With a Mormon candidate for the presidency and the unprecedented media attention given to Mormons recently, this conference  will take a broad view of the history of Mormon participation in American political life, from Joseph Smith’s 1844 run for the presidency to the Reed Smoot trials of the early 20th century and to the rise of Ezra Taft Benson during the Eisenhower administration, which ushered in a new era of Mormon identification with the Republican Party.

Speakers include Randall Balmer, Richard Bushman, Claudia Bushman, Joanna Brooks, Matthew Bowman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Jan Shipps, Trevor Hill, Meredith LeSueur, David Campbell, Russel Arben Fox, Max Perry Mueller, Philip Barlow, and Peggy Fletcher Stack. The Religious Test, a documentary about American voters’ perceptions of Mormons, will also be screened.

Moderated and organized by Randall Balmer and Jana Riess. Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

No registration required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Members of press may contact chriscdtr@gmail.com.

Conference schedule and participant bios and paper abstracts follow:

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A Talk by Yuri Stoyanov, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
This lecture intends to explore movements in Western and Central Eurasia  like Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism, and Ismailism (which as early as the tenth century expanded in Central and later in South Asia and often condemned by its Sunni opponents as a ‘Manichaean’ sect). Why did normative Christian and Islamic elites view them as heretical? How did they defy this label to achieve the character of religious internationals?

Co-sponsored by IRCPL, CDTR, the Unit for Culture, Religion and Communication at the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia and the Harriman Institute.

A conversation with Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad as well as Look at Me and The Keep. Moderated by Willing Davidson, fiction editor of The New Yorker.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion, including Mark Z. Danielewski on April 24. 

A talk by Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies and director of The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, at Princeton University.

Saudi Arabia’s leaders have claimed that their regime is immune to the revolutionary changes associated with the Arab Spring uprisings. The Saudis have been quite actively engaged with these events and in complicated ways, domestically as well as regionally. They have encouraged some of the uprisings and attempted to clamp down on others.  This talk will explore Saudi Arabia’s policies in response to the Arab Spring, which include enforcing religious sanctions against public demonstrations within the Kingdom, increasing various domestic subsidies in an effort to co-opt potential dissent, stabilizing the monarchy in Bahrain and stewarding a new government into power in Yemen.

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

4:00 – 6:00 pm: A discussion with Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Etienne Smith, Alfred Stepan, and Alioune Badara Diop, a political scientist at Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal. Moderated by Mamadou Diouf.

6:15 – 7:30 pm: A screening of film Democracy in Dakar, which looks at the involvement of the youth and rap singers in the elections in 2007.

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

A private seminar discussion with Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at IRCPL. Participation is by invitation. If interested in attending, please email Chelsea Ebin at cre2106@columbia.edu.

A public talk, Mobilities and Immobilities: Reflections of Fieldwork in Palestine, will follow on Tuesday, February 14, at 5pm.

Glenn Bowman’s talks are part of the Religion and Mobility Faculty Seminar, organized by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History, and Valentina Izmirlieva, Professor of Slavic Languages, and sponsored by the IRCPL.

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

A lecture by Alioune Badara Diop, a political scientist at Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal. Moderated by Ousmane Kane, associate professor of international and public affairs at SIPA at Columbia University.

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

A public talk by Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at IRCPL.

His talk is part of the Religion and Mobility Faculty Seminar, organized by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History, and Valentina Izmirlieva, Professor of Slavic Languages, and sponsored by the IRCPL.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Middle East Institute.

A conversation with Charles Best, Founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that provides a way for people to donate directly to public schools. Through peer-to-peer philanthropy, the nonprofit has raised more than $86 million for 200,000 projects at public schools across the country. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including guns on February 29; waste on March 28; debt on April 3; and health care on April 12. 

Directions to the Heyman Center. Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive.

A conversation with John Feinblatt, the chief policy adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and the lead architect of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; waste on March 28; debt on April 3; and health care on April 12.

A talk by David Buckley, a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University. Moderated by Alfred Stepan,  the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia; and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professor of French and Romance Philology and of Philosophy at Columbia.

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

A roundtable discussion on Mali’s 2012 elections with Susanna Wing (Haverford College), Jaimie Bleck (University of Notre Dame), and Brandon County (Columbia University). Moderated by Manthia Diawara (New York University).

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

A conversation with Allison Macfarlane, professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University. Her research focuses on environmental policy and international security involving nuclear energy, and she is the editor of Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste. Moderated by Klaus Lackner, Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; guns on February 29; debt on April 3; and health care on April 12.

A conversation with Michael E. Lewitt, founder and president of the investment advisory firm Harch Capital Management, discusses the relationship between choice and debt. He is the author of The Death of Capital: How Creative Policy Can Restore Stability, and his widely read newsletter, The Credit Strategist, covers economics, politics and the financial markets. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; guns on February 29; waste on March 28; and health care on April 12.

Directions to the Heyman Center. Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive.

A graduate student conference on how religious traditions have been instrumental in both reflecting and constructing humans’ notions of animals and have integrated such notions into comprehensive mythical, symbolic, and ritual frameworks of meaning and action. In recent decades, however, many earlier forms of such relationships have been radically transformed in the face of rapid development.  This conference engages both the shifting complexity of the modern world and a growing body of scholarship in religious studies.

Keynote speakers include Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School; and Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School.

Sponsored by the Religion Graduate Students’ Association of Columbia University.

A conversation with author of Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves and Only Revolutions. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion.

What is the proper place and role of religion in a constitutional democracy or international human rights regime? Does the presence of religious symbols and rituals in public and official spaces foster exclusion or inclusion of those who differ?  Do demands for jurisdiction by religious authorities over personal law (marriage, divorce, sexual morals, rituals, etc.) expand or undermine the political equality and human rights of citizens?

This workshop steps back to examine the European and transatlantic past and present with interdisciplinary and geographically diverse scholars and students to take up the issues from the perspective of constitutional, political, and legal theory.

Organized by Jean Cohen, Yasmine Ergas, and Samuel Moyn. Participants include John Bowen, Christian Joppke, Tariq Modood, Maleiha Malik, Cecile Laborde, Rajeev Bhargava, Denis Lacorne, Riva Kastoryano, Genevieve Fraisse, Patrick Weil.