2021
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Friday, December 17, 2021 Ludlow 301 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This presentation explores the dynamic mode in which landscape, ritual and narrative co-create and shape each other in Hindu traditions. Considering several examples of pilgrimage in India, this paper delves into the way that narratives are experienced through rituals that shape and are shaped by sacred landscapes. I end with an example from my dissertation about an 18th century devotional poet, Vengamamba, who was deeply embedded in, and in turn shaped the ritual landscape of, the south Indian pilgrimage site that she inhabited. Aalekhya Malladi is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. Her dissertation, “Devotee, Yogini, Goddess: Tarigonda Vengamamba and her Transformations,” explores the texts and the life histories of devotional poet Vengamamba (1735–1817), and conceives of a distinct female perspective on devotion and detachment. This project also examines her hagiographies and the rituals performed at her shrine, which illuminate the way that her at-times transgressive compositions and life histories have been tamed and curtailed by a hagiographical tradition that shapes her life into that of an “ideal female devotee.” She held the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship in 2019-2020. Prior to her doctoral studies, Aalekhya received an MA from Columbia University and a BA from Rutgers University, New Brunswick. |
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Wednesday, December 15, 2021 Ludlow 301 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 My talk will comprise two parts. In the first part, I will introduce the audience to the interrelated issues of divinization and individuation in Hinduism. As is well known, the Hindu pantheon is composed of an innumerable number of deities but what does it mean to say that these deities are distinct or separate from each other? Are they really all that different? We may even ask a prior question, what does investing an entity with the properties of a divine being entail? The first part will guide the audience to some of the key issues that arise in the consideration of these questions. The second part will briefly explore the possibilities and limits of this idea of divinization as they emerge in the fraught, but also illuminating, context of the deification of the custom of widow burning or sati in contemporary India. Swayam Bagaria is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the College Fellows Program at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University in 2020. His current book project is on the relation between popular Hinduism and ethnoreligious nationalism in India. |
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Friday, December 10, 2021 Ludlow, 3rd Floor Conference Room 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EST/GMT-5 The word guru comes close to what we might call an empty signifier: a word that is used so variably and in such a diverse array of contexts that it loses all meaning. And yet, to their followers, students and devotees, gurus can signify “life, the universe and everything.” In this talk, I will present an historic case of misapprehension of the figure of the guru in order to reflect upon the guru as a sovereign figure. In examining a colonial-era court case, I will hope to reveal the lineaments of a forgotten history of monastic power in India. The figure of the guru, properly historicized, is a productive site for the understanding of an alternative vision of normative power, wielded by the monastery, that operated through the ethical self-formation of its subjects. In this historical case, we see how the medieval monastery articulated a vision of totalizing religious power that was misapprehended by the colonial state, and indeed continues to be misapprehended to this day. I argue that this misapprehension prevents us from recognizing the monastery as an enduring institution of unparalleled power, and the guru as a particular paradigm of sovereignty. Nabanjan Maitra is Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas, Austin, where he teaches courses on the Religions of South Asia and Sanskrit. He holds a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago with a focus on Hinduism. His book project, The Rebirth of Homo Vedicus, examines the formulation and implementation of a novel form of monastic power in a medieval south India monastery. The study explains the underlying logic of ethical self-formation as the driver of the totalizing vision of power that the monastery, with the guru as its sovereign head, administered. It shows the primacy of this mode of governance in the emergence of Hinduism in the colonial period. His research and teaching attempt to situate and explicate Hinduism of the present—the local and the global—in longer histories of texts, institutions and conduct. |
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Tuesday, November 30, 2021 Fordham University Campus Center, Weis Cinema 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 The twentieth century, as scholar George M. Fredrickson has noted, brought both the “climax and retreat” of racism and antisemitism. The murder of six million Jews during World War II forced a reckoning with ideas that made this unprecedented crime possible and contributed to broader reconsideration of social and religious values dominating western society. It also forced, as the editor of Ebony would later write in the introduction to the special issue on “The White Problem in America” “a re-examination of the Christian faith which brought forth the idea that skin color was not a true measure of a man’s humanity.” This talk will seek to explain the modern rejection of equality of both Jews and Black people in the West by tracing Christianity’s claim to superiority that emerged in a theological context in antiquity but came to be implemented in a legal and political context when Christianity became a political power. I will argue that the Christian sense of superiority developed first in relation to Jews and then transformed to a racialized superiority when Europeans expanded their political reach beyond Europe, establishing slaveholding empires in the early modern period, culminating in the Holocaust and forcing an ongoing reckoning in the post-WWII era. Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2006); Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize; and Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), which won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award; and the forthcoming Enduring Marks of Servitude: Christianity’s Stamp on Antisemitism and Racism in Law and Culture. She has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In 2020-2021, Teter was the NEH Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Jewish History. NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate |
