Open events

This evening event celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies/Association Canadienne des Études Patristiques. Patristics is the study of early Christian history and context (100 to 600 CE), with scholarly contributions from various academic backgrounds, perspectives, approaches and voices.
Our guest lecturer is Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed (Harvard Divinity School), an internationally recognized scholar with strong Canadian connections whose work includes Patristics and bridges multiple disciplines and religious traditions. As a Japanese-American Jewish scholar of Christianity, Dr. Reed is uniquely situated to contribute lessons and sketches from historical struggles with identities, boundaries, and togetherness in the midst of ideological and ethnic tensions. Her historical work models how engagement with difference, and different models of difference, in the distant past can provide imaginative models for rethinking the challenges of the present as well. Much of her research focuses on alternative epistemologies as well as recovering erased and forgotten voices from the past. In this lecture, she will show how a focus on the Canadian context cultivated in the crucible of CSPS/ACÉP—with its unique combination of Francophone and Anglophone perspectives on the Christian past—can shed new light on the history and future of the field.
We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Federation’s Open Programming Fund, the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (CSBS), and the Canadian Corporation of Studies in Religion (CCSR). This lecture is part of a CCSR Joint Lecture series that focuses on the study of religion and theology in Canada.