With Courtney Bryan, Kevin Fellezs, Kendall Thomas and Josef Sorett

Music and song have been inextricably been part of the American civil rights movement.  Join us for a night of performances and a discussion on how jazz and gospel urged civil rights and social justice activists forward and interpreted the messages of the movement through music.

With Professor Jack Hawley, Pandit Sanjeev Abhyankar and Yogi Trivedi

The sixteenth century poet Surdas is unarguably one of the best known bhakti poets in India. His poetry has been performed through several genres of music, art, and theater. His influence on later Hindi poets and later bhakti theologians illustrates his significance within the bhakti world. Musically speaking, however, Surdas has traveled beyond the bhakti world and has gained a prominent place within the performance setting of Hindustani or North Indian Classical Music. Pandit Sanjeev Abhyankar will perform several pads from Sur’s Ocean and from Sur’s oral tradition in different classical and devotional repertoires. The performance will be followed by a short discussion on Sur’s Ocean and more generally, on the performance of bhakti through song and translation.

With Bishop Raúl Vera and Priest Alejandro Solalinde

Columbia University’s Center for Mexican Studies presents the Leaders of Mexico Forum. Two distinguished human rights and social justice activists in Mexico, Bishop Raúl Vera, 2012 Nobel Prize Nominee, and Priest Alejandro Solalinde, an eminent migrants' defender, will deliver this special dual-lecture: "The Humanitarian Emergency from South to North: Migration and Social Justice." They will dwell on their fight to address the humanitarian crisis resulting from the migration from South to North, as well as issues of social justice amidst the violent Mexican borders.

With Parimal Patil

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers

With Marthe Hesselmans

Once a pillar of South Africa’s apartheid system, the Dutch Reformed Church has in recent years become the scene of a remarkable transformation process. It now claims to promote diversity rather than ethnic exclusivism, and encourages communities to bridge their divides and merge into one interracial and multiethnic church. Marthe Hesselmans, PhD Candidate at Boston University and Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, explores the depth of this transformation against the backdrop of post-apartheid South Africa. How do church communities seek to adapt to the new “rainbow” society, and to what extent are they able to untangle their entrenched religious-ethnic and racial affiliations?

With Omri Elisha

The Religion and Politics in American Public Life lecture series, co-coordinated for 2014-15 by Professors Courtney Bender, Jean Cohen, Josef Sorett, and John Torpey, is a series of public conversations that explore the often contentious role of religion in American political and public life.  Each session features a speaker presenting on a timely, topical intersection of religion with American politics and society, such as civil religion, public discourses of morality, and reproductive and sexual rights.

With Jerusha Lamptey

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Stephen Stapleton, Husam Al-Sayed, Ava Ansari and Professor Moneera Al-Ghadeer

Stephen Stapleton (Artist, Co-Founder and Director), Husam Al-Sayed (Filmmaker & Founder of Telfaz11) and Ava Ansari (Artist and Edge of Arabia Associate Curator and US Tour Manager) will join Professor Moneera Al-Ghadeer (Visiting Professor, Columbia Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies) in conversation to discuss the mission and conceptual framework of Edge of Arabia's three- year tour across the United States. In 2013, Edge of Arabia initiated an ongoing tour across the United States in partnership with Art Jameel, with the intention to investigate, communicate and archive alternative stories and histories connecting the Middle East and the United States, and to cultivate direct encounters on a grassroots level across the physical and psychological borders in between and across these regions.

With Charles Hallisey

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Shaul Magid

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Colm Tóibín and Roy Foster

Immediately following "Adapting to Modernity or Taming It?," at 6:15pm, the Writing Lives Series from the Heyman Center for the Humanities brings you Colm Tóibín and Roy Foster in Conversation, in the Sulzburger Parlor, Barnard Hall.  More information is available at heymancenter.org

With Marta Ferrer, Eliana Kanefield, Zead Ramadan, Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, Sarah Sayeed and Seth Kimmel

Please mark your calendars for the first event in our new LAIC Public initiative, which seeks to put students and faculty from our department into conversation with people from outside of the university in order to address issues of broad public concern.

The first event will be a roundtable on “Islam and the Global City” in the lobby of the Casa Hispánica at 6pm on Wednesday April 8th. The event is free and open to the public.

With Hossein Kamaly

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Prema Kurien

Indian Americans are becoming politically active. What is particularly striking about this group is that they have mobilized around a variety of identities to influence U.S. policy. Some identify as Indian Americans, others as South Asians, and yet others on the basis of religious identity as Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. A growing group identifies in terms of their party affiliation as Democrats and Republicans. There is also an adult, second-generation population that is getting involved in civic and political activism in very different ways than from their parents' generation.

