"Art and Religion" symposium February 23, 2011

On February 23, the Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel will host a free “Art and Religion” symposium at Spiegel Auditorium in conjunction with Junko Chodos’ exhibit, “The Intersection of Art and Religion,” moderated by Rafael Chodos with presentations by Junko Chodos, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller and Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles. Admission is free and open to the public but you must register at www.uclahillel.org/artreligion. There will be a reception following the lecture/discussion.

Junko Chodos holds a B.A. in the Philosophy of Art and Art History from Waseda University. Her art is in the permanent collections of several museums and universities in the US and Europe. She has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, and Osaka, and has given lectures in museums, galleries, universities and other institutions including the Getty Museum, the Fresno Art Museum, the Long Beach Museum, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art in St. Louis, Claremont Graduate University, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and Barnard College in New York City. Her work is featured in two full-length books.

Jack Miles (speaker) is Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies with the University of California at Irvine and Senior Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is a writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. His book GOD: A Biography won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996. His book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God led to his being named a MacArthur Fellow for the years 2003-2007. Over a period of nearly 20 years (1975-95), Miles was successively an editor at Doubleday, the executive editor at the University of California Press, the literary editor at the Los Angeles Times, and a member of the Times editorial board, writing on politics and culture. He is currently at work as general editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions.

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller (speaker) is in his 36th year at UCLA Hillel as director. He was ordained in 1971 at Yeshiva University where he also earned a Masters Degree in Rabbinic Literature. He has taught Kabbalah and Talmud at the University of Judaism (AJU), and has lectured in the Departments of Near Eastern Languages and Culture, and Sociology, at UCLA. He is currently teaching at Loyola Marymount University and is a member of the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and of the Wexner Heritage Foundation.