Our signature program includes a sequence of public lectures and seminars with a focus on themes chosen both for relevance and faculty expertise, including:
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Voting the Divine: Collective Decision-Making and Religious Authority between Polytheism and Monotheism Susanna Elm (History), Duncan McRae (Classics), and Emily Mackil (History)
This Public Course series will examine theological contexts and motives of voting and deliberation in premodern societies. The series addresses the relationship between voting as the signal marker of democracy, and the rituals and theologies of both monotheist and polytheist societies. This series focuses on democracy as a central feature of religious life.
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Theology and Health-Care Ronit Stahl (History and Othering and Belonging Institute)
This Public Course series will examine the role of religious institutions and accommodations in American healthcare. It will focus on the reshaping of American health care by religious hospital systems to examine how theology has infused public policy and public health. The course will examine how theology substantively and rhetorically shapes healthcare and how theology has become interwoven with public policy and democracy.
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Religion and the Republic: Past, Present, Future Co-Convened by Jonathan Sheehan (History), Ethan Shagan (History), Victoria Kahn (Comparative Literature), and Kinch Hoekstra (Political Science)
This Public Course series will examine the broader questions of the relationship between democracy and theology, using the case of republican politics in the past and in the present. The series will bring together historians, religion scholars, political theorists, political scientists, and legal scholars to explore the historical and contemporary varieties of republican religion in the hopes of developing a more robust way of imagining democratic norms and practices.