Religion

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?

The founder of the Sikh Panth (community), Guru Nanak (1469-1539), wrote songs of devotion to express his mission of faith and charity to his early followers. He did not write an autobiography. Therefore, Sikhs learn about Guru Nanak and relate to his life story through a corpus of janam-sakhi (birth stories) narratives that present his life’s story but are not part of the scriptural canon.

Secularism is often understood as the separation of religion and politics, and France is usually upheld as a model secular nation. But how does French secularism work in practice? Is separation ever possible? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Paris, Professor Mayanthi Fernando examines recent attempts by the French state to secularize Islam by dividing it into “religion” and “culture.” She shows how this is ultimately an impossible task, and how that might reveal something about the nature of secularism itself.

This lecture examines the formation of American secularism through the art of cartoonist Watson Heston. Looking at Heston’s iconic images provides an opportunity to assess the contours of both secularism and secular studies.

Is secularism the separation of church and state? Is secularism the absence of religion? What does it mean to be secular? Professor Joseph Blankholm will answer these and other questions as he explains the many meanings of secularism and why they matter for anyone trying to understand the future of American religion—and nonreligion.