25th Annual Witherspoon Lecture

The department was pleased to have Jonathan Z. Smith, the distinguished historian of religion, give the 25th annual Loy H. Witherspoon Lecture in Religious Studies. Professor Smith's lecture, "Things Said/Things Done: The Relations of Myth and Ritual," was presented on Tuesday, March 31, 2009, at 7:30 p.m. in Rowe 130. He is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The University of Chicago.

Jonathan Z. Smith is an historian of religion whose research has focused on such wide-ranging subjects as ritual theory, Hellenistic religions, nineteenth-century Maori cults, and the notorious events of Jonestown, Guyana. Some of his works include Map Is Not Territory; Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown; and To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. In his book Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, he demonstrates how four centuries of scholarship on early Christianities manifest a Catholic-Protestant polemic. His latest work is a collection of essays entitled Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, offering a retrospective look at his work. Smith moves easily in the worlds of religious studies, anthropology, literature, philosophy, and history. He is editor of the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion. He has served as the Dean of the Faculty of the College of Humanities at the University of Chicago, President of the North American Society for the Study of Religion, and most recently, President of the Society of Biblical Literature. 

The Loy H. Witherspoon Lectures in Religious Studies, the oldest and most prestigious endowed lecture series at UNC Charlotte, was established in 1984 to honor the distinguished career and service of Professor Loy H. Witherspoon, the first chairperson of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion in the Department of Religious Studies.