5/6/98

CONTACT: Diane Manuel, News Service (650) 725-1945;
e-mail dmanuel@leland.stanford.edu

Harvard professor to give Heyns Lecture in Religion and Society

Diana Eck, professor of comparative religions and Indian studies at Harvard University, will deliver the spring 1998 Roger W. Heyns Lecture in Religion and Society at 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 13, in Kresge Auditorium.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Eck's lecture is titled "America's New Religious Landscape: Negotiating Identities, Negotiating Differences," and will explore the religious diversity of the United States. From 1991 to 1995, Eck headed a research team at Harvard, the Pluralism Project, that documented the growing presence of Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Zoroastrian communities. On Common Ground: World Religions in America, available as a book and interactive CD, makes data and research from that project accessible in a multimedia format.

Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Faculty of Divinity, Eck has written extensively on India, including Banaras, City of Light and Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. Her most recent book, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, explores Christian theology and interfaith dialogue.

For more information about Eck's lecture, call 723-1764.

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By Diane Manuel