Center for the Study of Religion - UCLA

Lost Books: The Forgetfulness of Writing and the Forgetting of Jewish Pasts
2023-05-04 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 314 Royce Hall
It is often noted how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed our understanding of ancient Judaism, radically expanding our evidence for Jews and Judaism prior to the rise of Christianity. Yet this material also stands as a striking reminder of how much of the literary heritage of Jewish antiquity has been lost to us. How and why was this material lost to the Jewish tradition, and what might its forgetting tell us about Jewish memory-making, past and present? This lecture explores these questions with a focus on lost books, real and imagined, and the shifting meanings of writing within Jewish cultural history.
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Annette Yoshiko Reed is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. She studies ancient Jews and Christians, with a focus on questions of knowledge, identity, and difference. Her recent books include Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism and Christianity​ (2018 and Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism (2020). She is currently working on a book on the cultural power of forgetting, focusing on the Jewish reception of the Second Temple past.
Thursday, May 4, 2023 • 314 Royce Hall • 4 PM
Annette Yoshiko Reed (Harvard University)
Moderator: Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA)
Lost Books: The Forgetfulness of Writing and the Forgetting of Jewish Pasts
Etta and Milton Leve Scholar-in-Residence

This event is co-sponsored with lead sponsor UCLA Alan D Leve Center for Jewish Studies’ Etta and Milton Leve Scholar in Residence.

The Mothers, the Mamzers, and the Rabbis: Reconstructing Family and Community in Post-Holocaust Jewish Law
2023-05-08 16:00 - 17:00 | Haines 39/Zoom
This talk centers on the little-known story of the children of illicit unions that resulted from a highly unusual situation in post-Holocaust Munkacz, a SubCarpathian town that had been a major Jewish center before World War II. A number of women who returned to Munkacz in 1945 believed their husbands had perished in the camps, remarried, had children, and then saw their first husbands return. In 1965, two major Eastern European Orthodox rabbis tried to find solutions to keep the children of these children from also being considered Mamzerim, children of misbegotten unions who are considered outcasts in the Jewish community. In texts that at first glance appear highly formalistic and technical, these Jewish legal decisors tackled many of the central dilemmas of postwar European Jewry, and are thus illuminated by contemporary writings of policymakers, international relief agencies, novelists, and historians.
This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.

Ethan B. Katz is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, where he has taught since the fall of 2018. He is an affiliate faculty of the Center for Middle East Studies, the Institute of European Studies, and the Center for the Study of Religion. Dr. Katz also serves as the Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Life and Campus Climate. Since the spring of 2019, he has been the co-founder and co-director of the Antisemitism Education Initiative at Berkeley, an effort that has received national attention and funding.
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Mark of Contradictions: The Creation of Judah's History and the Case of Samson
2023-05-09 12:30 - 13:00 | 290 Royce Hall
In biblical texts, we find preserved the “mark of contradictions, fragmentations, and adjunctions,” as intellectual historian Michel de Certeau once wrote (The Writing of History 1988: 313). This talk will explore the mark of contradictions in what may seem a peripheral set of texts within the broader biblical narrative, the Samson stories of Judges 13-16. Buried in the book of Judges, these quirky stories have consistently baffled scholars: where do they come from, why were they preserved, and what role do they serve? In the talk, Mahri Leonard-Fleckman will trace shifting portrayals of Samson through different biblical witnesses and rewritings through the first century C.E. to demonstrate how Samson preserves an important mark of contradictions as he is drawn into the fabric of Judah’s history. In doing so, her broader aim is to probe the relationship between fluidity and fixity in scribal production, history writing, and tradition itself. Moderated by William Schniedewind (UCLA).
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Mahri Leonard-Fleckman is an assistant professor of Hebrew Bible in the Religious Studies Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. She specializes in Iron Age history and the composition history of the Hebrew Bible, and is the author of The House of David: Between Political Formation and Literary Revision (Fortress Press, 2016) and co-author of The Book of Ruth in the Wisdom Commentary Series (Liturgical Press, 2017). Her current book project, provisionally titled Scribal Representations and Social Landscapes of the Iron Age Shephelah, focuses on scribal representations of the “Other” in ancient Israel in relation to broader questions of identity in the Iron Age Levant, and is under contract with Oxford University Press. Leonard-Fleckman has published numerous scholarly and public-facing books and articles, is currently the Catholic Biblical Quarterly Book Review Editor for the Old Testament and Qumran, and is active on numerous other editorial boards and professional committees.

Co-sponsored with the lead sponsor UCLA Alan D Leve Center for Jewish Studies as part of their Bible and the Ancient Near East series, in addition to and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

Ethics in Paul and Paul in Ethics
2023-05-11 16:00 - 17:00 | Zoom
This talk looks at a few examples of Paul’s ethical reasoning and then discusses how his ethical discourse compares with those of several types current today.
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Adela Yarbro Collins is the current president of the Society for Biblical Literature and an American author and academic who has served as the Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. Her research focuses on the New Testament, especially the Gospel of Mark and the Book of Revelation, and she has also written on early Christian apocalypticism and eschatology. Collins has also served as the President of the Society of New Testament Studies (2010–2011) and as the President of the New England Region of the Society of Biblical Literature (2004–2005).

Different Roads, One Goal: Gandhi and Jainism
2023-06-03 14:00 - 17:30 | 314 Royce Hall
The nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the last century’s most revered figures, has exerted enormous influence across the world. Gandhi was himself greatly influenced by Jainism, an ancient religion whose practitioners, many of whom live in Gandhi’s native state of Gujarat in north-western India, are committed to minimizing harm to living beings.
In this symposium, speakers will discuss connections between Gandhi and Jainism and parallels between Gandhian and Jain thought.
SCHEDULE:
2:00 – 2:45: Tara Sethia: “Gandhi, Ahiṃsā and Jainism”
2:45 – 3:30: Chris Chapple: “Jain and Gandhian Vows: Nonviolence, Truth, and Simplicity”
3:30 – 3:45: Break
3:45 – 4:30: Veena Howard: “Gandhi and his Practical Anekāntavāda for Sarvodaya”
4:30 – 4:50: Response from Vinay Lal
4:50 – 5:30: Concluding Discussion
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Speakers:
Christopher Key Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published more than twenty books including Karma and Creativity (1986), Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (1993), Reconciling Yogas (2003), Yoga and the Luminous (2008), Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas (2020), and several edited volumes on religion and ecology. He has received numerous grants for his research, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Nehru Fellowship program. He serves on the advisory boards for the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale), the Ahimsa Center (Pomona), the Jaina Studies Centre (London), the Dharma Academy of North America (Berkeley), the Uberoi Foundation (Denver), the South Asia Studies Association (Los Angeles), the Center for Religions and Spirituality (LMU), and the International School for Jain Studies (Delhi).

