please e-mail [email protected] to make a reservation by Friday, February 22 (so we can plan appropriate quantities of food). See you there!
Friday, December 7, 2012
All over campus! Each night of Hanukkah we will celebrate in a different location, with each night being sponsored by a different part of the Bard community. Each night will feature candle-lighting plus something special. ALL ARE INVITED!
Sat. Dec. 8, 8 pm JSO latke and doughnut bash, Beit Shalom Salaam (Basement of Village A)
Sun. Dec. 9, 6:00 pm at Festival of Lights, Bard Chapel
Tues. Dec. 11, 6:00 pm, 1st floor of Village C, latkes prepared by the Associate Dean of Students
Wed. Dec. 12, 5:30 pm sponsored by Julie Silverstein/Student Activities at the Campus Center Room 214
Thurs. Dec. 13, 4:30pm at the Hannah Arendt Center. We'll light candles, cook together and then eat and talk about Arendt and Hanukkah.
Fri. Dec. 14, 3:45 pm, sponsored by Leon Botsein at the President’s home
Sat. Dec. 15, 8 pm sponsored by J Street U at Beit Shalom-Salaam (Basement of Village A)
Friday, December 7, 2012
All over campus! Each night of Hanukkah we will celebrate in a different location, with each night being sponsored by a different part of the Bard community. Each night will feature candle-lighting plus something special. ALL ARE INVITED!
Sat. Dec. 8, 8 pm JSO latke and doughnut bash, Beit Shalom Salaam (Basement of Village A)
Sun. Dec. 9, 6:00 pm at Festival of Lights, Bard Chapel
Tues. Dec. 11, 6:00 pm, 1st floor of Village C, latkes prepared by the Associate Dean of Students
Wed. Dec. 12, 5:30 pm sponsored by Julie Silverstein/Student Activities at the Campus Center Room 214
Thurs. Dec. 13, 4:30pm at the Hannah Arendt Center: We'll light candles, cook together and then eat and talk about Arendt and Hanukkah.
Fri. Dec. 14, 3:45 pm, sponsored by Leon Botsein at the President’s home
Sat. Dec. 15, 8 pm sponsored by J Street U at Beit Shalom-Salaam (Basement of Village A)
Monday, November 26, 2012
Olin 102 Andrew March Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Since the 2011 revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, political life in those countries has been dominated by so-called "moderate Islamist" parties. These parties proclaim the acceptance of constitutional democracy and political power-sharing, while at the same time endorsing shari'a law as the ultimate source of legitimate power in a Muslim country. This talk approaches the paradox of Islamic democracy through the lens of the concept of sovereignty in contemporary Islamic political theology. What does it mean to hold that both God and the people can be said to be "sovereign" and what unresolved paradoxes remain at the level of theory?
Friday, November 16, 2012
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Seonjae Sunim Renown South Korean Buddhist nun, scholar, and master chef Seonjae Sunim comes to Bard College to share her philosophy of dietary and spiritual well-being. Considered an icon in Korean temple cuisine, Seonjae will share her experience as an advocate of a return to locally-informed traditional Korean food culture and environmentally-conscious cooking. She may even share a recipe for kimch’i made of vegetables grown in the Hudson Valley.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Reem-Kayden Center Room 102 Katharine K. Wilkinson, DPhil
How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a MIddle Ground on Climate Change