Events To Gather Signatures
April 9: 3-5pm & April 10: 9am-5pm
A common product of twentieth-century processes of state formation in many parts of the world has been a strong discursive emphasis on "secularism" and "secularization". But since the 1980s, the entry of religion into the public sphere in many parts of the world (the Islamic revolution in Iran; the rise of evangelical Protestantism as a force in American politics; the influence of Hindu nationalism in India or Islamism in Egypt) has unsettled the predictive certainties of secularization narratives. Developments in national politics, such as the entry of new groups into the democratic process (Muslim immigrant groups in Europe; low caste groups in India), have disrupted existing forms of secular consensus. One result has been a proliferation of debates about secularism.
As the certainties of secularization theory fade, it becomes possible to ask new questions about how terms like "secular", "secularism", "tolerance" or "religious freedom" are deployed, by whom, and to what ends. Who is authorized to speak for secularism? Who is marginalized in debates over its meaning? What hierarchies or exclusions do particular deployments of "secularism" secure? These questions arise in specific institutional contexts: in controversies over religious expression in public schools; at the intersection of civil courts and Islamic tribunals in matters of marriage and divorce; in debates over obscenity, blasphemy, and free speech in the press or the art museum. But they have broad implications for our understanding of contemporary debates in a "post-secular" age.
Conference Participants
- Cassie Adcock, Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Indian Secularism and Hindu Tolerance - Asad Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
Pakistan as a Secular State? - John Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
Secularism in an Indonesian Judge's Words - Patrick Eisenlohr, Professor of Anthropology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Transnationalism, Secularism, and Religious Pluralism in Mauritius - Marie-Dominique Even, Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, France
Are Post-Communist Societies Secularized? The Case of Mongolia - Zhe Ji, Resident-Research Fellow at Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Nantes, Postdoctoral Fellow at Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, France
State and Religion in Modern and Contemporary China: Secularization against Secularism - Ahmet Karamustafa, Professor of History and Religious Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Turkish Secularism through Alevi Spectacles - Ian MacMullen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis
Do Common, Secular Schools Provide the Best Preparation for Citizenship in a MultiReligious Liberal Democracy? - Yufeng Mao, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Washington University in St. Louis
Finding a Place for Islam in the Modern Chinese Nation-State: A Historical Perpective - Mohamed-Salah Omri, Associate Professor of Arabic, Washington University in St. Louis
(Re)presenting Secularism in the Arab World Today - Philippe Portier, Professor of Political Science, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France
Post-secularism in Habermas' Thought - Jeff A. Redding, Assistant Professor of Law, St. Louis University School of Law
Dar ul Qazas v. The Courts?: An Examination of a Muslim Alternative Dispute Resolution System and Its Implications for the Future of Secular Legal Systems - Peter van der Veer, Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany
Urban Religion in Mumbai and Singapore: Governing Multicultural Spaces - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Re-narrating Secularism - Jean-Paul Willaime, Director of Etudes à l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France
Secularism on the European Level: Do We Have a Combat between a Non-religious Worldview and Religious Worldviews, Or Do We Have a General Framework of Neutrality towards Secular and Religious Beliefs? - Karin Zitzewitz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and Anthropology, Michigan State University
Forms of the Secular in Modern Indian Art
This conference is sponsored by the Pluralism, Politics, and Religion Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis. For more information please visit: http://ias.wustl.edu/secularism_conference or contact: 314.935.4448 or klmowery@wustl.edu
Friday, April 9, 2010 - Saturday, April 10, 2010
Dr. Kammie Takahashi
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Religions
Busch Hall, Room 018
Dr. Kammie Takahashi will describe the introduction of Indian Buddhist tantrato Tibet in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the uniquely Tibetan innovations of yogi-poet Pelyang, many of which were to become the visionary foundations of the later Dzogchenmovement.
This lecture is sponsored by Theta Alpha Kappa, the Religious Studies Honorary. For more information please contact Julia Jay at jgjay@wustl.edu.
Friday, April 23, 2010
2:00 pm
TBA
For several decades, Islamicists had held the opinion that the Arabo-Islamic intellectual tradition, especially those aspects of it associated with the rationalist (ma'qūlī) Hellenistic synthesis, had been on a trajectory of sharp decline after the classical period (ca. 800-1200 CE). Since much of the rationalist output of the post-classical period (ca. 1200-1900 CE) was in the form of commentaries and glosses on books from the curricula of the religious schools (madāris), it was simply assumed to represent some form of sterile scholasticism. Yet this position was never actually based on the investigation of the massive body of works from this tradition. In recent years, Islamicists have begun to change their opinions, partly in view of what classicists and medievalists have shown us of the internal dialectical traditions, vibrancy, and dynamism of post-Aristotelian commentaries and of the scholasticism of the Latin Schoolmen. However, it appears that this new position is equally adopted as a truth by convention. Little serious technical work on the very promising post-classical Islamic "scholastic" commentaries has been carried out; this state of scholarship needs to change. This text-based workshop brings together some of the leading scholars working on post-classical scholastic commentaries in the Islamic logical, philosophical, and theological traditions. The participants will present detailed technical investigations, constituting a first step in determining the contours of these traditions.
Workshop reading material will be available October 7, 2010 to all interested in attending. Please contact Prof. Asad Ahmed (aahmed@wustl.edu) or Prof. Jon McGinnis (mcginnis@umsl.edu) to receive a copy.
This event is co-sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. WashU sponsors include: the College of Arts and Science, the Center for Programs, and the Religious Studies Program.
Friday, October 29, 2010 - Saturday, October 30, 2010
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This web site has pages for each state. So click on Missouri.
Some more web sites with events schedules
www.joyfmonline.org/events.asp
www.slfp.com/SLFP-SpecialEvents.htm
http://festivalnet.com/state/missouri/mo.html
www.missouristatefairspeedway.com
www.festivals-and-shows.com/missouri-car-shows.html