Making Philosophical Sense of Chan (Zen) Cases

Prof. Robert H. Sharf (Berkeley)

Buddhist Views of Conceptuality (vikalpa) and the Quantum Measurement Problem

Prof. Robert H. Sharf (Berkeley)

Mind in World, World in Mind: On the Existential Nature of the Loop

Prof. Robert H. Sharf (Berkeley)

Do Buddhists Believe the Moon Is Still There When Nobody Is Looking? Reflections on Realism, Anti-realism, and the Looping Structure of Buddhist Thought

Prof. Robert H. Sharf (Berkeley)

Jordan Lectures 2016 – Mani’s Death: Inter-Religious Conflict in Early Sasanian Iran and the Memory of the Apostle

Iain Gardner (University of Sydney)

Seminar 3: This seminar examines the various available sources, and question the factual and counter-factual memory of the apostle preserved into the medieval and modern world.

Jordan Lectures 2016 – Mani’s Career as the ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’: His Missions and the Community he Founded

Iain Gardner (University of Sydney)

Seminar 2: This seminar examines Mani’s missions and the community he founded within the context of the many intellectual, spiritual and doctrinal traditions with which he interacted.

Jordan Lectures 2016 – Mani’s Background and Early Life: Who was He and What did He Think He was Doing?

Iain Gardner (University of Sydney)

Seminar 1: This seminar discusses and compares the varied pictures of Mani, including topics such as his origins, name and the religious experiences that he claimed.

Jordan Lectures 2016 – The Many Lives of Mani: Inter-Religious Polemic and Scholarly Controversy

Iain Gardner (University of Sydney)

Keynote lecture: This lecture looks at the ways in which Mani was remembered by his followers, caricatured by his opponents, and has been invented and reinvented according to the vagaries of scholarly fashion.

Jordan Lectures 2014 – A Glimpse of the Future: Exploring, Comparing and Saving Some Neglected Mythologies

Michael Witzel (Harvard University)

At the present stage of myth studies, there is an urgent need to compare some neglected mythologies that can tell us more about early stages of mythology as practiced by those who moved into Europe around 40 thousand years ago.  Further, we need to study the early substrates in populations or those "empty spaces" that have been overlaid by the Christian and Muslim religions. Finally, there is the urgent need to record and "save" some endangered mythologies.

Jordan Lectures 2014 – Mythology or Folklore: The Curious Case of Alan Dundes and His Students

Michael Witzel (Harvard University)

Contrary to claims made earlier in the 20th century by diffusionists and those who uphold Jungian archetypes, the well known folklorist A. Dundes has decreed that no such “universals” exist. However in search for a “grand theory” of folklore he employs another 20th century universalist, S. Freud. His former students closely follow Dundes.

Press Conference

Professor Michael Witzel

Jordan Lectures 2014 – Some Recent Approaches to Comparative Mythology: Dumézil, Burkert, Puhvel, M.L. West, B. Lincoln

Michael Witzel (Harvard University)

In this talk I aim to point out some similarities and differences in the approaches of recent mythologists, who are however mostly dealing with Indo-European materials. Some reasons will be given why we must go beyond the narrow confines of this well-reconstructed family of languages, religions and rituals.

Jordan Lectures 2014 – Oldest Japan and Oldest India: Two Unlikely Candidates for Comparison?

Michael Witzel (Harvard University)

Building on the preceding talk, in this presentation I seek to compare two mythologies that are distant in time and space, the oldest Indian one (Veda, c. 1000 BCE) and the oldest Japanese one (Kojiki 712 CE, Nihon Shoki 720 CE). Reasons for their surprising resemblances are given, based on a close comparison of two key myths, that of the hidden sun  (Iwato, Vala) and of the slaying of the Dragon. An ancient common source will be proposed.

Jordan Lectures 2014 – A New Approach to Mythology: Historical Comparative Mythology

Michael Witzel (Harvard University)

In this presentation I offer a general introduction to my book "The origins of the world's mythologies"  (OUP 2012). I will discuss and problematize the new method employed: a combination of a comparative and an historical approach that leads to recurrent reconstructions of increasingly earlier mythologies. As such, the proposed approach is parallel to those in linguistics, stemmatics, paleontology and genetics.

Teaching the Abrahamic Religions: A Subversive Enterprise?

Guy G. Stroumsa

Islam in the Mind of Europe: Abraham Geiger, Ignaz Goldziher and Louis Massignon

Guy G. Stroumsa

Three Orientalists on Judaism and Islam: Ernest Renan, Julius Wellhausen and William Robertson Smith

Guy G. Stroumsa

Three Rings or Three Impostors? The Comparative Approach to the Abrahamic Religions and its Origins

Guy G. Stroumsa

Seminar Three: How It Really Was

Prof. David J. Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A)

Seminar Two: The Great Westwards Shift

Prof. David J. Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A)

Seminar One:The World Muhammad Made

Prof. David J. Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A)

Opening lecture: How Islam Saved the Jews

Prof. David J. Wasserstein (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A)

Secularism & Political Violence: Rethinking Discourses of Sikh Ethno-nationalism

Professor Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)

Mourning Sovereignty: Finitude and Sacred Violence in the Myth of the Khalsa

Professor Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)

Guru-as-Word (I): Language, Music and Subjectivity in the Adi Granth

Professor Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)

Beyond Theism and Atheism: Re-interpreting the Creation Myth in Sikh Literature

Professor Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)

Frames of Comparison: Nihilism and the Modern Sikh Imaginary

Professor Arvind Mandair (University of Michigan)