Yearly Archives: 2015

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»]

Melani McAlister– “Congo Crisis: US Evangelicals, Congolese Christians, and the Politics of Race and Decolonization, 1960-64”

April 01, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion
In the early 1960s, Congo was in crisis. As the newly independent nation’s first prime minister was assassinated and violence wracked the country, a white American evangelical missionary was murdered in the streets of the capital city. The story of his death became national news, and US evangelicals, white and black, struggled to understand the politics of race, religion, and revolution that led to [read more»]

Karen Miller–The Frontier and National Integration in the 1930s Philippines: Mindanao Muslims, Christian Settlement, and Struggles over Land Tenure

March 25, 2015
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Committee for the Study of Religion
Abstract: During the 1930s, Filipinos struggled over how and whether to integrate territory and people from “Non-Christian” areas into the newly emerging nation-state. Under US colonial rule, these regions had been managed separately from the rest of the archipelago. Beginning in 1935, however, the Philippines began its 10-year transition to independence. Filipino governing elites, the vast majority of whom were Christian, [read more»]