Veena R. Howard, Ph.D., is Professor of Asian Religious Traditions in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno She also holds the Endowed Chair in Jain and Hindu Dharma. She was recently appointed as the director of the M.K. Gandhi Center: Inner Peace and Sarvodaya. Her publications include the books, Gandhi’s Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Moral Challenges (Lexington, 2023); The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender (ed.), (Bloomsbury, 2019); Dharma, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Sikh Traditions of India (ed.) (IB Tauris, 2017); and Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (SUNY Press, 2013). She has also authored numerous peer-reviewed articles including, “The Nonviolence Conundrum: Political Peace and Personal Karma in Jain and Hindu Traditions” (Religions, 2023); “Oxford Bibliography Article: Mohandas K. Gandhi” (Oxford University Press, 2019); “Divine Light and Melodies Lead the Way: The Santmat Tradition of Bihar”(Religions, 2019); “The modern monastic Santmat movement of Bihar: building bridges between Sanātana Dharma and Sant-Mat (International Journal of Dharma Studies, 2017); “Lessons from ‘The Hawk and the Dove’: Reflections on the Mahabharata’s Animal Parables and Ethical Predicaments” (Sophia International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, 2016), “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and the Empowerment of Women” (The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2013), She has also translated three books from the modern Sant tradition from Hindi into English. She has served on the Board of Trustees of the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Tara Sethia is the founder of Ahimsa Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Thought and Action at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona where she held the inaugural the Shri Shantinath Endowed Chair in Ahimsa Studies. As Center-Director for nearly two decades she created an interdisciplinary Minor in Nonviolence Studies; directed summer institutes for K-12 educators; and hosted conferences, lectures, dialogues, and workshops on nonviolence. Her publications include the following books: Gandhi: Pioneer of Nonviolent Social Change, Living Gandhi, and Ahimsa, Anekanta and Jainism. She teaches courses on India, South Asia, and Nonviolence and Social Change. Dr. Sethia is a recipient of many honors, awards, and grants, and has been featured in the media, including the Los Angeles Times. She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA. Currently, she is emerita professor of History.

Discussant:
Vinay Lal is a writer, blogger, cultural critic, and Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He earned his BA and MA, both in 1982, from The Johns Hopkins University with concentration in literature, history, and philosophy, and a PhD with Distinction from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago in 1992. He writes widely on Indian history, historiography, the Indian diaspora, colonialism, the architecture of nonviolence, Gandhi, American politics, contemporary culture, and the global politics of knowledge systems. His 20 books include the two-volume Oxford Anthology of the Modern Indian City (2013); The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the Twenty-first Century, co-edited with Ashis Nandy (Viking Penguin, 2005); Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture (Penguin, 2005); The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (Oxford, 2003); Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy (Pluto Press, 2002); India and Civilizational Futures: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II (Oxford, 2019); The Fury of Covid-19: The Passions, Histories, and Unrequited Love of the Coronavirus (Pan Macmillan, 2020); and, most recently, Insurgency and the Artist: The Art of the Freedom Struggle in India (Roli Books, 2022). Two volumes of his collected papers on Gandhi are scheduled for publication in early 2024. He blogs at abplive.in and maintains an extensive academic YouTube channel with over 300 lectures at youtube.com/user/dillichalo with nearly 33,000 subscribers and 2.5 million views.

From Enchanted to Re-enchanted: Trajectories of Vietnamese Buddhism in a Post-modern World
2023-10-05 16:00 - 17:30 | Royce 243
Sponsored by the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies. It is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Buddhist modernity has often taken on the form of a secularized, rationalist and democratic Buddhism that accentuates meditative techniques and a focus on psychology and salvation attained through individual endeavor. Non-rational, devotional, forms of Buddhism have, at least rhetorically, been painted as pre-modern, backwards or superstition. Echoing the now debunked secularization theory of religion – that religion will diminish and be replaced by science – it has been assumed that the modernization of Buddhism would displace devotional forms of Buddhism with this rational and humanistic form of Buddhist modernism. This theory is now demonstrably proven false in many places, but especially in Vietnam where there has been a resurgence of interest in devotional forms of Buddhism, which focus on supernatural assistance in daily life and the potency of some monks to tell the future and alter fates (in essence, the denying the secular division between the mundane and supernatural.) Professor Alexander Soucy (Saint Mary’s University), will posit that this is not a persistence nor resurgence of the pre-modern, but instead needs to be understood as something new – as much owing to the structures and assumptions of modernity as to the power of the enchanted past.
Registration required. Click here.
Alexander Soucy is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada). His first monograph, The Buddha Side: Gender, Power and Buddhist Practice in Vietnam (2012) is the only English-language ethnography of Vietnamese Buddhism. He has co-edited two volumes on Buddhism in Canada, Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada (2010) and Flowers on the Rock: Global and Local Buddhisms in Canada (2014), and a volume on Buddhism and globalization, called Buddhism in the Global Eye: Beyond East and West. He has published a number of essays on Vietnamese Buddhism in Vietnam and in the West.

Welcome Reception - Fall 2023
2023-10-12 16:00 - 18:00 | Royce 306
Please join us to welcome in the new academic year, see old friends and meet new people.
Click here to let us know that you will be coming by October 5th. Thank you!

Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah: David Reubeni's How-To Manual of Messianic Redemption
2023-10-18 16:00 | Zoom
In the 16th century, a Hebrew-speaking, battle-scarred, Black-skinned Jew named David Reubeni appeared suddenly in Venice with a desperate plan to restore Jewish pride and political independence. Why did kings, bishops, rabbis, bankers, and even a pope, open their homes and wallets for him? Some answers come from one of the weirdest documents in Jewish history, Reubeni’s personal diary. Professor Alan Verskin will share insights from his book in this online event which is co-sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.

