Announcements

Submit your entry now: Williams Prize for Religion Studies 2025-26

We're happy to announce that applications are now being accepted for the Williams Prize in Religion Studies!

The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2026.

Various categories for papers written for any Religion, Culture, and Society class.

Considerations:
In your file upload, ensure your personal information is removed from the file. This includes your name, class name, faculty member who assigned project, etc. Submissions will be rejected if identifying information is not removed. 

• Only material written by you for a Lehigh course may be submitted.
• Only essays completed after April 1, 2025 are eligible.
• Presidential Scholars are not eligible.
• Limit: two entries per category.
• Essays generated using ChatGPT and other forms of generative artificial intelligence are not eligible
• No entry may be submitted more than once.
• Submissions are due by March 31, 2026

Submit here 

2025-2026 Williams Prize

Established in 1908 by Edward H. Williams, professor of geology and mechanical engineering, the Williams Prizes recognize outstanding work in writing and performance. To be eligible for the prizes, all work submitted must have been completed in a Lehigh course or internship and written after the date of April 1, 2025 with direct or indirect supervision by Lehigh instructors.

Information regarding other competition categories, etc, can be found here

We are excited to announce Professor Judith Weisenfeld of Princeton University as the Alice Eckardt Scholar-in-Residence for 2024. Professor Weisenfeld will deliver the Eckardt Lecture on Wednesday, October 9 at 5pm on "Black Freedom & the Racialization of "Religious Excitement" in American Psychiatry". 

Judith Weisenfeld is Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton University. A scholar of African American religious history, her books include New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration (NYU 2016), which won the 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions, Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949 (California, 2007), and African American Women and Christian Activism: New York's Black YWCA, 1905-1945 (Harvard 1997). Her forthcoming book, Racial Commitments: African American Religion in American Psychiatry, will be published by New York University Press in 2025. She is also the Director of The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities, and Cultures, which is supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Learn more about the event Black Freedom & the Racialization of "Religious Excitement" in American Psychiatry 

Congratulations to Michael Raposa, EW Fairchild Professor of American Studies, for receiving the Libsch Research Award! The objectives of this award are to recognize excellence in research, scholarship and/or artistic achievement, including the overall impact, as well as the quality and quantity of scholarly contributions; reward those who perform distinguished research; place research and scholarship on an equal footing with teaching and university service in the annual awarding of recognition. Well deserved!