The Castelfranco Chair in Religious Studies was generously endowed by Professor Paul A. Castelfranco and his wife Marie in 2002. The purpose of the Chair was to attract a senior scholar in the history of post-New Testament Christianity with a proven interest in inter-religious dialogue and comparative religion and a sensitivity to contemporary religious and cultural issues. The initial term of the endowed Chair was five years with the option of reappointment. The first appointee to the Chair was Dr. Allison P. Coudert, whose focus of interest is on the interaction between religion and science, with a special emphasis on Jewish contributions to science and issues dealing with race, class, and gender.
Past Events
2025-26
Leela Prasad, A Great Riddle, A Sovereign Hope: Prison Imaginings of Gandhian Ahimsa, 10/16/25
2023-24
Elena Conis, Vaccine Resistance in Historical Perspective, 05/10/23
Randal Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, 04/13/23
Michael Christopher Low, Imperial Mecca: Ottonman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj, 02/23/23
2021-22
Harvey Stark (California State University, Sacramento), 4/4/22
Life, Death, and Spiritual Healing: American Muslim Hospitals Chaplains at Work
Michele Margolis (University of Pennsylvania), 5/3/22
Morality Politics: Abortion, Evangelicalism, and the /Republican Party
2018-19
Michelle Lelwica (Concordia College), 4/4/19
Shameful bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement
Daisy Deomampo (Fordham University), 4/18/19
Transnational Reproduction: The Bioethics of Crossing Borders for Fertility Services
Bénédicte Boisseron (University of Michigan), 5/1/19
Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question
2016-17
Kathryn Gin Lum
Damned Nation
2015-16
Claudia Rankine
The Making of a Citizen
Donald R. Davis
The Imaginative Impulse: Law and Aspirational Ethics in Medieval India
John Kelsay
God's Warriors: Individuals and the Right of War in Christianity and Islam
