This is a call for applications for the 2017 UCSIA Summer School on “Religion, Culture, and Society: Entanglement and Confrontation." This summer school is a one-week course taking place from Sunday, August 27, 2017 until Saturday, September 2, 2017 at the University Center Saint-Ignatius Antwerp, University of Antwerp, Belgium. This year the program will focus on the topic "Between Market, State, and Religion: Economic Realities, Social Justice, and Faith Traditions." The UCSIA Summer School brings together a multidisciplinary and international group of 30 PhD students and postdoctoral scholars. Participation and stay for young scholars and researchers are free of charge, but participants should pay for their own travel expenses to Antwerp. You can submit your application via the electronic submission form on the summer school website. The completed file as well as all other required application documents must be submitted to the UCSIA selection committee no later than Sunday, May 14, 2017.
here & there
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.
Jeffrey Stout to give Gifford Lectures
Religion Unbound: Ideals and Powers from Cicero to King May 1 – May 11, 2017, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Business School Auditorium, University of Edinburgh In “Religion Unbound,” a 2017 Gifford Lecture Series hosted by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Jeffrey Stout (Princeton University) will trace the ideal’s history and explain how its defenders have defined and criticized religion.
CFP | Jews and Quakers (NEW DATE!)
The Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex and Woodbrooke Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies, Birmingham, invite submissions for a groundbreaking joint one-day conference to be held at the University of Sussex on December 14, 2017, under the title "Jews and Quakers: On the borders of acceptability." The conference aims to explore the impact on the thought, theology, and praxis of Jewish and Quaker communities following experiences of persecution, political alienation, and outsider status in the wider communities in which they have lived in Europe, North America, and globally since the seventeenth century. It offers a rare opportunity for researchers to identify and explore such parallels and differences as might be found between the experiences of Jews and Quakers. The coordinators welcome papers from established scholars, postdoctoral early career researchers, and doctoral candidates. The deadline for submissions is April 10, 2017. More details can be found here or on their website.
CFP | Converting Spaces: Re-Directing Missions Through Global Encounters
The department of religious studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, with support from the Cordano Endowment in Catholic Studies, will host an interdisciplinary conference from May 4-6, 2017, entitled “Converting Spaces: Re-Directing Missions Through Global Encounters.” The keynote speaker for the event is Dr. Liam Brockey of the history department at Michigan State University. Proposals addressing the relation of space to conversion in the context of European global and colonial expansion from the sixteenth century onwards are welcome from established scholars, graduate students, and independent researchers. The deadline for submissions is February 17, 2017.
Post-Doctoral Opportunity at the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion at the University of California-Berkeley has opened recruitment for the Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellowship in Public Theology for the 2017-2018 academic year.
Beyond the Secular State? Secularism, Empire, and Hegemony
Monday, November 14, 6:15 to 8:00 p.m. 403 Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia University Three orders of questions regarding secularism—genealogical, philosophical, and political—will be envisaged during an upcoming public debate at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) at Columbia University. Talal Asad, Mohamed Amer-Meziane, and Etienne Balibar will be speaking on these questions in the conversation titled, “Beyond the Secular State? Secularism, Empire, Hegemony.”
Charles Taylor wins Berggruen Prize
On October 4, 2016, the Berggruen Institute named philosopher Charles Taylor as the inaugural recipient of the Berggruen Prize—a one-million dollar annual award for a thinker “whose ideas are of broad significance for shaping human self-understanding and the advancement of humanity.” For his breadth of study across disciplines, commitment to both academia and public life, and the legacy of his research into human relationship and meaning, the nine-person committee selected Professor Taylor as the first winner of this prize. In the words of Craig Calhoun, current president of the Berggruen Institute and former president of the Social Science Research Council, “Taylor’s own life exemplifies the wisdom that philosophy celebrates, bringing intellectual humanity as well as remarkable knowledge to personal relationships, teaching, scholarship, and public engagement.” In celebration of this honor for Charles Taylor, we at The Immanent Frame collected some of our favorite content from the past nine years written by or about the man whose concept, the “immanent frame” (Chapter 15 of A Secular Age), is our namesake.
Call for Comments: Writing religion for the IPSP
Can we hope for a better society? That is the animating question behind an ambitious project, the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP). Inspired by Amartya Sen, the project is modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is guided by a scientific council and a steering committee. It exists to “harness the competence of hundreds of experts about social issues” and to “deliver a report addressed to all social actors, movements, organizations, politicians, and decision-makers, in order to provide them with the best expertise on questions that bear on social change.” Also modeled on the IPCC, drafts of the chapter reports are now available for public comment. Prompted by David Smilde, this is our invitation to the readers of The Immanent Frame to join that conversation. To read the chapter on religion and provide critical comments, visit the IPSP commenting platform.
Post-Doctoral Opportunity at Columbia University IRCPL
The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life invites applications for postdoctoral scholar positions, for the 2016-2017 academic year.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate: Public Life and Religious Diversity
The Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University has announced a new position: Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Political Theory: Public Life and Religious Diversity in association with Harris Manchester College.