Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Divinity School Dean David N. Hempton discusses the role of HDS at Harvard, as well as the role of religion and ethics at other Harvard Schools with Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean James Ryan, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria. The panel was part of HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

Harvey Cox, HDS Hollis Professor of Divinity Emeritus, discusses his recent publication, The Market as God. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Listen to Kwame Dawes read "To Buy a Pair of Shoes" for the last day of our #NationalPoetryMonth 2017 celebration. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2013.

Listen to Joanna Klink read "Feverish" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2009.

Listen to Kim Garcia read "Genesis Suite" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn 2006.

Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye read "It's Good to Sit Down with a Racist Every Now and Then" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Winter/Spring 2012.

Dr. Anna Sun, HDS Berggruen Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Kenyon College gives a lecture based on her research project for the year, "The Logic of Prayer in Contemporary China." Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Listen to Tania Runyan read "Paul's Blinding of Elymas" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2012.

Eliza Griswold, HDS’s inaugural Berggruen Fellow, delivers her talk, "New Poems and a Talk on Syrian Artists in Exile," on April 13, 2017, at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS. Griswold, a poet, writer, and journalist, read from poems she's written this year at HDS, and present the blueprint of her Berggruen Fellowship project mapping Syrian artists, filmmakers, poets, and writers since the revolution began. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

HDS students Jiaying Ding, Sally Fritsche, and Chandra Plowden deliver sermons for the Billings Preaching Prize Competition during Noon Service on April 12, 2017. The annual preaching competition is open to second- and third-year MDiv students. In addition, Denson Staples, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and Mandi Rice, the non-biblical text reading winner, each read their scripture passage Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel on Resistance and Complicity to Empire Through Political Movements panel featuring: Zulfiyya Abdurahimova: PhD candidate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Nadeem Mazen: Cambridge City Councilor, first elected Muslim politician in Massachusetts Haley Rogers: CAIR Massachusetts Director of Development and Community Relations Mariam Durrani: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Listen to Richie Hofmann read "Capriccio" for #NationalPoetryMonth. Originally published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2012.

At a time when the White House proposes to increase military spending by $54 billion while slashing funds for social programs at home and humanitarian aid abroad, we recall the warning of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that a nation spending more money on the military than on social uplift "is approaching spiritual death." What role can religious communities play today in resisting war and militarism and working for social and economic justice? Speaker David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies and the Peace Accords Matrix, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame; Special Adviser for Policy Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame Moderator and respondent J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Secretary of Health Care and Social Services, Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and

Congratulations to the Stendahl Symposium awardees who submitted papers on the theme: “Resisting Hegemonies: Understanding Multiplicity in a World of Difference” Denson Staples: "The Remembrance of God: Particularity, Universality, and Divine-Human Relations in the Qur'an" Siobhan Kelly: "Savior Rhetoric in Transgender Celebrity" James Ramsey: "Time, Sound, and the Margins: Theological Stick Figures of Kendrick and Coltrane" Deborah Frempong: "Genres of Self: Locating the Human in Oyono's Houseboy and Sembene's Black Girl" Professor Laura Nasrallah introduced the speakers, with Professor Cornel West responding to them. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Ousmane Kane, HDS Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, discusses his recent publication, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa. Ali Asani (FAS), Khaled El-Rouayheb (NELC), and Fallou Ngom (BU) served as respondents. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Consciousness Hacking is a growing community interested in expanding the focus area of local design, science and tech talent to include contemplative frameworks. This event brings together experts in Neuro-Engineering, Meditation, Psychiatry, Self-Reflection Technology, and more. Speakers include Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, Dr. Andreas Mershin, Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, and Chris Berlin. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Dr. Tyler Roberts presents the 2017 Dudleian Lecture. Dr. Tyler Roberts, Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College, presents the 2017 Dudleian Lecture. Marx’s claim that premise of all criticism is the criticism of religion continues to shape critical projects today. It enables scholars of religion such as Bruce Lincoln to distinguish the study of religion from theology and other religious discourses and literary critics such as Stathis Gourgouris to distinguish the secular from the religious. But we are left, consequently, with impoverished notions of critique and of religion. Starting instead from Foucault, who dreamt of a criticism that “would multiply not judgments but signs of life,” and with special attention to Ted Smith’s political theology, “Signs of Life” considers how we might rethink the critical project with and not against at least certain forms of “religion.” Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, HDS Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity, discusses her recent publication, Congress of Wo/men: Religion, Gender, and Kyriarchal Power. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

The Islamic tradition and Muslim communities have rich and long legacies of teachings, practices, and precedents for prioritizing nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation. Two leading scholar-practitioners discuss theological, spiritual, and practical resources for peace in Islamic scripture and tradition, historical cases, and implications for our contemporary world. Dr. A. Rashied Omar speaks on “Justice and Compassion: Embodying the Core Values of Peacebuilding in Islam” Afra Jalabi speaks on “In Search of the Lost Hero: The ‘Muslim’ as a Peace-Maker: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Islamic Nonviolence and its New Possibilities” Moderated by Prof. Jocelyne Cesari Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Zachary Wright, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University Qatar Visionary Knowledge: Encounters with the Prophet in Islamic Africa, 18th Century to the Present Khaled Esseissah, Ph.D. student, History Department, Indiana University-Bloomington The Ulama of Bilad Shinqiti (Mauritania) and their Roles in Disseminating Islamic Learning Outside Africa Ahmed Chanfi, Senior Lecturer, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Northeastern African `ulama' and Salafism in Mecca and Medina: The Case of the Ethiopian Born Shaykh Muhammad ʿAli Amin al-Jami and the al-Jamiyya Movement in Saudi Arabia Dahlia Gubara, Assistant Professor, American University of Beirut Black Magic, White Magic, and the Man from Katsina Panel chair: Oludamini Ogunnaike, College of William and Mary Texts, Knowledge, and Practice: The Meaning of Scholarship in Muslim Africa website: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/islamafrica Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://