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Bio: Alan Verskin is Samuel J. Zacks Chair of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. Prior to that, he taught for a decade at the University of Rhode Island. His areas of research include religious, legal, and social history in both Jewish and Islamic contexts, from the middle ages through the nineteenth century. He is particularly interested in travel, translation, and the migration of ideas between religious communities. His most recent book is Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah: The Sixteenth-Century Journey of David Reubeni through Africa, the Middle East, and Europe (Stanford University Press, 2023).

Righting the American Dream
2023-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Kaplan 365
Zoom or In-Person event
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In this book talk, author Diane Winston explores how after two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but something changed in 1983. Reagan spoke of his embattled agenda as a spiritual rather than a political project and cast his vision for limited government and market economics as the natural outworking of religious conviction.
In a provocative new history of how the news media facilitated the Reagan Revolution and the rise of the religious Right, Winston reveals how support for Reagan emerged from a new religious vision of American identity circulating in the popular press. The news media broadcast this message with enthusiasm, and white evangelicals rallied to the president’s cause. With their support, Reagan won reelection and continued to dismantle the welfare state, unraveling a political consensus that stood for half a century.
Diane Winston spent over a decade as a journalist and is now associate professor of journalism and Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California. She is the author or editor of several books, including Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City. Her newest book, Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision, is available through University of Chicago Press.
Small bites and beverages will be provided. RSVP is required. Click here to register
Obtain a 30% discount on the book with promocode UCPNEW at the University of Chicago Press website.

Shirdi Sai Baba's Presence: Mediums, Mediations, and Mobilities
2023-11-09 16:00 - 18:00 | Royce Hall 306/Zoom
In-person and Zoom
Register here for both in-person or Zoom
The South Asian saint Shirdi Sai Baba has an ever-growing global diaspora. His inspiration and healing energies are boons reinforced for many by his defiance of religious communitarianism. In welcoming all castes, creeds, and nationalities, Baba offers an alternative to the divisiveness of his time and ours. Although Baba left his body in 1918, he is eternally present through two- and three-dimensional iconic images and figural sculptures that, as his embodiments, are found in innumerable temples, home altars, roadside and wayside shrines, films, websites, and social media. Through a recently published volume, Professors Srinivas and Roberts have explored the emergence of specific spaces, practices, selves, presences, and mobilities associated with Baba. Such presentations are often exegetical and are interesting unto themselves, but they also offer opportunities to consider the dynamics of religious expression anywhere in the world. Haptic visualities, spatial refabulations, corporeal mobilities, transmigrations, universes of translation, and positionalities in trans-Asian and Indian Ocean worlds are among theoretical perspectives addressed. An anthropology of credibility is espoused as Drs. Srinivas and Roberts seek to understand and, to a degree, participate in the truths lived by Baba and his devotees.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for India and South Asia
AL Roberts in Tunis, March 2023; photo by Amira Hassnaoui
Allen F. Roberts is Distinguished Research Professor / Distinguished Professor Emeritus of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and was trained in socio-cultural Anthropology (PhD 1980, University of Chicago). He and his late spouse Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts (d.2018), who was Professor of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and Consulting Curator for African Arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, have undertaken research, writing, teaching, and museum work together concerning arts and humanities of Africa and the Indian Ocean World. AL and Polly’s award-winning books and traveling exhibitions include Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996) and A Saint in the City: Sufi Art of Urban Senegal (2003). Most recently and with Professor Smriti Srinivas of UC Davis, AL has co-edited and contributed to Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence (2023) as a volume dedicated to Polly Roberts’ memory.
Smriti Srinivas is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, USA. She explores regimes of spatial, somatic, and symbolic production, particularly in cities and Indian Ocean worlds. Her most recent books include Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence (2022), coedited with Allen F. Roberts and Neelima Jeychandran; Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (2020, coedited); and A Place for Utopia: Urban Designs from South Asia (2015).

Teach-in for Peace
2023-11-27 16:30 - 20:30 | 6275 Bunche Hall
ROOM FULL for in- person attendance. Accepting Zoom registration only.
RSVP required. Register here
Explore sources of peace and non-violence with leading teachers, including:

Salam Al-Marayati – Muslim Public Affairs Council
Professor Carol Bakhos – UCLA Center for the Study of Religion
Rabbi Sharon Brous – Ikar
Prof./Rabbi Aryeh Cohen – American Jewish University
Aziza Hasan – Executive Director, NewGround
Andrea Hodos – Associate Director, NewGround
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller – Director Emeritus, UCLA Hillel
Rev. Dr. Najuma Smith – Word of Encouragement Community Church
Imam Dr. Jihad Turk – Bayan Islamic Graduate School

Moderated by Professor David Myers, UCLA Distinguished Professor & Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History
Sessions taught by text experts, spiritual leaders, historians, peace activists & students.
Schedule:

4:30-4:45: Introduction (Prof. David Myers and poetry reading by Rachel Burnett)
4:45-5:05: Rabbi Sharon Brous
5:05-5:25: Imam Dr. Jihad Turk
5:25-5:45: Prof. Carol Bakhos
5:45-5:55: Break
5:55-6:15: Salam Al-Marayati
6:15-6:20: breathing exercise (Sharon Zelnick)
6:20-6:40: Prof. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen
6:40-6:50: Break
6:50-7:10: Rev. Dr. Najuma Smith
7:10-7:30: Aziza Hasan and Andrea Hodos
7:30-7:50: Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller

(Light refreshments provided)
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion and the New Coalition for Peace in the Middle East.

The Formation of Classical Islam from Muhammad to the Abbasids
2023-11-28 14:00 - 15:15 | Haines 39/Zoom
In person (Haines 39) or on Zoom
Register here for both in-person or Zoom attendance
Returning to UCLA by popular demand, this lecture by Walid Saleh (University of Toronto) provides an overview of the major features of Classical Islam that solidified during the early Abbasid period. Such features include the rise of major religious sciences and the textual tradition that became part of the scholarly and religious tradition.
Professor Walid A. Saleh is a specialist on the Qur’an, the history of its interpretation (Tafsir), the Arabic manuscript tradition, Islamic apocalyptic literature, and the Muslim reception of the Bible. His first book The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition (Brill, 2004) was the first monograph length study of al-Thalabi (d. 1035) and his influence in the history of Qur’an commentary tradition. His second monograph, In Defense of the Bible (Brill, 2008), is a detailed study and an edition of al-Biqa`i’s (d. 1480) Bible treatise, “The Just Verdict on the Permissibility of Quoting from Old Scriptures,” which is the most extensive discussion of the place of the Bible in the Islamic religious tradition.
Professor Saleh is the editor of the Routledge Qur’an Series. He is also on the editorial board of Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the Journal of Qur’anic Studies.

