EVENT CANCELLED - Confusion of the Babels: Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism
2024-05-14 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.
Register here for the Zoom link.

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

CANCELLED: And God Laughed: Humor in the Bible
2026-01-15 16:00 | Royce Hall 306
Due to unforeseen circumstances, And God Laughed: Humor in the Bible with Joel Kaminsky has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will re-list if the event is rescheduled.
Since the Hebrew Bible is a sacred text for Jews and Christians many readers naturally assume it cannot contain any humor. This talk will explore several biblical narratives that employ humor to make serious theological points. Becoming aware of such biblical humor can enrich our understanding of these stories and of certain theological ideas the ancient biblical writers wished to emphasize.
Joel Kaminsky is the Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a professor of Bible in the Religion Department at Smith College where he has taught since 1997. His research explores the intersection between narrative and theological currents in the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature and seeks to illuminate the distinct ways that Jews and Christians over the past two millennia have interpreted the Hebrew Bible.
Joel Kaminsky (Smith College)
Moderator: Carol Bakhos (UCLA)
The Bible and the Ancient World Seminar Series
Sponsored by The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion

A Tattered Leaf Covers the Torn: Class Dynamics of Buddhist Charity in Vietnam
2026-01-21 16:00 - 17:30 | Royce 243
Professor Sara Ann Swenson (Dartmouth College) presents new research on how global trends in humanitarianism are enacted at the local level through the everyday ethics and informal practices of low-income and middle-class Buddhist volunteers in Vietnam.
Studies of humanitarianism tend to focus on the large-scale. They analyze disaster relief, international diplomacy, development politics, and privatized welfare. These studies highlight trends and policies that suggest generosity is becoming homogenized into “industrialized philanthropy.” Yet when global trends actualize in local communities, diverse ethics and interpretations of care reemerge. Differences flourish and conflicts arise over how to best care for others.
Sara Ann Swenson’s research examines the point at which national trends toward philanthropy are enacted on the ground by focusing on the role of low-income and middle-class Buddhist volunteers in Vietnam. Informal giving and “random acts of kindness” are difficult to quantify, meaning they are often overlooked among large-scale studies of humanitarianism. Yet these everyday ethics of care are also a major way that citizens—particularly low-income earners and middle-class workers—transform ethics of care into civic engagement and moral citizenship. Moreover, as volunteers draw on Buddhist teachings and practices to explain care in Vietnam, their religious ethics permeate secular and public institutions such as hospitals, universities, and social service programs. Close qualitative research shows how—even as processes of giving are increasingly globalized—the motivations, experiences, and relationships that arise from giving can vary greatly by context, depending on intersectional dynamics between donors and recipients. Researchers must always attend to questions of who is giving to whom and why for a comprehensive understanding of how social service needs are being met amid high-speed development and privatization in late socialist countries like Vietnam.
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Sara Ann Swenson is an Assistant Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College. She researches contemporary Buddhism in Vietnam. She holds a PhD and MPhil in Religion from Syracuse University, an MA in Comparative Religion from Iliff School of Theology, and a BA in English from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her book Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Sponsor(s): Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for the Study of Religion, Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East
2026-01-27 14:30 - 16:30 | Bunche Hall 10383
In this book talk, Febe Armanios (Middlebury College) will present on her recently-published monograph Satellite Ministries, which explores how modern expressions of faith, technology, and political power intersected and clashed across the Global South and beyond through the analysis of sixteen Christian television channels in the Middle East. In 1981, a satellite television station called Star of Hope began broadcasting from Israeli-occupied South Lebanon. Later renamed Middle East Television (METV), its programming included American soap operas, sports, and evangelical content alongside innovative Arabic Christian televangelism. METV spurred the growth of competing Christian broadcasters and reshaped the Middle East’s media and religious landscape over the next four decades. Through extensive fieldwork and archival research, Febe Armanios explores how Western evangelicals and indigenous Christians harnessed terrestrial and satellite technologies to promote Christian television in the Middle East.
This is a hybrid event
In- person RSVP – click here.
Register here to attend online.
Co-sponsor: Center for Near Eastern Studies

