Here are two intensely original essays in distinct voices and registers that also repeatedly intersect. Reading Christina Sornito and Allen…
Openings and flashes: A reply to Shelton and Sornito
sacred
Borderlands of the sacred
Americans have long sacralized ordinary objects through memory work that reveals the power of the state, that transforms otherwise familiar,…
Sous les pavés, la plage!
With the question “Is this all there is?”, my mind immediately went to the ’68 French student protest slogan “Under…
Secular, sacred, Yiddish, Jewish
In considering immanentism, it is difficult not to imagine it in religious terms. This is all the more so when…
Money—flat, broad, and deep
Is money transcendent or immanent?
Sacrality, secularity, and contested indigeneity
Indigenous peoples articulate their indigeneity within the political and legal language of secularism, even as it renders certain claims to…
Is the “native” secular?
Headlines scream of burgeoning populism around the world, but the shift in politics today could also be described as a…
The sacred and the social
In these Carlyle Lectures, given at the University of Oxford in January and February 2016, I suggested that between 1650…
Robert P. Benedict Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
University of Cambridge historian John Robertson will be delivering this year's Robert P. Benedict Lectures on the History of Political…
Constructing the Jewish public space: Community, identity, and collaboration
The construction of space constitutes one of the primary ways through which religions create templates for behavior. As they construct…