The Columbia University Seminar on Religion and Writing

The meetings are open, but a RSVP is required.  Columbia University’s COVID protocols apply to the in-person meetings: https://provost.columbia.edu/news/spring-2023-update-covid-19-university-guidance.  If you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to write to me (dar2111 [at] columbia.edu).

Details for the seminar’s 2023-2024 program will be published as they became available.

For the academic year of 2022–2023, our regular meetings were organized as hybrid events.  The in-person participants convened in the Faculty House on Columbia’s Morningside campus (64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY 10027; for directions, please click here; for accommodation of access, please see below). At the same time, the seminar itself was accessible to ZOOM participants. 

September 29, 2022 – Lucy K. Pick (University of Chicago): Literacy, Orality, and Translation: Samuel ibn Tibbon, Michael Scot, and Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed

October 27, 2022 – Ameneh Youssefzadeh (Independent Scholar): Devotional Songs and Narratives in Iranian Khorasan

November 15, 2022 – Isabelle Levy (Columbia University): Jewish Literary Eros: Between Poetry and Prose in the Medieval Mediterranean

January 30, 2023 – Alison Vacca (Columbia University): “The Nonsense of your Farfetched Stories”: Textual Transmission between Armenian and Arabic in the Eighth Century

February 27, 2023 – Br. John Glasenapp, OSB (St. Anselm College): Rewriting Music, Rethinking Identity: Observant Reform, Liturgy, and Oral Learning among Nuns in the Southern Low Countries

April 25, 2023 – Kenneth Baxter Wolf (Pomona College): How Not to Read the Earliest Latin Life of Muhammad

Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities.  University Seminar participants with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or [email protected].  Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request.  Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. 

The official page of the Columbia University Seminar 751 is available at: http://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/religion-and-writing/.  For more information about the seminar’s history, please see: https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/religionwriting/usem751history/.  The abstracts of all talks since January 2012 are archived at: https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/religionwriting/abstracts/

Dagmar A. Riedel, co- chair
Columbia University
dar2111 [at] columbia.edu

TBA, co-chair

TBA, rapporteur


First published, 1 February 2012
Last updated, 20 May 2023