Ritual theorist Ronald Grimes, professor emeritus of religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, will give a lecture titled “Translating Bodies: Enhanced for Festivity,” on Thursday, April 11, at 4:10 p.m., in the Kennedy Auditorium, Taylor Science Center. The lecture is an event in Hamilton’s Humanities Forum and is free and open to the public.
Grimes’ main areas of study include ritual studies, religion, media, and the performing arts in contemporary North America, and religions of the American Southwest. His recently published books include Rite out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts (2006) and Deeply into the Bone: Reinventing Rites of Passage (2003), and he is the co-editor of the Oxford Ritual Studies Series and of the volume, Ritual, Media, and Conflict (2011). Grimes is currently researching the craft of ritual studies and ritual creativity, improvisation, and the arts.
Grimes received a bachelor’s degree. in religion and philosophy from Kentucky Wesleyan College, a M.Div. in theology from Emory University, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Columbia University. He is the director of Ritual Studies International and was senior researcher, senior lecturer, and ISM Fellow at Yale University during 2011-2012. In his lecture, Grimes will reflect on the dramatic and ritualistic dynamics of bodies enhanced for festivity using video clips from his Yale-sponsored project, “Ritual Creativity, Improvisation, and the Arts.”
The Hamilton College Humanities Forum continues a series of lectures, workshops, and presentations designed to explore the problem of secular humanism in the modern academy. This year’s theme is “Translation and Cultural Exchange.”
