‘Living into our humanity’: A talk with the outgoing academic dean
Jennifer Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at YDS, is returning to a full-time faculty role after eight years as senior associate dean for academic affairs. In a retrospective interview, Herdt reflected on the curricular responses to the coronavirus and racism crises and the present-day applicability of her historical research on human ethical formation. “It can be inspiring,” Herdt says, “to ask how we are living into our humanity, individually and collectively, seeking to become persons capable of courage and honesty and kindness and respect, of building more just and loving practices and institutions and communities.” Her administrative experience, she said, has given her “a much fuller and deeper appreciation for the distinctive identity and mission of YDS . . . as well as its distinctive place within the ecology of Yale and amongst other institutions of theological education.” The full interview is available on the YDS website.
Exhibit celebrates LGBTQ visibility
Since January, a photography exhibit titled Seminary has been on display in the Divinity School’s Sarah Smith Gallery. The show features the work of Gabrielle Muller ’20MAR, who spent more than a year photographing members of the LGBTQ community at YDS. The exhibit description written by Muller and collaborators JaQuan Beachem ’21MDiv and Laura Snell ’21MAR calls the work an “unapologetic, joyful celebration of queer visibility in religious spaces.” Muller explains that the exhibit sprung from her interest in the way photographs shape and preserve institutional narratives. “This project always had a performance element built in,” she says, “as its fulfillment was in hanging the photographs on the walls of the school.” An article about the exhibit, with links to its online version, can be found on the YDS website.
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