Past Symposia

The Institute will not be hosting a symposium in 2026.

Past Events

• November 7-8, 2025: Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies
  • Symposium Program [pdf]
  • Friday Night Event Speaker: Professor Edward Wright-Ríos from Vanderbilt University presents Devotion in Motion: Dynamic Tradition and Lived Religion. How does pilgrimage endure, and why is its popularity surging? We often imagine it as an experience of contemplative self-discovery anchored in tradition. But in Mexico pilgrimage thrives amid journeys that are raucous, gritty affairs characterized by unflagging sensory assault, unrelenting commercial activity, and social media’s ubiquity. Why and how does a subset of Catholics there sustain this mode of devotion? Professor Wright-Ríos is also the author of Devotion in Motion: Pilgrimage in Modern Mexico (2025).
• November 8-9, 2024: Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies
• Program for our upcoming symposium [pdf]

• Friday night opening reception and talk: Dr. Kiran Shinde from La Trobe University in Australia: Religious Tourism Thrives Because Pilgrimages Exist: Voices from South Asia. Dr. Shinde will speak about the contemporary phenomena of religious tourism in the developing world through his analysis of several pilgrim towns and pilgrimage landscapes related to Hinduism and Buddhism. His wide-ranging examples reinforce that religious tourism thrives on religious infrastructure created by religious institutions – and all of this is rooted in the traditions of pilgrimage.
• November 3-4, 2023: Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies
  • Featured Panel: The Accidental Highway: U.S. Highway 20 and the Pilgrimage to Main Street, USA with Brian Bouldrey, Northwestern University, Dept of English, Jennifer Keller, Environmental Protection Agency Specialist, and Karen Titus, Documentary Photographer
• November 4-5, 2022: Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies
  
  • Pilgrimage Studies: Next Steps
  • Keynote Speaker:  Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto, Department for the Study of Religion. Professor Coleman is an anthropologist whose most recent book, Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement, was published in 2021 by New York University Press
• November 12-13, 2021: Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies, online sessions only
  • The Changing Nature of Pilgrimage in a Globalizing World
• May 28, 2021 
  • Pilgrimage, Racial Injustice, and Experiential Learning
• January 21, 2021
  • Virtual Conference - Pilgrimage in the midst of Pandemic