The Cardinal’s talk focused on Catholic social teaching in the age of economic globalization, and was delivered to a packed room in the Westbrook Building. He discussed the Church’s focus on strengthening communities and the ways in which global capitalism is creating increasingly stratified societies.

To watch the entire talk, visit the Religion and Public Life resources page, where all of the videos for the speaker series will be posted throughout the spring.

The next talk will be on Tuesday night. All remaining talks will be on Tuesdays, beginning at 5:30 pm in room 0014 of the Westbrook Building, next to Duke Chapel.

Jose Casanova | February 19
“Post-secularization, Globalization, and Poverty”

Ruth Marshall | February 26
“Pentecostalism, Poverty & Power”

Katherine Marshall | March 5
“Religion and Development”

Peter van der Veer | March 26
“The Spiritual, the Secular and the Poor in India and China”

Susan Holman | April 9
“Public Health, Poverty & Patristics”

For more information and to download the application, visit our Campus Grants site.

“Public Health, Poverty, and Patristics”

Susan Holman, Senior Writer at the Harvard Global Health Institute, will be speaking Tuesday, April 9th as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Holman is engaged in projects at HGHI that range from curricular development to strategic planning, faculty leadership initiatives, and website news and stories. She has more than 10 years experience in research writing and editing in public and global health, with degrees from Brown University (PhD), Harvard Divinity School (MTS), and Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (MS). Prior to joining HGHI in 2011, Susan was consultant writer and editor for Partners In Health, academic writer and editor at the Harvard University FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health, and medical writer for Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Susan is an invited scholar internationally on faith-based responses to poverty and global health, and has taught maternal and child health as a public health nutritionist and registered dietitian (RD) at the South End Community Health Center and Joslin Diabetes Center.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

April 9, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

Peter van der Veer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, will be speaking March 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Religions and Public Life speaker series.

Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. He has just finished a monograph on the comparative study of religion and nationalism in India and China. He taught previously at the Free University in Amsterdam, at Utrecht University and at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he was appointed as Professor of Comparative Religion and Founding Director of the Research Center in Religion and Society in the Social Science Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. He served as Dean of the Social Science Faculty and as Dean of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam, and as Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, both in Leiden. In 1994 he was appointed as University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position he continues to hold. He has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the New School in New York, and the National University of Singapore.

The Religions and Public Life initiative is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Divinity School, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

March 26, 5:30 pm
Westbrook Building room 0014

The first film, Gran Torino (2008), will be screening Monday, January 14. It features actor-director Clint Eastwood as disgruntled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski. The story follows his growing friendship with his neighbor, a young Hmong teenager who tried to steal Kowalski’s prized possession: his 1972 Gran Torino. The post-film discussion will be led by Professor Marianna Torgovnick (English Department and Arts of the Moving Image). Torgovnick’s research and teaching expertise relates to film and media studies, cultural criticism, religion, and contemporary American issues.

On Monday February 11th, Le fils (The Son) (2002) will be shown. In this award-winning Belgian-French mystery film, themes of compassion and justice unfold in unexpected ways. The story follows Olivier, a carpentry instructor at a vocational school, who is still recovering from the murder of his only son five years earlier and the subsequent dissolution of his marriage. When a new student applies to join his class, Olivier initially refuses but then secretly begins following the boy.

The last two films in the series are selections from the Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival. Brother Number One (2011) will be screened Monday, March 18. The director of the film, New Zealander Rob Hamill, tells the story of his brother’s death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. It explores the violence of the regime and its followers, killing nearly 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. Thirty years later, Rob Hamill has a rare chance to take the stand as a witness at the Cambodia War Crimes Tribunal. In this documentary,  Rob retraces his brother’s final days, meeting survivors who tell the story of what countless families across Cambodia experienced at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

The award-winning and international festival favorite Habibi (2011), by director Susan Yousef, will show April 8. The film follows young lovers Qays and Layla, university students in the West Bank who are forced to return home to Khan Yunis, Gaza. In conservative Khan Yunis, their relationship can only be sustained through marriage, but Qays is too poor to con­vince Layla’s father that he can provide for his daughter. As the couple struggles to be together, Qays paints verses from the classical Sufi poem Majnun Layla all over Khan Yunis, a rebellious act that angers Layla’s father and the local self-appointed moral police. Lyrical and passionate, Habibi depicts a reality where personal happiness must be weighed against society’s opinions, and a choice sometimes made between one’s people and one’s heart.

All films begin at 7:00pm
Griffith Theater, Bryan Center
Free admission, parking passes, and movie snacks

The series is sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and presented by Screen/Society at Arts of the Moving Image and the Center for Documentary Studies.

The biennial award is administered by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was initiated in 2005 by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams to encourage contemporary theological writing for a wider Christian readership. The prize is awarded in honor of Dr. Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961-1974.