Month: January 2025

On Thursday, April 17, at 6:00 pm, in Drake’s Sussman Theater (lower level of Olmsted Center), Dr. Max Thornton, independent scholar, will deliver a lecture on “Getting What We Deserve: Theologies at the Intersection of Disability and Work.”

Dr. Thornton’s lecture will think through some of the connections between disability, work, and the theological ideas that shape popular views on both in the US. Concepts of punishment for sin, redemptive suffering, and character formation are embedded in the ways we think about both disability and work; the place where they meet is shaped by racialized ideas about labor, poverty, and salvation, as well as the belief that God materially rewards the faithful. Yet disability theology offers an alternative to these habits of thought, asking us to rethink both our definition and our valorization of “work”; to withhold judgments about sin, punishment, redemption, and other metaphorical readings of disability; and to take seriously our shared human vulnerability.

On April 5, Drake’s Comparison Project will host “A Celebration of Islam in Des Moines,” in conjunction with the annual forum of the Abdelkader Education Project.

The event will occur in Meredith Hall from 2:00–4:30pm.

It will feature plenaries about Abd el-Kader and the Abdelkader Education Project, as well as dozens of breakout sessions on various topics, booths for the many Islamic communities in Des Moines, and a photo exhibition.

We will soon have more information posted about the event.

On Thursday, March 27, at 6:00 pm, in Drake’s Sussman Theater (lower level of Olmsted Center), Dr. Julia Watts Belser, Professor of Jewish Studies at Georgetown University, will deliver a lecture on “Radical Rest: Jewish Sabbath Practice as Resistance to Ableism.”

We live in a world pitched toward productivity, where we often face intense pressure to measure our worth on the basis of our work. In this talk, Julia Watts Belser brings the insights of disability culture into conversation with Jewish wisdom about Shabbat and Sabbath practice to explore how traditions of radical rest can counter productivity culture. How might Sabbath practice and other forms of intentional slowness offer resources for challenging ableism? How might reimagining religious practice to take seriously disabled people’s experiences of living with limits spur us to build a world that better honors the needs and the yearnings of all our bodies and minds?

On Thursday, March 6, at 6:00 pm, in Drake’s Sussman Theater (lower level of Olmsted Center), Dr. Amy Donahue, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University, will deliver a lecture on “The Bhagavad Gītā’s Yoga Model of Disability.”

Contemporary medical models of disability assume notions of “normal” human embodiment and functioning that South Asia’s Hindu philosophical and religious traditions largely do not share and in many cases implicitly challenge. Rather than assuming normalcy and ability as default human conditions, Hindu traditions generally assume that human experience begins with ignorance and dysfunction. All persons, in other words, are in some state of “disability,” and overcoming our traumas takes work that no one initially wants to start. According to the Gītā, this work involves yoking reflexive tendencies, including deep-rooted habits of (mis)identification that distort a person’s authentic nature (svabhāva). Realization of our true selves requires, first, replacing attachments that lead to torpor, confusion, and conflict with habits leading to clarity and joy, and second, uprooting even these habits for the sake of a perfect harmony of all beings. This yoga model of disability found in the Gītā therefore contests contemporary medical accounts while offering critical guidance for contemporary cultural disability theorists.

On Sunday, February 23, from 3:00–5:00 pm, Drake University’s The Comparison Project, in conjunction with the “Iowa Interfaith Exchange,” hosts “Roads to Religion” in the Olmsted Center (Parents Hall) on Drake’s campus. The event, which is free and open to the public, features dozens of local religious communities, collectively representing at least a dozen religious traditions. These communities will be arranged throughout the hall as if on a map of the metro area. Visitors will receive a map to guide them in their exploration of them. Refreshments will be provided by Drake’s catering service, Sodexo.

The Comparison Project engages in the practice of comparative philosophy of religion, increases understanding of local-lived religion, and cultivates interfaith literacy and leadership. It is supported by Drake’s Center for the Humanities, Drake’s Slay Fund for Social Justice, Drake’s Stringfellow and Hay Lectureships, Humanities Iowa, and Cultivating Compassion: The Dr. Richard Deming Foundation.

The ”Iowa Interfaith Exchange” includes Drake’s The Comparison Project and three other local nonprofits: CultureALL, the Des Moines Area Religious Council, and Interfaith Alliance of Iowa.