Between Discordant Shores: Dante’s Francis, the Book of Islam and the Orient
2026-02-05 16:00 - 17:00 | Kaufman Hall Room 101
(Image: Coppo di Marcovaldo, St. Francis before the Sultan,” Sultan Malek al-Kāmil and his philosophers, Bardi Altarpiece, c. 1260s, Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence.)
Marking the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’s death in 2026, this talk draws on Morosini’s recent study Dante, Moses and the Book of Islam (2024) to explore Dante’s Francis and their shared conception of the Book of Islam and of the Orient. At its center is the Book’s role within the Commedia and in Dante’s representation of Francis, offering a new perspective on the Orient as a geographic space of dialogue rather than dehumanizing alterity.
This perspective, as emerged in Dante, Moses and the Book of Islam, calls for a reevaluation of Dante’s “discordant shores” of Paradiso IX, 85. In Dante’s vision, the Book becomes a bridge between cultures and faiths, a medium of transmission and encounter that links distant shores within a Mediterranean network of knowledge.
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Prior to joining UCLA’s Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies in July 2024, Professor Morosini was Professor of Italian at the Università L’Orientale di Napoli since 2022 and the 2024 Chair of Italian Culture at UC Berkeley.

A Multifaith Conversation on Justice, Forgiveness and Compassion
2026-02-24 18:00 - 20:00 | UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), 570 Westwood Plaza
In our deeply fractured world, religion serves both to connect and offer wisdom and to foster conflict and division. Over the course of centuries, it has been frequently invoked to justify brutal violence, but can it be an effective tool to advance justice? To explore different perspectives on the topic of faith, forgiveness, and justice, we will be joined by a distinguished panel of religious leaders: Father Greg Boyle, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Valarie Kaur, and Imam Dr. Jihad Turk.
Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Rabbi Sharon Brous is the senior and founding Rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish spiritual community in Los Angeles. Valarie Kaur is a civil rights leader and activist, filmmaker, educator, best-selling author, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. Imam Dr. Jihad Turk is the founding President of Bayan Islamic Graduate School, a preeminent Muslim institution of higher education.
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Organized by and co-sponsored with the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute as part of their Compassionate Conversations series.

Who are the Tanguts and why do they matter? Writing, Religion, and Cultural Exchange in the Xia Kingdom
2026-03-05 16:00 - 17:30 | Royce 243
The Tangut Xia kingdom flourished in the Ordos region and the Gansu Corridor between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. This talk will provide an introduction to the Tangut Xia kingdom, its unique writing system, and its dynamic religious traditions, highlighting the complex Chinese and Tibetan cultural interactions that shaped its historical development. By integrating elements of Chinese and Tibetan cultures, the Tanguts forged a unique religious and cultural amalgam.
The Tangut Xia kingdom flourished in the Ordos region and the Gansu Corridor between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Despite its relatively brief existence, it developed a distinctive literary culture and produced a rich textual heritage that deserves thorough and sustained academic study. During the early stages of state formation, Tangut emperors actively adopted and adapted elements of Chinese-style governance and bureaucratic institutions. At the same time, the Tangut rulers sponsored the acquisition, translation, and dissemination of the Chinese Buddhist canon. By integrating elements of Chinese and Tibetan cultures, the Tanguts forged a unique religious and cultural amalgam.
By the twelfth century, the introduction of Tibetan Buddhist texts further expanded the kingdom’s intellectual and religious horizons, bringing Tangut culture into close contact with Tibetan civilization. This talk will provide an introduction to the Tangut Xia kingdom, its unique writing system, and its dynamic religious traditions, highlighting the complex cultural interactions that shaped its historical development.
Speaker: Nikita Kuzmin is a historian of the Middle Period China. He joined Elling Eide Center in August 2025 as a visiting scholar after graduating from a Ph.D. program from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. Prior to coming to UPenn, Nikita have lived and studied in Russia, China, Germany, Nepal, and Japan. He has a strong research interest in the history of the Tangut period (11th-13th centuries) of the greater Dunhuang area, as well as circulation of people, books, and thoughts along the Silk Roads.
REGISTER HERE for this in-person event.
This event is organized by and co-sponsored with the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies.

