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Religion Professor Serves as Featured Speaker at the University of Chicago Jeff Kosky headlined two separate events held on May 13.

Jeff-Kosky Religion Professor Serves as Featured Speaker at the University of ChicagoJeff Kosky, professor of religion

Jeff Kosky, professor of religion at Washington and Lee University, headlined a pair of on-campus events at the University of Chicago on May 13.

The first event involved an afternoon discussion on his body of work hosted by the university’s Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. The second event was a lecture given by Kosky at the University of Chicago Divinity School, inspired by his recently published book, “From the Heart: A Memoir and a Meditation — on a Vital Organ.”

The afternoon discussion, titled “The Edges of Expression: Exploring the limits of language, the role of image, and the space for wonder in academic inquiry,” featured two UChicago graduate students presenting short appraisals of Kosky’s writings, both recent and past, to which Kosky responded before inviting an open discussion.

“I never thought of my work in the context of free speech,” Kosky said. “Participating in this discussion, I came to see that words that come from the heart are a kind of speech for which students would like to have space freed up. Many would like a classroom where speech that wonders might be welcome, where they might inquire and say, ‘What is it, I wonder?’”

The evening lecture was titled “WRITING FROM THE HEART: On Learning and Discovery” and responded to students’ invitation to “reflect on how insights drawn ‘From the Heart’ can advance discussion about the place of the personal in academic writing.”

According to Kosky, his lecture responded to the students’ request by “looking to the writing of my narrative of heart failure as an example of learning that faces up to the challenge of taking personally the things it discovers and how one is transformed by the revelations.”

Kosky has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2003. He previously worked at Redmoon Theater, a visual spectacle production company, in Chicago. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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