2024 Spirituality and Health Symposium Beauty: The Importance of Aesthetic Experience for Developing Resilience
This is a hybrid event with opportunity to participate in-person and on-line. Link will be provided upon registration.
One aspect of spirituality is the perception of beauty hidden in everyday things and experiences. Neuroscience presents us with evidence that perceiving the beautiful in our daily struggles helps strengthen our emotional and spiritual resilience and makes us happier people. The 2024 Spiritual Care Symposium is pleased to introduce two scholars from vastly different disciplines who show us ways that beauty presents in life. The symposium provides an opportunity to grow in understanding of how the aesthetic experience is associated with life satisfaction, mental health, and wellbeing.
Schedule for the day:
8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration / coffee 9:00 am – Opening remarks 9:05 Opening ritual 9:15 – 10:00 am Keynote Presentation
Dr. Anjan Chatterjee: “Art and Architecture as Agent of Change.” Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He received his BA in Philosophy from Haverford College and MD from the University of Pennsylvania. A past Neurology Chair at Pennsylvania Hospital, his research addresses neuroaesthetics, spatial cognition, language, and neuroethics. He wrote The Aesthetic Brain and co-edited Brain, Beauty, and Art, as well as Neuroethics in Practice, and The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience. His editorial services have included several neuroscience, psychology, aesthetics and bioethics journals. He received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology from the American Academy of Neurology, the Rudolph Arnheim Prize for contributions to psychology and the Arts from the American Psychological Association, and the Leadership in Innovation Award from the Global Wellness Institute for his work in neuroaesthetics. He is a founding member of the Board of the International Neuroethics Society, past President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and past President of the Behavioral Neurology Society. His TED talk: “How your brain decides what is beautiful” has been viewed over 3 million times. He serves on the board of The Global Wellness Institute and was previously on the boards of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Haverford College, the Norris Square Neighborhood Project, and the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired. 10:00 am – 10:30 am Panel discussion with audience and distinguished panel of experts in the arts, sciences and spirituality. 10:30 Break – Coffee, snacks and conversation 10:50 am – 11:35 am Rev. Dr. Charles (Chaz) Lattimore Howard, PhD: Presenting form his book THE BOTTOM A Theopoetic of the streets (200) “The beauty of a terrible truth.” Rev. Charles (Chaz) Lattimore Howard, PhD, University Chaplain and Vice President for Social Equity & Community at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. Over his more than quarter-century at Penn, he and his team have worked to curate a dynamic spiritual and religious community on and around campus. In addition to his responsibilities as Chaplain, Chaz has provided leadership to a range of campus initiatives and taught in Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Education. In 2020, he was invited to assume an additional role at Penn as the inaugural Vice President for Social Equity and Community. His writing has been featured in such publications as Sojourners Magazine, Daily Good, Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Huffington Post, The Christian Century, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Forward, Democratic Left, and Slate. He is the editor of The Souls of Poor Folk, a 2007 text which explored new ways of considering homelessness and poverty, The Awe and The Awful, a poetry collection and Lenten Devotional, He is the author of five books including most recently Black Theology as Mass Movement, Pond River Ocean Rain and The Bottom: A Theopoetic of the Streets. He shares life with his beloved wife, Dr. Lia C. Howard and their three daughters. 11:35 am – 12:10 pm Panel discussion around learning to see beauty 12:15 pm Closing Remarks |