• Religious Studies
• Guest Speakers and Conferences

Guest Speakers and Conferences

AY 2012-2013

As part of the 125^th, academic departments were asked to invite a distinguished alum to return to campus to give a lecture.  The Religious Studies Department is honored to host a lecture by former Oxy Professor, Dr. Karen King (now at Harvard Divinity School) on February 7, 2013 at 4:30 in the Dumke Commons. 

Trained in comparative religions and historical studies, Prof. King pursues teaching and research specialties in the history of Christianity. Her particular theoretical interests are in discourses of normativity (orthodoxy and heresy) and gender studies. She has received many research grants and awards for excellence in teaching and research; among them are grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, and the Graves Foundation.

Prof. King has been awarded one of six Luce Fellowships in Theology for 2012-2013 to complete a book project, titled “Martyrdom and Its Discontents: An Historical Essay on Rethinking Religion and Violence in the Formation of Christianity."  This book will be added to a long list of scholarly publications, including The Secret Revelation of John; The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle; What Is Gnosticism?; Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (with Elaine Pagels); and Revelation of the Unknowable God. Other publications include Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed.) and Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today (ed.).

 

AY 2011-2012

During the Fall 2011 semester, well-known Buddhist writers Stephen Batchelor and Martine Batchelor were visitors on the Occidental campus.  They gave a joint lecture in Prof. Wright's class, Buddhist Thought from India to Japan, and then an evening lecture to the campus community on Buddhism and Secularity.

Also in the Fall of 2011, Prof. Moazzam-Doulat organized a roundtable discussion called "Islamophobia Now" which invited members of the Muslim, Sikh and local law enforcement agencies to discuss discrimination, cooperation and changing attitudes in the wake of September 11.  The event was co-sponsored by Religious Studies and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life.

In Spring 2012, Professor Moazzam-Doulat organized the Interdisciplinary Symposium VI. This symposium—offered every other year—brings scholars from a number of disciplines to engage with a major thinker in the Continental Philosophical tradition. This year, Professors Sean Kirkland (Depaul, Philosophy), Andrew Mitchell (Emory, Philosophy), Damian Stocking (Occidental, ECLS) and Dale Wright (Occidental, Religious Studies) took up the later work of Martin Heidegger in relation to the idea of the sacred and exposure to the other.  Occidental students were involved in the planning and organization of the event and they spent time long after the formal panels working through the themes and arguments with the speakers.   (Previous symposia have focused on tragedy and community, Bataille and sacrifice, Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Blanchot's 'outside'.)