Events
Coming Events
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Recent Past Events
Thursday April 12, 2012 at 1pm 311 Bessey Hall Dr. Taylor Petrey will speak on
The Birth and Body of Christ in Early Christianity
For more information on this event please contact Dr. Chris Frilingos, Religious Studies Department at frilingos@msu.edu.
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Thursday, April 12, 4 p.m.
Lake Superior Room, MSU Union
Dr. Kathryn Lofton, Yale University, will speak on
Your Best Life is Mine: Oprah Winfrey and Modern American Religion
Russel Nye Lecture
American Studies
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Wednesday April 18th 6:15pm-8:30pm 158 Natural Resources BuildingSee the first full-length, high-definition documentary film ever made about legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold and his environmental legacy
Green Fire shares highlights from his extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation and the modern environmental movement. It also illustrates how Leopold’s vision of a community that cares about both people and land continues to inform and inspire people across the country and around the world. Leopold’s ideas remain relevant today, continuing to inspire projects nationwide that connect people and land.
Panel Discussion will follow: Including faculty from Fisheries and Wildlife, James Madison College, Religious Studies, and Lyman Briggs, food will be provided.
Presented by the MSU Fisheries and Wildlife Club and Fisheries and Wildlife Graduate Student Organization
With support from MSU Library, MSU Office of Campus Sustainability, and The Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability
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Religious Awareness Week (click here for more info!)
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Wednesday April 12th, 2012 at 3pm 316 Bessey Hall Dr. Todd Tremlin will speak on
Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion
Come join us for this lively illustrated talk on our continuing series: Science and Religion: Beyond the Polemics.
A College of Arts and Letters Themed Year Event. Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies.
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Monday, March 26th, 2012 3:00pm-4:20pm C113 Wells Hall
Join us for the only American showing of a short Norwegian documentary film on the little-known, endangered, and often misunderstood ancient Yezidi religious tradition, whose home is Kurdistan. Followed by a conversation with Lazgin Barany (University of Duhok), who is featured in the film.
Sponsored by the Religious Studies Department Co-Sponsored by Asian Studies and the College of Arts and Letters
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Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7pm
International Center CIP 115
Dr. Diane Moore will speak on
“What Americans Don’t Know About Religion”
Religious illiteracy has more social and political implications than you might have thought. In this dynamic public talk, Professor Diane Moore, author of Overcoming Religious Illiteracy and recipient of an Outstanding Teacher of the Year award at Harvard University, demonstrates the surprising lack of religious knowledge in American society, and its global implications.
* Senior Lecturer on Religious Studies and Education
* Senior Fellow at The Center for the Study of World Religions
* Director of the Religious Literacy Project
* Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, Harvard University
Professor Diane L. Moore pursues research interests in the public understanding of religion through education. She is the director of the Harvard Religious Literacy Project and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Religion and Education and British Journal of Religious Education. An Outstanding Teacher of the Year award-winner at Harvard, she is also chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Task Force on Religion in the Schools, and directs the Harvard Program in Religious Studies and Education. Her talk is based on her book Overcoming Religious Illiteracy.
A College of Arts & Letters Themed Year Event
Sponsored by Religious Studies Department and ASMSU
Co-sponsored by MSU College of Education, MSU Honors College, Jewish Studies, and Muslim Studies
Friday, March 16, 2012 1:30pm-3:00pm
International Center 201 Professor Amy DeRogatis will speak on
“Sex and the Single Evangelical: Female Purity Literature and Rituals from Birth to Adulthood”
Dr. DeRogatis will survey evangelical purity literature from children’s books to young adult popular magazines, focusing on advice and rituals aimed at young women who seek to maintain a “purity lifestyle.” She will discuss how purity balls, modesty fashion shows, chastity pledge cards, courting manuals, and date nights with Jesus operate to mold and monitor female born-again bodies and minds with the promise of earthly and heavenly rewards.
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Wednesday March 21, 2012 7:30pm Wharton CenterAn Evening with Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD., is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity and human resources. He works with governments in Europe, Asia, and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. The resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by politicians of all parties and by business, education and cultural leaders across the Province. He was one of four international advisers to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.
For 12 years, he was professor of education at the University of Warwick in the UK and is now professor emeritus. He has received honorary degrees from the Open University and the Central School of Speech and Drama; Birmingham City University, and the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. He was been honored with the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design for services to the arts and education; the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2005, he was named as one of Time/Fortune/CNN’s “Principal Voices.” In 2003, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts. He speaks to audiences throughout the world on the creative challenges facing business and education in the new global economies.
His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Penguin/Viking 2009) was a New York Times best-seller and is being translated into eight different languages.
Tickets can be purchased at http://www.whartoncenter.com/
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 4:30pm
111 Berkey Hall
Professor Doug Sjoquist will speak on
“Corporate Hinduism in America”
America has been exporting its culture to the rest of the world via movies, TV shows, pop music, and other forms of entertainment for a long time but especially since the communications revolution in the 1980s when improved technologies spawned the concept of globalization. This same globalization, in turn, has allowed Americans to borrow freely from other cultures. It appears that when we borrow from other cultures, however, the borrowing is mostly used to sell products. American advertisers, for example, frequently co-opt the language and the culture of Hinduism in marketing products like perfume, films, and even car insurance.
This presentation will explore the existence of Hindu language and imagery in American advertising and discuss how the Hindu words and images are employed. What’s lost in the translation? Is there a danger of promoting cultural misunderstandings? Do Americans even know the cultural origins of the words and images used in such advertising?
Professor Sjoquist is the lead Religious Studies faculty member at Lansing Community College and is a visiting professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Religious Studies teaching Hinduism (REL 340).
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 7 p.m.
