Reading Group: Transcendentalism
This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation. This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Archival Methods: Finding the Sacred and the Profane in the Psychedelic Archive
Registration is required.
Please register to attend.
Friday, February 6, 2-5 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Thursday, February 12, 1-4 pm - Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave.
Friday, February 13, 1-4 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Note: This workshop is a three-part series, and each session builds on the last. Please register only if you are able to attend all three sessions.
Please register to attend the series.
*If the event is full, please email ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu to be added to the waitlist.
This workshop will explore and engage the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library, the world’s largest collection of psychedelic literature, housed at Harvard.
We will look at practical questions of the archive: How do you find archives you are interested in? , How do you search online to find aids and databases, and what are the limitations of those tools? , How do you authenticate objects and…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
CSWR Conference Room, Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Archival Methods: Finding the Sacred and the Profane in the Psychedelic Archive
Registration is required.
Please register to attend.
Friday, February 6, 2-5 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Thursday, February 12, 1-4 pm - Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave.
Friday, February 13, 1-4 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Note: This workshop is a three-part series, and each session builds on the last. Please register only if you are able to attend all three sessions.
Please register to attend the series.
*If the event is full, please email ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu to be added to the waitlist.
This workshop will explore and engage the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library, the world’s largest collection of psychedelic literature, housed at Harvard.
We will look at practical questions of the archive: How do you find archives you are interested in? , How do you search online to find aids and databases, and what are the limitations of those tools? , How do you authenticate objects and…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Friday, February 13, 2026, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Houghton Library classroom, Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Porphyry of Tyre on Theology and Theurgy: Oracular Voices and Luminous Intellect
Registration is required.
Please register to attend this event in person.
Please register to attend this event on Zoom.
The late-ancient Mediterranean world was shaped by three competing yet mutually formative dynamics: the spread of Christianity, the proliferation of the cults known as Mysteries, and the systematization of Neoplatonic philosophy. Porphyry of Tyre, one of late antiquity's most important philosophers, sought to negotiate the tensions between these dynamics. Arguing that philosophical thinking about the gods—“theology”—and ritual interaction with them—“theurgy”—are mutually compatible, Porphyry maintained that one can participate in ceremonial practices all while remaining committed to Neoplatonist metaphysics. In doing so, he worked to hold together intellectual and religious traditions that were increasingly at risk of fragmentation. Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Philosophy from Oracles—newly translated as part of the CSWR’s 4T initiative—are his most significant contributions to these…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Preston Williams Chapel, Swartz Hall
45 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Moana Meditations - Indigenous Spiritualities of the South Pacific Ocean
This group meets on Wednesdays, 4-6 pm, 2/4, 2/18, 3/4, 3/25, 4/1, 4/15)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
Oceania—our ‘sea of islands’ rather than islands in a vast sea, takes up one third of the Earth and has been given many names by explorers, scholars, and those seeking geopolitical control. The ‘Pacific’ – a pacified, calm, and empty space, the Asia-Pacific, Indo-Pacific, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Pacific Islander communities are also now spread around the globe with diaspora in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and beyond where Christianity and Indigenous spiritualities coalesce and clash in different ways. This workshop series will be highly interactive, incorporating Indigenous poetry, artwork, and talanoa (open-ended discussions) exploring the importance of the fanua (land), and interconnection with Atua (God/s), Tagata (people) and Moana (ocean) to cultural identity and seeking climate justice. It provides opportunities for both group…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Reading Group: Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics
This group meets, Thursdays, 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, 3/26, 4/9, 4/23
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics Reading Group invites participants to explore expansive understandings of transcendence, healing, consciousness, and connection through and beyond the use of psychedelic substances. Engaging themes such as war, AI, madness, clowning, childbirth, and death, we interrogate and reimagine what constitutes the “psychedelic” within the field of psychedelic humanities. Rooted in queer, feminist, ecological, Indigenous, and decolonial perspectives, this group offers a collaborative space for exploration, critical questioning, and integration of our own experiences and communities. This reading group brings together students, staff, faculty, and members of the broader community to learn with and from each other.
