|
|
|
|
October 2016
News and Events
|
|
Contents
01) BCSR Hosts Visiting Fellow Jason S. Sexton
02) BCSR Hosts Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Theology Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
03) October 6 | European Moments in the Making of Islam’s “Image Problem” | Finbarr Barry Flood
All events are free and open to the public.
For more information, visit bcsr.berkeley.edu.
|
|
01) BCSR Hosts Visiting Fellow Jason S. Sexton
 Jason S. Sexton joins BCSR as a visiting fellow through June 2017. He is a Lecturer in the Honors Program at Cal State Fullerton, where he teaches a variety of interdisciplinary courses. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews, and has written widely in the areas of California studies, prison studies, religious studies, and contemporary theology. He is the Editor of the UC Press-published, Boom: A Journal of California; and has edited Theology and California: Theological Refractions on California’s Culture (Routledge) and authored The Trinitarian Theology of Stanley J. Grenz (Bloomsbury). He is currently writing a book that gives an interdisciplinary theological account of the incarcerated church.
|
|
02) BCSR Hosts Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Theology Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
 BCSR is pleased to welcome Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins as the Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Theology for the 2016-17 academic year. As part of BCSR’s Public Theology Program funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, the fellowship seeks to further the development of modes of inquiry that can chart new directions for work in religious studies.
Steinmetz-Jenkins is the managing editor of the Social Science Research Council’s online religion forum, The Immanent Frame, and recently received his Ph.D. in Modern European History from Columbia University. His work primarily focuses on twentieth-century Western European intellectual, religious, and political history with subsidiary interest in American history and religious studies. His dissertation titled, The Other Intellectuals: Raymond Aron and the United States examines Aron’s critical views of various schools of American thought devoted to modernization theory, neoliberalism, and international relations theory. At BCSR Steinmetz-Jenkins will be working on a manuscript titled, Religion and the Left Since 9/11. He has written for The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, Dissent, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
|
|
03) October 6 | European Moments in the Making of Islam's "Image Problem" | Finbarr Barry Flood
Finbarr Barry Flood, Professor of the Humanities, New York University
Thursday, October 6, 5-7pm
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley
 The image of Islam in the West has been consistently informed by the idea that Islam fosters distinctive attitudes towards the image. Recent controversies about Islam, aniconism and iconoclasm are typical in this respect, often taking the idea of an Islamic Bilderverbot (image prohibition) as a given. Seen from the perspective of the longue durée, however, the idea of an image problem is only partly informed by knowledge or understanding of beliefs and practices that are internal to Islam. Representations of Islam produced by non-Muslims over more than a millennium have been no less important to the perception, perhaps even creation, of an Islamic Bilderverbot. This persistent idea should, therefore, be analyzed not only in light of the tenets of Islam, but also as an aspect of European intellectual history. Doing so sheds light upon the current reinvestment of the image as a site for the construction of difference in debates about Islam, secularism and European identity.
|
|
By connecting scholars, students, and the global community, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) fosters critical and creative scholarship on religion and activates this scholarship for students and the public at large.
To receive regular announcements about the BCSR, we invite you to sign up for our mailing list. For more information, or to make a donation, please visit our website.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