How Archaeologists Study the People of the Gospels
2024-01-16 12:30 - 13:45 | Royce 306
In Person (Royce 306) or on Zoom
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How do archaeologists unearth the daily life of people from Jesus’s time?
Contrary to popular belief, archaeology of first-century Roman Galilee is not about illustrating or proving the gospels, drawing timelines, or hunting treasure. Rather, it is about understanding the lives of people, just like us, who lived in the time of Jesus. How do we conceive of Jesus and his mission as part of a larger world? How did different groups in Roman Galilee understand their identities and values? How do we interpret material culture in conjunction with textual evidence from the gospels? On a more basic level, how do we know where and how to dig?
Co-sponsored by the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies
James Riley Strange teaches how to address these problems in his book Excavating the Land of Jesus. Drawing on professional experience as a scientific archaeologist in Israel, Strange explains current methodology for ground surveying, excavating evidence, and interpreting data. James Strange received the Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Chair in New Testament in the fall of 2017. He is a 2015 recipient of the Dean’s Award for Research, Howard College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi honor society. Strange is Director of the Shikhin Excavation Project in Israel and researches archaeology of Palestine in the Hellenistic through Byzantine periods, early Christianity and post-biblical Judaisms. He teaches courses in New Testament, ancient Greco-Roman Religions, and the archaeology of Palestine.

Colonial Encounters: Sor Juana, Guaman Poma, and the Birth of the Brown Church
2024-01-24 15:30 - 16:45 | Kaplan 365
In person (Kaplan 365)

This guest lecture examines the little known multicultural religious protests to the Spanish Conquest of colonial Latin America. Such protests began in 1511 under the guidance of Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos and led to “The Great Debate” in which, for the first time in recorded human history, an entire nation paused to reflect on the moral injustice of war and colonization. In the decades and centuries to come, mestizo, black, indigenous, female, Spanish, and Asian voices would arise to challenge the perverted racial and sexist logic of the Spanish colonial project. This talk further examines the lives and voices of three of these diverse leaders—Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca, Guaman Poma de Ayala, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Together, these multicultural protests gave birth to the “Brown Church” and a 500 year tradition of Christian social justice in Latin America.
Robert Chao Romero is an associate professor in the Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies and Central America Studies. Romero is the author of “Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity,” and co-author of “Christianity and Critical Race Theory” and “God’s Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants.” Romero is also an ordained minister and faith rooted community organizer.

Making a Refuge of Resistance: A History of the U.S. Sanctuary Movement
2024-02-12 15:30 - 16:45 | 314 Royce Hall
In person (Royce 314)

Is sacred space protective space? This question lies at the heart of the Sanctuary Movement, the most confrontational progressive religious social movement in the United States since the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. Modern Sanctuary Movement activists adopted the ancient practice of protecting in designated sanctuaries individuals who stood in legally precarious conditions. From the 1980s to the present day, this practice has protected undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation by offering them refuge in churches, where federal agents to this day still fear to tread. The movement has distinguished itself over the past 40 years, according to one historian, as the “largest mass mobilization of civil disobedience against detention and deportation in US history.”
“Making a Refuge of Resistance” asks how these houses of worship protected migrants from immigration enforcement authorities. What histories and testimonies rendered such spaces sacred and lent houses of worship qualities of safe refuge? This lecture is based on Professor Barba’s ongoing research on the Sanctuary Movement.

Lloyd Barba is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He is the author of Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford University Press, 2022). He is also the editor of Latin American and U.S. Latinx Religion in North America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Most recently, he co-edited Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender, and Culture (Penn State University Press, 2023). He is now writing a religious biography of Cesar Chavez and several projects on the U.S. Sanctuary Movement from the 1980s to the present day. His work has been featured in the Washington Post, The Conversation US, and other media outlets. He is teaching a course on Latinx Religion for UCLA’s Center for the Study of Religion this winter quarter.

The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel
2024-04-09 14:00 - 15:30 | UCLA Faculty Center
Presented by the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures.
The story of the Twelve Tribes of Israel begins in the Hebrew Bible. But all around the world, there are stories about what happened next – which tribes went where, what might have happened to them, what they might have become. This paper, based on the book by the same name, explores what happens when we think of all of these as part of the same phenomenon: a history of efforts to create new visions of ancient Israel from the twelve tribes tradition that now spans more than 2,500 years and circles the globe.
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Andrew Tobolowsky is an Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of two books, The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles, and the book this talk will be based on, The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. A third, Between Israel and Greece, is forthcoming. Dr. Tobolowsky has also written about the twelve tribes tradition for various online outlets – Ancient Jew Review, TheTorah.com, Bible Odyssey, Ancient Near East Today, and Biblical Archaeology Review – and has been a frequent guest on podcasts and YouTube series.
Moderated by Catherine Bonesho (UCLA)

My Grandfather's Altar
2024-05-06 16:00 - 17:30 | UCLA Faculty Center
Registration closed. The room is at capacity.
VENUE CHANGE: This event will now be held at the UCLA Faculty Center.
Richard Moves Camp, in conversation with the editor and producer of his book My Grandfather’s Altar: Five Generations of Lakota Holy Men, shares stories from this oral-literary narrative account of five generations of Lakota religious tradition. Moves Camp is the great-great-grandson of Wóptuȟ’a (“Chips”), the holy man remembered for providing Crazy Horse with war medicines of power and protection. The Lakota remember the descendants of Wóptuȟ’a for their roles in preserving Lakota ceremonial traditions during the official prohibition period (1883–1934), when the U.S. Indian Religious Crimes Code outlawed Indian religious ceremonies with the threat of imprisonment.
Wóptuȟ’a, his two sons, James Moves Camp and Charles Horn Chips, his grandson Sam Moves Camp, and his great-great-grandson Richard Moves Camp all became well-respected Lakota spiritual leaders. My Grandfather’s Altar offers the rare opportunity to learn firsthand how one family’s descendants played a pivotal role in revitalizing Lakota religion in the twentieth century.

Richard Moves Camp (Oglala Lakota) is a fifth-generation Lakota healer, tribal historian, and spiritual leader. He teaches at Sinte Gleska University and lectures on Lakota history, culture and traditions. In 2021, he was named a Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow.
Moderated by Jennifer Jessum, book producer and founder of the Mitakuye Foundation and Simon Joseph, book editor and Lecturer for UCLA’s Study of Religion IDP.
Co-sponsored by the Mitakuye Foundation and Steve Aron/Autry Museum of the American West.