Facilitators include:
LILA GLENN RIMALOVSKI is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School studying the relationship between eco-spiritual prac…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Psychedelics and Ethics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, February 19, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Archival Methods: Finding the Sacred and the Profane in the Psychedelic Archive
Registration is required.
Please register to attend.
Friday, February 6, 2-5 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Thursday, February 12, 1-4 pm - Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave.
Friday, February 13, 1-4 pm - Houghton Library classroom (registrants will be contacted with location details)
Note: This workshop is a three-part series, and each session builds on the last. Please register only if you are able to attend all three sessions.
Please register to attend the series.
*If the event is full, please email ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu to be added to the waitlist.
This workshop will explore and engage the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library, the world’s largest collection of psychedelic literature, housed at Harvard.
We will look at practical questions of the archive: How do you find archives you are interested in? , How do you search online to find aids and databases, and what are the limitations of those tools? , How do you authenticate objects and…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Friday, February 20, 2026, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Houghton Library classroom, Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Public Research Talk with Stuart Sarbacker: Tracing the Path of Soma: Psychoactives and Psychedelics in the History and Philosophy of Yoga
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
Stuart Sarbacker, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at Oregon State University, will examine the relationship between Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain systems of mind-body discipline (yoga) and the use of psychoactive substances in traditional and modern cosmopolitan contexts. This will include querying Sanskrit concepts in yoga, tantra, and āyurveda, including elixirs (soma, amṛta, rasa, and dravya); psychoactive herbs and roots (oṣadhi, mūla); and substances such as cannabis (bhaṅgā), datura (dhattūra), and opium (ahiphena). He will argue for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between endogenous and exogenous models of self-transformation in yoga and for a broader understanding of the wide range of psychoactive substances—and thus psychoactive effects—in yoga’s historical and philosophical orbit.
STUART RAY SARBACKER, PhD, is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, February 23, 2026, 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Death and Mourning
Death raises existential questions of the meaning of life and our relationships to others. It transcends the mundane, resulting in a sense of awe and connection to something greater than ourselves. Although all societies, cultures, and religions respond to death, how death is experienced, commemorated, and understood varies historically, cross-culturally, and among religions even in the same societies. This reading group is gathering to explore the multiple ways in which death and mourning are viewed and conceptualized. Participants will join with the facilitator to choose specific readings and topics as we work to a better understanding of how death may be perceived, how mourners are treated and expected to act and how the dead are thought about. Do the dead continue to communicate with the living? Do they go to a better (or worse) place? Do they return in a new form having learned from their experiences on earth? How in different religious traditions is this understood and what does it tell us about that re…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, February 23, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
List Lecture: “Forging the Monotheistic Triangle: Jews, Arabs, Christians and the Promises of European Modernity” with Susannah Heschel
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
In the autumn of 1941 in Nazi Germany, a group of Christians suddenly became Jews. Baptized as children or adults and members of Protestant or Catholic churches, they were now required to wear a yellow star denoting their racial status as Jews. The crisis of 1941 illumines key Christian theological problems. While Jews have long been the icons of refusal in Christian eyes, modernity brought a softening, with assimilation and conversion as Jews viewed the Enlightenment as Europe’s open door of welcome.
Both Jews and Arabs were initially optimistic about the promises of European modernity. During the nineteenth century, Jewish thinkers imagined a monotheistic triangle, redefining Judaism as the foundation of the West, with Islam and Christianity as its two daughter religions. Yet just as some Christians were anxious about the religious identity of baptized Jews, Europeans hesitated to accept Jews and Arabs…
Programming Series: Annual Lectures. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Transcendentalism
This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation. This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Transcendence, Transformation, and Trans-Psychedelia with Hil Malatino and Susan Stryker
Registration is required.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
Public conversations about both psychedelics and gender-transition are often constrained by two parallel limits: a focus on clinical applications, and a presumption that those who take psychedelics or change gender do so primarily as “patients.” This framing obscures a rich history in which psychedelics and gender-transition have been sites of religious experimentation and metaphysical speculation. Practices that one might call “trans psychedelia” have unfolded historically through encounters with Indigenous religious traditions, more-than-human communication through altered states, and theories of transformation that exceed the limits of biomedicine.
