Date/Time
Date(s) - 17 Apr 2014
4:15 PM - 5:45 PM
Location
Zimmerli Art Museum
Category(ies) No Categories
Dr. Caroline Walker Bynum
Professor Emerita of Medieval European History, Institute for Advanced Study
“Goddesses, Saints and the Eucharist: What Does It Mean to Compare Religious Traditions?”
Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 4:15 PM
Zimmerli Art Museum, Maxwell Multipurpose Room,
71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick NJ 08901
Reception to follow in the Graduate Student Lounge
The field of “comparative religion” includes the idea of comparing phenomena in its very title. Yet scholars differ radically in their conceptions of what can or should be compared. In this lecture, Prof. Bynum, a specialist in the Christianity of Europe in the late Middle Ages, draws on her travels in India and her forays into the study of Hinduism to argue that cross cultural comparison can help us understand both similarities and differences between religions but only if we devote considerably more attention to the choice of phenomena than is usually done. In the first part of her lecture she will explore seeming parallels between procession of female holy figures, east and west, comparing veneration of the Virgin Mary in both medieval Europe and present-day America to goddess veneration, especially Durga Puja, in India. Pointing out that these female statues look alike but behave very differently leads Prof. Bynum to question some recent theories concerning “materiality,” the agency of images, and the role of anthropomorphism in religion. Asking what objects or phenomena should most profitably be compared between Hinduism and Christianity leads her to propose a startling comparison between the Christian Eucharist and the Hindu divine.