Dartmouth Events

Freedom & Vigilance: Four Meditations

The Dartmouth Religion Department presents the James and David Orr Memorial Lecture on Culture and Religion by Leela Prasad, Brown University

5/14/2026
4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Haldeman Hall 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Lectures & Seminars, School of Arts and Sciences

Leela Prasad, St. Purandar Das Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies
Brown University

Thursday, May 14, 2026
4:30 PM
Location: Haldeman 041 (tentative)
Free and open to all

Reception to follow

Lecture title: Freedom & Vigilance: Four Meditations

Abstract: In a deepening climate of erosion and erasure, we must keep asking what each of us can do to resist inhumanity, fear, and disenchantment, and to keep searching for more livable futures. This talk offers four meditations—on the forest, the sanctuary, the carceral web, and the heart—to discern a practice of vigilance more sovereign and sustaining than the brute vigilantism of the state and other oppressive structures. What does it mean to be alert to threat, but also to be vigilant for justice; vigilant for the smallest acts of dignity; vigilant for freedom in the ordinary and the everyday? What forms of agency does an ethics of vigilance reveal? What hope does it trace, what freedom does it offer, and what does it demand of us?

For more information, contact:
Liz Storn
Religion@dartmouth.edu
Permanent URL to this event: https://religion.dartmouth.edu/events/event?event=80727

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.