Events
Come Visit Us!
The Department of Religious Studies hosts public lectures, film screenings, and visiting scholars throughout the academic year.
Upcoming
Greek Epics, Sanskrit Epics: Kindred Classics, or Cunning Co-incidence?
About the Event
Dr. Joseph Badawi-Crook, from the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, will be giving
a lecture titled "Greek Epics, Sanskrit Epics: Kindred Classics, or Cunning Co-incidence?"
Dr. Badawi-Crook will talk about how the readers of both Ancient Greek and Ancient
Indian Epic poetry cannot help but notice innumerable parallels between the two. For
some, similarities should be attributed to a shared Indo-European inheritance. For
others, they should be attributed to historical influence from one to the other –
some think from Greece to India, and others from India to Greece. Still others think
these similarities are just flukes. And skeptics say the answer is unknowable. Dr.
Joseph Badawi-Crook, who did his PhD on this topic, has developed new methods to answer
these knotty but fascinating questions. In doing so, we inevitably consider why any
culture resembles any other, why we make stories, and why these ancient Epics are
worth reading in 2026.
Date, Time, and Location
📅 Wednesday, November 4, 2026
🕛 5:00 PM
📍 Cooper Hall I CPR 460 I 4th Floor — University of South Florida
Today's Biggest Blind Spot!
About the Event
Dr. Faraz Harsini is a biomedical and food systems scientist and the CEO and founder
of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), a nonprofit that advocates for changing
unjust laws, animal and environmental protection, public health, nutrition, and pursuing
careers that can make the most difference. Dr. Harsini was a Bioprocessing Senior
Scientist at
the Good Food Institute, where he worked on advancing scientific and technological
methods to produce alternative proteins and cultivated meat.
Date, Time, and Location
📅 Thursday, November 12, 2026
🕛 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
📍 The Chamber I MSC 4200 I 4th Floor — University of South Florida
Event announcements in Department News
Annual Jain Lecture
Supported by the Bhagwan Padma Prabhu Endowment, the department brings a visiting scholar of Jain studies to campus each year. Recent speakers have addressed fasting and karmic purification, motherhood in Jain literature, and Jain-Muslim relations in medieval India.
Dates forthcoming
Join us
Events are open to anyone interested in the study of religion, on campus or off. To
hear about the next one, follow Department News. To propose a speaker or a co-sponsored
event, contact the department.
Department of Religious Studies
4202 E. Fowler Avenue, CPR 107
Tampa, FL 33620
(813) 974-0665