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Professor of Religious Studies Heidi M. Ravven was an invited participant in a panel discussion with Thomas Szasz on May 30 at the meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association Study Group at Upstate Medical Center Department of Psychiatry in Syracuse, N.Y.  

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate recently published two book chapters at the intersections of religion, film and contemporary culture. The first, titled “Religion and Film: Making Movies, Making Worlds,” appears in Religion and Culture: Contemporary Practices and Perspectives, edited by Vincent Biondo and Richard Hecht, and published by Fortress Press. The volume is an anthology of essays that look at the religious practices, including topics of violence, gender, nature, the arts, sports and more. Plate’s contribution argues for the ways cinema construes particular frames of reality in ways akin to religious traditions.

As is the custom at Hamilton, the Dean of Faculty recognizes retiring faculty and hosts a reception in their honor at the last faculty meeting of the academic year. On May 16, Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds honored four professors retiring this year: Professor of  Anthropology Charlotte Beck; Jim Bradfield, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Economics; Professor of Government Ted Eismeier; and  Jay Williams ’54, the Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies. Following are the tributes Reynolds read.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Abhishek Amar co-edited Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Buddhist Site: Bodh Gaya Jataka, a volume in the Routledge Press South Asian Religion Series.

Concurrent with the Middle East’s growing role in international politics, student interest in that part of the world has been expanding. In response to both, the faculty approved an interdisciplinary program and minor in Middle East and Islamic World Studies at its May 1 meeting.

Students in “Religion, Art, and Visual Culture” (cross-listed with Religious Studies and Art History) traveled to Boston for two days in April to explore works of art.  

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi M. Ravven commented on a panel discussion, “Applying the Neuroscience of Morality,” during a conference held March 30 - April 1 at New York University’s Center for Bioethics.  

Neal Keating, assistant professor of anthropology at SUNY Brockport and former visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Hamilton, will speak on Monday, April 9, at 4:10 p.m., in the Kirner-Johnson Building’s Red Pit. Keating will discuss “Lost in Transition: Indigenous Rights and Transitional Justice in Cambodia, Canada, and Guatemala” and will preview his new book, Iroquois Art, Power, and History. The event is sponsored by the Religious Studies Department and is free and open to the public.  

Heidi M. Ravven, professor of religious studies, delivered an invited keynote plenary address at the Third International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics, held in Orlando, Fla., on March 25 - 28.  Her address was titled “'The I That Is We’: Rethinking Moral Agency in Terms of Nested Complex Adaptive Systems.”

Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies S. Brent Plate presented invited lectures during March in Ithaca and Syracuse, N.Y., Louisville, Ky., and Richmond, Va.