Join us Thursday, November 13, at 6 pm, for a Dunkerley Dialogue with artist Sheila Pepe, whose installation Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest opens October 11–in conversation with Brigitte Keslinke, PhD candidate in Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania, and Gregory Spinner, Teaching Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College. They will discuss art and ideas at the intersection of religion, ritual, and rest, with a special emphasis on the cult of Mithras, a mystery religion of the Roman Empire for which a ritual meal was a central component.
The talk will be followed by a modern Mithraic feast, details TBD.
Dunkerley Dialogues pair Skidmore professors with artists in a conversation format, which is often a catalyst for new connections and understandings across disciplines, and can spark new ideas for all participants. Dunkerley Dialogues are made possible by a generous gift from Michele Dunkerley ’80.
This event is free and open to the public. The program will include ASL interpretation.
About the speakers:
Sheila Pepe is best known for crocheting large-scale, ephemeral installations and sculpture made from domestic and industrial materials. For more than 30 years she has accumulated a family resemblance of works in sculpture/installation/drawing, and other singular and hybrid forms. Sometimes drawings that are sculpture, or sculpture that is furniture, fiber works that appear as paintings, and table top objects that look like models for monuments, and stand as votives for a secular religion. The cultural sources and the meanings twisted together are from canonical arts of the 20th century, home crafts, lesbian, queer and feminist aesthetics, 2nd Vatican Council American design, an array of Roman Catholic sources as well as their ancient precedents. The constant conceptual pursuit of Pepe’s research, making, teaching, and writing has been to contest received knowledge, opinions, and taste.
Brigitte Keslinke has a BA in Archaeology and History of Art and Architecture from Boston University and an MA in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a PhD candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked on projects in Italy, Cyprus, and Türkiye, and her research centers on the intersections of foodways, religion, and identity. Her dissertation is a comparative study of sacrifice and feasting in the worship of the Roman god Mithras; in it, she explores how the cult was adapted by and for the various communities into which it was introduced.
Gregory Spinner is a Teaching Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College. With a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago, his intellectual interests are wide ranging. His research focuses on Jewish texts and practices, while he teaches courses that include the Bible, Midrash, and comparative studies of myth, ecstasy, and material religion.
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