RELIGION, Culture AND PUBLIC LIFE

Our core event series, Religion, Culture, and Public Life, provides a platform for exploration and debate of both pressing current events and the often overlooked ways in which religion can figure in the different aspects of society, the economy, and the arts. In recent years, we have discussed the rise of populism and conspiracy theories, White Christian gun culture in the United States, the sexual politics of Black Churches, and the atrocities against the Uyghur in Xinjiang.

patriarchal violence

Patriarchal violence affects many targets, both now and in history: violence against women, violence against children, violence against LGBTQ+ populations, violence against racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Sometimes, that violence takes the form of direct physical assault within the domestic sphere; sometimes it takes the form of institutionalized imprisonment and dehumanization; sometimes it takes the form of the legal system; sometimes it takes the form of the medical establishment. These forms of violence are pervasive, and are often insidious, coursing through notionally liberal democracies like the United States. This series aims to help us think in new ways about patriarchal violence in contemporary culture. The Fall semester of the Patriarchal Violence series will explore the historical roots of these types of violence and their relation to European religion and patterns of colonization. The Spring semester will focus on current forms of Patriarchal Violence, and will think through the various mechanisms available for curbing it, ranging from activism to legal protections to consciousness raising.

Religion and Climate

IRCPL’s Religion and Climate series is animated by calls to reimagine human relationships with and responsibilities to the environment in an age of planetary crisis. As the impact of climate change is increasingly but unevenly felt, religion is emerging as a site of epistemological doubt, struggle, and possibility. This series will explore the cosmological underpinnings that shape diverse understandings of the environment and examine how religious subjects react to and act upon the ecological upheavals they face, challenging exclusively technocratic or secular responses to the climate crisis. 

Shifting paradigms of american religion

The Shifting Paradigms of American Religion series convenes public-facing conversations intended to rethink the history of religion and to imagine future possibilities for its place in American democracy, culture, and public life. Each event focuses on one of four paradigms–Human, Belief, Local, and Indigenous–with the aim of interrogating assumptions about religious identity and providing a productive conceptual meeting place for diverse audiences. Bringing together scholars, practitioners, and community members, Shifting Paradigms carves out space for reflection on the challenges that define our current moment. Programs in this series span a wide range of concerns—from identifying alternative ways of thinking about humanity in our questionably algorithmic age, to examining the pitfalls and possibilities in policymaking of understanding religion in terms of belief. This series is funded by the Henry R. Luce Foundation.

Grantee Spotlight

Check out this upcoming talk hosted by IRCPL summer research fellow Jessie Rubin (F'23), PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Columbia University

Burn/T Out: Conflict & Forced Displacement during the Northern Ireland 'troubles'

Featured speakers:

Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne (Conflict Resolution, Trinity College, Dublin)

Casey Asprooth-Jackson (Independent Filmmaker)

Jessie Rubin (PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology, Columbia Univ.)

Time and Place:  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2024, from 6PM-8PM

The Center for Ethnomusicology, 701C Dodge Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus, Broadway at 116th St. 

Link:   https://music.columbia.edu/events/burnt-out-conflict-forced-displacement-during-northern-ireland-troubles

PLEASE NOTE: Non-Columbia-affiliated guests will need to REGISTER for admission to campus.  Please send an email to jlr2230@columbia.edu stating your full name to be registered and to receive a QR code for campus admission on the day of the event.

DESCRIPTION:
As a result of the outbreak of the 'Troubles' across the North of Ireland, some 45 - 60,000 people were forced from their homes, becoming “burnt out”. This has been referred to as the largest movement of civilians in Europe since the outbreak of World War II. Those forced to leave their homes either crossed the border in Ireland and became refugees, or stayed in Northern Ireland as internally displaced persons. In 2024, the legacy of this displacement remains pronounced, with segregation and division a feature of the post-conflict landscape. Although violent displacement ultimately provided the backdrop to segregated Belfast and beyond, relatively little work has been done to examine the long-term effect on those who were burnt out. Since the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement, multiple efforts to deal with the legacy of the past have been proposed. Oral memory archives, grassroots storytelling projects and historical inquiries have all been attempted, with varying degrees of success. During this talk, Brendan Ciarán Browne and Casey Asprooth-Jackson reflect on their exhibition entitled Burn/t Out, and their attempts to spotlight the long-term impact of the mass-displacement of civilians caused by the eruption of violence in 1969. By sharing visual stills, and documentary film material from their work, Brendan & Casey invite you to receive stories of mass displacement in an exhausted present. This study of displacement seeks to provoke reflection on a critically under-examined experience, while ruminating on the fatigue it has produced. Held at once, these opposing tendencies suggest a synthesis: that the endeavor to recall and recover from the trauma of the past is also the struggle not to burnout. Jessie Rubin, ethnomusicology PhD candidate at Columbia will be the discussant.

Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne is tenured Professor of Conflict Resolution at Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on conflict and forced displacement in the context of the north of Ireland and Palestine. He is the author of several books including 'Refugees & Forced Displacement in the Northern Ireland Troubled: Untold Journeys' (with Niall Gilmartin), and 'Transitional (in)Justice & Enforcing the Peace on Palestine' (Nominated for the Middle East Monitor Palestine book award, 2023).  

Casey Asprooth-Jackson is an artist and filmmaker from Rochester, New York. His visual production centers on alternative modes of political expression, and his research has included case studies in Palestine, Norway and Ireland. He received a BA in Film Production from Bard College, and an MFA in Intermedia from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. 

Jessie Rubin is an ethnomusicology PhD candidate at Columbia University. She recently completed a year of multi-sited fieldwork for her dissertation research, which explores how, through music, Northern Ireland’s Catholic Nationalist Republicans (CNRs) have not only carried on a tradition of Palestine solidarity, but in doing so have launched a discussion of how Irish republicanism might be (re)fashioned on the global stage. Rubin's Masters’ thesis, “Places We Could Find Ourselves In”: Affective Networks of Queer MENA Party Life in NYC" examines New York-based reformulations of MENA (Middle East/North African) cultural practices within an electronic dance party network.

Joint projects

IRCPL will fund projects by Columbia University faculty that aim to understand the role of religion in the contemporary world and its historical roots. Joint Project funding may be applied to research projects, seminars, conferences, working groups, and other programs that bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars.

student fellowships

Every year, IRCPL awards a number of research fellowships to students traveling over the summer to complete their dissertation or other research projects:

Undergraduate Summer Fellowships

Graduate Summer Research Fellowships

Dissertation Fellowship

THE CLAREMONT PRIZE

The Claremont Prize in the Study of Religion is dedicated to the publication of first books by early career scholars working in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences. Prize-winners will be invited to IRCPL to participate in a workshop and the books will appear in IRCPL’s series, “Religion, Culture, and Public Life,” published by Columbia University Press.