Harvard Divinity School

 

Annual Addresses and Lectures HDS is pleased to make recent Convocation addresses and Dudleian, Ingersoll, James, and Tillich lectures available online.  Streamed audio and video content on this site is delivered in RealMedia format. The latest versions of RealPlayer or RealAlternative are compatible with this site, and one of these will need to be installed to access streamed media. The preferred browser is Internet Explorer; videos may not play in other browsers. To read lecture texts in Portable Document Format (PDF), you will need Adobe Reader or another PDF viewer. Convocation Harvard Divinity School opens each academic year with Convocation—the only one of the Schools of Harvard University to hold such an event. The Convocation address is given each September by a member of the Faculty of Divinity. 2009: Jacob K. Olupona, "Africa Matters: Religious Creativity and Africa's Encounters With the World" video 2008: Donald K. Swearer, "An Ecology of Human Flourishing" video 2007: Anne Monius, "On the Question of Relevance: Why Twelfth-Century India and Haitian Voudou Matter" video 2006: Davíd Carrasco, "Borderlands and the 'biblical hurricane': Images and Stories of Latin American Rhythms of Life" video · news article 2005: Ann Braude, "A Short Half-Century: Fifty Years of Women at Harvard Divinity School" text · video · news article 2004: Peter Gomes, "The Backward Glance and the Forward Look" text · video · news article 2003: Janet Gyatso, "Where We Do Stand" text The Dudleian Lecture The Dudleian Lecture, endowed by Paul Dudley in 1750, is the oldest endowed lecture at Harvard University, with the first lecture given in 1755. Dudley specified that the lecture should be given once a year, and that the topics of the lectures should rotate among four themes: natural religion, revealed religion, the Romish church, and the validity of the ordination of ministers. Today, the lectures rotate among the three themes of natural religion, revealed religion, and Protestant-Catholic mutual understanding. 2009-10: Sallie McFague, "Cities, Climate Change, and Christianity: Religion and Sustainable Urbanism" video · news article 2008-09: María Pilar Aquino, "Globalization, Identity, and Religious Peacebuilding" video 2007-08: Paul Rorem, "Negative Theologies and the Cross" video 2005-06: Susannah Heschel, "Jesus and Shylock: Feminist Views of Christianity's Jews" video 2004-05: Miroslav Volf, "Memory, Salvation, and Perdition" text · video 2003-04: Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "In the Beginning Was Consciousness" text · video The Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality One of the oldest endowed lectures at Harvard University, the Ingersoll Lecture dates from 1893. The original bequest of $5,000 was made by Caroline Haskell Ingersoll in honor of her father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll (HDS Class of 1818), and the terms of the gift stated that a lecture be given once a year, following the model of the Dudleian Lecture. 2009-10: François Bovon, "The Soul's Comeback: Immortality and Resurrection in Early Christianity" video 2008-09: Leora Batnitzky, "From Resurrection to Immortality: Theological and Political Implications in Modern Jewish Thought" video 2006-07: James Cone, "Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree" video 2005-06: Karen Armstrong, "Is Immortality Important?" text · video 2004-05: Donald Lopez, "Meditations on the Immortality of the Buddha" video 2002-03: Daniel Callahan, "The Desire for Eternal Life: Scientific Versus Religious Visions" text · video The William James Lecture on Religious Experience The William James Lecture was established in 1968 with a gift to Harvard Divinity School from the John Lindsley Fund endowing a lecture series in honor of William James. A scholar is to be invited each year to lecture with particular reference to James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience. 2008-09: Paul J. Griffiths, "Experience Attenuated: The Proper End of the Liturgical Life" video 2007-08: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Imagination, Not Culture: A Singular Example" video 2006-07: Ghassan Hage, "This Is Not a Religious Experience: Muslims in the West and the Specter of Extermination" video 2005-06: Karen Baker-Fletcher, "Dancing With God in a World of Crucifixion" video 2004-05: Bernard McGinn, "Visions and Visualizations in the Here and Hereafter" video 2003-04: Gananath Obeyesekere, "The Buddhist Meditative Askesis" text excerpts · video 2002-03: John Ashton, "The Religious Experience of Jesus" text · video The Paul Tillich Lecture The Tillich Lecture, sponsored by Harvard Divinity School and the Memorial Church, commemorates the theologian Paul Tillich, an émigré from Nazi Germany who served as a University Professor at Harvard from 1955 to 1962. The first lecture was held in 1990, on the 25th anniversary of Tillich's death. 2008-09: Stuart A. Kauffman, "The Open Universe and the Sacred" audio · news article 2007-08: Bruno Guiderdoni, "Science, Faith, and the Dialogue of Cultures: Islamic Perspectives" news article 2006-07: Louis Dupré, "The Fateful Separation of Philosophy and Theology" 2005-06: Letty Russell, "Encountering the 'Other' in a World of Difference and Danger" audio · news article 2004-05: Richard Schacht, "After the 'Death of God': Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Tillich" video 2003-04: Charles Adams, "Race, Religion, Politics: Tillich and the Black Preacher" video