Religion

On the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, scholars from across the Middlebury College faculty will discuss the impact that this major historical event has had on the study of art, history, music, language, literature, politics, and religion. The Thursday evening lectures and the Friday roundtable discussions are open to the public.

Ruth Dunnell, James P. Storer Professor of Asian History, Kenyon College

Performativity and Agency of the Material Guise (Vesham) in a South Indian Goddess Tradition

Joyce Flueckiger situates stri vesham in a wider repertoire of guising in Gangamma traditions, which provides commentary on the agency of material guising, and argues that stri vesham does not make men women, but transforms their masculinity.

The Passions of J.S. Bach are among Bach’s most revered and respected music, yet that music is grounded in specific religious context far removed from today. Is Bach’s music truly universal, or is there another way to understand how Bach’s Passions resonate in the modern era? This talk is an introductory event to the Middlebury Bach Festival, in which John Butt will conduct J. S. Bach’s “St John Passion,” Saturday April 28 and Sunday April 29. go/bachfest/

Commencement reception for Religion Seniors and their families.

Commencement reception for seniors and their families for the departments of Dance, Theatre, Classics & Classical Studies, Literary Studies, Philosophy, Religion, and Education Studies.

Remarks & awards for graduating seniors and their guests in MAC 125 followed by a reception in the Mahaney Arts Center Upper Lobby at 4:30 p.m.

This epic film by renowned artist Ai Weiwei is a detailed and heartbreaking exploration of the global refugee crisis. Captured over the course of a year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent stories that stretches through Afghanistan, Greece, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, Turkey, and beyond. From teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders, ‘Human Flow’ witnesses its subjects’ desperate search for safety, shelter, and justice. (2017, dir. Ai Weiwei, 140 min.) Free and open to the public.*

Moriel Rothman-Zecher, ‘11, returns to Middlebury to read from his first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, a coming-of-age novel of which the Jerusalem Post has said that it “conveys the complexities of Israeli and Palestinian life with passion, nuance and tenderness…” Rothman-Zecher “has shown a fearlessness and vulnerability on these pages that speak to his ability to explore difficult terrain without feeling the need to draw any neat or concise conclusions. It shuns certainty and is open, nuanced, inconclusive and often contradictory. Just like Israeli reality.”

Through her decades-long ethnography of Hindu temple rituals in the city of Bangalore, India, Tulasi Srinivas analyzes wonder as an anthropological concept; moments where ritual enmeshes with global modernity to create wonder- a feeling of amazement at being overcome by the unexpected and sublime. In this talk, Srinivas asks— What is the purpose of wonder and how does it link with creativity? Can it inform our practices of ethnography, our understanding of India, and of ourselves?