Bringing together scholarship on psychedelia, gender, and religion, this conversation with Hil Malatino and Susan Stryker explores how drugs, and the stories told about drugs, have functioned as religious technologies that have shaped experiences of dissociation and transcendence, informed…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Zoom.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Hindu View of Life Lecture: Recasting the Hindu Goddess in an American Landscape
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
In 1926, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan concluded his “The Hindu View of Life” lectures by noting that Hinduism is “a growing tradition” and calling for a reworking of Hindu principles “with special reference to the needs of a more complex and mobile social order.” A century later, Hindu immigrant communities in the United States exemplify that vision, carrying their traditions across oceans and planting them in new soil. At the Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan, the Hindu Goddess has been reimagined to flourish in her latest, Midwestern context, reflecting both the temple community’s Indian roots and its life in an American cultural, religious, and natural world. This lecture examines how a twenty-first-century Hindu view of life has taken shape within this temple and its vibrant community.
TRACY PINTCHMAN is a professor of religious studies and the director of the Global Studies Program at…
Programming Series: Annual Lectures. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Moana Meditations - Indigenous Spiritualities of the South Pacific Ocean
This group meets on Wednesdays, 4-6 pm, 2/4, 2/18, 3/4, 3/25, 4/1, 4/15)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
Oceania—our ‘sea of islands’ rather than islands in a vast sea, takes up one third of the Earth and has been given many names by explorers, scholars, and those seeking geopolitical control. The ‘Pacific’ – a pacified, calm, and empty space, the Asia-Pacific, Indo-Pacific, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Pacific Islander communities are also now spread around the globe with diaspora in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and beyond where Christianity and Indigenous spiritualities coalesce and clash in different ways. This workshop series will be highly interactive, incorporating Indigenous poetry, artwork, and talanoa (open-ended discussions) exploring the importance of the fanua (land), and interconnection with Atua (God/s), Tagata (people) and Moana (ocean) to cultural identity and seeking climate justice. It provides opportunities for both group…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Reading Group: Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics
This group meets, Thursdays, 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, 3/26, 4/9, 4/23
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics Reading Group invites participants to explore expansive understandings of transcendence, healing, consciousness, and connection through and beyond the use of psychedelic substances. Engaging themes such as war, AI, madness, clowning, childbirth, and death, we interrogate and reimagine what constitutes the “psychedelic” within the field of psychedelic humanities. Rooted in queer, feminist, ecological, Indigenous, and decolonial perspectives, this group offers a collaborative space for exploration, critical questioning, and integration of our own experiences and communities. This reading group brings together students, staff, faculty, and members of the broader community to learn with and from each other.
Facilitators include:
LILA GLENN RIMALOVSKI is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School studying the relationship between eco-spiritual prac…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Psychedelics and Ethics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, March 5, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Reading Group: Death and Mourning
Registration is required.
Please register to attend this session.
Death raises existential questions of the meaning of life and our relationships to others. It transcends the mundane, resulting in a sense of awe and connection to something greater than ourselves. Although all societies, cultures, and religions respond to death, how death is experienced, commemorated, and understood varies historically, cross-culturally, and among religions even in the same societies. This reading group is gathering to explore the multiple ways in which death and mourning are viewed and conceptualized. Participants will join with the facilitator to choose specific readings and topics as we work to a better understanding of how death may be perceived, how mourners are treated and expected to act and how the dead are thought about. Do the dead continue to communicate with the living? Do they go to a better (or worse) place? Do they return in a new form having learned from their experiences on earth? How in different religious t…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Reading Group: Transcendentalism
This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation. This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Public Research Talk: Thoreau’s Solar and Lunar Philosophy, with Charles Stang and Sarah Schorr
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
Join us on March 23 at 11:30am. Charles Stang and Sarah Schorr will discuss Thoreau’s extraordinary encounters with, and meditations on, the sun and the moon, and the significance of those for their ongoing book collaboration, Skywater.
