Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, will give the keynote address, “Religion, Belief, and Politics,” at Macalester College on October 23, 2009. Assad has won international renown for his work on secularism. His best known books include On Suicide Bombing (The Wellek Library Lectures), Columbia Univ. Press 2007; Formations of the Secular, Stanford Univ. Press 2003; and Genealogies of Religion, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993. The lecture is open to the public and will take place at 4:45 p.m. in the John B. Davis auditorium of the Ruth Stricker Campus Center.

Asad’s lecture will challenge current views of religion that identify it almost exclusively with belief and will argue instead for a more expansive understanding of the role of the body in religion. Such a view of religion would challenge our current ideas of secularism and subsequently the relation or religion and politics.

The Symposium is sponsored by the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching and funded by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The symposium will continue through the weekend with presentations made by Macalester faculty representing disciplines across the humanities and cultural studies. Topics will range from the history of the emergence of the modern category of the secular to its effectiveness as a response to religious pluralism. These sessions are open to faculty and students and will be held in the fourth floor lounge of Old Main beginning Saturday morning through Sunday at lunch. Each presenter will give a 30-minute paper, followed by a half hour for questions, answers, and general discussion. Precise titles and times appear below:

Saturday, October 24, 2009
4th Floor Old Main

9:15 AM	Opening Remarks Paula Cooey & David Martyn
9:30	“Mood, Meaning, and Meta-religion: Rethinking Religion and Secularism” James W. Laine (Religious Studies)
10:30	Coffee Break
11:00	“Islamists and the Reproduction of the Eurocentric Temporal Template of Colonial Secular Modernity” Khaldoun Samman (Sociology)
12:00	Lunch
2:00	“In him we live and move: The Secular Space of Newton’s Physico-Theology” Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy)
3:00	“Trauerspiel and Secular Times: Amor Fati, Magic, Contingency, and Prevemption” A. Kiarina Kordela (German Studies)
4:00	Coffee Break
4:30	“The Relative Virtues of Theodicy: Adam Smith and Neoclassical Economics on the Necessity of Evil” David L. Blaney (Political Science)
5:30	Adjournment

Sunday, October 25, 2009
4th Floor Old Main

9:30 AM	“Can Justice Be Blind regarding Religion in the United States? The Limits of Theolegal Theory as an Alternative to Secularism” Paula M. Cooey (Religious Studies)
10:30	Coffee Break
11:00	French Laïcité and Its Paradoxes: Secularism à la Française” Joëlle Vitiello (French and Francophone Studies)
12:00	Concluding Remarks and Discussion Clay Steinman (Humanities, Media, and Cultural Studies)
1:00	Adjournment