EVENT CANCELLED - Confusion of the Babels: Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism
2024-05-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Royce Hall 306
EVENT CANCELLED.
While the usual rendering and understanding of the Tower of Babel narrative (Gen 11:1–9) presumes the existence of one unified divine and human language (usually Hebrew, but with other candidates) between Eden and Babel, an alternative narrative imagines there having already existed a totality of ‘seventy” languages from the beginning, and only at Babel having been “dispersed,” “confused,” or should we say, “babbled”? We will explore the basis for this confusion in Scripture and its translations, Second Temple texts, early rabbinic teachings, and, by extension, into early Christianity and Islam. What are the implications of this alternative understanding for the status of Hebrew as a distinctly “Jewish” yet universal language, and for the conception of language(s) and translation(s) more broadly, culminating in the seminal article by Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”?
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Steven D. Fraade, Mark Taper Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and the History of Judaism at Yale University. Until his retirement in 2022, Steven Fraade taught for forty-three years courses on rabbinic literature, the history of Second Temple and early rabbinic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He regularly offered seminars on midrashic, mishnaic, and talmudic texts, and topics in ancient Jewish history. His research interests include the history of Judaism (in its varieties) in Second Temple and early rabbinic times; biblical translation and exegesis in ancient Judaism and Christianity; the history and rhetoric of ancient Jewish law; the Dead Sea Scrolls; literary-rhetorical analysis of tannaitic and amoraic rabbinic texts; attitudes towards ascetic piety in early Judaism; and multilingualism in ancient Jewish culture.

Signs of Faith Against Fascism
2024-05-23 16:30 - 17:30 | Kaplan 365
In this book talk, Eric Martin will explore how people of faith can connect their religious traditions with the rise of overtly fascist violence in the United States. With first-hand accounts from the largest white supremacist gathering in modern American history at Unite the Right in Charlottesville, Virginia, Martin will share how the clergy resisting Nazis and the KKK point a way forward for Christians in particular. His book expands outward to ask what churches can learn from antifascists, Black Lives Matter, and those working on the ground to combat the continuing coalition of far-right militias and gangs that promise to endure. It also invites the faithful to imagine a counter-witness that does more than merely preach against hate. Using biblical exegesis, storytelling, interviews, thought experiments, art, and theology, Martin explores how we can rethink notions of civil disobedience, nonviolence, love, prayer, and liturgy to enflesh a worthy faith in the face of a fascist creep.
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Eric Martin is a lecturer at UCLA for Study of Religion where he teaches about the Bible, justice and liberation movements, and spirituality. He also teaches at Loyola Marymount.

Cappella Romana - "In the Footsteps of St. Demetrios"
2024-10-27 17:00 - 19:00
Cappella Romana presents a world première program – IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. DEMETRIOS – Directed by Alexander Lingas, Founder and Director of Cappella Romana.
Sunday, October 27, 2024 / 5:00 PM / Reception following the performance
This concert brings to life the vibrant soundscape of medieval Thessaloniki, Byzantium’s second largest city. Hear ancient hymns honoring the city’s patron, the ever-popular St. Demetrios, sung on the weekend of his annual feast day. Experience ecstatic Byzantine chants for the saint adorning the Cathedral Rite of Constantinople, sung by the women and men of Cappella Romana.
Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral
1324 S Normandie Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006
Tickets: $25 General Admission (including service fees)
Free for children under 18
All students age 18+ with valid ID:
UCLA students can reserve free tickets online with UCLA logon ID
Non-UCLA students: Free tickets can be obtained at UCLA Central Ticket Office in advance, or at event
Buy Tickets
This performance is presented by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral. It is held under the auspices of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco and the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles, is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the Peter J. and Caroline B. Caloyeras Endowment for the Arts, and the Mary Calfas Janos Program Fund. This program is co-sponsored by Gefyra (Bridge), the UCLA College Humanities Division, UCLA Center for the Study of Religion, and the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.
Gefyra (Bridge) is a collaborative program established by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). Gefyra’s mission is to connect students, faculty, and communities along the West Coast of North America with Greek scholars, artists, and other creators, so that they can together explore expansive and imaginative approaches to Greek culture and knowledge production. The program additionally supports academic conferences and cultural projects that bridge the West Coast and Greece.

How Religion Matters in an Age of Extinction
2024-11-20 16:00 - 17:00 | Kaplan 365
In person (Kaplan 365) or on Zoom
Could knowledge about biodiversity loss be advanced through inquiry into the study of religion? Emerging from a lab that integrates humanities, arts, and sciences into research on coastal change in Virginia, this talk shows how different conceptions of religion and spirituality open unique lines of inquiry into human dimensions of environmental change.
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Willis Jenkins is John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Jenkins writes along intersections of ethics, religion, and environment, including The Future of Ethics, which won an American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion. Current research focuses on climate justice and ethics amidst extinctions and biodiversity loss. Jenkins also co-directs the Coastal Futures Conservatory which integrates arts and humanities into coastal change research at the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research site.

Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes
2024-12-03 14:00 - 15:30 | 314 Royce Hall
Who wrote the Bible? Its books have no bylines. Tradition long identified Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, with Ezra as editor. Ancient readers also suggested that David wrote the psalms and Solomon wrote Proverbs and Qohelet. Although the Hebrew Bible rarely speaks of its authors, people have been fascinated by the question of its authorship since ancient times. In Who Really Wrote the Bible, William Schniedewind offers a bold new answer: the Bible was not written by a single author, or by a series of single authors, but by communities of scribes. The Bible does not name its authors because authorship itself was an idea enshrined in a later era by the ancient Greeks. In the pre-Hellenistic world of ancient Near Eastern literature, books were produced, preserved, and passed on by scribal communities.
Bill Schniedewind (UCLA) draws on ancient inscriptions, archaeology, and anthropology, as well as a close reading of the biblical text itself, to trace the communal origin of biblical literature. Scribes were educated through apprenticeship rather than in schools. The prophet Isaiah, for example, has his “disciples”; Elisha has his “apprentice.” This mode of learning emphasized the need to pass along the traditions of a community of practice rather than to individuate and invent. Schniedewind shows that it is anachronistic to impose our ideas about individual authorship and authors on the writing of the Bible. Ancient Israelites didn’t live in books, he writes, but along dusty highways and byways. Who Really Wrote the Bible describes how scribes and their apprentices actually worked in ancient Jerusalem and Judah.
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William M. Schniedewind (UCLA)
Moderator: Carol Bakhos (UCLA)
Presented by the Alan D Leve Center for Jewish Studies as part of the Bible and the Ancient World Seminar Series. Co- sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion.

