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Approaching 501 Park Street in Syracuse, a visitor would see what looks like a Catholic church. Though this site was once home to the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, the building is now being converted into a mosque. As neighborhood demographics change, the need for specific religious spaces tends to shift as well. This summer, three students are working on a Levitt Group Research Project, “Sacred Spaces in Transition.”

Lainie Smith ’16, through the Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), is examining meditation in her summer research project titled “Investigating the Growth and Adaptations of the Practice of Meditation” with Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Abhishek Amar.

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies Brent Plate was invited to be a FIRST (Faculty-in-Residence Summer Term) scholar at the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder this year.

On a typical Tuesday night this semester, many Hamilton students found themselves absorbed in their books or typing up papers on their computers, but for students taking Professor Brent Plate’s Religion and the Media course, much of the work happened at the microphone. As students in Plate’s course spent the spring investigating the influence of various media on religious practices, they also experimented with a new medium through which to communicate their research.

A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects, authored by Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate, has recently been reviewed and featured prominently by several media outlets including the Library Journal, The Christian Century, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Republic and Marginalia Review of Books.

The New York Times published a letter to the editor written by Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate on May 2 under the title “Why Religious Literacy is Important in Our Culture.” Plate, author of A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects, was responding to an opinion piece by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Singer, songwriter Joanne Shenandoah will deliver a lecture titled “The History, Culture, Religion and Music of the Oneidas and Iroquois” on Tuesday, April 29, at 4 p.m., in the Red Pit, Kirner-Johnson Building. The event is free, open to the public and sponsored by Hamilton’s religious studies department.

Polly Roberts, professor of world arts and cultures/dance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will deliver a lecture on the display of sacred objects in a museum context on Thursday, April 17, at 4:15 p.m., in the Overlook of the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art.

Students in "Religion, Art, and Visual Culture" (RELST/ARTHT 375) spent two days exploring art museums in New York City. The class visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rubin Museum of Art.

To many, Buddhist monks are revered mystics who reside in secluded monasteries and mountaintop temples. Perhaps it came as a surprise then, when Dr. Justin McDaniel, published author and associate professor of Buddhism and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, revealed that he himself was ordained during his three and a half year sojourn in Thailand. McDaniel presented his lecture about Thai Buddhism in the Wellin Museum Overlook on April 10.