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Thursday, November 4, 2021 Dr. Nerina Rustomji, Associate Professor of History at St. John's University, will be giving a talk titled The Beauty of the Houri: Images and Interpretations of the Heavenly Virgins. This talk addresses the images of the pure female companions of Islamic paradise or houris by presenting how the houri was understood from the seventh to the twenty-first century in Arabic, French, and English texts. The houri offered a feminine ideal of purity for a variety of interpreters, including Qur’anic commentators, Latin Christendom theologians, British and French travel writers, eighteenth and nineteenth century poets and writers, and twentieth and twenty-first century interpreters of Islam. The talk considers how an unknowable feminine figure continues to compel, even while signifying the differing aims of spiritual purity, political violence, and gender parity. |
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Tuesday, November 2, 2021 University of Cincinnati Campus Center, Weis Cinema 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This lecture series, held throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, will explore the ongoing phenomenon of antisemitism by examining its myriad historical contexts and relationships to other forms of prejudice and hatred. This talk will discuss the Camphill movement, an international network of intentional communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities that was founded in Scotland during World War II by Austrian Jewish refugees. It will focus on the antisemitism and ableism that forced Camphill’s founders to flee Nazi Central Europe, the antisemitic and ableist immigration policies that they confronted in the US and Britain, and the way their response to these overlapping forms of prejudice informed the mission and identity of the movement they founded. Drawing on her forthcoming book On the Spectrum: Jewish Refugees from Nazi Austria and the Politics of Disability in the Britain and North America, Sorrels will use Camphill to reconstruct the larger story of how Jewish refugees transformed British and North American approaches to disability and, in the process, reshaped the tradition of Viennese curative education. Katherine Sorrels is Associate Professor of History, Affiliate Faculty in Judaic Studies, and Chair of the Taft Health Humanities Research Group at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Outsiders: Imperial Inclusion, National Exclusion, and the Pan-European Idea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is the co-editor of two forthcoming volumes, Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, and Culture (Camden House, 2022) and Ohio under COVID: Lessons from America's Heartland in Crisis (under review with the University of Michigan Press). Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate |
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Monday, October 18, 2021 Rhodes College Preston 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 This lecture series, held throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, will explore the ongoing phenomenon of antisemitism by examining its myriad historical contexts and relationships to other forms of prejudice and hatred. This presentation will first consider the recent debate whether anti-Semitism should be considered a form of racism or a unique form of hatred. Framing this discussion within a historical overview, we will consider how Judeophobia was entangled with Islamophobia and what Fanon called Negrophobia. We will unpack the origins of the terms “anti-Semitism” and “racism” and consider how many theorists in the aftermath of the Holocaust and during anti-colonial struggles understood the linkages between these terms. These theorists were opposed by scholars and writers who insist upon the singularity of anti-Semitism. I will suggest that the root of these claims stem from notions of Jewish choseness, Zionist understandings of anti-Semitism, and claims about the uniqueness of the Holocaust. I will argue that the assertions of uniqueness do not hold up to scrutiny, make a case for why exceptionalist arguments lead to a dead-end in efforts to fight anti-Semitism, and conclude that the struggle today demands that we be clear that anti-Semitism is racism and must be combatted as part of the broader anti-racist struggle. Jonathan Judaken is the Spence L. Wilson Chair in the Humanities at Rhodes College. He is the author of Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-antisemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Nebraska, 2006) and the editor of Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism (SUNY 2008) and Naming Race, Naming Racisms (Routledge 2009). He recently edited a round table in the American Historical Review titled, “Rethinking Anti-Semitism” (October 2018) and co-edited a special issue of Jewish History (with Ethan Katz) on “Jews and Muslims in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher” (September 2018). He has just finished co-editing The Albert Memmi Reader (with Michael Lejman), a compendium of the Tunisian Franco-Jewish writer’s work (Nebraska, 2020). NOTE: These lectures are open to the public but all visitors to the Bard campus must register in advance and provide proof of vaccination by completing this form. Co-sponsored by The Hannah Arendt Center and The Center for the Study of Hate |
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Thursday, October 7, 2021 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 |
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Wednesday, September 15, 2021 Please join us for an open-air lunch and informal gathering with students and faculty in the ISR program. We'll provide pizza and drinks and answer all your questions about the study of religion in a liberal arts setting. All are welcome. When: Wednesday, September 15, 12–1 pm Where: the picnic tables in the small yard between Albee and the Henderson Computer Center (weather permitting) |
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Tuesday, September 14, 2021 Online Event 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Although white supremacist movements have received renewed public attention since the 2017 violence in Charlottesville and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they need to be placed in deeper historical context if they are to be understood and combated. In particular, the rise of these movements must be linked to the global war on terror after 9/11, which blinded counterextremism authorities to the increasing threat they posed. In this panel, two prominent sociologists, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathleen Blee, trace the growth of white supremacist extremism and its expanding reach into cultural and commercial spaces in the U.S. and beyond. They also examine these movements from the perspective of their members’ lived experience. How are people recruited into white supremacist extremism? How do they make sense of their active involvement? And how, in some instances, do they seek to leave? The answers to these questions, Miller-Idriss and Blee suggest, are shaped in part by the gendered and generational relationships that define these movements. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). Kathleen Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. If you would like to attend, please register here. Zoom link and code will be emailed the day of the event. |
