CURA Announces Religion and World Affairs Colloquium
The Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), an affiliated regional studies center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, announced the fall schedule for their 2017-18 Religion and World Affairs Colloquium.
The colloquium, which is co-sponsored by the Boston University School of Theology, will feature CURA Fellows sharing critiques and providing valuable insight of in-progress papers. The theme of this year’s colloquium is “Religion and Social Engagement.” The topics will explore the ways in which religious institutions engage with their states and societies, the impact of religious social engagement, the theological and moral ideas behind various forms of social engagement, and other topics related to this broad theme.
Timothy Longman, CURA Director and Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science, said the colloquium will help prepare working papers for publication with the aim being to collect the best papers from the 2017-2018 year into an edited volume.
“The new Religion and World Affairs Colloquium will present and discuss working papers to prepare them for publication. We hope to put together a group of the papers in a collected volume or an edition of a journal. The theme for this year’s Colloquium is religion and social engagement. We’re bringing together a fantastic group of BU faculty, staff, and graduate students with scholars from outside BU doing cutting edge work on religion in anthropology, political science, international affairs, theology, and religious studies.”
The first installment of the colloquium will take place on September 15, 2017 and will feature Peter Mandaville, Professor of International Affairs at George Mason University. Mandaville will discuss “Assessing the Impact of Transnational Religious Soft Power: Theoretical and Methodological Issues.” View the full schedule for the 2017-18 Religion and World Affairs Colloquium.
“The CURA Fellows program will bring together BU faculty and graduate students from diverse disciplines with an interest in the academic study of religion,” Longman said. “We see this as a great opportunity to create a stronger community of scholars working on religion in world affairs.”
2017 CURA Fellows include:
- Sana Haque, Masters student in International Relations and International Communication at Boston University
- Daryl Ireland, Acting Director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at the School of Theology at Boston University
- Suegatha Kai-Rennie, Masters student in Global Development Policy at Boston University
- Amod Lele, Senior Educational Technologist at the Office of Digital Learning and Innovation at Boston University
- Chad Moore, PhD student in Religion and Society at Boston University
- Barbod Salimi, Assistant Professor of Philosophical Psychology, Theological Ethics and Peace Studies at the School of Theology at Boston University
- Yang Shen, PhD student in Religion and Society at Boston University
- Bin Song, PhD student in Religious Studies at Boston University
- Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, doctoral candidate in Philosophical and Comparative Theology at the Boston University School of Theology and University Chaplain for Community Life at Marsh Chapel
- Emily A. Williamson, PhD student in Anthropology at Boston University
- Yongguang (Max) Xue, Research Assistant at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at the Boston University School of Theology
- Michael Zank, Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies and Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University
Learn more about the 2017 CURA Fellows.
Email cura@bu.edu for copies of papers to be presented at the 2017-18 Religion and World Affairs Colloquium. Attendees are requested to read papers in advance of each session.