CHARLES STANG joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2008. His research and teaching focus on Christianity in late antiquity and, more broadly, philosophy and religion in the ancient Mediterranean world. Stang's current projects include a book on daemons in ancient philosophy, translations of both Evagrius Ponticus’ Letter to Melania and Henry Corbin’s Le paradoxe du monothéisme, and an edited volume on “Platonism as a Living Tradition.”
In 2017, he became the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS.
SARAH SCHORR is an American artist and researcher with a studio based in Denmark. A captivation with light, water, and modes of embodied contemplation runs…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, March 23, 2026, 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Death and Mourning
Registration is required.
Please register to attend this session.
Death raises existential questions of the meaning of life and our relationships to others. It transcends the mundane, resulting in a sense of awe and connection to something greater than ourselves. Although all societies, cultures, and religions respond to death, how death is experienced, commemorated, and understood varies historically, cross-culturally, and among religions even in the same societies. This reading group is gathering to explore the multiple ways in which death and mourning are viewed and conceptualized. Participants will join with the facilitator to choose specific readings and topics as we work to a better understanding of how death may be perceived, how mourners are treated and expected to act and how the dead are thought about. Do the dead continue to communicate with the living? Do they go to a better (or worse) place? Do they return in a new form having learned from their experiences on earth? How in different religious t…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, March 23, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Hackett Lecture: The Light from the Other Shore”: The Rise of Public Christianity in Contemporary China, with Xi Lian
Registration Required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on zoom.
In a major historical development in China since the 1980s, amid the crisis of belief in the post-Mao era, an assertive, homegrown Christianity has emerged in the public sphere to proclaim a transcendent truth and offer a new moral compass for Chinese society. Christian beliefs and values have since inspired some of the most unconventional and innovative intellectual and artistic works, reshaping the cultural mainstream. They have also given rise to a morally charged, frequently unrealistic, and at times tragically heroic political and social activism to promote democracy and human rights.
XI LIAN is the David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of The Conversion of Missionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907-1932 (Penn State UP, 1997), Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (Yale UP, 2010),…
Programming Series: Annual Lectures. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Transcendentalism
This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation. This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Reading Group: Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics
This group meets, Thursdays, 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, 4/2, 4/16, 4/30
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics Reading Group invites participants to explore expansive understandings of transcendence, healing, consciousness, and connection through and beyond the use of psychedelic substances. Engaging themes such as war, AI, madness, clowning, childbirth, and death, we interrogate and reimagine what constitutes the “psychedelic” within the field of psychedelic humanities. Rooted in queer, feminist, ecological, Indigenous, and decolonial perspectives, this group offers a collaborative space for exploration, critical questioning, and integration of our own experiences and communities. This reading group brings together students, staff, faculty, and members of the broader community to learn with and from each other.
Facilitators include:
LILA GLENN RIMALOVSKI is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School studying the relationship between eco-spiritual prac…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Psychedelics and Ethics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Global Ayahuasca: A Book Talk with Anthropologist Alex Gearin
Registration is required.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
Ayahuasca originated in the Amazon jungle and is considered sacred by many Indigenous and mestizo communities across South America. Fueled by the “psychedelic renaissance” and growing interest in ayahuasca’s visionary and healing potential, groups serving the potent psychoactive brew can now be found around the world. In his latest book, Global Ayahuasca: Wondrous Visions and Modern Worlds (2024), medical anthropologist Alex Gearin charts ayahuasca’s spread through fieldwork in three countries—Peru, Australia, and China. His findings challenge universalizing narratives about the nature and uses of ayahuasca, offering readers insight into ayahuasca's prismatic forms. Gearin will be in conversation with Jeffrey Breau, program lead for psychedelics and spirituality, to discuss his book and its implications for the study of psychedelics and religion.
