The Annual Durfee Lecture was initiated by a generous gift from Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee. Held every spring, the series provides our students and colleagues with the opportunity to meet distinguished thinkers.

14th Annual Durfee Lecture, Spring 2022
Thursday, March 3, 2022, 6 p.m. | Abramson Family Founders Room (SIS building)

Kwok Pui Lan, Dean's Professor of Systematic Theology
Emory University, Candler School of Theology 

Kwok Pui Lan

Dr. Kwok Pui Lan is Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University and a past president of the American Academy of Religion. She has authored and edited numerous books on Asian and Asian American feminist theology, biblical interpretation, and postcolonial criticism. An internationally known scholar, Dr. Kwok received her doctorate from Harvard University. Her publications include Postcolonial Politics and Theology; Globalization, Gender, and Peacebuilding; Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology; and Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World. She is also the editor of Women and Christianityin 4 volumes.

“Postcolonialism, Interreligious Engagement, and Peacebuilding”

Scholars interested in postcolonial theory have contested the ways “religion” has been conjured and studied to further colonial interests. This lecture discusses growing concerns of decolonizing religious studies and debunks myths that hinder interreligious learning and engagement. Focusing on the Asia Pacific region, Dr. Kwok argues that interreligious solidarity is crucial to peacebuilding and offers examples of how religious leaders and organizations have worked to further peace.

Father Columba Stewart, OSB

2020 Phi Beta Kappa Fellow, Benedictine Monk, Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John’s University

Past Lectures

13. "The Pre-Monastic Ascetic Landscape of Mesopotamia: Marcionites, Manichaeans, and Other Conversation Partners", 2021

Father Columba Stewart, OSB
2020 Phi Beta Kappa Fellow, Benedictine Monk, and Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John's University

12. "Prophets, Profits, and Pain: The Politics of Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria", 2019

Anthea Butler 
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the graduate chair of Religious Studies

11. "Reading The Qur'an In America", 2018

Jane McAuliffe
Inaugural Director of National and International Outreach
Library of Congress

10. "Rest, Bullet: Ritual Homecoming Practices among Combat Veterans", 2017

Kathryn McClymond
Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies
Georgia State University

9. "Locating Contemporary Spirituality: New Thoughts on the Changing American Religious Landscape", 2016

Courtney Bender
Professor of Religion
Columbia University

8. "Religious Difference Without Religious Conflict", 2015

Stephen Prothero
Professor of Religion
Boston University

7. "The Religious-Secular Binary as a Space of Pluralism", 2014

Slavica Jakelic
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Thought
Valparaiso University
Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
University of Virginia

6. "God's Fifth Abode: Entrepreneurial Faith in the Hindu Himalayas", 2013

Brian K. Pennington
Chair, Division of Humanities; Professor of Religion
Maryville College

5. "Islam and Human Rights: Religious and Secular in Conversation", 2012

Abdulaziz Sachedina
Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia, Charlottesville

4. "A for Antigone: Reading Derrida's Difference Again", 2011

Amy Hollywood
Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies
Harvard Divinity School

3. "Sheep Gone Astray: The Tragic History of the Religious Right", 2009

Randall Balmer
Professor of American Religious History
Bernard College, Columbia University

2. "Religion and National Conflict: Reflections on Myanmar, Iraq, and Other Current Examples", 2008

David Little
Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and
International Conflict, Harvard Divinity School;
Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Harvard University

1. "Parmenides in the 21^st Century", 2007

Harold A. Durfee
Professor Emeritus
Department of Philosophy and Religion
American University