The UA Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture (ISRC), the College of Humanities, and the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry are sponsoring a Humanities, Medicine, and Wellness panel, “Compassion as a Path to Health and Happiness: Brain and Body.” The conference organizers are Dr. Peter Foley, Director of the ISRC and Associate Professor of Religious Studies, and Dr. Hester Oberman, Medical Humanities Liaison for the College of Humanities and Lecturer in the Religious Studies Program.
The keynote speaker for the event will be Charles Raison, MD, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, and the Barry and Janet Lang Professor of Integrative Mental Health at the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, at the University of Arizona. Professor Raison recently launched the University of Arizona’s Center for Compassion Studies .
Respondents on the panel will be Albert Welter, Head of the UA Department of East Asian Studies and a renowned scholar in Buddhist Studies, and Fenton Johnson, Associate Professor of Creative Writing and author of numerous works, including Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks.
