Expert on pilgrimage to visit Syracuse University Sept. 22 as part of the Syracuse Symposium 2003: ‘Journeys’

Expert on pilgrimage to visit Syracuse University Sept. 22 as part of the Syracuse Symposium 2003: ‘Journeys’September 15, 2003Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Jill Dubisch, Regent Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University and an expert on pilgrimage, will speak Sept. 22 on “Journey Through the Heartland: An American Motorcycle Pilgrimage.” The presentation, part of the Syracuse Symposium 2003: “Journeys,” begins at 7:30 p.m. in Genet Auditorium, 108 Slocum Hall, and is free and open to the public.

Dubisch’s interest in pilgrimage grew out of fieldwork in the islands of Greece, work discussed in her book “In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (1995).”

In 1998, she joined Vietnam veterans in the annual “Run to the Wall,” a cross-country motorcycle journey from California to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. She discusses the uniquely contemporary pilgrimage in her co-authored book “Run for the Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage” (Rutgers University Press, 2001).

The Syracuse Symposium is an annual intellectual festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating. The 2003 theme is “Journeys:” journeys of exploration and discovery, intellectual journeys, mythical and artistic journeys, migrations of peoples, exiles, liberations, pilgrimages and more. The series continues throughout the Fall 2003 semester and will include lectures, exhibits, performances and other special events.