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2009 - Religion in the American Public Square 2008 - The Environment, Citizenship, and the Public Good 2007 - Meditations on Global Citizenship |
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This year, the focus will be on the intersection of the concepts of "civic life" and "religion" in the US, with the goal of exploring the following "big" normative question: What should be the role of religion (practice, symbols, etc) in contemporary American public life? The Forum will begin with a keynote address by Dr. Linell Cady, the Franca Oreffice Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University. Professor Cady will explore some of the conflicts and conundrums surrounding the interface between religion and secularism in American public life. We live in a time when the loudest voices—from the “new atheists” to the Religious Right—advance pictures of antagonism and opposition between religion and secularism, as if they were locked in a zero-sum game. Drawing upon recent historical work and examples from the 2008 presidential campaign, she will call attention to a very different trajectory that reveals the collusion, even fusion, of religious and secular visions and values. She concludes that developing a more adequate map of the alignments of religion and secularism in our nation’s life, past and present, offers insights into how to envision and enact their relationship in 21st-century America. TUESDAY, MARCH 24 5:00–6:00 p.m. Keynote Address 6:00–6:30 p.m. Response WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25 9:40–10:10 a.m. Educating the Global Citizen: 10:10–10:40 a.m. The Second Opinion: 10:40–10:55 a.m. Coffee Break 10:55–11:15 a.m. Response 11:15 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Questions and Comments 12:00–1:30 p.m. Lunch Break WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25 1:40–2:10 p.m. Working the System: The Role of Islam in Student Negotiations of a Midwestern Charter School 2:10–2:40 p.m. “We Are Moderate Muslims!”: An Investigation into the Valorization of this Phrase in Post-9/11 America 2:40–2:55 p.m. Coffee Break 2:55–3:15 p.m. Response 3:15–4:00 p.m. Questions and Comments 4:00–4:05 p.m. Closing Remarks 4:30–6:00 p.m. Sustain the Conversation PRESENTERSLinell Cady is Franca G. Oreffice Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University. She received her B.A. from Newton College and her M.T.S. and Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School. In 1983 she joined the faculty at ASU where she has served as departmental chair and associate and interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her research has focused primarily on the intersections of religion and the public/private boundary in the United States. Topics of particular interest include the construction of the modern category of religion and its interface with understandings of the secular, and the contested role of religion in public life. She is the author of Religion, Theology, and American Public Life and co-editor of Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain and Religion and Conflict in South and Southeast Asia. Her articles have appeared in anthologies and such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, and Journal of Religious Ethics. She currently serves as co-editor of Religion Dispatches, an online magazine that explores the intersections of religion and public life. She is also directing two projects funded by the Ford Foundation. The first, “Religion, Secularism, and Democracy: A Crossdisciplinary, International Project,” is a comparative study of secularisms and the public role of religion in four democracies: France, India, Turkey, and the United States. The second, “Teaching and Talking About Religion in Public,” part of Ford’s “Difficult Dialogues” initiative, is supporting the development of an undergraduate certificate program in religion and conflict at ASU. Liza Baer ’09 is a Religious Studies and International Studies double major. In the spring of 2008, she was fortunate to intern with the Institute for the Study of Islam and the Societies of the Muslim World, in Paris, France, where her interest in Islam’s diverse manifestations worldwide solidified. Now back in the Twin Cities, Liza works at a school attended primarily by Somali Muslims. She would like to thank that school’s staff and students for helping her carry out her case study and discover a new passion: teaching English-language learners. Aurora Sekine ’09 is a graduating senior with majors in Religious Studies and Japanese. Her initial interest in the study of religion was sparked by her first-year course on the religious traditions of Japan, and in the future, she plans to pursue graduate school in Japanese/East Asian religions. Aurora is also active in the immigrant/adult education community of the Twin Cities where she teaches GED preparation courses in math and science. She plans to join Teach for America as a high school math teacher in Fall 2009. Sher Afgan Tareen ’11 is a double major in Anthropology and Religious Studies. He has been a member of the Macalester Choir for the past two years. Being an enthusiastic singer, Sher Afgan was also a member of the St. Agnes Catholic Chorale last semester. Highlights include singing the Faurie Requiem and the Christmas Eve mass. As a freshman last year, Sher Afgan tutored a third grade student at Linwood Elementary School as part of the Civic Engagement Program. In high school, he initiated a Student Ethics Club. Andy Ver Steegh ’09 is a double major in Political Science and Classics. He is writing an honors thesis on the theory and practice of cosmopolitan political philosophy. As a Chuck Green Fellow in 2007, he worked with Minnesota 2020, a non-partisan public policy think tank. He studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo in the spring of 2008, followed by time at the Kenchreai Cemetery Excavations in Corinth, Greece. Selected as one of two inaugural Macalester-Harvard Interns in summer 2008, he spent time as a research assistant at the Hellenic Center for European Studies, a public policy think tank in Athens. |
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