Past Events 2003-2004

Prof. Jonathan Z. Smith delivering the 2003 Aronov Lecture

Public Lectures 2003-4

Second Annual Aronov Lecture

The Department was especially pleased and deeply honored to host Professor Jonathan Z. Smith, from September 22-24, 2003. On Tuesday evening at 7:00 Smith offered the Department of Religious Studies's second annual Aronov Lecture. The title of his public lecture--destined to be a chapter in his forthcoming essay collection, Relating Religion (University of Chicago Press, Spring 2004)--was "God Save this Honorable Court: Religion and Civic Discourse." The event was by far the most successful in the Department's recent history, attracting 150 students, faculty and local residents; the event filled Smith Hall 205 to overflowing and the reception lasted until 10:00 pm. While in Tuscaloosa, Smith also met with the Department's faculty and students, met with administrators and faculty from other Departments, and also guest lectured in Dr. James Apple's REL 100.

For photographs from the event, please click here.

Professor Smith--one of the world's most insightful and influential scholars of religion--is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1968. Trained at Yale Univereity, Smith has also held positions at Dartmouth College and the University of California at Santa Barbara prior to that. In addition to serving as the program coordinator for the programs in Religion and the Humanities and in Early Christian Literature, he is also a member of the Ancient Studies Program, the graduate committee on the study of the ancient Mediterranean world, and the associate faculty of the Divinity School. He was Dean of the Faculty of the College from 1977 to 1982 and received the university's Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1986. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2000, an honor reserved for very few US scholars.

Smith is the author of Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, and Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. He is the past president of the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR) and also served as the general editor of The Harper-Collins Dictionary of Religion, prepared under the sponsorship of the American Academy of Religion.

Thursday, February 5, 2004
Joshua Greene
author of Justice at Dachau: The Trials of An American Prosecutor
tenHoor 125, 7:00 pm
The lecture is co-sponsored with the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences

Religion in Culture Series

The following speakers are booked to deliver public lectures, as part of the "Religion in Culture" lecture series.

Wednesday, October, 22 2003
Professor Cathy Pagani
Department of Art
University of Alabama
Topic: "Jesuits in China: Science, Technology and Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries"
Manly Hall 207, 3-5 pm with reception following
Photos from this event

Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Professor James Apple
Department of Religious Studies
University of Alabama
Topic: "The Stone Mandalas of Bodh Gaya"
Manly Hall 207, 2-4 pm with reception following
Photos from this event

Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Professor Anita Leopold
Aarhus University, Denmark
Topic: "Syncretism: Why is it a Problem?" along with her husband,
Professor Jeppe Sinding Jensen
Aarhus University, Denmark
Topic: "The Semiotic Study of Religion: A Discussion with Tim Murphy"
101-F SSC, 2:00 pm

Thursday, January 22, 2004
Professor Mindy Nancarrow
Department of Art
University of Alabama
Topic: "Between the Book and the Basket: Structuring the Virgin in Spanish Golden Art Age"
207 Manly Hall, 2:00-4:00 pm with reception following
Photos from this event

Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Professor Herman C. Waetjen
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
Topic: "Power Plays in the Gospel of Mark"
207 Manly Hall, 2:00-3:30 PM
Photos from this event

Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Professor Gabriele Fassbeck
Department of Religious Studies
University of Alabama
Topic: "Endogamy Saves, or How to Keep the Demon Out of Your Wedding Bed: The Book of Tobit as an Early Jewish Test Case"
Photos from this event