Spirit of the Law

Many writers are influenced by their religious tradition. Even when they have left that tradition behind, the spirit of the religious law continues to influence, inflect and inform their writing. Join us for an informal conversation as panelists and attendees reflect on how religious practices (past or present) inform, haunt, push and pull their own thinking and writing.  

Panelists and audience members are welcome to share and reflect together.

This event is hosted by the Humanities Institute. The panel will be followed by audience Q&A. Refreshments will be served.

Panelists:

Kathleen Cummings is the Rev. John A. O’Brien Collegiate Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame.  She holds concurrent appointments in Gender Studies and the Department of Theology, and she is also affiliated faculty in Italian Studies and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Jeffrey Cohen is the dean of humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. He is widely published in the fields of medieval studies, monster theory, posthumanism and ecocriticism. At ASU, Professor Cohen is laying the groundwork for projects that intensify the university's strengths in the environmental humanities; increase opportunities for the work of humanities scholars to reach wider publics; and ensure the next generation of scholars, teachers and researchers (especially in traditional fields) is the most diverse to date. An overview of his success as dean of humanities may be found here.

Catherine O’Donnell is Assistant Vice Provost and Professor of History at Arizona State University. She is the author of the award winning book Elizabeth Seton: American Saint (Cornell University Press, 2018), as well as Jesuits in the British and North American Colonies: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation (Brill, 2018) and Men of Letters in the Early Republic (Chapel HIll, 2008). She has authored many articles including in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, Early American Literature and the US Catholic Historian. 

Yasmin Saikia is Co-Director of Center of Muslim Experience in the United States, and the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on the histories of memory and identity; women, war, and peace; histories of premodern and contemporary South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and engaging the history of Islam and Islamic values of peace.  As the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies she advances the study of peace with a more humanities-oriented approach by paying attention to culture, history, and individual and group agency. Saikia hails from Assam in northeast India and has deep connections with scholars and public in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Turkey. 

Image: William Blake, “Job and His Family” from the illustrations to the Book of Job, 1823-26. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection