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Religious Continuity and Change: Research Opportunities in Egyptian Case Studies (Or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation)
Rebecca Denova, Visiting Lecturer of Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Noon, 2628 Cathedral of Learning
Department of Religious Studies Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium
Dr. Denova spent July in Egypt with a Fulbright-Hays project in conjunction with Pitt's Global Studies Program entitled "Islam, the West, and the Muslim World." She will detail Egypt's rich heritage of religious syncretism and suggest present opportunities for research.
The Response of the U.S. Catholic Church to United States Policy in Central America, 1950-1990
Edward Brett, Professor of History, La Roche College
Noon, 2628 Cathedral of Learning
Department of Religious Studies Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium
Dr. Brett received his PhD from Rutgers University and specializes in Latin American history and the study of popular religious movements, including social justice groups inspired by Catholicism. He is the author of The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice, 2003; Murdered in Central America: The Stories of Eleven U.S. Missionaries (coauthored with Donna W. Brett), 1988; and Humbert of Romans: His Life and Views of Thirteenth-Century Society, 1984.
Why Do They Hate Us? A Muslim Perspective on Islam and Violence
Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies & Critical Discourse, South Valley University, Luxor, Egypt
3:00 PM, 501 Cathedral of Learning
Cosponsored by the University Honors College, Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies of the University Center for International Studies, and the departments of English, History and Political Science
Dr. Dardery received his PhD in Cultural Studies at Pitt (2000) and works on Occidental-Oriental dialogue. A speaker in much demand in Egypt, he is an active member of the Program for Civilization Studies & Dialogue of Cultures at Cairo University, which provides opportunities for Egyptian and visiting faculty and exchange students from a variety of disciplines to come together in meaningful dialogue. Dr. Dardery was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Seton Hill and other institutions in northern PA in AY 2006 for a project introducing and teaching about Islam in the American academic setting. While in Pittsburgh, he served as president of the Islamic Center and was a founding member of Daughters and Sons of Abraham at Carlow University. As Director of the Center for Language Teaching & Research at South Valley University (Egypt), he teaches on post-colonial discourse.
Contesting Sacred Space in China's Ethnic Borderlands: Ritual and Myth at Huanglong, Northern Sichuan
Donald S. Sutton, Professor of History and Anthropology, Carnegie Mellon University
Noon, 2628 Cathedral of Learning
Department of Religious Studies Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium
Donald S. Sutton works at the juncture between history and anthropology and focuses much of his work on ritual and folk religion, seen in a variety of contexts. He has published widely on religious and social change in 20th century Taiwan and on late imperial social relations explored through religion; a collection of his work is forthcoming in a book on ritual in Chinese societies. His current project on the “ethnic frontier” of China explores the intersection between ethnicity, religious practice, tourism and environmentalism in West Hunan and the Tibetan borderlands, at and near the Huanglong Scenic and Historic Interest Area World Heritage Site. Dr. Sutton’s most recent book is Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China (coedited with Pamela K. Crossley and Helen F. Siu), 2006. A listing of his publications is located at www.hss.cmu.edu/departments/history/.
Ritualizing Duality: Secret Iconographies of Empowerment in Medieval Japan
Lucia Dolce, Senior Lecturer of Japanese Religion, Department of the Study of Religion, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
4:15 PM, 4130 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, reception to follow
Cosponsored by the Asian Studies Center and Japan Council of the University Center for International Studies and the Program in Cultural Studies. Funding also provided by the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Mitsubishi Endowments and the Office of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lucia Dolce holds a first degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Venezia, Italy, and a PhD from Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her main research interest is Japanese religiosity of the medieval period, in particular, the esotericisation of religious practice, the development of millenarian ideas, and kami-Buddhas associative practices. Dr. Dolce’s first book, Esoteric Patterns in Nichiren’s Interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra, was awarded the Nakamura Hajime Prize for the best book in religious studies by a younger scholar in 2004. She is currently working on two research projects on rituals in premodern Japanese religion.
The Worship of Celestial Bodies in Japan: Politics, Rituals and Icons
Lucia Dolce, Senior Lecturer of Japanese Religion, Department of the Study of Religion, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
1:00-2:15 PM, 104 David Lawrence Hall
Open to RELGST 1550 and RELGST 0505, Religious Studies undergraduate majors and minors, and Asian Studies Center undergraduate certificate students only.
Cosponsored by the Asian Studies Center and Japan Council of the University Center for International Studies and the Program in Cultural Studies. Funding also provided by the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Mitsubishi Endowments and the Office of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.
A Truth Beyond Black and White: Conversion Motives Among American Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy
Amy Slagle, Cooperative Doctoral Program in Religion, University of Pittsburgh
Noon, 2628 Cathedral of Learning
Department of Religious Studies Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium
Discourses of “Jewishness”: A Symposium on New Directions in the Field of Jewish Studies
Convened by the Program in Jewish Studies
Discourses of "Jewishness” focuses on representations of Jewish identities as they have been offered in fictive forms, both in aesthetic as well as in cultural and historical formulations. In particular we are interested in exploring the ways in which ideas of "Jewishness" are imagined across cultures, disciplines and genres. To that end we have invited scholars and creative artists to comment on the manner in which Jewish identity has been shaped and depicted in their respective areas of research focused on Latin America, the United States, North Africa and Europe. We have intentionally chosen commentators whose work breaks with more traditional scholarly paradigms in the analysis of Jewish history and literature. Accordingly, the discussions offered in this program will highlight the rich and complex matrix of representations of "Jewishness" as they have been produced and consumed by both Jews and non-Jews in American, North and South, European, East and West, as well as North African settings.
Check back for updates and venues.
Keynote Address
Novelist, Dara Horn, author of The World to Come
Named one of the Best New American Novelists of 2007 by Granta Magazine
Program (in alphabetical order of participants):
Hebrew Engagements with America: Fashioning Ethnicity in the American Hebrew Novel
Jill Aizenstein, New York University
Marranos, Conversos, and Crypto-Latinos: Jewish and Hispanic Crossings in the American Southwest and the Boundaries of Ethnic Identity
Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan
Recovering “Jewish Spain”: Sephardism as a Redemptive Model in the Spanish Cultural and Political Landscape
Michal Friedman, Columbia University
Convertible Subjects: Representations of the Inquisition in 20th-Century Brazilian Theatre and Film
Erin Graff Zivin, University of Pittsburgh
The Mirror in the Window: Ferzan Ozpetek’s Jewish Rome
Lina Insana, University of Pittsburgh
Mahia: The Distillation of Moroccan/Jewish Identity
Oren Kosansky, Lewis and Clark College
"Shabbos Goyim" and the Recreation of "Jewish Space" in Present-day Poland
Erica Lehrer, University of Washington, Seattle
Italian Independence on the “Golden Wings” of Jewish Emancipation
Scott Lerner, Franklin and Marshall College
How the Jews became Japanese in Brazil
Jeffrey Lesser, Emory University