Kythe Heller
Divinity School
kytheheller@gmail.com
Kythe Heller is a poet, essayist, interdisciplinary artist, and scholar. She holds a ThD from Harvard University in the Committee on the Study of Religion, for Comparative Studies in Religion, Religious Thought (Philosophy and Theology), and Literary Studies and the Arts, with a PhD Secondary Field in Arts, Film, and Visual Studies/Critical Media Practice. Previously, she received an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA in English Literature from Reed College.
Recently published work includes a collection of poems, Firebird (Arrowsmith), nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award, an edited collection of literary translations, essays, and visual art, The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow/El alma se mueve en la sombra (Stenen, co-edited with Carolina Gómez-Montoya), finalist for the Foreword Indies Book Award, writing and intermedia works including Thunder Perfect Mind (with photographer Meka Tome) and Rite of Spring (with Meghan McNealy), and several critical studies of medieval and contemporary mysticism and spirituality, phenomenology of the senses, aesthetics, and socially-engaged arts, including “An Ethnography of Spirituality” in Arvo Pärt’s White Light: Media, Culture, Politics (Cambridge University Press), “Living Backwards” in Quo Anima: Innovation and Spirituality in Contemporary Poetry (Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics), and “The Heart Receptive of Every Form: Representations of Fire in the unio mystica of Mahomet (Mi’raj-Nameh (1436) Manuscript)” (Harvard Divinity School Graduate Journal). She has received fellowships and grant awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to support a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Mellon Foundation, Harvard University, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Film, music, performance, and installation work has been screened and exhibited at festivals in the United States and Canada.
She is the founder and creative director of Vision Lab, a socially-engaged art and research collective dedicated to the future of the human spirit, based at Harvard Divinity School and creating work at the nexus of contemporary spirituality, social and environmental justice, and technology, in order to augur collaborative, wise futures that inspire a global public. She edits the international art and culture journal Forecast, and is on the faculty of Bard College’s Language and Thinking Program.