The Great Search with John Philip Newell
2025-02-19 16:00 - 17:00 | 314 Royce Hall/Zoom
The story of Adam and Eve’s fall from innocence in the Garden of Eden is a mythical account of humanity’s broken relationship with the divine, with Earth, and with themselves.
In contrast, Celtic wisdom is built on a strong bond with Earth. In the prophetic figures that author John Philip Newell draws from in his book The Great Search, the Garden of Eden represents the inner garden of our souls and the outer garden of Earth, which are seen as essentially one. To live in relation to what is deepest in us is to live in relation to the ground from which we and all things have come. Where are we today, in relation to our true selves and the sacredness of Earth? And how are we to find our way home again?
Newell’s talk will explore some of these questions raised in his book at this moment of great spiritual awakening, an era characterized by religious exile on a vast scale.
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John Philip Newell is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of Earth and every human being. His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh and he has authored over fifteen books, including his award-winning publication, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, which was the 2022 Gold Winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Spirituality and Religious Thought of the West. His new book is The Great Search (August 2024), in which he looks at the great spiritual yearnings of humanity today in the context of the decline of religion as we have known it.
Newell speaks of himself as ‘a wandering teacher’ following the ancient path of many lone teachers before him in the Celtic world, ‘wandering Scots’ (or scotus vagans as they were called) seeking the wellbeing of the world. He has been described as having ‘the heart of a Celtic bard and the mind of a Celtic scholar’, combining in his teachings the poetic and the intellectual, the head as well as the heart, and spiritual awareness as well as political and ecological concern. His writings have been translated into seven languages. In 2020 he relinquished his ordination as a minister of the Church of Scotland as no longer reflecting the heart of his belief in the sacredness of Earth and every human being. He continues, however, to see himself as ‘a grateful son of the Christian household’ seeking to be in relationship with the wisdom of humanity’s other great spiritual traditions.
In 2016 he began the Earth & Soul initiative and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Seeking Liberation: Contemporary Female Ascetic Orders Among the Jains
2025-04-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Online on Zoom
Present day records show an overwhelming numerical preponderance of nuns in Jain mendicant orders. Their striking presence demands that we question the androcentric models of renunciation in South Asia, as well as interrogate the commonsensical assumptions about the attraction that a lifetime of mendicancy may hold for women. By privileging the voice of the nuns, themselves, this presentation looks at how the Indic concept of liberation as spiritual deliverance (moksa) may sometimes overlap, or approximate the more this-worldly idea of women’s liberation.

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Manisha Sethi, Associate Professor, Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Spread and Stack: The Development of the Roman Catholic Church from 33-461
2025-04-16 12:30 - 13:30 | Kaplan 365
In this talk by Gabriel Rossman, he attempts to explain the development of Christianity over its first six centuries from a highly localized charismatic sect to a hierarchical structure spanning much of the world. Rossman conceives of the formation of the Catholic Church as an illustrative case of large social structures forming in three overlapping stages. In the first stage, an organizational form diffuses via imitation, as with the Greek-speaking churches of Acts and the epistles. In the second stage, what had been horizontal relations develop hierarchies, but only of local scope, in this case the “monarchical bishops” of the early second century attested in Ignatius. In the third stage, local hierarchies themselves concatenate into a hierarchy of hierarchies, with the Christian case being metropolitan bishops and eventually the pope having authority over other bishops. Rossman compares the Church to other large-scale organizations that developed more recently via a similar pattern, such as the Federalist Party, the Guadalajara Cartel, and the National Food Truck Association. He will also discuss his attempt to digitize the Series Episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, a dataset from which he estimates the number of dioceses over time.
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Symposium - (Mis)using the Bible: White Evangelicalism & Christian Nationalism in America
2025-04-28 14:00 - 17:00 | Royce Hall 306/Zoom
White Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism has occupied an increasingly prominent position since—and in many ways before—the first Trump administration. Events such as January 6 and the second Trump presidency have highlighted the entanglement of politics and religious belief that is central to Christian Nationalism. This symposium brings together several scholars to discuss various aspects of white Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism, particularly as they connect to modern and contemporary American politics. The symposium serves as a forum for investigating topics such as tolerance and religious pluralism, the use of anti-abortion protests, and the intersection of race and Christian Nationalism. Further, the symposium opens a discussion on how Evangelicalism and Christian Nationalism use and misuse biblical and historical material to bolster their narratives.

Space is limited. RSVP here for the in-person event.
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Symposium Schedule:
2–2:10: Welcome – Carol Bakhos, Chair, Study of Religion
2:10-2:30: Introduction and Opening Remarks by Gina Konstantopoulos, Symposium Moderator – “Evangelizing Antiquity: The Museum of the Bible and the Appropriation of the Past”
2:30-3:00 Sophie Bjork-James – “To Be Pro-life in an Age of Extinction: Abortion, Christian Nationalism, and Ecological Denial”
3:00-3:20: Break
3:20-3:50: Brooklyn Walker – “Counterpoint in the Heavenly Choir: Christian Nationalism, Anti-Christian Nationalism, and the Multivocality of American Christianity”
3:50-4:20: Michael R. Fisher, Jr. – “Race, Politics, and Christian Nationalism in the Second Era of Trump”
4:20-5: Discussion and Q&A

Opening Remarks: “Evangelizing Antiquity: The Museum of the Bible and the Appropriation of the Past”
Founded in 2017 by David Green, the Museum of the Bible stands as an impressive institution: it boasts seven floors and 430,000 square feet of exhibition space, all located two blocks from the National Mall in Washington DC. The museum presents a narrative wherein historical and religious evidence and artefacts are utilized to bolster an evangelical perspective. This talk discusses how the Museum of the Bible, as well as other evangelical institutions, utilize the past in particular in their attempt to craft—and moreover legitimize—their own, often very specific, narrative.
Gina Konstantopoulos is an associate professor in Assyriology and Cuneiform studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research centers on religion, magic, and literature in Mesopotamia, with a focus on the role of demons and monsters. She is the author of The Divine/Demonic Seven and the Place of Demons in Mesopotamia (Brill, 2023). She has authored articles on demons and monsters in Mesopotamia, translations of Sumerian and Akkadian texts, and the reception of Mesopotamia in later pre-modern and modern contexts.