International Center CIP 115
Prof. Jeffrey Kripal will speak on
“The Religious Origins and Meanings of Superheroes”
Characters like Superman and Batman, and movies like The Matrix and Star Wars all have hidden religious origins and meanings. In this engaging, illustrated free public talk, Professor Jeffrey Kripal introduces the subject of his latest book, Mutants and Mystics (University of Chicago, 2011), and shows how religion and the paranormal plays a central role in contemporary popular culture.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Endowed Chair at Rice University, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago, 2011); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2006); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago 1995). He has also co-edited volumes with: Wouter Hanegraaff on eroticism and esotericism, Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (University of Amsterdam Press, 2008); Glenn W. Shuck on the history of Esalen and the American counterculture, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture (Indiana, 2005); Rachel Fell McDermott on a popular Hindu goddess, Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (California, 2003); G. William Barnard on the ethical critique of mystical traditions, Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (Seven Bridges, 2002); and T.G. Vaidyanathan of Bangalore, India, on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism (Oxford, 1999). His present areas of interest include the re-visioning and renewal of the comparative method in the study of religion, the comparative erotics of mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religious traditions, and the history of Western esotericism from ancient Gnosticism to the New Age.
A College of Arts and Letters Themed Year Event. Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies. Co-sponsored by the Department of English, The Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, and the MSU Honors College.
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Friday, 3 February, 2012 from noon to 1 p.m., in 116 Morrill Hall
The Department of Religious Studies hosts our
Spring 2012 Open House Pizza Party
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Click here to see this Religious Studies faculty panel in the news!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 7:00pm
International Center CIP 115
“Religion and Politics”
Representing the Department of Religious Studies, James Madison College, and the College of Law, professors from each department will join together in a panel to discuss the role of religion in contemporary American politics and the 2012 election.
The panel members:
Gene Burns, Ph.D., James Madison College
Frank Ravitch, J.D., LL.M., College of Law
Amy DeRogatis, Ph.D., Department of Religious Studies
Mohammad Khalil, Ph.D., Department of Religious Studies
Moderated by David Stowe, Ph.D., Department of English/Department of Religious Studies
Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, James Madison College, and the College of Law.
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Friday, December 2 at 2pm
MSU Union, Lake Ontario room
Dr. Anna Peterson, University of Florida
“Ethics, Nature, and Religion”
Dr. Anna Peterson is a professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her main research and teaching areas are environmental and social ethics, religion and politics, and religion in Latin America. Her books include Residence on Earth: Utopian Communities in the Americas (2005), which compares the experiences of returned refugees in eastern El Salvador and those of Amish farmers in the Midwestern U.S. The book brings together her interests in the sociology of religion and ethics. She has also written about ethics in more theoretical works, including her book Being Human: Ethics, Environment, and Our Place in the World (2001), which explores the complex connections among conceptions of human nature and attitudes toward non-human nature. Anna Peterson’s latest book is Everyday Ethics and Social Change: The Education of Desire (2009). The book explores the ethics embedded in interpersonal relationships and encounters with non-human nature and their potential as a resource for progressive social change. Professor Peterson is involved in a collaborative project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to develop curriculum and material for teaching environmental ethics to scientists, engineers, and technology professionals.
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“Put a Ring on It: Popular Culture and the Moral Economy of Sexual Purity”
Dr. Sara Moslener, Kalamazoo College
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3pm
Wells Hall B122
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Sara Moslener holds a doctorate in U.S. Religious history from Claremont Graduate University and is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College. She is currently at work on a book titled Saving Civilization: Sexual Purity from the White Cross to the Silver Ring, which examines apocalyptic themes within evangelical purity culture.
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Part of the Department of Religious Studies
Religion and U.S. Culture Series
“Catholic and American: Does American Matter?”
Dr. David O’Brien
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 7pm
in the MSU Union, Parlor Room C:
The Sixth Annual Endowed Lecture in American Catholic Thought and Culture
The College of Arts and Letters
Religious Studies Fall Open House:
Friday, September 9, 2011 from 12pm - 1:00pm, 116 Morrill Hall
Religious Studies Discussion Group first meeting of the semester:
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 from 6:30pm - 8:00pm, 116 Morrill Hall
“Science and Religion: Beyond the Polemics”
On April 6, 2011, as part of our Religious Studies Discussion Series “Science and Religion: Beyond the Polemics”, we welcomed Andrew Newberg, M.D. to the MSU campus for a presentation that introduced the cutting-edge intersection of science and religion today in the scope of neuroscience. This past November, also as part of our Religious Studies Discussion Series, we enjoyed a fruitful and informative discussion with Dr. Michael Boivin, who discussed the effects of spirituality on the brain of cancer patients. Please follow the link below for additional information and links, as well as photos from the Newberg event:
Spirituality and Medicine Resources and Photos
Religious Studies Student Discussion Group
Contact Sara Lone (lonesara@msu.edu), group president. A student discussion group and registered student organization (RSO) dedicated to topics in religion. Visit the Religious Studies Discussion Group Facebook page here for events and all of the details.
Campus Interfaith Council
The Campus Interfaith Council (CIC) seeks to promote relationships between peoples of differing faiths, work to integrate a religious aspect into student life, and encourage interfaith cooperation and understanding, and aid students in maintaining personal religious identities through dialogue, community service, and collaborative events. The CIC is a member of ASMSU with voice and vote on the Programming Board and Student Council.
*Visit the website for more details, click here.
Contact Nada Zohdy (zohdynad@msu.edu) or Rebecca Farnum (farnumre@msu.edu) with questions.
In order to facilitate communication between our department and the surrounding community, we occasionally publish a newsletter. Peruse our winter 2011 newsletter here.
Our Department events archive is here.
