Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2019
BCSR faculty and affiliates will offer an array of undergraduate and graduate courses on religion in spring 2020. Covering numerous faiths, regions, periods, and methods, the courses are a testament to the interdisciplinary breadth and historical depth of our offerings. …
Anna Hennessey joins BCSR as a Visiting Scholar through September 2020. Anna Hennessey is a San Francisco author and scholar whose work explores the religious, artistic, and philosophical dimensions of birth. Her recent book, Imagery, Ritual, and Birth: Ontology Between the Sacred and the Secular (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) explores ways in which religious imagery is secularized and re-sacralized during the contemporary …
Ethan Shagan, a BCSR affiliated faculty member and winner of the 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award, will be teaching the new course History 20: Introduction to the History of Religion this spring. The course will introduce students to the history of religion from the earliest written records to the modern world, including the monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the …
Now in its seventh year, BCSR recently added several new members to its advisory board. Robert Braun (Sociology), Stefania Pandolfo (Anthropology) and Ronit Stahl (History) will join current board members Charles Hirschkind, Asma Kazmi, Niklaus Largier, Joanna Picciotto and Jonathan Sheehan, and BCSR co-directors Karen Barkey and David Marno. Robert Braun combines archival work with geographical information systems to study civil …
BCSR is proud to announce that Karen Barkey has joined David Marno as Co-director for the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. Karen succeeds Co-founder Jonathan Sheehan, whose leadership has been pivotal in establishing BCSR and ensuring the success of the $1M grant in Public Theology from the Henry Luce Foundation, now in its final year. Jonathan will continue to serve on BCSR’s advisory board …
The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded a very generous grant to help launch and develop the Political Theology Network. The grant includes a project geared specifically to graduate students in the area: The Political Theology Network’s Dissertation Workshop. A brief word about the initiative: The Dissertation Workshop will award up to 5 grants of $500 each for students who will …
For the fourth consecutive year, BCSR faculty will mentor an intellectually diverse set of New Directions in Theology grant winners throughout the academic year. Representing eight disciplines, with interests ranging from antiquity to the present, the incoming New Directions students will regularly meet with BCSR faculty to discuss contemporary religious research and to refine their academic projects. The New Directions …
We have good news regarding one of our most successful program, the New Directions in Theology Grants. BCSR recently received an extension of funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, which supports the Berkeley Public Theology Program, and will be able to continue the New Directions program for another year. New Directions in Theology grantees participate in a cohort of students …
May 2019 Dear Friends of BCSR, 2018-2019 has been an exceptional year for the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. We’d like to bring you up to date on our current and planned activities, and thank you for helping to make this year such a success. Our biggest efforts and events revolved around the third year of programming from …
An ongoing series on current and recent Berkeley grads working on religion. As part of our series spotlighting UC Berkeley graduate student research, BCSR recently had the opportunity to sit down with Simon Brown, a doctoral candidate in European History. His dissertation is tentatively titled “Useful Subjects: English Practical Divinity and Useful Knowledge from Reformation to Enlightenment.” BCSR: Could you tell us about your …
The Center has been busy! Recordings of the following events are available on Soundcloud or YouTube. April 25: “‘Doing’ Political Theology Today: Promises and Pitfalls” Ruth Marshall: SoundCloud Recording April 3: “The Creative Repercussions of Counterculture” Haroon Mirza: SoundCloud Recording March 13: “What’s Theology Got to Do With It? An Eighteenth-Century Chinese Emperor Debating Religions and Christianity” Eugenio Menegon: SoundCloud Recording …
For the past two years, the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, has convened a series of workshops and seminars concerning, broadly speaking, the place of theology in the university. From the outset, our goal was to challenge narrow conceptions of both secular learning and “theology,” in hopes of fostering robust conversation about …
