News and Events

An ancient vase with a painting of figures

Upcoming Event - Towards a Counterhistory of the Western Canon | The “Original Fragments” of the Bible and Homer

Today, powerful forces push us to either idolize or neglect now-canonical works like Homer and the Bible, seeing them as either evidence of a unique Western genius or as exhausted and overplayed “greatest hits.” But before they were idols, worshipped or fallen, ancient Mediterranean cultural monuments were something quite different. This workshop will explore how the discoveries of criticism let us encounter them freshly, as if for the first time. Read More
a classical painting of a woman draped in green cloth near some flowers.

Upcoming Event - Medieval Sex Crimes and Consent in Canon Law

Notes from the Field | Prof. Grace Delmolino, French and Italian
This talk will analyze the standard taxonomy of medieval sex crimes as defined in canon law, discuss how consent relates to these crimes, and reflect on how the medieval crime of “raptus” morphed into the etymologically connected (but conceptually divergent) “rape” of the 21st century Read More
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Castelfranco Lecture Series: Randall Balmer "Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right"

Balmer will speak about how one of the Religious Right’s most durable myths is its myth of origins. American evangelicals, the story goes, long dormant as a political entity, began to mobilize politically in the 1970s in response to the Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973. Balmer claims this story is simply not true; what actually galvanized the Religious Right as a political force was the elimination of tax-exempt status for racially discriminatory Christian institutions. Read More
western aar

March 24-26 Western Region - American Academy of Religion conference

This year’s theme is: “Civil Rights, Religion and Responsibility”. This conference is the West’s most important national conference on religious studies, and it happens once a year. It is a great honor, then, for us to host it, and this is the first time that that has happened. There will be hundreds of participants in approximately 30 sessions over three days, and the WR-AAR conference is the first in-person one since the start of the pandemic. Read More
A headshot of Professor Flagg

Notes from the Field: Flagg Miller

"Al-Qaeda and the Racialization of Religious Freedom: Post-Cold War Islamic Militancy from the Annals of Legal and Legislative Accommodationism in the United States"
Tuesday, February 21, 12:10 - 1:00 pm Read More