A book talk with Josef Sorett (Columbia, Religion), Barbara Savage (UPenn), Brad Braxton (St. Luke’s School), and Nyasha Junior (Temple)

This book brings together an interdisciplinary roster of scholars and practitioners to analyze the politics of sexuality within Black churches and the communities they serve. In essays and conversations, leading writers reflect on how Black churches have participated in recent discussions about issues such as marriage equality, reproductive justice, and transgender visibility in American society. They consider the varied ways that Black people and groups negotiate the intersections of religion, race, gender, and sexuality across historical and contemporary settings.

Individually and collectively, the pieces included in this book shed light on the relationship between the cultural politics of Black churches and the broader cultural and political terrain of the United States. Contributors examine how churches and their members participate in the formal processes of electoral politics as well as how they engage in other processes of social and cultural change. They highlight how contemporary debates around marriage, gender, and sexuality are deeply informed by religious beliefs and practices.

Through a critically engaged interdisciplinary investigation, The Sexual Politics of Black Churches develops an array of new perspectives on religion, race, and sexuality in American culture.

A lecture by Catherine Wanner (Penn State). Moderated by Valentina Izmirlieva (Columbia).

Religion is pivotal to how the relationship between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples is understood. This talk offers a comparison of religious affiliation prior to the war and the spate of complications that have been introduced since the invasion.

A panel with Lisa Ross, Magnus Fiskesjo, and Ajinur Setiwaldi. Moderated by Andrew J. Nathan.

What’s happening in and beyond the camps in Xinjiang make occasional headlines here in the United States. But what should an extended discussion focus on? Newspaper accounts often frame the atrocities in relation to “Muslim minorities,” or the question as one of “freedom of religion.” Is this apt? If not—or if not wholly—how and why? To what extent do matters of race or culture also play a role? And how can we understand what’s happening today in historical perspective?

This event is co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

A panel with Randall Balmer, Ben Carrington, and Samantha Sheppard. Moderated by Frank Guridy.

What work do gestures do in public culture? How does the body signal convictions and commitment? Such questions have been especially important in recent years when it comes to the intersections of racial justice, social protest, and sports. By “taking a knee,” the boundaries between religious, political, and social forms of action are purposefully blurred. In this event, IRCPL brings together leading experts on sports, race, and religion to discuss the intersections of protest and piety in contemporary and historical perspective.

A lecture by Darryl Li (University of Chicago), moderated by Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia, Anthropology).

Two decades into the Global War on Terror -- as well as of standard liberal and left critiques -- the animating specter of "jihadism" remains as obfuscatory and violent as ever. This lecture attempts to clarify the stakes and the harms of this invidious category. Believers call many things jihad -- from personal struggles for self-improvement to armed violence -- and debate over proper uses of the word. The concept of jihadism, however, designates only a subset of these many diverse activities. Yet the very act of delineating which invocations of jihad count as jihadism and which do not is an intervention into a debate among believers using criteria from outside the tradition. Jihadism inevitably gives rise to the implicit residual category, of "non-jihadist" jihads. What can we learn from this (non-)category and what are its stakes for thinking about radical politics more generally?

A book launch with with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Sarah Dees, Osman Balkan, and Candace Lukasik. Moderated by Courtney Bender.

At Home and Abroad bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse and distinguished authors from religious studies, law, American studies, sociology, history, and political science to explore interrelations across conceptual and political boundaries. They bring into sharp focus the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies. Contributors break down the categories of domestic and foreign and inquire into how these taxonomies are related to other axes of discrimination, asking questions such as: What and who counts as “home” or “abroad,” how and by whom are these determinations made, and with what consequences?

A panel with Susannah Crockford (Ghent University) and Will Sommer (The Daily Beast). Moderated by Elizabeth Castelli (Barnard, Religion).

“Apocalypse Pending: Religion, Politics, and Social Media” explores the growing popularity of conspiracy thinking in our current moment and its place in the history of religious movements, particularly in the US context. It considers how new media technologies have made it possible for the dissemination of such thinking on a scale unimaginable in the past, how the moral panic it generates is impacting social and political life worldwide, and whether there are measures available to control its spread or mitigate its effects.