ALEX K. GEARIN (PhD) is a medical anthropologist specializing in the intersections of mental…
Programming Series: Spirituality and Psychedelics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
Zoom.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Reading Group: Death and Mourning
Registration is required.
Please register to attend this session.
Death raises existential questions of the meaning of life and our relationships to others. It transcends the mundane, resulting in a sense of awe and connection to something greater than ourselves. Although all societies, cultures, and religions respond to death, how death is experienced, commemorated, and understood varies historically, cross-culturally, and among religions even in the same societies. This reading group is gathering to explore the multiple ways in which death and mourning are viewed and conceptualized. Participants will join with the facilitator to choose specific readings and topics as we work to a better understanding of how death may be perceived, how mourners are treated and expected to act and how the dead are thought about. Do the dead continue to communicate with the living? Do they go to a better (or worse) place? Do they return in a new form having learned from their experiences on earth? How in different religious t…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, April 6, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Reading Group: Transcendentalism
This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation. This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker…
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Reading Group: Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics
This group meets, Thursdays, 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, 4/2, 4/16, 4/30
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics Reading Group invites participants to explore expansive understandings of transcendence, healing, consciousness, and connection through and beyond the use of psychedelic substances. Engaging themes such as war, AI, madness, clowning, childbirth, and death, we interrogate and reimagine what constitutes the “psychedelic” within the field of psychedelic humanities. Rooted in queer, feminist, ecological, Indigenous, and decolonial perspectives, this group offers a collaborative space for exploration, critical questioning, and integration of our own experiences and communities. This reading group brings together students, staff, faculty, and members of the broader community to learn with and from each other.
Facilitators include:
LILA GLENN RIMALOVSKI is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School studying the relationship between eco-spiritual prac…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Psychedelics and Ethics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, April 9, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.
Reading Group: Death and Mourning
Registration is required.
Please register to attend this session.
Death raises existential questions of the meaning of life and our relationships to others. It transcends the mundane, resulting in a sense of awe and connection to something greater than ourselves. Although all societies, cultures, and religions respond to death, how death is experienced, commemorated, and understood varies historically, cross-culturally, and among religions even in the same societies. This reading group is gathering to explore the multiple ways in which death and mourning are viewed and conceptualized. Participants will join with the facilitator to choose specific readings and topics as we work to a better understanding of how death may be perceived, how mourners are treated and expected to act and how the dead are thought about. Do the dead continue to communicate with the living? Do they go to a better (or worse) place? Do they return in a new form having learned from their experiences on earth? How in different religious t…
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, April 20, 2026, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Reading Group: Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics
This group meets, Thursdays, 2/5, 2/19, 3/5, 4/2, 4/16, 4/30
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.
The Psychedelics Beyond Psychedelics Reading Group invites participants to explore expansive understandings of transcendence, healing, consciousness, and connection through and beyond the use of psychedelic substances. Engaging themes such as war, AI, madness, clowning, childbirth, and death, we interrogate and reimagine what constitutes the “psychedelic” within the field of psychedelic humanities. Rooted in queer, feminist, ecological, Indigenous, and decolonial perspectives, this group offers a collaborative space for exploration, critical questioning, and integration of our own experiences and communities. This reading group brings together students, staff, faculty, and members of the broader community to learn with and from each other.
Facilitators include:
LILA GLENN RIMALOVSKI is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School studying the relationship between eco-spiritual prac…
Programming Series: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion. Transcendence and Transformation. Spirituality and Psychedelics. Psychedelics and Ethics. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, April 23, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Conference Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138.