#  Orientalism and Religion Colloquium 

 





March 25, 2015

 

 

The Center regularly hosts public lectures, book events, and occasional conversations such as those included in the Religion in the News lunch series. But also of great importance to the Center’s mission are the regular colloquia and reading groups we sponsor. Three such groups currently meet.

2014-15 marks the third year of the *Comparative Studies Colloquium* for faculty and doctoral students, convened by Professor Kimberley Patton and myself. This colloquium provides an opportunity for a wide range of doctoral students in different fields in the study of religion to share work in progress that crosses religious and theological, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. (You may contact me for further information.)

This year, we have been happy to host also the *Religions and Peacemaking Colloquium*, convened by Dean David Hempton and Professor Diana Eck, similarly open to faculty of the Divinity School and wider university, as well as interested Harvard students who join the colloquium. Each month, speakers and panels take up timely instances of peacemaking and constructive work and witness in the face of violence, thus highlighting the constructive role religious people play in the work of peace. (Regarding this colloquium, contact doctoral student, Elizabeth Lee-Hood.)

This semester, we have been happy to add a new Reading Group on *Orientalism and Religions*, convened by Professor Charles Stang and myself, open to Harvard faculty and students. (In past years, reading groups focused on the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben.) This new reading group has thus far focused on Edward W. Said’s well-known 1978 *Orientalism*, with particular attention both to precedents in the post-war period, and ensuing, still lively reactions to the book and the issues it raised. Future meetings this spring, and possibly next year, will focus on how the critique of orientalism and sensitivity to the array of related issues about individual and systemic bias in the study of religions and the construction of our religious others affects the study of religions today. (Contact me or Professor Stang for further information.)

These ongoing conversations are essential to the mission of the Center in fostering the exchange of ideas on important academic themes and issues of contemporary importance, regular conversation among faculty and students and, in short, intellectual collaboration as a way of proceeding essential to the life of a contemporary university.

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