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Founded in 1974 by faculty from departments and programs across campus, the Comparative Religion Program today continues its tradition of interdisciplinary instruction. Its teaching faculty are pulled from such programs and departments as Sociology, Classics, History, Near East Languages and Civilization, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, as well as from the School of Law and other professional schools on campus.
The Program is virtually unique in the United States in that it is located within a school of international studies giving students access to resources from every region of the world. The Program's faculty have earned both local and national recognition for their distinguished record of education, scholarship, and public service.
The Program's goal is to provide the university community with opportunities to reflect on the complex role religion has played throughout history. Through its continuing presentation of public lectures, symposia, and conferences, the Program seeks to explore the impact of religion on human security, democracy, and on politics, economics, and pressing social issues of contemporary life. For more about the Luce Foundation symposium, faculty and graduate student news, and on- and off-campus events, please check the web-site http://jsis.washington.edu/religion/humsec/.
James K. Wellman, Jr.
Chair, Comparative Religion Program
Breaking News
Monday, April 28th
Comparative Religion graduate student, Mike Heyes, has been admitted to Rice University where he will enter the Ph.D. program focusing on Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Esotericism in mid-August 2008.
Ian Harris speaks on "Buddhism under Pol Pot" at 7:30 PM, Kane Hall 220.Based on fieldwork and archival research over a three year period, this illustrated presentation will highlight the manner in which the Khmer Rouge shifted from co-opting socially progressive segments of the Buddhist monastic order (sangha) in the early years of the 1970s to the almost total destruction of organized religion in Cambodia by the time they were ousted in 1979. It will also examine the Buddhist origins of communism in Cambodia, the re-emergence of Buddhism in the early 1980s, and best estimates of the numbers of monks who perished during Democratic Kampuchea.
Professor of Buddhist Studies, Division of Religion and Philosophy, University of Cumbria, England. He is currently Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada Foundation Visiting Professor on Buddhism and Contemporary Society at Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogacara in Early Mahayana Buddhism (E.J. Brill, 1991), co-editor of Contemporary Religions: A World Guide (Longman, 1992), and Cambodian Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2005). He studied at the Universities of Cambridge and Lancaster, receiving a doctorate in Buddhist philosophy from the latter, and has written a number of articles on Buddhism and ecological ethics. Over the last ten years he has concentrated on the political manifestations of Buddhism in South and South-East Asia, particularly Cambodia. He is a founding member of the U.K. Buddhist Studies Association and editor of the Bulletin of the British Association for the Study of Religions.
Thursday April 10, 2008
Lindsey DeWitt will be the only entering student admitted to the Buddhist Studies Program in UCLA's Asian Languages & Cultures Department. She will study with William Bodiford, noted scholar of Soto Zen Institutional History in Japan. Lindsey has been offered a full scholarship for a minimum of four year: two years are fellowship and the other two will be part-time T.A.ships and/or graduate mentorship with faculty. The program is quite small, but full of first-rate scholars and students pursuing exciting work.This summer, she has been accepted to and hopes to attend, Stanford's IUC Summer language program in Japan before matriculating at UCLA. Linsdsey plans to move to Los Angeles with my boyfriend and dog. "We will probably live in West Hollywood, quite a change from Seattle, but nice nonetheless," she says.
Wednesday, May 21
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Prof. James Wellman will speak about his new book, "Evangelical vs Liberal: The Clash of the Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest" at the University Bookstore @ 7 PM.
The cultural conflict that increasingly divides American society is particularly evident within Protestant Christianity. Liberals and evangelicals clash in bitter competition for the future of their respective subcultures. In this book, James Wellman examines this conflict as it is played out in the American Northwest.
Drawing on an in-depth study of twenty-four of the area’s fastest- growing evangelical churches and ten vital liberal Protestant congregations, Wellman captures the leading trends of each group and their interaction with the wider American culture. He finds a remarkable depth of disagreement between the two groups on almost every front. Where evangelicals are willing to draw sharp lines on gay marriage and abortion, liberals complain about evangelical self-righteousness and disregard for personal freedoms. Liberals prefer the moral power of inclusiveness, while evangelicals frame their moral stances as part of a metaphysical struggle between good and evil. The entrepreneurial nature of evangelicalism translates into support of laissez-faire capitalism and democratic political advocacy. Liberals view both policies with varying degrees of apprehension. Such differences are significant on a national scale, with implications for the future of American Protestantism in particular and American culture in general.
