A conversation with Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and most recently Super Sad True Love Story. Moderated by McKenzie Wark, professor of media and cultural studies at The New School and author of Gamer Theory. Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology...

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...

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,...

A talk by Nathan Schneider, who writes about reason, religion, and politics for publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Times, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches. He is editor of the online literary magazine Killing the Buddha and the website Waging Nonviolence. His book about the search for proof of God’s existence is forthcoming.

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.  This conference engages both the shifting complexity of the modern world and a growing...

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...

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,...

Friday, September 28th, 2012 to Saturday, September 29th, 2012, Friday, 9am-5:30pm; Saturday, 10am-5:30pm Room 101, Religion Department, 80 Claremont Ave The IRCPL is sponsoring a two day workshop on ‘Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period’ on September 28-29, 2012. Last year, this project organized a workshop...

A wide-ranging discussion with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the legendary civil rights leader and first major African American presidential candidate, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the acclaimed social critic and publisher of The Nation magazine, on matters of race, religion, and politics in America today. With the election just days away, this timely discussion will...

A conversation with Wallace S. Broecker, the “Grandfather of Climate Science,” on the subject of climate change, natural disasters, and apocalyptic visions and predictions. Wally Broecker is the Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is also a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty...

Please join us for the launch of Marvine Howe’s new book, Al Andalus Rediscovered: Iberia’s New Muslims and a roundtable conversation with the author,  Marvine Howe, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and author of books on Turkey and Morocco; Jose Moya, Professor of History at Barnard College; Michele Wucker, President of the...