Faiths In Conversation – Hinduism & Justice – Dec 13, 2021

Speaker

Rita D. Sherma holds an MA in Religion, and a PhD in Theology & Ethics from Claremont Graduate University, CA. She is the Director of the Shingal Center for Dharma Studies, Chair of the Department of Theology & Ethics, Core Doctoral Faculty, and Co-Chair of Sustainability 360 initiative at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), Berkeley. Formerly, she was the Swami Vivekananda Visiting Professor in Hindu Studies at USC, Los Angeles. Amongst her published books and volumes pending publication are: Contemplative Studies and Hinduism: Meditation, Devotion, Prayer, & Worship (2020); Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics (2020); Woman & Goddess in Hinduism: Reinterpretations & Reenvisionings, (2011), and Hermeneutics & Hindu Thought, (2008). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Dharma Studies, the Associate Editor of Springer’s multi-volume Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, and on the Editorial Board of the AAR’s publication, Reading Religions. She is the founding Vice President of Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM), a learned society for interreligious studies in the Religions of India. A pioneer in the field of Critical Sustainability Studies, Professor Sherma serves on the Advisory Board of the Yale Forum on Religions & Ecology, and has recently co-edited a 35-chapter new volume, Religion & Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses (Springer, 2021), Ecology & Indian Philosophy (forthcoming, 2022). She is currently directing a multi-media project of Contemplative Studies and Asian Religions.

Respondent

Dr. Jonathan Wyn Schofer is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, with affiliation in the Schustermann Center for Jewish Studies.  His primary area of research is classical rabbinic Judaism.  His first book, The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) was notable selection for the Jordan Schnitzer Book Awards of the Association for Jewish Studies in 2008.  His second book is Confronting Vulnerability: The Body and the Divine in Rabbinic Ethics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010).  Since then, he has published smaller pieces on the connections between law, theology, and ethics in canonical Jewish sources of late antiquity.  He currently is preparing two book manuscripts, one on Mishnaic purity law, the body, and domestic space; and one on canonical homiletic midrash to biblical law. https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/scjs/news/faculty-spotlight-dr-jonathan-schofer

REGISTER NOW