Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Edited by Courtney Bender and Pamela E. Klassen

The first book in IRCPL’s publication series with Columbia University Press After Pluralism offers a critique on how religious difference is often framed as a problem only pluralism can solve. Its essays treat pluralism as concept historically and ideologically produced and explore it as a term that sets the norms of identity and the parameters of exchange, encounter and conflict. Contributors locate pluralism’s ideals in diverse sites—Broadway plays, Polish Holocaust memorials, Egyptian dream interpretations, German jails, and legal theories—and demonstrate its shaping of political and social interaction in surprising and powerful ways. To be published on October 15, 2010.

IRCPL is currently soliciting proposals for faculty seminars to be held in Fall 2010 or Spring 2011. These semester-long seminars bring together Columbia faculty and colleagues of peer institutions for investigations of interdisciplinary topics. Past seminars were on such topics as Networks, Toleration, Blood and Ghosts (to view past seminars and their participants, please visit: http://ircpl.org/seminars).

If you would like to organize a faculty seminar in the Fall 2010 or Spring 2011, please submit a proposal with a 1-2 page description of subject and a list of likely participants. It should also indicate anticipated results of the seminar, such as particular courses, a collection of essays, public lectures or symposia. Each seminar may have up to two organizers, who will each receive a stipend of $2000. Each seminar will also be provided with $2000 for expenses such as books, catering and materials.

Proposals due to Emily Brennan at eb422@columbia.edu

Iran: After the Election
Leading Iranian scholars and analysts discuss the impact of the recent elections, Iran’s relationship with the international community and the theocratic foundations of the Islamic Republic. The conference was sponsored by SIPA and the Middle East Institute. [December 5, 2009]

Access video and audio of the event via links at the conference site.

The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life is currently accepting fellowship applications from graduate and undergraduate students at Columbia University to conduct research related to their dissertations and senior theses. The fellowship will provide each student $4000 to cover expenses directly related to research, including, travel, lodging and materials. For application details and deadlines, click here.

Organized by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of Religion and Co-Director of IRCPL, the seminar will explore the relationship of networks to social, political and cultural ideas and practices.  Consideration will be given to the role of networks in industrial, consumer and finance capitalism through an investigation of railroads, typewriters, telephones, television, Internet, the World Wide Web and cell phones. Schedule for bi-weekly meetings will be determined in January 2010. If you are interested in participating in the seminar, please e-mail eb422@columbia.edu.

JACK MILES: The Future of Religious Language

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Intrigued with Islam: Jewish Scholars, Travelers, and Converts in Modern Europe

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Jesus as Aryan Hero: The Peculiar Conversion of Christianity into National Socialism

JON MEACHAM: Covering Conflict

CHARLES TAYLOR: Can Human Action Be Explained?

SECULARISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life announces a joint program between Columbia University and Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. The Institute and the University will plan workshops and cooperation to add to our already existing research on Turkey. The Institute plans joint conferences with members of various departments at Boğaziçi University, among them Political Science and International Relations, Sociology, History and the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History.

Faculty Seminars bring together Columbia faculty and colleagues from different departments and disciplines for semester-long investigations of interdisciplinary topics. For directions on how to submit a seminar proposal for Fall 2009 or Spring 2010, click here.

Listen to IRCPL co-director Mark C. Taylor read his op-ed on higher education from The New York Times (April 26, 2009). Read it here.

download

PAUL AUSTER: Literature and Terror

A conversation with PAUL AUSTER, acclaimed novelist, essayist and translator. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

CHARLES TAYLOR: The Politics of Recognition

A lecture by Charles Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and Templeton Prize-winning author of A Secular Age (2007).