Department of Religious Studies

The Religious Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania offers a program of undergraduate education in humanistic studies appropriate for many careers and walks of life and extensive opportunities to those who wish to become scholars and teachers in the field in its graduate program. Both programs offer courses in major religious traditions, religion and culture, religion and society, and theories of religion. The primary emphasis of the program is upon understanding through interpretation. Thus the focus of the program is upon the descriptive, historical, critical and theoretical work that engages every interpreter of religion.

Search results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 37
  • Publication
    A Drum Speaks: Partnership to Create a Digital Archive Based on Traditional Ojibwe Systems of Knowledge
    (2007-01-01) Powell, Timothy B
    I want to take back, as an ambassador to my people [the Ojibwe], that new lesson I learned [at the Penn Museum (UPM)], we no longer have to be afraid of having pictures taken because they don’t steal the spirit of what’s being taken. They can invigorate and enliven and inspire knowledge and wisdom and learning … Digital imaging is a new thing … that can [bring to life these Ojibwe artifacts] for our kids and our generation … We’re going to digitally image some of the things and take them back to our people … All of these things . . .
  • Publication
    Digital Repatriation in the Field of Indigenous Anthropology
    (2011-10-01) Powell, Timothy B
    As the term “digital repatriation” gains wider circulation, it has come under increased scrutiny and criticism. At the 2010 AAA Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Kim Christen convened an Executive Program Committee session entitled “After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge.” Despite abundant examples of how digital technology creates opportunities for working in partnership with indigenous communities, questions focused on the inadequacies of the term “digital repatriation.” Panelist Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh (Denver Museum of Nature and Science) stated the problem most succinctly by recounting that the Native communities he worked with always wanted to know if “digital repatriation” meant that they were going to get the original materials back. The answer, of course, was no.
  • Publication
    The Culture of Disbelief
    (1994-03-21) Carter, Stephen L.
    Stephen L. Carter, author of The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, speaks about some of the same topics covered in his book: whether American leaders and intellectuals take religion seriously, and whether these same leaders take a stand on the importance of religion and how religion functions in the lives of the many Americans who are believers. His approach in this lecture is that of religious affiliation and belief in the Supreme Court confirmation process.
  • Publication
    The Impossible Dream
    (1988-01-18) Fauntroy, Walter E.
    The congressman called for a commitment to change. Drawing on memories of his close association with King, he noted that to many in his time, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dreamer of impossible dreams. Nevertheless, King turned several "impossible dreams" into living realities. The fact that King managed to have public facilities desegregated, in the face of strong opposition, serves as a good example. From this the congressman found encouragement that, although injustice continues to plague society, if we pledge ourselves to the kind of ideals that inspired King, we will find it possible to create a more equitable order. In response to the lecture, Dr. Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, recalled that, beyond racism, King opposed the Vietnam war. She urged the audience to work toward the kind of society of which he dreamed.
  • Publication
    Some Skeptical Thoughts About Active Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
    (1994-03-23) May, William F.
    William May argues for a middle course regarding euthanasia and assisted suicide, rejecting absolutist positions and makes the point that neither life at any cost nor killing to cure a disease serves society or individuals very well. Elsa Ramsden, David Hufford, Neville Strumpf, Albert Stunkard, all participate in a panel discussion after the formal lecture.
  • Publication
    Steering a Course Set by Thomas Jefferson: New Developments in the Native American Collections at the American Philosophical Society
    (2015-09-01) Powell, Timothy B
    As the director of Native American projects for the past 7 years, I have been watching distinguished scholars give talks like this one from the back row of the upper balcony. One of the things I noticed is that almost everyone, from Nobel Prize winners to astrophysicists, begins his or her talk by admitting how intimidating it is to speak to such a distinguished audience. And I can certainly second that emotion here today. So as I was writing the talk, I was trying to imagine a way to calm my anxiety and I came up with a highly questionable solution. What if, I imagined, I were talking to Thomas Jefferson? It would, no offense, make the American Philosophical Society (APS) audience seem tame by comparison. So I began by asking: How would I explain myself to Jefferson, who started the Native American collection in the late 18th century when he served simultaneously as the president of the United States and the president of the APS? Oh, yeah—I’m feeling calmer now!
  • Publication
    How to Buy a Continent: The Protocols of Indian Treaties as Developed by Benjamin Franklin and Other Members of the American Philosophical Society
    (2015-09-01) Wallace, Anthony F C; Powell, Timothy B
    In 1743, when Benjamin Franklin announced the formation of an American Philosophical Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, it was important for the citizens of Pennsylvania to know more about their American Indian neighbors. Beyond a slice of land around Philadelphia, three quarters of the province were still occupied by the Delaware and several other Indian tribes, loosely gathered under the wing of an Indian confederacy known as the Six Nations. Relations with the Six Nations and their allies were being peacefully conducted in a series of so-called “Indian Treaties” that dealt with the fur trade, threats of war with France, settlement of grievances, and the purchase of land.
  • Publication
    The American Philosophical Society Protocols for the Treatment of Indigenous Materials
    (2014-12-01) Powell, Timothy B
    The APS Protocols have played an important role in helping the Society build stronger ties to the indigenous communities whose cultural materials are housed in the library. Beginning in 2008, the APS implemented a Digital Knowledge Sharing (DKS) initiative that established partnerships with four indigenous communities in the United States and Canada. The DKS program brought teams of Native American elders, teachers, and scholars to the APS. The teams selected materials for digitization that would strengthen ongoing language preservation and cultural revitalization projects in their communities. During the course of this process, indigenous community members helpfully identified archival materials considered to be culturally sensitive. Although the APS will keep with its tradition of allowing open access to collections (except for those accepted into the collection with restrictions), material designated by indigenous communities as culturally sensitive may not be photographed or otherwise reproduced without express permission from the communities of origin, a policy especially designed to keep sensitive material from circulating on the Internet. It is a compromise that respects the traditions of the APS and our current and future Native American partners.
  • Publication
    Building Bridges Between Archives and Indian Communities
    (2010-01-01) Powell, Timothy B
    The APS has a long, distinguished history of preserving Native American languages. It began when Thomas Jefferson was the President of the Society in the late eighteenth century. A new chapter in this history was written this past May at the “Building Bridges between Archives and Indian Communities” conference—the first time in more than two hundred years that a large number of Native Americans have been invited to the Library to reconnect with their heritage. It was my great privilege to organize the conference. As Larry Aitken, tribal historian from the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, who performed the Sacred Pipe ceremony that began the conference, said, “It is good that the APS invited us here, opened their doors and their books so that we can bring these things back to life.”
  • Publication
    Can “Law” Be Private? The Mixed Message of Rabbinic Oral Law
    (2015-01-01) Dohrmann, Natalie B
    A great deal of ink has been spilled on the question of early rabbinic literary culture and the rabbinic dedication to the development of an explicitly oral legal tradition. In this essay I will argue that given that the manifest content of early rabbinic discourse is law, it is productive to look to the very public practices of communication inscribed, literally and figuratively, in the Roman legal culture of the east. Within this context, the rabbinic legal project makes sense as a form of provincial shadowing of a dominant Roman legal culture. This paper will explore the paradoxical rabbinic deployment of the most public of Roman genres, law, in a manner explicitly coded as private. How does one make sense of the public aspirations of rabbinic law with its choice to remain unwritten and therefore largely invisible in the imperial landscape of the rabbinic city?