With Charles K. Armstrong, Sagi Schaefer and George Gavrilis

This panel brings together experts on historical and current border and conflict zones in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The aim is to bring processes of bordering, the areas in which borders come to be, and the agencies, practices, and populations involved in such developments to the center of discussion. Paying attention to the processes of bordering and division in their local contexts, rather than as by-products of global conflicts determined by major powers, uncovers the huge difference between setting borders on maps or in treaties and actually being able to police and enforce borders on a daily basis. In studying historical and current conflicts and assessing their consequences, it is therefore at least as important to consider the levels at which such borders can be maintained in practice as it is to determine where exactly the lines were drawn.

With Elizabeth Alexander, Eddie Glaude, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Obery Hendricks and Josef Sorett

As a series, Ancestral Witnesses will explore the intersections of religion and African American literature produced during the social upheavals of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and their aftermath. The panels will feature discussions that examine how black writers engaged religion in their efforts to imagine black liberation and human freedom, as well as how black religions have shaped African American literary visions. We define “religion” broadly to include not only Islam and Christianity, but also African-derived practices (i.e. voodoo or hoodoo) and “new” belief systems (i.e. Rastafarianism and the International Peace Movement Mission).

With Daniel Boyarin

In this series of lectures, Daniel Boyarin proposes that scholarship ought to resist using the term "Judaism" with reference to the pre-modern period. As has been argued by several scholars already, there is no "native" term with this meaning in antiquity or the Middle Ages. There is, moreover, no evidence that Jews divided off one category of their experience and practice and named it their religion. It is, therefore, a falsification of the evidence to pick out an entity and name it "Judaism." A theoretical argument against using modern categories to analyze ancient realities will be advanced as well.

With Daniel Boyarin

In this series of lectures, Daniel Boyarin proposes that scholarship ought to resist using the term "Judaism" with reference to the pre-modern period. As has been argued by several scholars already, there is no "native" term with this meaning in antiquity or the Middle Ages. There is, moreover, no evidence that Jews divided off one category of their experience and practice and named it their religion. It is, therefore, a falsification of the evidence to pick out an entity and name it "Judaism." A theoretical argument against using modern categories to analyze ancient realities will be advanced as well.

With Hamid Dabashi

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Daniel Boyarin

In this series of lectures, Daniel Boyarin proposes that scholarship ought to resist using the term "Judaism" with reference to the pre-modern period. As has been argued by several scholars already, there is no "native" term with this meaning in antiquity or the Middle Ages. There is, moreover, no evidence that Jews divided off one category of their experience and practice and named it their religion. It is, therefore, a falsification of the evidence to pick out an entity and name it "Judaism." A theoretical argument against using modern categories to analyze ancient realities will be advanced as well.

With Lawrence McCrea

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Daniel Boyarin

In this series of lectures, Daniel Boyarin proposes that scholarship ought to resist using the term "Judaism" with reference to the pre-modern period. As has been argued by several scholars already, there is no "native" term with this meaning in antiquity or the Middle Ages. There is, moreover, no evidence that Jews divided off one category of their experience and practice and named it their religion. It is, therefore, a falsification of the evidence to pick out an entity and name it "Judaism." A theoretical argument against using modern categories to analyze ancient realities will be advanced as well.

With Souleymane Bachir Diagne

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Emad Shahin

Emad Sahin, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the IRCPL will be speaking about “Egypt between untenable authoritarianism and thwarted democratisation”.

With Arindam Chakrabarti

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.

With Alexander Weheliye, Michael Veal, Beth Coleman and George E. Lewis

Following the idea of a black radical tradition, African and African diasporic futurism refers to practices of technological agency to reimagine the past and enact alternative possible futures in the material world. This convening considers the sonic and spiritual dimensions of futurism throughout modern black culture, reflecting on the challenges and opportunities presented by sound technologies that enable the creation of an alternative tomorrow, real or mythic. Presenters will consider the intersection of sound technology, spirituality, and Africana studies in a wide-ranging discussion tracing relations between colonial legacies, technologies of liberation, and social movements in the modern world.

With Wael Hallaq

What does it mean for something to be ‘the word of God?’ What are the origins, forms, and functions of this concept? This seminar series will investigate what it means within the traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, with a variety of scholars and thinkers.