Author Archives: Mark Porter Webb

Said Arjomand –“Islam as a World Religion and Developmental Paths in the Islamicate Civilization”

March 04, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion

Abstract This lecture sketches a historicized paradigm for analyzing the relation between Islam as a world religion and the Islamicate civilization that grew around it from the Nile to the Oxus. Moving away from the monistic and ahistorical, one ideal-type one-religion approach followed by many Weberians, and applying instead Max Weber’s own notion of developmental patterns to axial civilizations in [read more»]

Rosario Forlenza (Columbia University), Secularization from Within: Political Catholicism in Perspective

May 13, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion

Using the Italian case as a springboard, this paper discusses how Catholicism related to modernity and democracy, tracing continuities and changes in the tensions between religion and secularity throughout the twentieth century. At a general level, Catholicism went through a process of transformation which developed from radical rejection of modernity to hesitant embracement and, finally, critical co-articulation of the modern [read more»]

Carla Bellamy–Neoliberalism, Political Hinduism, and a New God in a New India

March 18, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion

In the early 1990’s, the Indian government began transitioning from a planned socialist economy to one that embraced global markets.  Twenty-five years later, the increased availability of products that have become markers of middle class status has fostered a feeling of possibility and an enhanced belief in the efficacy of individual agency.  At the same time, widespread frustration with government [read more»]

Philip Bohlman–On the Origin of Nations: Sacred Music and Religious Nationalism

May 06, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion

Religion in its many forms—as myth and metaphor, people and polity, community and chorus—provides one of the most powerful foundations for the nation. The forms in which the religion and nation converge engender what I refer to in this colloquium as religious nationalism. The power of religious nationalism is evident not only in its originary moments, but also in the [read more»]

The Politics of Eschatology and Global Movements

May 01, 2015
All Day
Committee for the Study of Religion

  The Politics of Eschatology and Global Movements Friday, May 1st 2-5:30
CUNY Graduate Center
Room 5307 Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), “Spiritual Warfare in the End Times: Evangelical Politics of Truth and Time” Nerina Rustomji (St. John’s University), “The Houri Code: Online Jihadi and Feminist Interpretations on the Heavenly Virgins of Islamic Paradise” Lynn R. Huber (Elon University), “Envisioning the [read more»]

Saygun Gokariksel, “Purification by Sacrifice”: Politics of Truth, Memory, and Accusations of “Collaboration” with the Communist-era Secret Service in Poland

April 29, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion

The “collapse” of state communism in Poland (as elsewhere in Eastern Europe) has ignited contentious questions about historical truth and memory and widespread accusations of “collaboration” with the former secret service. As part of the “transition” to a law-governed (Rechstaat), secular, capitalist democracy, Poland has employed the legal procedure called “lustration”, the exposing and banning of communist “collaborators” from public [read more»]

Ana Stuven–Modernity and Religion in 19th century Chile.  The Creation of a Republican Public Sphere

April 27, 2015
All Day
Committee for the Study of Religion

One of the big challenges posed by the arrival of Western modernity has been the role  assigned in it to the religious.   In this presentation I wish to discuss the relationship between religion and politics in dialogue with modernity during the l9th century in Chile, focusing on two problems: one, the political and ideological discussion posed by republicanism and liberalism on the [read more»]

Nathaniel Berman–“In a Place Parallel to God:” The Draft, the Demonic, and the Conscientious Cubist

April 22, 2015
12:00 am - 2:00 pm

NOTE: In Graduate Center, room 5109. Abstract: The notion of “religion” as a coherent concept and sphere of human life, as conceptualized in liberal theory from Locke to Weber, has been problematized from numerous perspectives in the past generation. Critics have argued that “religion” must be viewed as a historically and culturally contingent category and as an artifact of identifiable [read more»]