When it comes to the Catholic Church these days, news headlines offer few opportunities for levity. I’m referring, of course,…
Notes from the field
In the summer of 2010, a small group of graduate students who received the SSRC Dissertation Development Research Fellowship (DPDF) blogged regularly for The Immanent Frame. The fellows came together in conjunction with a 2010 DPDF subfield called “After Secularization: New Approaches to Religion and Modernity.”
After the fellowship period ended, a select group of fellows continued the blog through the fall of 2010. In their short contributions to “Notes from the field,” the fellows shared notes and reflections on their emerging research, as well as other insights and questions, ruminations, and observations.
Then, in early June 2011, the SSRC program on religion and the public sphere convened twelve advanced graduate students and five distinguished professors for a five-day dissertation workshop on religion and international affairs. Over the course of the workshop, students shared their ongoing work, considered critiques from student and faculty participants, and debated the coherence of the very banner under which they had been gathered.
All of these reflections and notes from these students are gathered below.
Thinking of Vincent Pecora, with Eric Voegelin in mind
Voegelin’s central, surprisingly Kantian thesis is that some recognition of transcendence is the precondition of open, self-reflexive inquiry. Founded on…
Letter from Istanbul
I have come to Turkey at a time when discussions of a “shift in the axis” of Turkey’s foreign policy…
What’s the writing on the wall?
What makes a religious political party? The question is more than semantic in Senegal. The constitution bars political parties based…
Confessions of a casual Löwithian
What is secularization? This question raises the issue of what exactly religion and “the secular” are---terms that, as our discussions…
Sacred, secular, and soccer
What would FIFA President Sepp Blatter make of the Hand of God? With his declaration that there is “no room…
“I study religion,” or: How to start an awkward conversation
As a PhD student in Religion, my answer to the question, “What do you do?” is always a loaded one.…
The stories we tell
In a recent Newsweek article, “Saint Sarah,” Lisa Miller chronicles Sarah Palin’s iconic status among evangelical Christian women in the…