As you may know, Yale University’s response to concerns over the transmission of COVID-19 has entailed numerous adjustments and cancellations that affect a large number of people in the Yale community and beyond. In accordance with Yale’s guidelines, this event has been cancelled.
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This symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to discuss the ways in which natural catastrophes prompt sacred expression, whether in art, music, or ritual. By comparing sacred responses to natural catastrophes (keeping in mind their entanglement in human action) from antiquity up to the present, this symposium seeks to address the following questions: why do natural disasters generate artistic and sacred expression, even in secular and post-secular spaces? How does sacred expression configure environmental imaginaries? What role does expressive culture have in contemporary challenges surrounding climate change?