“To Be Pro-life in an Age of Extinction: Abortion, Christian Nationalism, and Ecological Denial”
Within Christian Nationalism, anti-abortion and anti-environmental politics are united. Since white evangelicals adopted an anti-abortion stance between the late 1970s and early 1980s, they have sought to make it the most significant moral issue of our time. Abortion can then act as a moral pivot, re-directing concern away from other problems, especially environmental ones. Drawing on long-term research on white evangelical politics in Colorado, this talk shows how within Christian Nationalism concern about abortion often serves to occlude care about the environment and the climate crisis. The significance of this is hard to overstate in our current era of climate crisis and species collapse.
Sophie Bjork-James is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements. She is the author of The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family (Rutgers 2021, winner of the Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize) and the co-editor of Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism (2020). She has been interviewed on the NBC Nightly News, NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC Radio 4’s Today, and in the New York Times. Her work has received support the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the National Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. She is currently working on a new book exploring how young people understand abortion in a state that has implemented a total abortion ban.

“Counterpoint in the Heavenly Choir: Christian Nationalism, Anti-Christian Nationalism, and the Multivocality of American Christianity”
The Bible has been used to give voice to the concepts of rule by religious precept and ethnocentrism central to Christian nationalism. But, in opposition to religious nationalism, the Bible has also been used to proclaim themes of pluralism, equality, and liberty. Using data drawn from a survey of American Christians, I explore the extent to which both Christian nationalist and anti-Christian nationalist ideas derived from the Bible have taken hold in the public. Among American Christians, support for Christian nationalism and anti-Christian nationalism are positively linked. While anti-Christian nationalist ideas have the potential to improve tolerance, feelings of threat can silence these messages supportive of religious pluralism.
Brooklyn Walker is an Instructor of Political Science at Hutchinson Community College and will be joining the University of Tennessee-Knoxville as Assistant Professor in the fall of 2025. Brooklyn is interested in how people come to think of themselves as members of politicized groups and in the effects of politicized identities on intergroup relations and public opinion. Her projects have explored the intersections of Christian nationalism and religious and racial group identities. She also researches in the areas of political psychology, racial and ethnic politics, and gender and politics.

“Race, Politics, and Christian Nationalism in the Second Era of Trump”
Although Christian nationalism ideology resonates across the United States, it’s important to recognize that, like many demographic groups, supporters of Christian nationalism don’t universally subscribe to the same ideas. Existing research focuses almost exclusively on White Americans who qualify as Christian nationalism adherents and sympathizers (hereafter Christian nationalists) and does so through observational analysis with few exceptions. This presentation leverages observational analysis and causal inference to examine the ideological and political differences between Black, White, and Latine Americans who qualify as Christian nationalists.
Michael R. Fisher Jr., Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the political economy of race/racism in the Department of African American and African Studies and is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion at The Ohio State University. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Fisher’s areas of specialization include race, policy, and socio-economic inequality and race and religion. He holds research appointments at the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University, the National Initiative of Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University, and the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa. He is also a 2023–25 Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute and is editor of Confronting Racism and White Supremacy in the US: Twenty-First-Century Theological Perspectives (Friendship Press, 2024).

Organized by Gina Konstantopoulos
Co-sponsored by the Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World at UCLA and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Progressive Activists and the Bible
2025-05-08 11:15 - 12:15 | Online on Zoom
Some of America’s most effective reformers did not just refer to the Bible, but fused their own struggles with its narratives, seeing themselves as part of a cosmic divine battle within history. Claudia Setzer will have us consider how abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer and others used multiple methods of biblical interpretation to make sense of their struggles and to reject despair. We will also consider contemporary activist groups that root themselves in the Bible and religious traditions.
Register here for the Zoom link.

Power and Alterity in Black Religious Thought
2025-05-13 12:30 - 13:30 | Kaplan 365
Who is the human? What is legitimate religion? Who is left out of these discourses? Questions of power, humanity, and alterity animate religious discourse and responses to oppression. Leveraging the Rastafari movement and interrogating religious racism this talk will allow us to grapple with 20th century Black religious discourses and their continued relevance for thinking about how to protect religious freedom in the contemporary moment.
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Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California – Los Angeles. Alhassan comes to UCLA from Arizona State University where she was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. As a transdisciplinary Africana Studies scholar of religion, philosophy, and gender theory, Alhassan transnational ethnographic work focuses on Black women’s radical epistemologies in Africa and the Caribbean. She is interested in the healing communities Rastafari women form to combat anti-black gendered racism and religious discrimination. Her forthcoming book tentatively titled, Re-Membering the Maternal Goddess: Rastafari Women’s Intellectual History and Activism in the Pan-African World is the winner of the National Women’s Association and University of Illinois Press First Book Prize. She is the co-editor of the book, Black Women and Da Rona: Community, Consciousness, and Ethics of Care, published with the Feminist Wire Series Books at the University of Arizona Press in 2023. Her published work also appears in Callaloo, the National Political Science Review, Religions, The Black Scholar, IDEAZ journal, Political Theology Network, the Immanent Frame, and Caliban’s Readings. She is a Crossroads Arts Fellow with The Crossroads Project Black Religious, Histories, Communities and Cultures at Princeton University. Currently, she serves as the Secretary of Rastafari Thought at the Caribbean Philosophical Association, on the board of the Religion, Medicines, and Healing Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and an organizer of the Collaborative for Research on Black Women and Girls.