This third panel in the series will focus on the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, including the prominent appeal to ‘new age’ symbolism by such figures as the ‘Q Shaman.

A panel with Julie Byrne (Hofstra University), Jonathan Calvillo (Boston University), and Mary Anne Case (University of Chicago). Moderated by Katherine Franke (Columbia Law).

The recent appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court generated a good deal of media coverage on her Catholic faith, especially her associations with the Catholic charismatic renewal. Barrett, though, is only one of six justices on the court who identify as Catholic, and as long ago as 2008 the political scientist Barbara Perry referred to the Supreme Court as “the Catholic Court.” Yet what might this mean, and how—if at all—can we trace the influences of Catholicism on judicial reasoning? The aim of this panel is to bring together scholars working across a range of fields—including law, history, critical race theory, and gender studies—to reflect on this question in relation to the Court’s recent past, present, and future.

A panel with Sarah Posner (author and journalist) and Kathleen Stewart (UT, Austin). Moderated by Courtney Bender (Columbia, Religion).

As the historian Richard Hofstadter famously pointed out more than half a century ago, conspiracy thinking or “the paranoid style” runs deep in the American political psyche. With an eclectic religious population (many of whose ancestors fled persecution in Europe for their beliefs: Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists, Huguenots, Catholics, Jews), the United States may be exceptional in its political DNA—a combination of religious fervor and persecutory fear that, while generally latent, sporadically erupts in the body politic. The right-wing fear of social welfare policies as godless and unholy is one current manifestation of this particular political psychology. Another is the increasing online presence of apocalyptic religious sects, of which QAnon is an articulation.

“Apocalypse Pending: Religion, Politics, and Social Media” explores the growing popularity of conspiracy thinking in our current moment and its place in the history of millenarian movements, particularly in the US context. It considers how new media technologies have made it possible for the dissemination of such thinking on a scale unimaginable in the past, how the moral panic it generates is impacting social and political life worldwide, and whether there are measures available to control its spread or mitigate its effects.

A conversation with Mohamad Amer Meziane and Etienne Balibar. Moderated by Nadia Abu El-Haj.

2020 has already been marked by two major, historical events: COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. This dialogue is an attempt to determine how political philosophy might help us think about them. In particular, it will probe how the unfolding crisis might force us to rethink our concepts of violence and the political. The pandemic is now inseparable from the question of the state and of the forms of violence it deploys. Does this signal a ‘return’ of the state to the center of politics, or simply its unmasking? How are we to think about violence both before and after the pandemic? How do empire and colonialism still structure the present? To what extent is Islamophobia part of systemic racism and practices of surveillance? How does Islamophobia overlap with anti-Blackness both in Europe and the United States? How do 9/11 and the War on Terror still determine the reactions of nation-states to the pandemic and are these reactions reducible to a generalized state of exception? And, finally, is 2020 the beginning of a new historical time?

A panel with Joan Donovan (Harvard) and Brandy Zadrozny (NBC News). Moderated by Matthew L. Jones (Columbia, History).

As the historian Richard Hofstadter famously pointed out more than half a century ago, conspiracy thinking or “the paranoid style” runs deep in the American political psyche. With an eclectic religious population (many of whose ancestors fled persecution in Europe for their beliefs: Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists, Huguenots, Catholics, Jews), the United States may be exceptional in its political DNA—a combination of religious fervor and persecutory fear that, while generally latent, sporadically erupts in the body politic. The right-wing fear of social welfare policies as godless and unholy is one current manifestation of this particular political psychology. Another is the increasing online presence of apocalyptic religious sects, of which QAnon is an articulation.

A conversation with Joshua Dubler, Vincent Lloyd, Rev. Lynice Pinkard, and Kempis “Ghani” Songster. Moderated by Kendall Thomas.

