Upcoming Lectures

Richard Sosis, Professor of Humanistic Anthropology, University of Connecticut: A Systemic Approach to the Evolutionary Study of Religion: Definitions, Debates, and Demons; Monday 6 November; Swallow 101 at 5:00

Recent Paine Lectures    

George Demacopoulos (Fordham): The Origins of Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in the Early Byzantine Hymns for Good Friday, November 15, 2022.

Jacqueline Vayntrub (Yale): Orality and the Bible's Displaced Voices. October 13, 2022.

Matt Gabriele (Virginia Tech): The Bright Ages: Towards a New Story of the Medieval World, March 10, 2020   

Paul Johnson (University of Michigan): Religion in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Nearhuman Attraction, February 10, 2020   

William Schweiker (University of Chicago): On the Varieties of Enhancing Life. Oct 18, 2019   

Stephen Berkwitz (Missouri State): The 'History of the Bodhi Tree' and Buddhist Identity in Medieval Sri Lanka, September 26, 2019   

Andrea Jain (Indiana University-Purdue University): Peace, Love, Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality Aug. 22, 2019   

Rachel Lindsey ( St. Louis University): #ArchCityReligion: Rethinking Lived Religion in the Heartland, March 13, 2019   

George Archer (Iowa State University): The Oral World of the Qur'anic Mind, March 1, 2018   

W. Michael Ashcraft: New Religious Movements, Sept. 15, 2018   

Emily Clark, Spirits of New Orleans, March 19, 2018   

Kristina Buhrman, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Florida State University. Invisible Eclipses: Prediction and Ritual in Medieval Japanese Astronomy. August 22, 2017       

Kent Brintnall, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina. Forgetting Freud: The Drive for Religion. April 28, 2017   

Deonnie Moodie, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Oklahoma.   
Modernizing a Hindu Temple: Kalighat in Colonial and Contemporary Calcutta. October 14, 2016   

Brannon Ingram, Assistant Professor of the Religious Studies, Northwestern University. A Noble Jihad? Debating Politics in the Muslim Anti-Apartheid Movement. April 19, 2016    

John Schmalzbauer, Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies, Department of Religious Studies. The Unsecular Campus: The Diversification of Student Religious Life in America. March 11, 2016   

Kathleen Kennedy, Associate Professor, Department of English, Penn State – Brandywine.The Puzzle of Abbot Islip’s Book, Tudor Pop Music, & Kind Henry’s Lady. November 6, 2015   

Kelly Hayes, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University-Indianapolis. Intergalactic Space-Time Travelers: Envisioning the New Age in Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn. October 16, 2015   

 Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. Everyday Secularism: Sufi Shrines and Interreligious Dialogue in Modern India.  April 10, 2015   

John Modern, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Franklin & Marshall College. Adventures in the Religion Machine: Scientology, Structuralism, and William S. Burroughs. February 27, 2015   

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis. Practice Makes Perfect: Mormons and the Politics of Representation. October 20, 2014   

Jill Peterfeso, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Guilford College. Women Priest: The 21st Century Ordination of Women in Roman Catholicism. October 13, 2014.   

Brad Crowell, Associate Professor of Religion, Drake University. King Solomon, An Emperor without an Empire: Toward a Postcolonial Historiography of Ancient Israel. September 24, 2014.   

Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University. 
Do Not Tamper With the Clues: What the Goldman Sachs Group Can Tell Us About Religion. March 13, 2014   

Michael Zogry, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Kansas.
 Religion & Baseball: Naismith's Game. March 4, 2014.   

 David Amponsah, PhD Candidate, Harvard University Committee on the Study of Religion. Governance, Witchcraft, and the Debate Over the Public Interest in Colonial Ghana, 1906-1957. February 4, 2014.   

David Walsh, PhD Candidate in Anthropology of Religion, Arizona State University. Inviting Fire: Dene Food and Religion in the Subarctic.  January 28, 2014.   

Sarah Dees, PhD Candidate in Religious Studies, Indiana University. The Study of Native American Religions in the Assimilation Era. January 30, 2014.   

Erin Darby, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Digging the Divine? Female Figurunes and the Archaeology of Israelite Religion. March 19, 2013.    

Anne Blankenship, Postdoctoral Fellow, Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Before the Civil Rights Movement: Christian Responses to the Incarceration of Japanese Americans. February 5, 2013