Conversations at the Center

Conversations at the Center is a colloquium series that fosters in-depth exploration of theoretical, methodological and regional issues in the study of religion and conflict among faculty, graduate students, and the community.

Featured Conversations

Pandemic Re-attunements: Thinking and Acting with Planetary Times

Whitney Bauman on the intersection of religion, science, and ecology as he examines how ideas of progress govern orientations toward time, which, in turn, shape human relationships with the natural world.

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COVID-19, Religion, & Humanity: Dispatches from the Frontlines

The coronavirus pandemic has shut down the U.S. economy, put millions of Americans out of work, overwhelmed hospitals in many cities, and taken the lives of nearly 200,000 people worldwide. While most news coverage has focused on the medical, social, economic, and political repercussions of the pandemic, the religious dimensions of COVID-19 are also momentous.

The pandemic—surging during Lent, peaking over Passover and Easter, and still spreading as Ramadan begins—has become an occasion for millions of people, whether religious or secular, to reflect on their beliefs and commitments. Learn more as we discuss how COVID-19 is affecting different communities around the world with with Fr. Patrick Gilger, S.J., contributing editor for America magazine, who is joining from Milan, Italy, and Anand Gopal, award-winning journalist and assistant research professor with the Center, who is joining from New York City.

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Conversations Archive

Date	Event	Speaker(s)	Links
April 2021	What Good is Theory? Religion, Critique, and Truth	Vincent Lloyd Mayanthi L. Fernando Andrew Prevot Inese Radzins Jason Josephson Storm	Video
April 2021	Laid Bare: Surveillance, Eugenics, and Personhood	Sylvester Johnson Charles McCrary	Video
April 2021	Science, Religion, and Society: Lessons from the U.S. Case	Andrew Jewett	Video
March 2021	“Opening a Star Gate to the Dark Gods”: Psychic Espionage, Satanic “Cults,” & Occult Nazis on the Dark Web	Jason Josephson Storm
Feb. 2021	Religion, Violence, and Digital Culture: Understanding QAnon	Candace Rondeaux Sarah Riccardi-Swartz Adam Darrah James Edmonds	Video
Jan. 2021	Laid Bare: Sacred Earth	Mary Evelyn Tucker	Video
Oct. 2020	Pandemic Re-attunements: Thinking and Acting with Planetary Times	Whitney Bauman	Video
Oct. 2020	Fragile Earth and the Sacred: From Rachel Carson to Earth 2.0	Lisa Sideris	Video
June2020	Laid Bare: Contagion & Community	Arnold Eisen Lauren Gilger Ben Hurlbut	Video
April 2020	COVID-19, Religion, & Humanity: Dispatches from the Frontlines	Patrick Gilger Anand Gopal	Video
March 2020	Science, Secularization, and American Democracy	Noah Efron
Jan. 2020	A "Judeo-Christian" America? Competing Visions of a Nation in Turmoil	K. Healan Gaston
Oct. 2019	Political Power and Religious Authority in Indian Islamic Thought: A Perspective from the 18th Century	Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Oct. 2019	Apocalyptic Visions: Telling the Story of Our Climate Future	Earl Swift Steven Beschloss Tracy Fessenden
Oct. 2019	Black Dignity: The Political Theology of #BlackLivesMatter	Vincent Lloyd
Oct. 2019	Rediscovering the Jews of Białowieża through Oral History
Oct. 2019	India’s Future in Crisis? Kashmir, Assam, and the Fate of Democracy	Ather Zia Suvir Kaul Yasmin Saikia Daniel Rothenberg James Rush
April 2019	Religion, Media, and Climate Change: What's the Story?	Ben Ehrenreich Tulasi Srinivas Jeffrey Cohen
April 2019	Religion, Journalism, and International Affairs	Karin Attiah	Video
Feb. 2019	The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History	Siep Stuurman
Oct. 2019	Sufi, Salafi, Shi'i: Sectarian Discourses in Nigeria	Sani Umar
Sep. 2018	Religious and Social Change in the Middle East	Anand Gopal Edith Szanto Rozina Ali
April 2018	Language Emancipation of Slavic Microlanguages: A Comparative Case Study	Motoki Nomachi
April 2018	The Kosovan Gorani Ethnolect: A Borderland Enclave in Search of Linguistic Identity	Motoki Nomachi
April 2018	War in a Warming World	Mark Douglas
March 2018	Manbij: Understanding the Syrian Civil War from the Experience of a Single Town	Anand Gopal
Feb. 2018	Luther and the Legacy of Anti-Semitism	Volker Benkert Gary McCluskey
Nov. 2017	America’s War Against ISIS: The Ground View	Anand Gopal
March 2017	Religion, Civilization, Cooperation and Conflict	Edward Slingerland
March 2017	Making Sense of the Trump Revolt: Where Do the Two Parties Go from Here?	Joshua Mitchell
March 2017	At the Center of the Storm: Syria, ISIS, and the Refugee Crisis	Anand Gopal
Nov. 2016	What is Specific About the Drama of Athletic Events? Towards a Phenomenology of Stadium Crowds	Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Oct. 2016	Takin' it to the Streets and the Seats: Promoting Social Justice through Communication Activism Research and Teaching	Lawrence R. Frey
Sep. 2016	Understanding the (Surprisingly Religious) History of American Secularism	Jacques Berlinerblau
Sep. 2016	Religion, Conflict and Terrorism in the Public Consciousness	John Carlson Anand Gopal Daniel Rothenberg Delia Saenz
April 2016	Islam and Democracy During Global Transitions	Daisy Khan
April 2016	Interactions and Interchanges: Has the Animal Question Displaced the Woman (of Color) Question?: Diffracting Posthumanities with Intersectionality	Rachel Lee
April 2016	Human Rights and Humanitarianism: Distinctions With or Without a Difference?	Michael Barnett
Feb. 2016	Interactions and Interchanges: Undocumented Literature	Robert McKee Irwin
Jan. 2016	By the Grace of God: Religiosity, Religious Self-Regulation, and Perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence	Claire M. Renzetti
Nov. 2015	Sacred Battles: Violence in Southern Sport and Culture	Eric Bain-Selbo
Nov. 2015	A Conversation with Anand Gopal	Anand Gopal
Nov. 2015	Feminist Writing from Pakistan: Remembrance of Being	Kanza Javed
Sep. 2015	Violence and Vulnerable Communities	Kamran Ali Miriam Cooke William Hart
Sep. 2015	Choreographing the Trauma of the Syrian Revolution	Miriam Cooke
April 2015	Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy	Alice Kang
April 2015	The Catholic Church and the Mexican Revolution	Phil Stover
April 2015	Radioactive Ghosts: Precarious Lives in the Aftermath of Nuclear Contamination	Gabriele M. Schwab
April 2015	Interactions and Interchanges: Beyond the Hijab: Pakistani Women’s Perspectives	Kanza Javed Tehreem Aurakzai Mawhish Khan Zahra Hamdani Aisha Usman
March 2015	Global Dynamics of Violent Extremism	Chad Haines Abdullahi Gallab Ibrahim Hassan Raza Rumi
Feb. 2015	Interactions and Interchanges: Ledfeather, A Reading and Discussion	Stephen Graham Jones
Jan. 2015	Faith, Death, and Freedom on the Arizona Frontier	Luis Cabrera
Dec 2014	Apocalyptic Violence: The Desire for Universal Destruction and Its Historical Origins	Matthias Riedl
Nov. 2014	Talking to the Enemy: The Making and Unmaking of Terrorists	Scott Atran
Nov. 2014	Measuring Religion: Sacred Values in Human Conflict	Scott Atran
Nov. 2014	Measuring Religion: Political and Economic Influences on Religious NGOs	Evelyn Bush
Oct. 2014	Interactions and Interchanges: Why Human Rights Depend on the Humanities	Sophia McClennen
Oct. 2014	A Conversation with Andrew Bacevich	Andrew J. Bacevich
Oct. 2014	Interactions and Interchanges: Chicana/o Studies and Transnationalism: Constructing Paradigms of Future Critique from Foundational Studies of the Past	Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saue
April 2014	Soft Power and Web 2.0: Public Diplomacy as Anti-Terrorism	Valentina Bartolucci
April 2014	Safety, Soldier, Scapegoat: Pat Tillman and American Civil Religion	Jonathan Ebel
March 2014	The Transhumanist Imagination: Technological Singularity: A Crucial Event in God's Self-Actualization?	Michael Zimmerman
March 2014	The Choosing People: The Puzzles of American Jewish Voting	Ken Wald
Jan. 2014	Fuzzy Sovereignty	Alessandro Monsutti
Nov. 2013	"Closing" Guantánamo	John Carlson
Nov. 2013	War Against Evil: The Religious Foundations of US Foreign Policy	Ira Chernus	Video
Nov. 2013	The American Way of Religion and Violence?	John Carlson
Nov. 2013	Religion, Politics and American Democracy	Linell Cady
Nov. 2013	The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible	James H. Charlesworth
Sep. 2013	The Decline of Religiosity?	Laurence R. Iannaccone
April 2013	The Bad, the Ugly-but Maybe Some Good?- of Religion and Intergroup Relations	Steven Neuberg
April 2013	The Transhumanist Imagination: Governance, Progress and Converging Technologies	Brice Laurent
March 2013	The Politics of Native American Religious Freedom	Suzan Harjo
March 2013	The Sacralization of Democratic Politics in Europe and Beyond	Anna Grzymala-Busse
Feb. 2013	The Transhumanist Imagination: Vannevar Bush, the Endless Frontier, and Human Enhancement	Gregg Zachary
Feb. 2013	Politics and Religion	Linell Cady Bruce Meyerson Rev. William Burrill Robert McWhirter Jeffery Ventrella
Feb. 2013	The Arab Spring: Between Hopes and Challenges	Jonathan Fine
Jan. 2013	Ministries of Presence: Chaplains as Priests of the Secular	Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Nov. 2012	What is the "Turkish Model"?: Muslimism in Turkey and Beyond	Neslihan Cevik
Nov. 2012	Religion and International Affairs: Religion and Strategic Targeting in World War II	Ron E. Hassner
Oct. 2012	Guantanamo: Ethics & Law, Religion & Politics	Tyler Cabot Howard R. Cabotn Adrew S. Gordon John Carlson Daniel Rothenberg
Oct. 2012	The Legal Response to Hate Speech: Should the U.S. be more like Europe?	Jeremy Waldron James Weinstein
Oct. 2012	Islam and Pluralism	Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Sep. 2012	Religion in Conflict: Modern East Asia	Huaiyu Chen, Zhange Ni
May 2012	Violence and New Religious Movements	James R. Lewis
April 2012	Waiting, Tolerating, and Cooperating: Modern Religious Belief as a Restraint Device	Mike McCullough
March 2012	Beyond the Arab Spring: Back to Islamism?	Asef Bayat
March 2012	The Global Diffusion of Law: Gender, Transnational Crime and the Case of Human Trafficking	Beth Simmons
Feb. 2012	New Approaches to the Study of Science and Religion	Wesley Wildman
Oct. 2011	Un/Forgiving Memory & Counter/Redemptive Hope: Film Screening and Discussion	Martin Beck Matuštík
Oct. 2011	Notes on the Study of African Religion in the Diaspora	Jualynne E. Dodson
Sep. 2011	Religion and Ethnic Conflict: Observations from the Shatter Zones of Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus	John O’Loughlin
Sep. 2011	The Difference a Decade Makes: Religion, Politics and Public Life
March 2011	Revolution 2.0 in Egypt and Beyond	Merlyna Lim
March 2011	Gender, Religion, and Human Rights: Afghanistan's Changes and Challenges	Marzia Basel
March 2011	Is There a Secular Body?	Charles Hirschkind
March 2011	Is Israeli-Palestinian Peace Possible? Obstacles and Opportunities	Gershon Baskin
Dec 2010	God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics	Daniel Philpott
Dec 2010	Law, Religion, and the Politics of International Human Rights	Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Nov. 2010	Rethinking Public Diplomacy: Religion Discourse in the Middle East	Evelyn A. Early
Nov. 2010	Afghanistan: States of Indeterminacy	Chad Haines
April 2010	Human Sacrifice: Religion and Statecraft	William Hart
Feb. 2010	There's a Spirit that Transcends the Border: Religious Activists for Immigrant Rights	Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
Oct. 2009	Moral Judgment and the Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur	Mathias Thaler
April 2009	Becoming Modern: The Social Gospel and Gender Ideals for a New Era	Susan Curtis
March 2009	'What Would Walter Want?': Walter Rauschenbusch and the Future of Religious Progressivism	Christopher Evans
March 2009	Society as the Subject of Redemption: The Social Gospel, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the Politics of Economic and Racial Justice	Gary Dorrien
Oct. 2008	Heresy and Healing: Conversations on the Soul, Social Justice, and Mental Illness in the Practice of Islam	Stefania Pandolfo