Changes in the American religious landscape enabled the rise of mass incarceration. Religious ideas and practices also offer a key for ending mass incarceration. Activists-scholars Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd advance these bold claims in their new book Break Every Yoke, which weaves religion into the stories about race, politics, and economics that conventionally account for America's grotesque prison expansion of the last half century. By foregrounding the role of religion in the way political elites, religious institutions, and incarcerated activists talk about incarceration, Break Every Yoke is an effort to stretch the American moral imagination and contribute resources toward envisioning alternative ways of doing justice.

Dubler and Lloyd will join us to discuss their work in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing protests. They will be in conversation with pastor, writer, and activist Lynice Pinkard, and Kempis “Ghani” Songster, a former juvenile lifer and founder of the advocacy group The Redemption Project.

With Nasrin Rahimieh, University of California, Irvine.

My experience of directing an Iranian studies center in southern California provided me with unique opportunities to work with members of the Iranian American community, cultural associations, and donors. The linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversities of the local Iranian community bode well for exploring the different facets of Iranian culture in a university setting. But the promise and potential were at times weighed down by an impulse to contain and/or disavow Islam as a constitutive part of Iranian cultural legacy and by other effects of diaspora. In my presentation I will explore the ramifications of tensions that at times risked derailing the mission of an academic center devoted to the study of Iran. Understanding the anxieties manifested at the intersection of the academy and the community could pave the way for more robust engagements with ideas of Iran in the US academy today.

A panel with Gerardo Marti (Davidson College), Wes Markofski (Carleton College), and Janelle Wong (University of Maryland).

Over the past several decades, the popular image of an evangelical Christian has become ever more rigid. From preaching personal salvation over hellfire and damnation, to pushing for conservative “family values,” to, most recently, lobbying for a certain vision of the US Supreme Court, the media has helped construct a very particular figure. But just how accurate is this understanding? What lies beneath the rhetoric of the mega-church congregation and a presidential “base?” In this panel discussion, leading experts in the social sciences present their research on “other evangelicals,” detailing the ways in which different configurations of theology, social engagement, race, sexuality, and other factors shape the evangelical fabric, and, by extension, the contested landscape of faith-based politics in America.

With Zackary Berger, Alyssa Masor, Blima Marcus, and Michael Yudell. Moderated by Ayala Fader.

Over the past year, New York State has experienced the worst outbreak of measles since the 1980s, with the majority of cases appearing in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. The community centered aspect of the measles outbreak has been a focal point of the media coverage, yet much of this coverage glosses over how we should understand such a “religious” identification. In this panel event, we aim to get beyond the headlines to consider a range of questions. To what extent—and in what ways—is this an “ultra-Orthodox” issue? How are the affected communities responding or mobilizing at the local level? What does vaccine hesitancy, and, more broadly, anti-vaxx activism signal? Is it a rightful exercise of freedom of religion? Or suspicion of the state? Both, more, or something else altogether? And, finally, how does this outbreak speak to the longer history of the relationship between minority communities and the institutional infrastructure of public health?

With Lizbeth Mateo, Winnie Varghese, Amy Gottlieb, and Rose Cuison Villazor. Moderated by Katherine Franke.
In an era in which the idea of “religious liberty” has largely been co-opted by the Christian Right to signify protections for conservative beliefs about sex, marriage, and reproduction, what does “religious liberty” mean for undocumented people and immigration activists of faith? (How) should the law accommodate the religious belief that families and communities should not be torn apart by deportation, or that individuals have a right to migrate? Moreover, what effect will arguing for these rights in religious terms have on LGBTQ+ immigrants or immigrants who need reproductive health care?

This panel examines the various linkages between South Asia and the nonhuman. The nonhuman–whether animal, vegetal, telluric/elemental/mineral/topographical, extra-terrestrial, monstrous, or spectral—has called into question colonial and postcolonial imaginative circuits, political formations, and bodily registers, creating new forms of ethical engagement and analysis. These papers continue this important inquiry and, through a range of methods, explore how the non-human, in its questioning and surpassing of given forms, helps us to grasp as well as unravel the coordinates that structure(d) empire and its afterlives.

With Gil Anidjar, Alon Confino, Amos Goldberg, Raef Zreik, Gil Hochberg.
In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.