Goodspeed Lecture Series

Here are just a few notable speakers from past years:
  • Martin E. Marty Religious scholar & author of “Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America”
  • Eddie Glaude Religious scholar & author of “Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America”
  • Donald K. Swearer Religious scholar & author of “Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thailand”

About the Series

Edgar Goodspeed

Edgar Goodspeed, one of the most important American Biblical scholars of the twentieth century.

The Goodspeed Lectureship enables the Religion Department—often in conjunction with other departments and programs—to bring to Denison credentialed scholars related to Religious Studies, to deliver an all-campus convocation lecture. The convocation lecture, of publishable quality, is the central event of the scholar’s visit, but the visit also includes significant classroom participation and other engagement with students. The scholar’s publications are typically integrated into the curriculum of courses offered during that semester. While the principal benefactor was in the field of Biblical studies, the lectureship has enabled the College to invite scholars to lecture at Denison from the field of Religious Studies as broadly conceived.

The Goodspeed Lectureship was endowed with funds donated to Denison by the brothers Edgar Johnson Goodspeed (1871-1962) and Charles Ten Broeke Goodspeed (1869-1949), both of whom graduated from Denison in the Class of 1890. The Lectureship is named after Edgar Goodspeed, who was a scholar of Greek and the New Testament, and one of the most important American Biblical scholars of the twentieth century.

Series Archives

2013 - 2014

Choon-Leong Seow (Princeton Theological Seminary)
"Artistic Interpretations of the Story of Job"

The Goodspeed Lecture Series welcomes Leong Seow.

Photo of John Haldane

The Goodspeed Lecture Series welcomes John Haldane, University of St. Andrews, presenting "Education: Old and New"

2012 - 2013

Sara Patterson (Hanover College)
“‘It Was like an Oprah Moment’: Religious Expression and Experience at Salvation Mountain”
Sister Helen Prejean (Ministry against the Death Penalty)
Kwok Pui-Lan (Episcopal Divinity School)
"Occupy Religion, the Church, and Social Change"
Mary E. Hunt (Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER))
"Religion that Does Justice: A Queer Feminist Approach"
Will Womack (Research Associate of the American Baptist Historical Society)
"The Church Exotic: Popular Orientalism and the Missionary Circuit in Antebellum America"

2011 - 2012

William Propp (University of California, San Diego)
"Little Less Than Gods: Ancient Israelite Anthropology"

Kelly Brown Douglas (Goucher College)
"Claiming My Voice: Sexuality and the Black Church"
John K. Roth (Claremont McKenna College)
Crying Out for Action: The Holocaust, the Dead, and the Responsibility to Protect"

Stephanie Kaza (University of Vermont)
"Buddhist Environmentalism"

Patrick S. Cheng (Episcopal Divinity School)
"Radical Love: Why Christianity Is a Queer Religion"

2010 - 2011

Stephanie Kaza (University of Vermont)
"Beyond the Codes of Honor"
David Billotti (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
"Christian-Jewish Reconciliation"

Ulrich Duchrow (University of Heidelberg)
"Why Capitalism is Death-bound and How People Can Opt for Life—A Theological Proposal to Economists"

M. Zuhdi Jasser (advisor to the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands)
"Moderates and Radicals in Islam: How to Tell the Difference . . . and why it Matters"
Kate Ott (Religious Institute)
"In Search of a Relationship: Queering Faith, Sexuality, and Hooking-up"
David Loy (Xavier University)
"Buddhist Ecology: Reflections on Consumerism and the Environmental Crisis"

2009 - 2010

John Francis
"Planetwalker"
Andrea Ruehrwein Raynor, hospice chaplain
"Serving God Around 9/11"
Russell Sanders (Indiana University)
"Caring for Creation"

Stephanie Mitchem (University of South Carolina)
"Praying for Answers: Race, Culture, Class, and Consumerism"

David Schilling (Interfaith Center)
"Activism at the Intersection of Faith and Economics"
James Krehbiel (Ohio Wesleyan University)
"Sightlines and Site Lines: Art and Archaeoastronomy"

Beverly Mitchell (Wesley Theological Seminary)
"The Struggle for Human Dignity"
James H. Cone (Union Theological Seminary)
"Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen"

2008 - 2009

Ronald Grimes, (Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
"Ritual, Media, and Conflict in the Santa Fe Fiesta"
Abdi Roble and Doug Rutledge, writers and photographers
"The Trails of Somali Muslim Refugees in Africa and America"
Donald K. Swearer (Harvard Divinity School)
"Buddhist Economics: An Oxymoron?"
Eddie Glaude, Jr. (Princeton University)
"Black Studies: A Moment of Transition"
Melissa Raphael (University of Gloucestershire)
"Sexuality, Idolatry and the Hiding of God’s Face: A Post-Holocaust Perspective on the Representation of Jewish Women in Modern Jewish Art"

2007 - 2008

Corinne Dempsey (University of Wisconsin)
"Woman’s Privilege with a Twist: Engendered Entanglements of Human and Divine Power at a U.S. Goddess Temple"
Rhodessa Jones and Idrissa Ackamoor (Cultural Odyssey, San Francisco)
"Theater for the 21st Century: The Arts as a Healing Process"

Stephanie Mitchem (University of South Carolina)
"African-Americans and Healing: Facing Fears, Feeding Dreams"
Kathleen Erndl (Florida State University)
"Body, Voice, and Spirit: Hindu Women, Goddesses, and Possession"
James H. Cone (Union Theological Seminary)
"God of the Oppressed"

2006 - 2007

Charles Kernaghan (National Labor Committee)
"The Human Face behind the Global Economy"
Douglas Oakman (Pacific Lutheran University)
"The Perennial Relevance of St. Paul: Paul’s Understanding of Christ and a Time of Radical Pluralism"
Emilie M. Townes (Yale University Divinity School)
"Vanishing into Limbo"

Traci West (Drew University)
"Who Should Decide that Marriage is Good for You? Religion, Race, and Welfare Reform Policy"
Sir Anthony Kenny, (University of Oxford)
"Happiness: In this World or the Next?"

John Haldane (University of St. Andrews, Scotland)
"Faith and Culture: Catholic Intellectuals in a Secular Age"
Kelly Brown Douglas (Goucher College)
"The Black Church and the Politics of Justice"
Jan Willis (Wesleyan University)
"The Ethics of Interconnectedness"
Carl Ernst (University of North Carolina)
"Islam, Mysticism and Globalization"
Gayatri Reddy (University of Illinois)
"Sexuality and Its Discontents: Hijras and the Negotiation of Social Differences in South India"

2005 - 2006

Ann Mayer (University of Pennsylvania)
"Islam as a Framework for Rethinking Women’s Rights: Evolving Debates on Women’s Rights in the Middle East"
Mathew Forstater (University of Missouri)
"From Civil Rights to Economic Security: The African-American Struggle for Full Employment, 1945-1978"
Cheryl Kirk-Duggan (Shaw Divinity School)
"Truth and Consequences: Violence—As American as Mom, the Flag and Apple Pie"
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