EVENT POSTPONED: The Complex Interplay of Religion, Law and Politics in Israel
2026-03-09 17:30 - 18:30 | Bunche Hall 10383
We regret to inform you that this March 9th on-campus event featuring Orly Erez-Likhovski as been postponed, as the speaker is unable to fly to us from Israel due to the war with Iran. We will notify you when/if we can host this event in the future.
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Without the protections of a written constitution and a clear separation of religion and state, Israelis face unique challenges in securing fundamental rights to equality and religious freedom under Israeli law. Although Israel’s Declaration of Independence commits to “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex” the authority of the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate and the disproportionate influence of Orthodox political parties within Israel’s parliamentary system have contributed to violations of the rights of women, non-Orthodox Jews, members of the LGBTQ+ community and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israeli lawyer and activist Orly Erez-Likhovski will discuss key legal battles in Israel to protect and advance Israeli democracy and religious pluralism.
Speaker: Orly Erez-Likhovski, Director of Israel Religious Action Center
Moderator: Carol Bakhos, Robert E. Archer Chair in the Study of Religion, Director, UCLA Center for the Study of Religion
CLICK HERE for more information and to register for this in-person event. After registering, you will be emailed an RSVP confirmation. If you do not receive your email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.
About the Speakers
Orly Erez-Likhovski has served as an attorney at the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) since 2004, as Director of the Legal Department from 2014–2021, and Director of IRAC since 2021. In these roles, she has brought about significant legal achievements such as making gender segregation on public transportation illegal, ending the Orthodox monopoly on state-funded salaries to rabbis, filing (and winning) the first-ever class action suit regarding exclusion of women, and disqualifying racist candidates from running to Israel’s parliament. Orly holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Tel Aviv University and a master’s degree in law with a focus on human rights law from Columbia University in New York. She is a member of the Bar Association in Israel and New York.
Carol Bakhos (moderator) is Professor of Late Antique Judaism and Jewish Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and teaches for the Study of Religion IDP. Since 2012 she has served as Chair of the Study of Religion program and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA. Her most recent monograph, The Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Interpretations (Harvard University Press, 2014), was translated into Turkish (2015). In 2018, Bakhos received an NEH Summer-Institute grant to direct “Religious Landscapes of LA: Teaching and Exploring Religious Diversity Through Civic Engagement,” for K-12 educators.

Organized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. This event is part of the Center’s series “Religion in Israeli Society.” Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion.

The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution
2026-04-09 15:30 - 16:30 | Bunche Hall 10383
Muslim charities and community organizations have assumed a significant role in refugee support since the Syrian catastrophe: in Jordan and Canada, as elsewhere, they deliver food aid, house orphans, and organize remedial education. But Islam is more than just a resource for humanitarian projects. The Dread Heights details how the Islamic tradition guides refugees, relief workers, and religious scholars in a world of brutal sieges and mass displacement. Even as refugees become objects of humanitarian concern suspended between national orders, this ethnography brings another suspension into view: a form of life whose gestures are illuminated by the Quranic figure of the Heights. In the shadow of war, beyond humanitarian order, Islam offers an orientation to the devastation of the present.
Basit Kareem Iqbal is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Member in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University. An anthropologist and longtime academic editor, his research explores the difficulty of the present within and across distinct traditions and forms of life. He is author of The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (2025) and editor of collaborative journal issues on tribulation (2022), the destruction of loss (2023), the incapacitations of tradition (2026), and the unmooring of the present (2027). His current projects include translating a book on the representation of violence and writing a series of essays on evil in creation.
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Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, Center for Middle East Development, Center for Study of International Migration, Islamic Studies, and the Center for the Study of Religion

Music and Religion in Popular Culture: The Case of Orthodox Jews and Christian Contemporary Music
2026-05-13 12:00 - 13:15 | Kaplan 365
Since the 1960s religious practitioners have created their own music to express their beliefs and values to shield the community from popular culture. The Irony is they use the popular culture that they reject from American culture in their music. This presentation by Mark Kligman (UCLA) will highlight important composers and groups with audio and video examples of Orthodox Jewish and Christian Contemporary Music.
RSVP required here for in-person attendance.
Register for Zoom link here.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.

Gods and the Abyss: Encountering Oceanic Agency at the Edge of the Ancient World
2026-05-29 14:00 - 15:30 | Kaplan 365
This presentation examines how coastal communities in antiquity conceived of the sea not merely as a physical environment, but as a powerful, living force endowed with agency. Such perceptions became especially vivid in the aftermath of coastal catastrophes. The Gulf of Cádiz, on the southwestern edge of the Iberian Peninsula, serves as the primary case study. Its broad floodplains and pronounced tidal regimes made it highly vulnerable to extreme events, including storm surges and tsunamis, which repeatedly reshaped both the landscape and human experience. By tracing how societies from antiquity to the present have responded to episodes of catastrophic marine flooding through religious practice and ritualized forms of engagement, the paper explores the complex interplay between human action and the more-than-human agency of the sea.
Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Málaga (Spain) and currently a Getty Villa Scholar. His research interests include modern historiography of the ancient world and the cultural intersections between local Iberian communities—especially Tartessos—and the Phoenicians. His recent work focuses on the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis on coastal communities of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as their resilient responses to these kinds of environmental shocks with often catastrophic consequences. He has co-edited, with Francisco Machuca Prieto, the volume Historical Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Archaeology in the Iberian Peninsula (Springer, 2022) and co-organised the workshop Fluid Horizons: Charting Ancient Environmental History and Blue Humanities (University of London, 2024).
Co-sponsored with the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies

