October 2017
News and Events

Contents

Co-sponsored Event

Between Historiography and Literature: "Gershom Sholem's Intellectual Biography"

The famous Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) occupies a central role in our intellectual imagination. He was "the creator of an academic discipline," according to Martin Buber, and is discussed by historians, literary scholars, and philosophers. Yet despite his charismatic personality and the many books and articles he wrote, there is something about him that remains mysterious and somewhat enigmatic. Who was Gershom Scholem and what is it that he contributed, most decisively, to our understanding of culture, history, and politics? In this talk I will address the "Gershom Scholem enigma" and describe the path I took in my book, Gershom Scholem: an Intellectual Biography, to unravel some of its most intriguing aspects, including his historiography of the Kabbalah and the stories that he told about his life, known simply as "from Berlin to Jerusalem." (more)

Co-sponsored Event

Abbess as Alter Christus: Delineating Female Sanctity in Spain and Spanish America

Berkeley Public Theology Program

This multi-day workshop brings together 25 scholars from across the country to discuss newly recognized opportunities in the study of modern American Protestantism. The focus is on how the so-called “mainline” Protestants became increasingly ecumenical, separating themselves from evangelical Protestants while influencing the lives and careers of many men and women who left the churches.

The workshop is open to a limited number of registered guests. For more information, please contact info.bcsr@berkeley.edu

Co-sponsored Event

American Philosophy: The Spiritual and the Real

Philosophy professor John Kaag will discuss his recent American Philosophy: A Love Story, a book that traces his deeply personal engagement with the American philosophical tradition. Covering philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson to William James, American Philosophy raises compelling questions about immanence and transcendence, and how one lives a life worth living in a so-called secular age. Kaag's talk will be accompanied by a temporary exhibition of William James materials, drawn from the archives of the GTU's Center for Swedenborgian Studies... (more)

Co-sponsored Event

Foucault's Enlightenment: Islamic Revolution and the Perils of Universal History

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi examines Foucault’s writings on the Iranian Revolution as an attempt to write the history of the present without binding commitments to a teleological historiography. Is it possible for a people to envision and desire futures uncharted by already existing schemata of history? Is it possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the Enlightenment? Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that Foucault’s encounter with the Iranian revolution left a significant mark on his later works on the care of the self and the hermeneutics of the subject... (more)

Berkeley Public Theology Program

On the History of Religions and the Study of Islam

Islam plays a powerful role in American public discourse. Across this often contentious landscape, numerous voices can be heard defining and contesting the nature of Islam. These definitional problems also shape academic debates, where the seemingly basic question of what is Islam has received renewed attention. This lecture addresses the place and history of Islam in the modern academic study of religion in light of discursive structures that are designed to contain and delimit the meaning of Islam... (more)