Symposia

This round robin symposium showcases the work of three emerging leaders in scholarly research on Islamophobia: a political theorist, an anthropologist, and a sociologist. They each share a commitment to challenge injustice through scholarship even as they differ in approach.

Globalized religions like Christianity and Islam speak of their communions as universal and welcoming of all people, yet are often caught up in the nationalist and protectionist discourses of individual nations.

Is the framework of religious freedom suitable for the protection of American Indian sacred lands?

Public art as political theology brings sacred images to the political arena…even when the uses of sacred images transgress deeply held religious convictions for the sake of much needed social transformation.

While the difficulty in neatly defining the field itself verges on notoriety, the pieces in this series offer accounts of affect’s appearances and tangible effects, and illustrate the value of thinking political theology in relationship to emotions, bodies and the non-linguistic .

To whom should we, working in political theology, listen, and how?

The recent criminalization of Latinx people has led to a “zero tolerance” deportation policy and consequent separation of children from their families. Can we shift the public discourse in order to preserve the basic dignity of all people?

Is public theology a worthy aim politically? Is public theology necessarily political? Is “the public” of public theology a unitary entity? Who are some paradigms of the public theologian? Can public theology speak in a milieu of deep pluralism? What are the publics of political theology?

What are the prospects and limits of confronting sexual violence from within political theology?

For this symposium, we asked our contributors to reflect on possible points of intersection between ecology and political theology.

What is at stake in invoking “love” in political spheres? When we claim that “Love Trumps Hate”, what vision of “love” are we championing? When and how is it valuable for activists and religious leaders to make recourse to the idea of “love”? What kind of obligations does “love” entail?