Harvard Divinity School

Panel 3 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Stephen Prothero and featuring panelists CarolAnne Dolan, Geralyn Dreyfous, Amir Hussain, and Gordon Quinn. This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel 2 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Diane L. Moore and featuring panelists Lorraine Ali, Sarah Hammerschlag, Rhon S. Manigault-Bryant, and Anthony Petro. This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel 4 of the Symposium on Religious Literacy and Business: Media & Entertainment moderated by Lauren R. Kerby and featuring panelists Mario Cader-Frech, Bruno del Granado, Kerida McDonald, and Ross Murray. This symposium brings together media professionals and scholars of media, religion, and business to assess the state of religious literacy in the field and the role of entertainment media in shaping the public understanding of religion. Our aim is to foster critical reflection and collaborative relationships between scholars and media professionals in order to improve the religious literacy of the American public and reduce conflict and antagonism by encouraging more complicated, nuanced, and creative representations of religion on screen. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad presented "Hindu View of Life: Speaking For and Against Oneself" on Monday, September 17, at the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS. By reflecting on three key textual passages, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad engaged with the intersectional nature of his Hindu identity. This examination of Hinduism and intersectionality offered a new perspective on how identity is creatively and constantly reconfigured by the textual lessons and the lived reality of religious traditions. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, MA, DPhil (Oxon), is Fellow of the British Academy, and Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He is the author of some fifty papers and six books. His "Divine Self, Human Self: The Philosophy of Being in Two Gita Commentaries" won the Best Book Award 2011–2015 of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. His "Human Being, Bodily Being: Phenomenology from Classical India" was recently published by Oxford University Press. Learn more about the CSWR at https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/

Religious traditions insist on the importance of cultivating our faculty of attention, whether it be attention to ourselves, others, our environment, or the presence of the divine in any of these three. This panel will explore whether and how the practice of writing, especially fiction writing, helps us cultivate this art of attention. What is it about writing, and the imagination and patience required, that helps us learn how better to attend? The panelists are Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies, HDS; C.E. Morgan, author of the novels All the Living and The Sport of Kings, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Chris Adrian, novelist, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel 3 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Re-evalutating the Historic Core Curriculum Panelists: Ismail Warcheid, CNRS France, “Scholarly Networks, Legal Debates, and Territorial Integration” David Owen, Harvard University, “Of Radd and Sharḥ and Ṭurra: The Long and Late Dynamism of the African Commentary Tradition on Akhḍarī's Sullam on Avicennian Organon Logic” Alexis Trouillot, Université Paris VII, “The Study of Mathematics in the Sahel from the 15thto the 20th C.” Abubakar Abdulkadir, University of Alberta, Canada, “Poetry in West Africa and the Maghreb” Chair: Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel 2 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Prayers, Invocations, and the Talismanic Tradition Panelists: James C. Riggan, Florida State University, “Qur’anic Exorcism in North and West Africa” Zachary Wright, Northwestern University Qatar and Adam Larson, Weill Cornell University – Qatar,“Genealogy of Prayer Manuals 18th Century to the Present” Paul Anderson, Harvard, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: A Reconsideration of the Evil Eye and Ruqyah through Ethnographic Analysis” Oludamini Ogunnaike, College of Williams and Mary, “Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madih Poetry and its Precedents” Chair: Kimberly C. Patton, Harvard Divinity School As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa.

Panel 1 of West Africa and the Maghreb: Reassessing Intellectual Connections in the 21st Century Panelists: Armaan Sidiqi, Harvard University, “Perspectives on “Politicized Sufism”: A Case Study of the ṭarīqa QadīrīBoutchichiyya” Jaison M. Carter, Harvard University, ”Black Muslimness Mobilized: A Study of West African Sufism in Diaspora” Ariela Marcus-Sells, Elon University, “Technologies of Devotion in the works of Sidi Mukhtar al-Kunti” Christine Thun-Nhi Dang, New York University, “The Politics of Love in African Performances of Sufi Poetry” Chair: Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard Divinity School As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panel 5 of West Africa and the Maghreb: New Intellectual Connections Panelists: Mansour Kedidir, CRASC Algeria, “Connections of Intellectuals in the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa: Trajectories and Representations” Fatima Harrak, Institute of African Studies, Rabat Morocco, “Research on Moroccan-African Relations at the Rabat Institute of African Studies” Robert Parks, CEMA, Algeria, “American Research Centers in North Africa and Sahara-Sahel Studies” Ebrima Sall, Trust Africa, Senegal “CODESRIA and the New Pan-Africanist Intellectual Connections Across the Sahara” Chair: Jacob K. Olupona, Harvard Divinity School As part of the efforts to promote the study of Islam in Africa at Harvard, an Islam in Africa conference series was initiated under the sponsorship of HDS, NELC, CAS, AAAS, and the Hutchins Center with the goal to convene an international symposium every year to facilitate intellectual conversation between junior and senior scholars involved in cutting edge research in the field. In line with the mission of the Alwaleed Chair in Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, this conference series is centered on the history of Muslim institutions and ideas in Africa. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.