Hidden Devotions of Mediterranean Mothers: Milk Shrines from Bethlehem to Tripoli
Sarah Mady, Visiting Lecturer on Early Christianity
In small, unassuming spaces often left out of the historical record, women in ancient Lebanon built networks of healing shrines away from a male-dominated society. In this sacred landscape women today continue to seek healing and an abundance of mother’s milk, and also use shrines as memorials to mothers and children who died prematurely.
Lunch provided.
Contact: Tracy Wall twall@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, March 5, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Braun Room.
The Ambiguity of the Vow: Law, Kinship, and Gender in Pathologizing the Jain Fast Until Death
Miki Chase, Visiting Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions
In contemporary urban India, Jain laywomen comprise the majority of those who undertake sallekhanā or santhāra, the Jain fast until death. This project examines the everyday relational and ethical labor through which the fast is enacted within the domestic sphere, tracing how doctrinal ideals of asceticism are translated into embodied practice and how women’s ascetic agency is rendered both morally precarious and intelligible within kinship configurations and the evolving Indian legal and political landscape.
Lunch provided.
Contact: Tracy Wall twall@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, April 23, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Braun Room.