Duke University Department of Religious Studies

02/05/2026

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke-university-mohsen-kadivar-iran-islamic-republic-dissident-scholar-professor-human-rights-justice-censorship-20260204?utm_source=Chronicle+Newsletters&utm_campaign=aff11d20db-Daily_Rundown_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f9b5e65619-aff11d20db-42170561

02/04/2026

https://www.imageandfaith.com/visuallysacred-season4

01/29/2026

Check out a recent interview with Professor Mohsen Kadivar with magazine -Der Spiegel
We don't need a Supreme Leader:

Kadivar evaluates the future of Iran, characterizing the current authoritarian theocratic regime as a failing state that has lost its popular legitimacy. While he acknowledges the government's continued resilience against immediate collapse, he argues that ‘systemic reform’ or a transition to a ...

01/12/2026

Mark your calendars and join GSF on Friday, January 23, 2026 at the Center for Documentary Studies for a day-long symposium organized around our 2025-2026 research theme, Feminism and the Culture Wars.

This symposium contends with the relationship between feminist theory, feminist activism, and the culture wars. Often taking the form of moral panic, culture wars are characterized by reactionary rhetoric that targets the most marginalized groups, casting them as threats to the social order. More than metaphor, culture “wars” are proxies for political hegemony, eliciting questions about state power, criminalization, social movements, and the attack on academic freedom. Through lectures and a film screening, leading feminist scholars grapple both with feminism’s real and/or perceived role in sparking moral panic, and with its moral imperative to resist and contextualize that panic.

Please RSVP to attend! Open to undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, and community members.

Follow this link to find more information and RSVP! https://gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/events/feminism-and-culture-wars-symposium

11/10/2025

Congratulations to alum Adrienne Krone on the publication of "Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States." Read more about her latest work below!

"Ethical and moral concerns about food and diet commonly feature in individuals' religious identities and expressions. These concerns extend beyond what one should eat to include how food should be prepared and produced. As Adrienne Krone demonstrates in this ethnographic study, participants in alternative food movements are developing new ways to see food preparation and production as religious acts. Following two Christian and two Jewish food organizations, Krone complicates our understanding of American religion as religious people come together across a range of differences to change the food system.

This book showcases the complex ways that religion lives and works within food production, marketing, and distribution. These "free-range" religious practices blend belief and practice with secular concerns and constitute a key, albeit understudied, part of the American alternative food movement.

"Krone's unique ethnographic narrative gives readers valuable insight into the contemporary conversation between religious and alternative food movements. She uncovers tensions and complications for those seeking to draw together food justice and religion, but she also reveals how notions of the sacred emerge in relation to land, food, and the human body."

—Gretel A. Van Wieren, Michigan State University

"Adrienne Krone’s wonderful book is a groundbreaking addition to scholarship on religion beyond institutions and is essential reading for understanding how food production and consumption can become sacred acts."

—Nora L. Rubel, University of Rochester

For more information and to read an excerpt, visit the book page: https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469690322/free-range-religion/ ."

11/08/2025

https://jewishstudies.duke.edu/news/bernice-and-morton-lerner-distinguished-professor-judaic-studies-honored-upstander-award

11/05/2025

10/31/2025

Exciting course available now!

10/29/2025

Fascinated by how new religions take shape? Explore the beliefs, histories, and cultural impact of America’s most intriguing movements in this course!

10/29/2025

Looking to explore the intersection of theology and fiction? Join our new course inspired by the works of C.S. Lewis—where deep thought sparks great conversation.