Blake Lectures
The lecture honors William E. and Miriam S. Blake and is presented annually by a renowned scholar. The lecture is supported by an endowed fund established by family, friends, colleagues,and those who enjoyed the History of Christianity course which Professor Blake initiated at VCU. 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of this lecture series.
Thursday, February 21, 2013, 7:30 PM, VCU Student Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Avenue, First floor.The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
We are pleased to host Carlos M. N. Eire, Ph.D., the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.
The title of Professor Eire's lecture is "Redefining the Sacred: Protestantism and the Birth of Modernity." Click here for a flier.
In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba during the CIA's Operation Peter Pan - exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by the revolution. Seventeen years later, in 1979, Carlos Eire received his PhD from Yale. He specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a strong focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; and the history of death.
A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, Eire is currently on the editorial board of the journal "Church History" and the publications committee of Yale University Press. He is now writing a survey history of the Reformation era and researching attitudes toward miracles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His courses range widely in subject, but tend to focus on early modern Europe and on religious history.
For more information contact the Dr. Andrew Crislip (acrislip@vcu.edu or 804-828-0155), the History Department's Blake Chair in the History of Christianity.
The 2012 lecture was given by Wallace Daniel, Ph.D., Provost, Mercer University
"Saintly Martyr or Religious Heretic? Alexander Men and the Russian Orthodox Church"
February 23, 2012
Dr. Daniel is a prominent historian specializing in early modern and contemporary Russian and European history. Prior to joining Mercer, he completed a 30-plus year career at Baylor University, where he recently served as the Ralph L. and Bessie Lynn Professor of History and editor of the Journal of Church and State. Daniel's publications include The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia; Perspectives on Church-State Relations in Russia; and "Father Alexander Men and the Struggle to Recover Russia's Heritage" in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization.
The 2011 lecture was given by David Brakke, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington.
"Why the Early Church Did Not Reject Gnosticism"
March 31, 2011
Dr. Brakke is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Dr. Brakke is the author of several ground-breaking books in the history of ancient Christianity, including Demons and the Making of the Monk, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons, and The Gnostics, published in November 2010 by Harvard University Press, the basis for the Blake Lecture. He is Editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies.
Other speakers coordinated by the Blake program included:
John Plotz, Professor of English, Brandeis University
"Before there was Facebook: The Long History of Distraction and Absorption"
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Barbara Rosenwein, Loyola University Chicago
"Emotions and Change in History"
Friday, April 1, 2011
Paul Blowers, Emmanuel School of Religion
"Between Revulsion and Empathy: The Reinvention of Tragic Pity in Christian Responses to the Poor and the Diseased in Late Antiquity"
Thursday, Febraruy 24, 2011
Emma Wasserman, Rutgers University
Evil Everywhere? Demons, Spirits, and Powers in the Letters of Paul
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Kevin Wilkinson, Yale University
"New Palladas and Constantine the Great: A Recently Recovered Pagan Poet
on Religion and Politics in the Later Roman Empire"
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Previous lecturers:
|
2010 |
Dr. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona |
|
2009 |
Dr. Andrew Crislip |
|
2008 |
Dr. Barbara MacHaffie |
|
2007 |
Dr. Dale Hoak |
|
2006 |
Dr. Christine Heyrman |
|
2005 |
Dr. Bart Ehrman |
|
2004 |
Dr. Richard Harrison, Jr. |
|
2003 |
Dr. William E. Blake |
|
2002 |
Dr. John P. Meier |
|
2001 |
Dr. Jonathan Zophy |
|
2000 |
Dr. James Smylie |
|
1999 |
Dr. Edwin Gaustad |
|
1998 |
Dr. E. Ann Matter |
|
1997 |
Dr. Paul Maier |
|
1996 |
Dr. Samuel Hill |
|
1995 |
Dr. Charles Curran |
|
1994 |
Dr. Martin Marty |