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.
Recent Conversations
Complete Archive
| Date | Event | Speaker(s) | Links | ||||||||
| APR 2021 | What Good is Theory? Religion, Critique, and Truth | Vincent Lloyd Mayanthi L. Fernando Andrew Prevot Inese Radzins Jason Josephson Storm |
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| APR 2021 | Laid Bare: Surveillance, Eugenics, and Personhood | Sylvester Johnson Charles McCrary |
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| APR 2021 | Science, Religion, and Society: Lessons from the U.S. Case | Andrew Jewett | Video | ||||||||
| MAR 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 | ||||||||
| JUN 2020 | Laid Bare: Contagion & Community | Arnold Eisen Lauren Gilger Ben Hurlbut |
Video | ||||||||
| APR 2020 | COVID-19, Religion, & Humanity: Dispatches from the Frontlines | Patrick Gilger Anand Gopal |
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| MAR 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 |
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| 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 |
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| APR 2019 | Religion, Media, and Climate Change: What's the Story? | Ben Ehrenreich Tulasi Srinivas Jeffrey Cohen |
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| APR 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 |
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| APR 2018 | Language Emancipation of Slavic Microlanguages: A Comparative Case Study | Motoki Nomachi | |||||||||
| APR 2018 | The Kosovan Gorani Ethnolect: A Borderland Enclave in Search of Linguistic Identity | Motoki Nomachi | |||||||||
| APR 2018 | War in a Warming World | Mark Douglas | Video | ||||||||
| MAR 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 |
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| NOV 2017 | America’s War Against ISIS: The Ground View | Anand Gopal | |||||||||
| MAR 2017 | Religion, Civilization, Cooperation and Conflict | Edward Slingerland | |||||||||
| MAR 2017 | Making Sense of the Trump Revolt: Where Do the Two Parties Go from Here? | Joshua Mitchell | |||||||||
| MAR 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 |
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| APR 2016 | Islam and Democracy During Global Transitions | Daisy Khan | |||||||||
| APR 2016 | Interactions and Interchanges: Has the Animal Question Displaced the Woman (of Color) Question?: Diffracting Posthumanities with Intersectionality | Rachel Lee | |||||||||
| APR 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 |
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| SEP 2015 | Choreographing the Trauma of the Syrian Revolution | Miriam Cooke | |||||||||
| APR 2015 | Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy | Alice Kang | |||||||||
| APR 2015 | The Catholic Church and the Mexican Revolution | Phil Stover | |||||||||
| APR 2015 | Radioactive Ghosts: Precarious Lives in the Aftermath of Nuclear Contamination | Gabriele M. Schwab | |||||||||
| APR 2015 | Interactions and Interchanges: Beyond the Hijab: Pakistani Women’s Perspectives | Kanza Javed Tehreem Aurakzai Mawhish Khan Zahra Hamdani Aisha Usman |
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| MAR 2015 | Global Dynamics of Violent Extremism | Chad Haines Abdullahi Gallab Ibrahim Hassan Raza Rumi |
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| 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 | |||||||||
| APR 2014 | Soft Power and Web 2.0: Public Diplomacy as Anti-Terrorism | Valentina Bartolucci | |||||||||
| APR 2014 | Safety, Soldier, Scapegoat: Pat Tillman and American Civil Religion | Jonathan Ebel | |||||||||
| MAR 2014 | The Transhumanist Imagination: Technological Singularity: A Crucial Event in God's Self-Actualization? | Michael Zimmerman | |||||||||
| MAR 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 | |||||||||
| 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 | |||||||||
| APR 2013 | The Bad, the Ugly-but Maybe Some Good?- of Religion and Intergroup Relations | Steven Neuberg | |||||||||
| APR 2013 | The Transhumanist Imagination: Governance, Progress and Converging Technologies | Brice Laurent | |||||||||
| MAR 2013 | The Politics of Native American Religious Freedom | Suzan Harjo | |||||||||
| MAR 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 |
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| 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 |
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| OCT 2012 | The Legal Response to Hate Speech: Should the U.S. be more like Europe? | Jeremy Waldron James Weinstein |
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| 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 | |||||||||
| APR 2012 | Waiting, Tolerating, and Cooperating: Modern Religious Belief as a Restraint Device | Mike McCullough | |||||||||
| MAR 2012 | Beyond the Arab Spring: Back to Islamism? | Asef Bayat | |||||||||
| MAR 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 | ||||||||||
| MAR 2011 | Revolution 2.0 in Egypt and Beyond | Merlyna Lim | |||||||||
| MAR 2011 | Gender, Religion, and Human Rights: Afghanistan's Changes and Challenges | Marzia Basel | |||||||||
| MAR 2011 | Is There a Secular Body? | Charles Hirschkind | |||||||||
| MAR 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 | |||||||||
| APR 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 | |||||||||
| APR 2009 | Becoming Modern: The Social Gospel and Gender Ideals for a New Era | Susan Curtis | |||||||||
| MAR 2009 | 'What Would Walter Want?': Walter Rauschenbusch and the Future of Religious Progressivism | Christopher Evans | |||||||||
| MAR 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 |