(De)medicalization and the Dying Body: Sallekhanā, Kinship, and the Limits of Liberal Bioethics
2026-05-31 14:00 - 16:00 | Royce Hall 306
In this talk, Miki Chase (U of Wisconsin-Madison) explores how trajectories of illness and care, such as terminal cancer or anticipated cognitive decline, are reinterpreted through Jain doctrinal frameworks in the narratives of adult children of women who undertake the Jain ritual fast to death (sallekhanā or santhāra). Drawing on ethnographic accounts of women’s deaths in contemporary urban Jain households, Chase traces how narratives of bodily decline are reframed not as losses to be managed through medical intervention but as conditions of spiritual possibility that invite ascetic detachment and renunciation. Rather than resisting biomedical or bioethical paradigms outright, these narratives inhabit a complex zone of overlap where cognitive clarity is both a medical and religious ideal; the attenuation of pain is karmically elevated rather than clinically managed; and the logic of institutionalized care is subtly displaced not by the absence of obligation but by alternate forms of care. In tracing the limits of bioethical paradigms that presume the necessity of medicalization and institutional oversight, this talk describes how “illness narratives” and “santhāra narratives” coalesce to challenge prevailing understandings of what it means to die well, and how suffering, pain, and the medicalized body is accounted for in the lives—and deaths—of Jain women.
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(Parking information for Royce Hall)
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Miki Chase is Assistant Professor in South Asian Studies and holds the Śrī Anantnāth Endowed Chair in Jain Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on intersections of religion, law, and gender in questions of care around death and dying in India, with a specific focus on Jainism.
Dr. Chase received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, and her doctoral work received the Mohini Jain Presidential Chair in Jain Studies Best Dissertation Prize (2024). Her research focuses on the contemporary practice of the legally contested Jain voluntary ritual fast until death known variably as sallekhanā, santhāra, or samādhi-maraṇa, examining how lay Jains reconcile ideals and concepts outlined in scripture with the interreligious pressures of urban life and modernization of death, foregrounding the centrality of women’s moral subjectivities in such negotiations. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the American Institute for Indian Studies (AIIS), including the Rachel F. and Scott McDermott Junior Research Fellowship. Her book in progress is tentatively titled The Ambiguity of the Vow: Law, Kinship, and Gender in Pathologizing the Jain Fast Until Death.

Study of Religion Welcome Reception
2026-10-15 16:00 - 17:30 | Royce Hall 306
Lift a glass to the new academic year and meet friends old and new!
Welcome remarks by Dean Stern and Professor Bakhos at 4:30p.
RSVP required by October 11. See you there!

The Paradox of Pointless Suffering
2026-10-26 16:00 - 17:15 | Royce Hall 306
Why do we suffer? Why do people die young? Is there any point to our excessive pain, physical or emotional? This talk explores the ways that we have tried to minimize or eliminate suffering, and examines people’s attempts to find ways to live with pointless suffering. Ultimately, to be fully human—and to have healthy culture—means to acknowledge a mysterious paradox: we must simultaneously accept suffering and oppose it.
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Scott Samuelson studied philosophy at Grinnell College (BA, 1995, valedictorian) and Emory University (PhD, 2001). He is currently a Professor of Practice in the Departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. In 2014, he was named Distinguished Humanities Educator by the Community College Humanities Association. Inspired by his students, he wrote his first book The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone (University of Chicago Press, 2014), which has been well received not just by prominent reviewers but by numerous non-philosophers who found their philosophical voice with its help. The book has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese. Samuelson has published articles in the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Philosopher’s Magazine, and Christian Century. His article “Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers” in The Atlantic has been widely circulated. He’s been interviewed on NPR and given various public lectures and talks, including a TEDx talk “How Philosophy Can Save Your Life.”
Scott Samuelson was the recipient of the 2015 Hiett Prize in the Humanities.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies.
