With the prevalence of voices casting doubts and aspersions on the so-called secularization thesis, we might imagine that the familiar…
The burden of the great divide
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
The persistence of memory
Francis Ford Coppola’s rendition of Mircea Eliade’s novel Youth Without Youth opens with a montage of clocks woozily bending. These…
The rules of the games
The Stillborn God begins as a book about two chess games. Part of the book explains, in all too cursory…
Deciphered by means of a perfected computer
Seen with a genealogical eye, Youth Without Youth speaks to the sheer danger of the sacred as the robust object…
Realizing Eliade’s Dream
Francis Ford Coppola has made Eliade whole again. He has given him back to us. Youth Without Youth is a…
Varieties of secularism in a secular age
On April 4-5, the SSRC will co-sponsor a conference at Yale University on Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age.…
Repossessing the past
By some sort of happy coincidence—or to use the surrealist term referenced by Jeremy Biles, “objective chance”—I watched Youth Without…
The third rose
"Youth Without Youth" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gun violence, sexual congress, female nudity,…
Belief, spirituality and time
Charles Taylor, in his magisterial book on the Secular, periodically engages a constituency he calls immanent materialists. I would like…
Secularism and the paradoxes of Muslim politics
Few books in Islamic studies have been as eagerly awaited or intensely debated prior to publication as Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na`im's…