With Nancy Ammerman, Courtney Bender, Philip Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, Pamela Klassen, Ruth Marshall and more

What are the consequences of the increasing salience of “spirituality” in American civic and political life? Do actors and groups publicly identified as spiritual challenge commonly held understandings of social and political involvement? This conference explores the institutions and traditions that construct spiritual activities and identities, and it considers their relations to systems and patterns of political participation and public engagement in the contemporary United States.

With Robert O’Meally, Kwame Brathwaite, Erica Agyeman, Marcellus Blount, Courtney Bryan, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III and Josef Sorett

Since its inception, jazz music has inspired artists to represent the arrangements of its rhythms and nuances of its tone through photography, painting, collage, and other media. Join curator, scholar, and author Professor Robert O’Meally, photographer Kwame Brathwaite, and curator Erica Agyeman for a brief discussion addressing the visual representations of jazz.

With Hannah Appel, Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Ndiouga Benga, Emily Brownell, Andy Clarno, Catherine Cole, Claire Laurier Decoteau, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and more

The African metropolis represents one of the most challenging and important spaces of our time. Insight on African cities has driven some of the most innovative and provocative recent scholarly debates considering development, the nature of citizenship, and the postcolonial urban condition. In contrast with a familiar, sometimes apocalyptic reading of "failed" African cities which characterizes them as dysfunctional, chaotic and decaying, there is a burgeoning scholarship which explores the way that African cities actually work and the very orderly, dynamic, and creative processes which animate them. This is part of a larger literature emphasizing the need to incorporate African political systems into more cosmopolitan urban and development theories. In line with this larger enterprise, this conference highlights research at the cutting edge of African studies seeking to re-conceptualize the nature and contours of citizenship in African cities. It advances budding scholarship re-framing urban citizenship through showcasing emergent and historic practices through which urban Africans enact and reconfigure their cities, while asking some hard questions about the implications of these strategies and their limits.

With David Abram, Irene Diamond, Andrew Revkin, David Rothenberg, and Rhonda Roland Shearer

A symposium offering alternative approaches to environmentalism’s overly econometric, scientific and anti-metaphysical worldview.  Ecology must tend to location, ethics and cosmology as mutually imbricating, question the contestatory perspective of scarcity-based models and reconnect mind, spirit and body; human, non-human and technological worlds; ethics, politics, science, and religion.

With Murat Somer and Karen Barkey

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

With Lewis Black and Mark C. Taylor

A conversation with comedian Lewis Black, a regular commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is a two-time Grammy Award-winner for the comedy albums The Carnegie Hall Performance (2006) and Stark Raving Black (2010) and is author of several books, including Nothing’s Sacred (2005) and I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas (2010).

With Jack Snyder, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Michael Doyle and Courtney Bender 

Religious concerns stand at the center of international politics, yet key paradigms in international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—barely consider religion in their analysis of political subjects. The essays in this volume rectify this; they introduce models that integrate religion into the study of international politics and connect religion to a rising form of populist politics in the developing world.

With Eboo Patel

A Conversation with Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit that aims to promote interfaith cooperation. He is a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships and author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim.

With Tabinda Khan

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A workshop on Legal Pluralism, Multicultural Jurisdiction and Gender

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the various meanings of legal pluralism and its impact on human rights and on gender hierarchies. Is legal pluralism an obstacle to human rights, particularly of women? Is status based legal pluralism defensible if the groups exercising the coercive power of the state involve patriarchal norms and/or non-democratic hierarchical authority structures? Should one differentiate between ethnic and religiously based legal pluralism when the rights of women are at stake?

With Lynda Benglis and Jan Avgikos

A conversation with American sculptor Lynda Benglis, who has been at the forefront of contemporary art, raising ongoing challenges to the rigors of Modernism and Minimalism. A retrospective of Benglis’ work is currently on exhibit at the New Museum in New York City.

With Amy Hollywood

The Department of Religion Graduate Students’ Conference, which explores topics of comparative ethics, epistemic humility, and humiliations from social, political and anthropological views, will be held all day on April 1st. The keynote address will be delivered by Amy Hollywood, Professor at Harvard Divinity School, on “Humility and the Power of Prayer in Christian Monasticism.”

