Lerner Foundation Gift Establishes Permanent Fund for Religious Studies Program

The generous contribution of the Lerner family has allowed the Religious Studies Program to create The Lerner Workshop in Religion and Society.  Each year a renowned scholar is invited to NYU for a distinguished lecture and seminar.  Speakers will address issues that correspond with the Program's ongoing mission to explore religious practice and belief as integral parts of human social life.  As the Program faculty's intellectual interests, as well as its close working relationship with the Center for Religion and Media and the joint MA degree with the Department of Journalism attest, a central part of our intellectual and institutional project is to create public contexts for the kind of conversations about religion and social life that usually only occur in the academy: just as religion is something fundamentally public (even when privatized), so the conversation about it should be as well.  As our wide interdisciplinary approach includes anthropological, historical, literary, and philosophical approaches to the study of religion, so the invited speaker is asked to "think big" about the given topic. 

DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

October 2, 2012
JEFFREY STOUT (Department of Religion, Princeton University) presents
SHADOW OF A DOUBT:  Hitchcock on Augustine, Freud, and Horrendous Evil

Click here for video Part 1

Click here for video Part 2

April 26, 2012
Inaugural Lecture by Diane Winston
Religion, Sexuality and AIDS: All the News That's Fit to Print

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