CANTON -- St. Lawrence University’s Department of Religious Studies will host academic and activist Laury Silvers from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Friday, April 1, in Griffiths Arts Center, room 123.

Silvers is the author, co-author and co-editor of books and articles on Muslim women’s religious authority and Muslim women. She teaches courses on Islam, gender and religion at the University of Toronto. She also co-founded the first gender-equal LGBTQ-Open mosque in the U.S. and Canada.

Silvers will discuss the relative openness to women’s religious authority in the very early period of Islam, how that openness came to be officially narrowed, and the possibilities and problems of reclaiming those early examples as models for present-day Muslim feminist activism.

For more information, contact Religious Studies at 229-5130 or visit www.stlawu.edu/religious-studies.