Events
2023-24 Events
September - December 2023: Visiting Scholar Benjamin Schonthal
Benjamin Schonthal, University of Otago
Panel with Benjamin Schonthal and Levi McLaughlin (with grad respondents Emma Davis and Matthew Drew), "New Directions in the Study of Religion, Law, and Public Life"
Thursday, October 19th at 4pm
Benjamin Schonthal is Professor of Buddhist Studies and the Head of the Religion Programme at the University of Otago in NZ. His work examines the intersections of religion, law and politics in late-colonial and contemporary Southern Asia, with a focus on Buddhism and law in Sri Lanka. He’s the author of Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law (Cambridge 2016) and more than 40 chapters and journal articles. With Tom Ginsburg, he has just co-edited Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law (Cambridge 2023). In 2016 he received the Otago University Award for Distinction in Research (Early Career) and 2021 the Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal. His current research project, Law's Karma, examines the politics and practice of Buddhist law in contemporary South and Southeast Asia.
Talk: “Making the Rule of Law in a Sri Lankan Buddhist Monastery”
2022-2023 Events
Dr. Anoush Tamar Suni, Northwestern University
Tuesday, February 28 at 12pm
Dr. Elayne Oliphant, New York University
The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris
Wednesday, February 15 at 4pm
Film Screening at AAR, Friday, November 18, 8:00pm
We are excited to be sponsoring a film screening and panel at the American Academy of Religion 2022 annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. See below for details.
Pilgrimage to Magdalena/Peregrinaje a Magdalena (Border Community Alliance, 2021)Convention Center-Mile High 4A (Lower Level)
Seth Schermerhorn, Hamilton College, Presiding
This award-winning 30-minute film documents the contemporary pilgrimage to Magdalena de Kino in modern-day Sonora, Mexico, honoring Father Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645 –1711), who worked for 24 years in the Pimería Alta region, a region now divided by the US/Mexico border. This film explores the diversity of pilgrims—from the US, from Mexico, and from indigenous lands such as that of the Tohono Oʼodham—and the diversity of their practices and beliefs in relation to this important ritual. Produced by the Tubac, Arizona-based nonprofit Border Community Alliance, the film emphasizes what one participant calls “an eye-opening experience” of the pilgrimage and the fiesta at Magdalena—the sense of community “coming together as one” despite and through this diversity of identity, history, and nationality. The producers of the documentary, a scholar of indigenous religious traditions, and a Tohono O’odham elder will offer reflections on this pilgrimage as a model of community and respond to questions after the film, moderated by Spencer Dew and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd.
Panelists
Jerry Haas, Border Community Alliance
Alex La Pierre, Borderlandia
Seth Schermerhorn, Hamilton College
Magda Mankel, University of Maryland
Regina Siquieros, Tohono O'odham Nation
Responding
Spencer Dew, Ohio State University
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University
Dr. Jeremy Walton, University of Rijeka, Croatia
What is a Mosque? On the Tribulations of Religious Heritage across the Balkans
Monday, November 14 at 12pm
Scott Hall 107