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January 2020
From the Excess to the Apocalyptic: Media and the Production of Religious Surplus in Africa – Asonzeh Ukah
Arguably the most profound change taking place in Africa is neither political nor economic but socioreligious. In the last three decades following the liberalisation and deregulation of the media market, media have lent themselves to a new regime of religious identity never before witnessed. The real "Africa Rising" narrative is not how or about Africa and Africans being economically better off during this period but how Africans have mobilised a new array of media forms and platforms to perform and…
Find out more »The FBI, Jews, and Muslims: A History of Suspicion – Steven Weitzman
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Professor Steven Weitzman (UPenn) will speak on Monday, January 27th at 5:30 pm in the Judaica Library about The FBI, Jews, and Muslims: A History of Suspicion. This event is sponsored by the Shorstein Endowment for American Jewish Culture and the Center for Global Islamic Studies.
Find out more »Kannywood and Sufi and Salafi Muslims in Nigeria – Musa Ibrahim
Abstract: The talk is about how Sunni ulama initially put aside their theological differences to start a sharia censorship project against the emerging local Muslim cinema in northern Nigeria, and how they subsequently imported their ideological contestations into it. The objective is not only to show how the actors differently respond to, adapt, and contest new media-driven changes, but also how ‘Islam’ and Muslims are shaped and reshaped by the media. Musa (Abba) Ibrahim is a postdoctoral research fellow for the “Islam…
Find out more »February 2020
On Secularity, Muslim Immigrants and the Post-Lutheran Mindset – David Thurfjell
ABSTRACT Over the last couple of decades, the religious map of northern Europe has been redrawn. In Scandinavia, people previously formed by Lutheran state-church systems have today become among the most secular in the world. At the same time, immigration has pushed these countries in an opposite direction, making them multi-religious in an unprecedented way. Sweden is perhaps the most striking example. According to some estimations this country is today Europe’s most secular and most multi-religious country at the same time. It…
Find out more »May 2020
The Revolution Within: Religious Mediation and the Struggle for the ‘New Egypt’ – Yasmin Moll
The 2011 revolution unleashed passionate public concern about how to create a “New Egypt.” Islamic channels were important sites of these debates as rival television preachers gave media form to their competing visions of what a virtuous life entails and what an ethical polity looks like. Based on fieldwork in Cairo with the “New Preachers” – so named because of their novel styles of Islamic media – this talk explores what these on and off-screen struggles reveal about Islam’s competing…
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