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The Chaplaincy at Bard College

Professor Karen Barkey Receives Grant to Support Research on Historical Religious Pluralism

Professor Karen Barkey has been awarded a 2024 Expenses Grant from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in support of her upcoming book project, Successful Religious Pluralism in the Mediterranean: A Comparative-Historical Study. The grant also supports Barkey’s work with a Bard undergraduate who is transcribing, translating, and organizing Greek interviews into English.

Professor Karen Barkey Receives Grant to Support Research on Historical Religious Pluralism

Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Chair of Sociology and Religion Karen Barkey has been awarded a 2024 Expenses Grant from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. This grant was awarded in support of her upcoming book project, Successful Religious Pluralism in the Mediterranean: A Comparative-Historical Study. The grant supports Barkey’s archival trips to religious communities including Marseille Espérance, a faith leaders’ committee in Marseille, France, and the Simon Attias Synagogue and Haim Zafrani Research Center in Essaouira, Morocco. It also supports Barkey’s work with a Bard undergraduate who is transcribing, translating, and organizing Greek interviews into English.

Professor Barkey has taught at Bard since 2021, during which time she was named the 2021-22 Germaine Tillion Chair of Mediterranean Studies from the Institute for Advanced Studies D'aix-Marseille. Her current research explores how religious coexistence, toleration and sharing occurred in different historical sites under Ottoman rule. Previously, she focused on the comparative and historical study of the Ottoman Empire in relation to France and the Russian Empire.

Post Date: 02-17-2025

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).
Watch the livestream

Post Date: 10-14-2022

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.”

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.
Read More

Post Date: 06-28-2022
More News
  • Professor Shai Secunda Awarded $40,000 National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship for his Monograph on the Formation of the Talmud

    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.).
    Read the NEH announcement here

    Post Date: 03-22-2022
  • Nabanjan Maitra Joins Faculty of Bard College’s Interdisciplinary Study of Religions Program

    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 the Division of Social Studies. His tenure-track appointment begins in the 2022-2023 academic year. Maitra’s focus of research and teaching will be in 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.

    Post Date: 02-02-2022
  • Interview: Professor of Religion Bruce Chilton Talks About His New Book, The Herods: Murder, Politics, and the Art of Succession

    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.
    Full Story in the Washington Post

    Post Date: 08-24-2021
  • Alumni Spotlight: Tyler Williams Graduates with His Third Bard College Degree

    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.

    Post Date: 06-08-2021
  • Sociologist Karen Barkey Joins Bard Faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion

    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 Study of 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.
    # # #
    (4/09/21)
     

    Post Date: 04-09-2021
  • 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

    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.

    Post Date: 09-26-2019

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2023

Monday, December 11, 2023
Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, PhD
Olin 102  5:00 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 103  4:00 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 102  5:00 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 Hall  12:00 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 Hall  12:00 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 Hall  12:00 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 201  3:30 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 Hall  12:00 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 201  4:30 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 Hall  5:30 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 Hall  5:30 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 102  4:30 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 Hall  5:30 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


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