The pandemic has underscored the need to attend to the life of the spirit. In the fifth event of this series, we explore the relationship between spirit and art. What is the duty of the poet or artist toward the world of spirit? How do poetry and prayer intertwine? What is the spiritual responsibility of the critic or scholar? How can we mobilize the many intersections between the worlds of art and spirit as we move forward? What can spiritual practices teach the artist or critic?

Professor of Music (UC Berkeley) Nicholas Mathew studies the relationship between music and politics, including the ways in which music produces social attachments and collective identity.

Laura Pérez is professor of ethnic studies and chair of the Latinx Research Center. Her recent book, Eros Ideologies: Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial, examines art as a laboratory for creating, imagining, and experiencing new forms of decolonial thought.

John Shoptaw teaches poetry in the Department of English. His 2015 poetry collection, Times Beach, a meditation on the cultural and environmental history of the Mississippi watershed, won the Notre Dame Review Book Prize and the Northern California Book Award in Poetry.