Dunkerley Dialogue with Sheila Pepe, Brigitte Keslinke, and Gregory Spinner

Talks

Dunkerley Dialogue with Sheila Pepe, Brigitte Keslinke, and Gregory Spinner

Event details

November 13, 2025, 6 PM

Location: Payne Room

Free and open to the public, this event will have ASL interpretation

For information on planning your visit and accessibility, please see our Visit page

A symbol of two hands gesturing to indicate that Sign Language Interpretation is provided.

A woman with short hair and black, round glasses, faces us and smiles towards two people whose backs angle away from the camera on the right side of the photograph.

Dunkerley Dialogue with Sheila Pepe, Brigitte Keslinke, and Gregory Spinner, Tang Teaching Museum, November 13, 2025, photo by Shawn LaChapelle

Join us Thursday, November 13, at 6 pm, for a Dunkerley Dialogue with artist Sheila Pepe, whose whose works are on view in the exhibition Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest, in conversation with Brigitte Keslinke, PhD candidate in Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania, and Gregory Spinner, Teaching Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College. They will discuss art and ideas at the intersection of religion, ritual, and rest, with a special emphasis on the cult of Mithras, a mystery religion of the Roman Empire for which a ritual meal was a central component.

The talk will be followed by the re-creation of a Mithraic feast, with culinary offerings—grilled meats, grains, bread, dried fruit, spiced olive oil, and wine—based on the archaeological record. Attendees will be able to further engage in the ideas and the exhibition by sharing food and conversation on the mezzanine.

Dunkerley Dialogues pair Skidmore professors with artists in a conversation format, which is often a catalyst for new connections and understandings across disciplines, and can spark new ideas for all participants. Dunkerley Dialogues are made possible by a generous gift from Michele Dunkerley ’80.

This event is free and open to the public. The program will include ASL interpretation.

Anchor name: Photos

About the Speakers

Sheila Pepe is best known for crocheting large-scale, ephemeral installations and sculpture made from domestic and industrial materials. For more than 30 years she has accumulated a family resemblance of works in sculpture/installation/drawing, and other singular and hybrid forms: sometimes drawings that are sculpture, or sculpture that is furniture, fiber works that appear as paintings, and table top objects that look like models for monuments, and stand as votives for a secular religion. The cultural sources and the meanings twisted together are from canonical arts of the 20th century, home crafts, lesbian, queer and feminist aesthetics, 2nd Vatican Council American design, an array of Roman Catholic sources as well as their ancient precedents. The constant conceptual pursuit of Pepe’s research, making, teaching, and writing has been to contest received knowledge, opinions, and taste.

Brigitte Keslinke has a BA in Archaeology and History of Art and Architecture from Boston University and an MA in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is a PhD candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked on projects in Italy, Cyprus, and Türkiye, and her research centers on the intersections of foodways, religion, and identity. Her dissertation is a comparative study of sacrifice and feasting in the worship of the Roman god Mithras; in it, she explores how the cult was adapted by and for the various communities into which it was introduced.

Gregory Spinner is a Teaching Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College. With a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago, his intellectual interests are wide ranging. His research focuses on Jewish texts and practices, while he teaches courses that include the Bible, Midrash, and comparative studies of myth, ecstasy, and material religion.