The Awakening of Muslim Democracy

March 26, 2015
The Awakening of Muslim Democracy

As reported a few weeks ago in a report on Mark Jordan’s Convulsing Bodies (with the video of the session here), one of the distinctive and most interesting instances of Center programming are sessions devoted to the discussion of new faculty books.

These events, scheduled whenever there appears a new book by an interested faculty member in the Divinity School, Committee on the Study of Religion, or related fields, give us the invaluable opportunity to pay closer attention to our colleagues work, to learn more about how authors go about choosing topics and pursuing their research and seeing it through to publication. Each session begins with the author’s own account of the book, followed by comments by two or three discussants who respond to the book from angles of their own choosing. General discussion ensues.

On March 26, the Center hosted another in this series, devoted to The Awakening of Muslim Democracy: Religion, Modernity and the State, by Jocelyne Cesari, Lecturer on Islamic Studies (HDS), Research Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (FAS), and Director of the Islam in the West Program (FAS). The discussants were Ousmane Khan (Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at HDS, and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in FAS), and Liah Greenfeld (University Professor and Professor of Sociology, Political Science and Anthropology at Boston University). The video of the conversation will be posted soon, and you can read a recent interview on the book with Professor Cesari here.

There are still two more book events this semester, both at 5:15PM in the Center Common Room:

April 14, Kevin Madigan’s Medieval Christianity: A New History; discussants: Luis Giron-Negron, Amy Hollywood

April 20, Frank Clooney’s His Hiding Place Is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence; discussants:  Jorie Graham (FAS), Kimberley Patton, Catherine Cornille (Boston College).

These events are open to the university and to the wider community, so if you are in the area, please do stop in.

—By Francis X. Clooney, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions

See also: Faculty Book