Both groups act in good faith and with good intentions, and each maintains a moral core that furthers its own identity, ideology, ritual, mission, and politics. In some situations, they share similar attitudes despite having different beliefs. Attending church services and interviewing senior pastors, lay leaders and new members, Wellman is able to provide new insights into the convenient categories of "liberal" and "evangelical," the nature of the conflict, and the myriad ways in which both groups affect and are affected by American culture.
PAST EVENTS
Thursday, April 10
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Norton's talk, "The Shi'i Crescent? Discordant Notes from the Field," surveys several important Arab Shi'i community projects and assess whether the feared "Shi'i Crescent" is a convenient fallacy or emerging reality. He draws on recent fieldwork in Bahrain (2008), Kuwait (2007) and Lebanon (2007), as well as evidence from Iraq. The lecture will include a number of the speaker's photographs of political and religious rituals practiced by Arab Shi'i Muslims.
Norton headed the Ford Foundation's "Civil Society in the Middle East" program at New York University in the 1990s, co-chaired by Farhad Kazemi. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, co-founder of the Conference Group on the Middle East, and a co-founder of the Boston Forum on the Middle East.. In 2006-7 he held a Senior Fulbright Research Fellowship in Egypt, Kuwait and Bangladesh. He held earlier Senior Fulbright Fellowships in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Norway. A former Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Islamic Studies, he serves on the Centre's Academic Advisory Board.
Webb Scholars for 2008 Announced
Sasha Prevost and Ben Nickodemus have been awarded the Eugene and Marilyn Webb Scholarship for 2008. Congratulations!
The award is based on merit alone and requires a sample of the student's best writing for the committee's consideration.
Ms Prevost, an undergraduate, stood out for her thoughtful contributions to discussion and excellent writing "right up there with graduate students' work."
First year graduate student, Ben Nickodemus submitted a paper from his Religion 502 class entitled, "The Religion of Scripture to Humanity: Origen of Alexandria's Hermeneutic," for the Committee's consideration. It was praised for its fine research and excellent writing.
The Webb is open to undergraduates majoring in Comparative Religion majors and to the Program's graduate students.
Congratulations!
Editorial by Program Chair Appears
An editorial by Professor James Wellman, chair of the Comparative Religion Program appeared in the Feb. 7th issue of the Seattle Times on Baraka Obama. For the entire essay please link to http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004168377_wellman07.html
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Globalization, Religion, and the 'Class of Civilizations' Wednesday February 6, 7:30 p.m. View Flyer for more information |
BREAKING NEWS
December 6, 2007
Global Studies to Co-Sponsor Series
The Center for Global Studies at the UW's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies will allocate $6,000.00 towards The Global Religions and Human Security Lecture Series. The series will explore the role of religion in today’s world and the way it both enhances human security and can undercut it.
IThe lectures, supported in part by the Henry M. Luce Foundation, are designed to educate the public, extend research on the issues, and to create public policies that enhance and secure human security. The series is supported by the Luce Foundation, The Center for Global Studies, and by the Founders Annual Lecture in Religion and Contemporary Life.
The series will showcase policy professionals from the arenas of national security, law, and US foreign policy as well as academic researchers across the spectrum of politics, religion, law, and anthropology. Each will examine religion and its interface with issues of globalization, human security, and humanitarian need. The Annual Lecture in Comparative Religion and Contemporary Life presented next year by Prof. Martin Riesebrodt will inaugurate this series in February. Additional speakers include: C. Christine Fair (2008 Henry M. Luce Fellow), Prof. Martin Putna (Charles University, Czechoslovakia), Prof. A.R. Norton (Boston University), and Prof. Ian Harris (University of British Columbia).
All presentations are free.
November 9, 2007
NPR Interviews Grad Student
Kyla Pasha, currently on leave from the Comparative Religion MA program
at the UW while employed as a university lecturer in Lahore, Pakistan, was
interviewed on NPR this morning concerning the flow of information via
alternative media during the current political crisis. She stated that
Pakistanis - particularly young Pakistanis - are getting information via
the Internet while television news is blacked out.