Symposium - Women and Goddesses in Jainism
2025-05-23 14:00 - 17:00 | Hershey Hall Salon, 801 Hilgard Av, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
Photo credit: Samyak Modi

Throughout the history of Jainism, one of the world’s oldest living religions, Jain women have played a crucial role. Jain renouncers, whose self-denying lifestyle is revered as the highest ideal, are predominantly female, while Jain laywomen tend to be significantly more religiously active than their male counterparts. In this symposium, speakers will provide a range of perspectives on human and divine womanhood in Jain life and thought. Talks will cover the definition of gender in Jain philosophical texts, Jain goddess-worship and changing gender roles in the contemporary Jain diaspora.
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Directions to event venue – Hershey Hall Salon, Room 158
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE:
2:00 – 2:05: Welcome and introduction, Anahita Hoose (UCLA), symposium organizer & moderator
2:05 – 2:45: Ana Bajželj (UC Riverside): Defining Gender in Śvetāmbara Texts
2:45 – 3:30: Venu Mehta (Claremont School of Theology): Reconceptualizing “Goddess” in Jainism: Devotional Practices for the Jain Goddess Padmāvatī among the Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jains in Gujarat
3:30 – 3:45: Break
3:45 – 4:30: Shivani Bothra (Cal State Long Beach): Spiritual Equality or Social Boundaries: Redefining Gender Roles in Diasporic Jainism
4:30 – 5:00: Concluding Discussion

SYMPOSIUM PRESENTERS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF THEIR PAPERS:

Ana Bajželj is Associate Professor and Shrimad Rajchandra Endowed Chair in Jain Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of California, Riverside. She was previously a research fellow at the University of Rajasthan and the Polonsky Academy (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute), and she taught at the University of Ljubljana and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on Jain philosophy, particularly metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind. She is the author of The Nature of Change in Jaina Philosophy (Ljubljana University Press, 2016, in Slovenian) and the co-author of Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition (UC Press, 2021). She is currently working on a monograph study of the Tattvārthasūtra and its commentaries.
“Defining Gender in Śvetāmbara Texts”
This presentation analyzes Jain canonical definitions of the term “man” (puruṣa) from a set of standpoints listed in the Sthānāṅga (Ṭhāṇaṃga). These include (1) name (nāman), representation (sthāpanā), and potentiality (dravya); (2) knowledge (jñāna), view (darśana), and conduct (caritra); (3) sexual orientation (veda), mark (cihna), and (verbal) expression (abhilāpa); and (4) superiority (uttamapuruṣa), mediocrity (madhyamapuruṣa), and inferiority (jaghanyapuruṣa), each with three further subcategories. The presentation explores the semantic range of the term indicated by these standpoints by examining similar passages in other Śvetāmbara texts and considers its significance within the broader context of the Jain discussions on gender.

Dr. Venu Mehta is an Assistant Professor of Jainism and Comparative Spiritualities at the Claremont School of Theology. Her research primarily focuses on Jainism, with a specialization in Jain regional-vernacular devotional literature, narratives, and practices. Her doctoral dissertation examines the devotion to the Jain goddess Padmāvatī among Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jains in Gujarat, highlighting the interplay between regional devotional expressions and broader Jain theological frameworks.
Beyond her work on Jain goddess traditions, Dr. Mehta’s scholarship extends to the Jain concept of forgiveness and the intersections of aparigraha (non-possessiveness) with human dignity, sustainability, and Gandhian economic thought. Her recent research and publications also engage in Jain-Hindu comparative theologies and spiritualities, particularly in relation to goddess traditions.
In addition to her expertise in Jain studies, Dr. Mehta teaches courses on South Asian religious traditions, comparative spiritualities, and gender and women in spiritual practices. Her methodological approach integrates ethnographic research with textual analysis, emphasizing the lived experiences, devotional expressions, and ritual practices of Jain communities.
“Reconceptualizing “Goddess” in Jainism: Devotional Practices for the Jain Goddess Padmāvatī among the Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jains in Gujarat”
This presentation explores how Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak Jains in Gujarat reconceptualize the goddess Padmāvatī through their devotional practices, positioning her as a central female form of divinity within Jain religious tradition. Though Jainism primarily emphasizes the worship of the Tīrthaṅkars, Padmāvatī, a śāsanadevatā (guardian deity) and yakṣī of Pārśvanāth, has been accorded exceptional devotion. By examining vernacular literature, narratives, and regional practices from the late sixteenth century to contemporary times, I argue that Jains in Gujarat have actively shaped a distinct space for goddess worship, elevating Padmāvatī from an attendant deity to Śakti, the Great Goddess, and the Mother Goddess. This process of reimagining Padmāvatī involves a synthesis of universal Jain values with regional devotional expressions, contributing to the dynamics of democratization, universalization, and regionalization in Jain religious life. Lay Jains play a crucial role in this transformation, engaging with Padmāvatī’s legacy through non-esoteric devotional practices and literature, thus reaffirming her place within their religious framework. Ultimately, this presentation highlights how Padmāvatī’s evolving identity reflects broader patterns of Jain devotionalism, redefining the boundaries of feminine divinity within the Jain tradition in Gujarat.

Shivani Bothra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Before this, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University in Houston, USA, and taught as a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her doctorate from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her focus is South Asian traditions, Jainism, and Nonviolence. Shivani’s primary research areas are religious education and transnational Jainism, emphasizing Contemporary Jains.
“Spiritual Equality or Social Boundaries: Redefining Gender Roles in Diasporic Jainism”
This paper critically examines how gender roles in Jain diasporic communities are being redefined or reframed in ways distinct from traditional Indian contexts. How do education, modern professions, business ethics, and transnational networks influence the agency and status of Jain laywomen? In what ways do diasporic Jain women navigate their identities, negotiating between Indian religious traditions and evolving feminist discourses in their new sociocultural environments? Drawing on structured interviews with early Jain diaspora women, this research aims to shed light on the evolving spiritual and social roles of Jain women in a transnational context, assessing the extent to which diasporic Jainism fosters new models of gender participation and leadership.
This event is presented by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion. It is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Barbra Streisand Center.

Islamic China: An Asian History - Book Talk
2025-11-10 17:00 - 18:30 | UCLA Public Affairs Bldg., Rm 2270, 337 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
For more than a millennium, Islam has been a Chinese religion, and native-born Chinese Muslims have played important roles in their homeland—as butchers, merchants, and farmers; diplomats, scholar-officials, and royal astronomers. Yet the Muslims of China have often been understood as inherently foreign, incompatible with Chinese culture. In this reappraisal, Rian Thum recaptures the ordinariness of Chinese Muslims. In doing so, he suggests that these communities, whose classification has so often been seen as problematic, can teach us about the ways social categories are made and maintained in the first place.
Dr. Rian Thum is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester. A contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation, he is the author of The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, winner of the Fairbank Prize for East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the Hsu Prize for East Asian Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.
Sponsor(s): Program on Central Asia, APC, Asia Pacific Center, Center for the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies