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Monday, March 29, 2021 Bodies and clothing are in exchange and influence each other. Guyanese Hindus describe this interrelationship of clothing and bodies by highlighting that during acts of consuming clothing—when it is worn or gifted—substances and energies are transferred between bodies and dress, creating mutual touch. This touch is facilitated through for example body fluids, which transform used or ‘touched’ clothing into a person’s material likeness. Clothes and other material objects are thus dwelling structures for substances and energies, which have a special capacity to ‘take on’ former consumers. Used clothes are frequently exchanged within Guyanese Hindu families, a practice that remains relevant in the context of migration and is facilitated by the sending of ‘barrels.’ Gifts of used clothing become a means of recreating transnational families and religious communities. Additionally, gifts of clothing are not only relevant with regard to human social actors, but they furthermore materialize and visualize the relationships between people and deities, as clothes are frequently offered to deities during Hindu pujas (ritual veneration). In this talk I discuss the notions of touch and contact in the context of Guyanese transnational migration: I argue that in transnational networks, gifts of used clothing facilitate a means to literally stay in touch. Sinah Kloß holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Heidelberg University, Germany. Since February 2020 she is leader of the research group “Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification” at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn, Germany. Her current research project discusses the sensory history of touch and body modification and the interrelation of permanence, tactility, religion and servitude in Hindu communities of Suriname, Trinidad and Guyana. Her most recent books include the edited volume “Tattoo Histories: Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing” (Routledge, 2020) and the monograph “Fabrics of Indianness: The Exchange and Consumption of Clothing in Transnational Guyanese Hindu Communities” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).Join via Zoom: https://bard.zoom.us/j/82737596363?pwd=ZUpKOUNhYlpjQmwxNHFSS3llY2xkQT09 Meeting ID: 827 3759 6363 Passcode: 614305 |
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Tuesday, March 9, 2021 Online Event 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Dr. Jamillah Karim, a foremost scholar of race and gender in Islam, takes us through the rich history of Muslim Women’s legacy in the Black Freedom Movement through storytelling grounded in academic analysis and family history, providing a window into how she interweaves her academic training and personal faith to present true images of American Muslim women and to portray Islam in America as a Black Liberation Faith. Dr. Jamillah Karim is an award-winning author, speaker, and blogger. She specializes in race, gender, and Islam in America. She is author of Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (with Dawn-Marie Gibson) and American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender Within the Ummah, which was awarded the 2008 Book Award in Social Sciences by the Association for Asian American Studies. She is currently working on a new book, Radical Love, where she explores the depth and beauty of divine and human love. Dr. Karim blogs for Sapelo Square, Hagar Lives, Race+Gender+Faith, NYU Press Blog, and Huffington Post Religion. In 2014, her scholarly activism was recognized by JET magazine, which featured her as a young faith leader in the African American community. Dr. Karim is a former associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Spelman College. She holds a BSE in electrical engineering and a PhD in Islamic Studies from Duke University. Join Zoom Meeting Meeting ID: 844 6864 6575 / Passcode: 328029 |
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Monday, March 1, 2021 While Israeli TV established its international reputation based on terrorist thrillers, it also has developed a rich cadre of programs examining Jewish identity and belonging, many of these shows focus on Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. I propose a three-part typology. The first type of show establishes likeness, calling for the Haredi Jew to be understood as the same as any secular viewer. Series in the second category argue that Haredim are inherently better and more interesting than any secular subject. The third grouping rejects the claims of the first, and instead argues for a more nuanced look into the darker aspects of Haredi life today. We will explore these three types, and what they say about the relationship between Haredim and the State of Israel today. Dr. Shayna Weiss is the Associate Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Previously, she was the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Israel Studies at the United States Naval Academy. Her research interests converge at the intersection of religion and gender in the Israeli public sphere, as well as the politics of Israeli popular culture. Currently, she is completing a book on gender segregation in the Israeli public sphere and researching the rise of Israeli television in the global market. Join Zoom Meeting https://bard.zoom.us/j/84309541838 Meeting ID: 843 0954 1838 |
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Thursday, February 18, 2021 Online Event 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Jan Willis, PhD was raised in the South during the Jim Crow era and marched with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She went on to become a distinguished scholar, author, an award-winning teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. In this talk she will discuss the many resonances she sees between key Buddhist principles and social activism. Jan Willis is Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Born in Docena, Alabama in 1948 and profoundly affected by the Civil Rights movement, she majored in philosophy at Cornell University and met Buddhism while traveling in Asia in the 1970s. She earned her PhD in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for five decades. The author of several books and numerous articles and essays on Buddhist philosophy, meditation, women and Buddhism and Buddhism and race, her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist was first published in 2001 and was re-issued in 2008 by Wisdom Publications. In December of 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium." She has been profiled in Newsweek and Ebony. Her latest book, Dharma Matters: Women, Race and Tantra; Collected Essays by Jan Willis was published in April 2020. Join Zoom Meeting https://bard.zoom.us/j/86771200216 Meeting ID: 867 7120 0216 |