The Audible Monastery: Final Roundtable

The Audible Monastery lecture series concludes with a final online roundtable discussion.

Roundtable interlocutor: Stephen J. Davis, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University

Free and open to the public, but registration is required.

This talk is a part of The Audible Monastery webinar series convened in the 2027 spring semester by ISM fellow Marcel Camprubí. Join us for free online lectures every Friday at 12 p.m. from January 29 - March 5, 2027. View information on all the lectures in this series.

The Audible Monastery series:

Monasteries, though often understood as spaces of withdrawal, enclosure, and contemplative practice, were also audible presences within the broader religious and social environments of premodern societies. For neighboring communities and visitors, including members of other religious traditions, monastic sounds could articulate religious identity and separation, shape practices of devotion and religious formation, contribute to efforts at religious discipline and, at times, conversion, and foster unexpected forms of exchange and imitation.

This online lecture series brings together scholars working across a range of regions and religious traditions to consider how monastic sounds reached, affected, and were understood by those outside the communities that produced them. Five lectures, each paired with a response, will present case studies drawn from Christian and Buddhist monastic traditions in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and the Americas, followed by a concluding roundtable discussion. By placing historically and geographically distant monastic traditions in conversation, the series asks what comparison can reveal, which questions travel productively across different contexts, and where the limits of comparison lie.

Contact: Katya Vetrov