Brauer Seminar

Established by friends of the Divinity School to encourage interdisciplinary teaching and research, the Jerald Brauer Seminar is co-taught periodically by two or three Divinity School faculty members.

The topic changes according to the instructors' interests. Up to ten students may participate with the consent of the instructors, and each student receives a stipend to support participation. A seminar budget supports the honorarium and travel expenses for the Brauer Fellow, a visiting scholar who represents a disciplinary perspective on the seminar topic that complements those of the instructors.

Jerald Brauer was Dean of the Divinity School from 1955 to 1970. An authority on Puritanism and the history of Christianity in America, he served on the school's faculty for 49 years, from 1950 until his death, and wrote and edited numerous books. Although he officially retired in 1991, he continued to teach a seminar on Christian history each semester.

The Autumn 2025 Brauer Seminar, "Qur’anic Ethics,” will be co-taught by Professors Raissa de Rande and Yousef Casewit.

This Brauer Seminar has two primary objectives: first, to familiarize students with specific Qur’anic verses and teachings that address central ethical concerns, such as warfare and the rights of the marginalized. Second, the seminar aims to equip students with the theoretical tools necessary to think critically and creatively, both within the Qur’anic ethical tradition and in relation to the interpretive traditions that have evolved around the Qur’an, as well as relevant contemporary ethical theories.

The Spring 2026 Brauer Seminar, "Testimony in our Time: Exploring Cultures of Testimony,” will be co-taught by Professor Sheila Jelen and Director of Ministry Studies Cynthia Lindner

How can testimony and witness be defined in a way that encapsulates its multiple meanings? How does bringing the different forms and discourses of testimony and witness together open new possibilities for research and practice? In this team-taught course, we create a dialogue between Holocaust studies, religious leadership, and the psychodynamic psychologies to interrogate the theories, institutions, and practice of testimony and witness in a variety of contexts and media. The materials for the course will include works such as Felman and Laub’s Testimony, Ricoeur’s work on memory and narrative, audiovisual testimonies from the Fortunoff Archive at Yale, and fictionalized testimonies such as those of Tim O’Brien. We will consider personal narratives of death and dying, such as those by Nina Riggs, Paul Kalanthi, Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis. We will look at scriptural testimonies such as the Book of Ezekiel, and we will explore testimonies in courtrooms, and in places of worship. Students will create and present a research project at the end of the quarter.