Kyla plans to return to the UW graduate program in W 08 to complete her
degree program with a primary concentration in Islamic studies and a
secondary concentration in Jewish Studies.
Kyla has served brilliantly as a TA in RELIG 380 ("Theory of Religion") and
is the author of a widely-discussed blog (www.kylapasha.com).
Reflecting on the interview, Ms. Pasha reports in a personal email that "I
just got reamed by a freind for using an American accent and not sounding
desi enough." Well, Kyla, as Roseanne Rosanadana would say: "It's always SOMETHING!"
To hear the NPR interview www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16143471
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November 8, 2007
Graduate students Jen Callaghan, Amy Underkoffler, and Emily Morrison have been awarded travel grants by the Graduate and Professional Student Senate. The awards are made on the basis of personal statements and faculty recommendations. The three will use the support to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion to be held November 17 - 20 in San Diego.
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November 6, 2007
Kudos to graduate student, Laurel Gordon, whose article on Russian religious identity will appear shortly in The International Affairs Journal (UC Davis).
Titlted, “Right to Limit Religious Rights? the Russian government’s maltreatment of minority Protestant religions and favoritism of Russian Orthodoxy,” it focuses on comparing the treatment of the Russian Orthodox Church and minority religions by the Russian government.
“I attempt to evaluate the proclaimed “secularism” of this system,” explained Laurel, "and hope to demonstrate that attempts by the Russian government at “secularism” cannot be properly evaluated by a Western observer, due specifically, to the unique connection between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian nationality.”
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FACULTY NEWS
Martin S. Jaffee’s article, "One God, One Revelation, One People: On The Symbolic Structure of Elective Monotheism." (JSSR 69, 2001) was listed as one of the top
10 downloads from the JSSR-OUP website for 2006.
Scott Noegel received a Full Professor Crossdisciplinary Conversation Award from the Simpson Center for the Humanities.
IMPORTANT DATES DECEMBER.1, 2007: DEADLINE for Symposium on Religion and Human Security call for Papers. Click here for complete information.. NOVEMBER 8, 2007: Luce Reception & Student Social, Communications 204, 4 - 6 PM CALENDAR OF EVENTS Calendar |
Deadline for papers: December 1, 2007
Notification by: Jan. 15, 2008
CALL FOR PAPERS
RELIGION AND HUMAN SECURITY:
Negotiating the Power of Religious Non-State Actors
http://jsis.washington.edu/religion/humsec/
Seattle, Washington
University of Washington
Comparative Religion Program—Center for Global Studies
Jackson School of International Studies
Sponsored by the
Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs
Our theme of “Religion and Human Security” is based on the observation that religious non-state actors now often compete with states in their impact on human welfare. In some cases, the effect is benign. Religious groups provide essential services that corrupted and undemocratic states are unwilling or unable to provide. In other cases, the effect is detrimental to states’ capacity to exercise their legitimate powers. States, in effect, become hostage to grassroots movements and their priorities. We argue that in the contemporary world, one cannot effectively engage in humanitarian actions unless one understands the role that religious non-state actors provide in supplanting, supplementing, or contesting how states negotiate the welfare of their populations.
The conference will be a two part symposium, meeting in spring of 2008 and 2009. The first symposium will provide feedback on initial projects; the second we will expect a finished essay and be open to the public. We expect original research that makes a contribution to public policy.
Paper proposal abstracts should be two pages or less, stating the research question and chosen methodology. Deadline: December 1, 2007. Please include a two-page CV and send electronically to:
Loryn Paxton
Administrator, Luce Grant
Box 353650
Comparative Religion Program
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3650
Email: lpaxton@u.washington.edu
Chosen applicants will receive travel/lodging, as well as a $500 honorarium if paper is published in the edited volume. Chosen participants will be expected to attend both of the two-day symposiums.
Questions:
James Wellman, Project Director, jwellman@u.washington.edu
Reşat Kasaba, Co-Principal Investigator, kasaba@u.washington.edu
Clark Lombardi, Co-Principal Investigator, lombardi@u.washington.edu
Would you like to join the the CRP mailing list for updates on recent news and program events? If so please send an email with your name, address, and return email address to Loryn Paxton, Program Coordinator.