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Wednesday Lunch

Wednesday Community Luncheons

For decades, Wednesday has been a day of community gathering at the Divinity School. Ecumenical services are held at Bond Chapel at 11:30 a.m. that draw on the contributions of students, staff, faculty, and a variety of preachers from Chicago's religious communities, followed at 12:00 noon by a community luncheon in Swift Common Room. The lunches always feature a guest speaker, invited from the University, the local community, or beyond. Lunch topics have addressed everything from particle physics and the search for a fifth dimension to the history of Klezmer music. (Click here for an archive of Wednesday lunches since Autumn 2005.) The programs provide a unique opportunity for students, staff, and faculty to engage one another in informal conversation.

Special Wednesday Lunch events include the Dean's Forum, which invites a faculty member to discuss one of his or her recent works, with formal response from several Divinity School colleagues, and our quarterly Musical Offerings.

Lunch itself (a vegetarian meal; a vegan option is available by request) is prepared and served by our creative and energetic student staff. Wednesday lunches take place from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m. in Swift Common Room (1025 East 58th Street), and cost $5 ($4 for all students with ID) at the door. Those interested in attending should reserve a lunch in advance by emailing divinitylunch@gmail.com.

Spring Quarter 2008

April 2
Paul Copp, Assistant Professor in Chinese Religion, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, on "Incantations, Amulets, and Efficacy in Medieval Chinese Buddhism." Prof. Copp works on the cultural and intellectual history of medieval Chinese religions and is completing a book manuscript on Tang Buddhist spell craft, its attendant imaginings of linguistic and material forms of efficacy, and the ways its practices drew on longstanding Chinese traditions, both Daoist and otherwise (as well as working on numerous other projects).

April 9
Dr. Rick Kittles, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, will discuss "genetics, race, and ancestry." Dr. Kittles' research focus is to formally evaluate genetic mechanisms involved in complex diseases. His work entails understanding how genetic variation is structured across human populations and how that variation contributes to inter-individual variation in disease susceptibility and other phenotypes such as drug response and skin color. Currently his work explores sequence variation within candidate genes in well-characterized populations for prostate and breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and human pigmentation. His interests also include biological and socio-cultural issues related to "Race" and health disparities and the utility of admixture mapping for genes for common traits and disease in African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

April 16
Dean's Forum with Jean-Luc Marion, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology in the Divinity School; also in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Social Thought. Respondents TBA. Prof. Marion will discuss his book The Erotic Phenomenon.

April 23
Poetry open mic. In honor of National Poetry Month, lunch guests may bring a poem to read at our first annual Divinity School Poetry Month Lunch.

April 30
Daniel Sack, administrator of the Divinity School's Border Crossing Project and a historian of American religion, on "Food and Religion, Memory and Community." As part of his work for the Material History of American Religion Project, Sack wrote Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture (Palgrave, 2000), an investigation into the food practices of white mainline Protestants--ranging from conflicts over communion wine to potlucks to soup kitchens. This history reveals how food builds community and shapes memory. Sack will share some of the stories he discovered and invite us to share our stories of religion and food.

May 7
Eboo Patel, founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (http:// www.ifyc.org), a non-profit organization based in Chicago that ''builds mutual respect and pluralism among young people from different religious traditions by empowering them to work together to serve others,'' speaking. Dr. Patel has recently written Acts of Faith, chronicling his struggle to forge his identity as a Muslim, an Indian, and an American. He received his doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University. Dr. Patel will discuss his book and his theory of the ''Faith Line: Religious Totalitarians vs. Religious Pluralists in the 21st century.''

May 14
Garrett Kiely, Director of the University of Chicago Press, on a topic TBA. The U of C Press is the nation's largest academic press, and the publisher of numerous award-winning books and journals aimed at a scholarly and general interest audience including The Chicago Manual of Style. Kiely, an academic publishing veteran, began his duties as director of the Press last September.

May 21
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, SALC, History, and the College, on "The Power of 'Superstition' in Everyday Life in India."

May 28
Musical Offering. Join us for an outdoor lunch (weather permitting) and the music of The Prairie Dogs, who join us from Urbana-Champaign to offer a little bluegrass, a little traditional folk, a little old-time music. For this lunch only, there will be meat, vegetarian, or vegan options. Rain location: Common Room.