Ingersoll Lecture: On the Immortality of Man: A conversation with Elizabeth Strout

James Room, Swartz Hall
45 Francis Ave.
Cambridge, MA
Thu., Oct. 29, 2026, 4 – 6 p.m.



This event is free and open to the public.
Please register to attend.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author and New York Times bestselling mainstay, Elizabeth Strout captivates audiences with her distinctively New England stories and powerful ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. She is the author of The Things We Never Say, Tell Me Everything, Lucy by the Sea, Oh William!, Anything Is Possible, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and Olive Kitteridge.

With an introduction by Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, Elizabeth Strout will speak in conversation with Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

About the Ingersoll Lectures
The Ingersoll Lectures were established at Harvard in 1896 by President Charles W. Eliot through a bequest from Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, honoring the wishes of her father, Harvard alumnus Rev. George Goldthwaite Ingersoll. Given annually between May and December, the lectures explore the theme of the “Immortality of Man.”
Caroline Ingersoll stipulated that the lecture should not form part of the usual college course and should not be delivered as part of a professor’s routine instruction. She directed that the lecture be open to the public and made available in written form. The fund was later increased by a bequest from Mary S. Rauber.

Gazette Classification: Humanities, Poetry/Prose, Special Events
Sponsor: Harvard Divinity School, Office of Academic Affairs
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, Academic and Non-Degree Programming Coordinator, Office of Academic Affairs, Harvard Divinity School, [email protected]