The Social Science Research Council has announced three new fellowship opportunities for African faculty researching topics related to peace, security, and development. The Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa program "responds to a shortage of well-trained faculty now reaching crisis proportions in African higher education."
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Announcements, events, and opportunities related to topics of interest to TIF readers are posted here. Additionally you may find round-ups of news items and brief commentary on current events.
For a listing of all of the events announcements, click here.
For a listing of announcements regarding books, click here.
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Religion and marriage debate
by Grace YukichShould the state be in the business of marriage, or is it inherently a religious union that should be performed solely by religious groups? Will the religious exemptions to recent same-sex marriage laws influence their viability in the long run? Last week, The New York Times posted a debate on its website, in which five public figures, scholars and writers, argue about the ways in which the religion and marriage debate draws out perennial questions about the appropriate relationship between religion and the state.
July 5, 2011
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The Theological and the Political
by Charles GelmanFrom Fortress Press, an interview with Mark Lewis Taylor, author of The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World (Fortress, 2011).
July 5, 2011
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When news isn’t so black and white
by Amanda KaplanIn light of Hasidic 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky's recent murder, as well as The New York Times’ inclusion of "some of the blunt theological language of the funeral...without any kind of context and/or clarification from other Hasidic believers and outside experts," Getreligion discusses the implications and delicacy of reporting on religious affairs.
July 15, 2011
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The way of the brother
by Amanda KaplanS. Brent Plate offers a new reading of Terrance Malick's The Tree of Life, complicating the either/or dualism constructed in the film and disseminated in its reviews.
July 15, 2011
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Conference: Multiple Secularities and Global Interconnectedness
by Charles GelmanOn October 13-15, the Centre for Area Studies, University of Leipzig, will hold its second annual conference, Multiple Secularities and Global Interconnectedness.
July 18, 2011
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The “Axis of Antisemitism”
by Amanda KaplanJonathan Rauch responds to James Kirchick's Tablet Magazine article on the shuttering of Yale's Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism.
July 18, 2011
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Religious and secular foundations of human rights
by Grace YukichA post at the New York Times philosophy blog "The Stone" reflects on the differences between religious and secular underpinnings of human rights. The author, Anat Biletzki, critiques the argument that human rights are impossible without religion, or, particularly, belief in God. Instead, she asserts that the secular basis for human rights is in fact more faithful to humanity than religious justifications, which she defines as rooted in the authority of a superhuman creator (i.e., God) rather than in the value of the human.
July 19, 2011
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Cults video throwsback to Jim Jones
by Amanda KaplanIndie band Cults has released the official video for "Go Outside," which brings the fascinating and tragic story of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown back into the public field of view.
July 20, 2011
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The rise and fall of Christian rock
by Charles GelmanMeghan O'Gieblyn, writing for Guernica, forays into the history of CCM, or Christian contemporary music, which also happens to be that of her own adolescence, tracing the gradual displacement of the more overtly gospel elements of Christian pop, rock, and rap, as the Christian music industry, in its growing drive for "relevance," felt the squeeze of secular music, especially under the pincers the more profitable and marketing-savvy MTV. More than the fate of explicitly Christian popular music, this course, O'Gieblyn suggests, reflects the simultaneous devolution of a distinctly evangelical way of being in the world, which, stuck as it is between oppositional self-cloistering and secularizing dissipation, seems to O'Gieblyn to have tended toward to the latter.
July 20, 2011