With Obery Hendricks and Cokie and Steve Roberts

A Conversation with Cokie and Steve Roberts,  journalists and co-authors of Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families. Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and was co-anchor of interview program This Week (1996-2002). Steven V. Roberts was bureau chief for The New York Times and writer for U.S. News and World Report. The Roberts currently write a weekly syndicated column and previously authored the book From This Day Forward. 

With Karen Barkey, Levent Köker, Murat Tezcür, Kendall Thomas and Uday Mehta

Turkey, India, and to some extent, the United States offer excellent material for analyzing democracy, secularism and constitution-making. Conference panels will use TESEV DP research to evaluate current debates in Turkey on constitutionalism, constitution-making, transitional justice and reparations, and religion-state relations and to reflect on how these issues have been engaged in the United States and India and what each case can offer to scholarship and policymaking.

With Sami Pihlstrom

A talk by Sami Pihlstrom, Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki and Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. After having received his PhD in philosophy in 1996 from the University of Helsinki, he has authored more than ten books (seven in English) and dozens of articles on pragmatism, the problem of realism, transcendental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and related topics. He is one of the founders of the Nordic Pragmatism Network and one of the Editors of Sats: North European Journal of Philosophy, as well as Book Review Editor of Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

With Pradeep Chhibber

A conversation with Pradeep Chhibber, Professor of Political Science; Indo-American Endowed Chair, and Bedford Chair; Director, Institute of International Studies.

With Dilek Cindoglu

A talk by Dilek Cindoglu, Visiting Senior Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWaG). What are the real world impacts of Turkey’s headscarf ban? Despite the contrary expectations from the headscarf ban towards women’s emancipation and liberation in the public, the headscarf ban it is actually limiting women’s labor force participation in contemporary Turkey.

With Dahlia Lithwick and Suzanne Goldberg

A conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate and writer of the “Supreme Court Dispatches” and “Jurisprudence” columns. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, and Commentary, among other places. Moderated by Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia Law Professor and Director of Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

With Rozeta Shembilku.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

With Laurie Anderson and Irving Sandler

A conversation with Laurie Anderson, an American experimental performance artist and musician. Moderated by Irving Sandler, an art critic and historian and founder of Artist’s Space.“Refiguring the Spiritual” is a yearlong series of conversations with leading contemporary artists on the implications and influence of the changing spiritual landscape for the visual arts.

With Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington

Screening of Restrepo, an Academy Award nominated documentary about a platoon of U.S. soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Based on reporting for Vanity Fair and winner of the Grand Jury Prize for the best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

With Courtney Bender, J. Terry Todd, Janet Jakobsen, Winnifred F. Sullivan, Rosemary Hicks and Craig Calhoun

A panel discussion and book launch with contributors to After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement, the first volume in the book series by Columbia University Press and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

With Charles Taylor

A lecture by Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize and the 2008 Kyoto Prize. He is also author of A Secular Age (2007).

With Eliza Griswold and Randall Balmer

A conversation with Eliza Griswold, an award-winning journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation. Her recent book is The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (2010). Moderated by Randall Balmer, Professor of Religion at Barnard College.

With Abigail Disney

A screening and conversation with the producer of Pray the Devil Back to Hell, an award-winning documentary about a group of Liberian Christian and Muslim women who unite to force an end to the civil war in their country. Their campaign succeeds by demonstrations, sit-ins, and the withholding of sex.

With Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

With Terry Eagleton

A talk by Terry Eagleton, influential literary theorist and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster. He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), and, most recently, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (2009).

With Christophe Jaffrelot, Alfred Stepan and Philip Oldenberg

A conference with Christophe Jaffrelot, Alliance Visiting Professor (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris) and author Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (2008), A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (2004), and The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (1998), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University), Philip Oldenberg (Columbia University), and many others.

With Parvez Sharma

A screening and conversation with the director of A Jihad for Love a documentary film exploring the diverse lives of gay and lesbian Muslims in countries ranging from India and Iran to France. The film’s subjects struggle to reconcile their homosexuality with their faith, even as the majority of Muslims believe the Qur’an forbids it.