Author Archives: Brockopp

Welcome to Fall, 2017

September 12, 4:30 p.m.: Harshbarger Lecturer in Religious Studies : Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College: “Orientalism in a different key” Foster Auditorium

October 10, 3 p.m.: Michael Swartz, Ohio State University: “Divination and its Discontents.” 102 Weaver Building. Respondent: Gonzalo Rubio

November 8, 3 p.m.: Daniel Falk, Penn State University: “Definitional borders of prayer.” 102 Weaver Building. Respondent: Charlotte Eubanks.

Fall 2016 seminars are set

We are pleased to announce our fall line-up of faculty seminars as we begin our first year as an officially sponsored Institute for the Arts and Humanities Interdisciplinary Colloquium.

 

Wednesday, September 28, from 12:30 to 1:30 in Weaver 102

Erica Brindley, Professor of Asian Studies and History and Director of Graduate Studies, Asian Studies

“An Ancient Chinese Genesis Story From A Recently Uncovered Manuscript”

 

 

Wednesday,  October 19, from 3:30-4:30 in Burrowes 463

Marica S. Tacconi, Professor of Musicology and Associate Director, School of Music
“‘Entering’ the Sacred Page: The Medici and the Service Books of the Florentine Cathedral.”

 

 

Wednesday,  November 9, from 3:30-4:30 in Burrowes 463

Charlotte Eubanks, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese & Asian Studies and Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature

“Playing Dice for Paradise: The Print Culture of Buddhist Board Games.”

Welcome to the Society

The Penn State Society for the Study of Religion meets two or three times each semester in Weaver 102. All are welcome!

This year we will continue our series of faculty presenters. Brad Bouley has taken over leadership of the Society.

Please add suggestions for future discussions here in the comment section, and see the blog for reports on our first meetings last year.

Spring events planning

On December 6, twelve members of the Society held a wide-ranging discussion to evaluate the past year of events and lay plans for the spring. Leland Glenna, Cathy Wanner, Hoda El-Shakry, Nina Safran, Samar Farage, Brad Bouley, Rebekah Zwanzig, Tawny Holm, Annie Rose, Paul Harvey, Wilson Moses and Jon Brockopp attended.

We determined that our purposes were best served by having presentations from our own Society members and that the format of presentations should allow for ample discussion time. Several Society members agreed to commit themselves to coming to more events, but we also decided to limit ourselves to two events in the spring (in addition to the Harshbarger lecture in Religious Studies on March 24). Wilson agreed to present in February and Samar and Brad agreed to present in April.

To extend our discussions beyond methodology, we will try to juxtapose speakers with respondent from contrasting fields. We hope in this way to learn the extent to which our ideas can resonate beyond our own narrow fields.

Sarah Salter leads discussion of John Modern’s new book

On November 1, English graduate student Sarah Salter led discussion of Chapter Two (“Toward a Genealogy of Spirituality”) of John Modern’s Secularism in Antebellum America. The seminar was in anticipation of a lecture that Modern gave on the following Wednesday: An Instrument Infinitely More Wonderful than Television.”

Several graduate students attended the seminar, along with Hester Blum from English, which focused on both the content and the methodology of Modern’s work. Salter and Blum both pointed out, for example, that even though Modern is a scholar of religious studies, it is literary scholars who have most warmly embraced his work. The absence of Penn State historians and scholars of religion at the seminar and lecture was also noted.

Many participants expressed a sense of discovery when reading Modern’s work, unaware of the broad impact of American Protestantism on ideas of secularism, spirituality and modernity. Modern’s fluency with literature, as well as his own literary style, thus open up new venues for research.

Desai leads discussion of Kumkum Chatterjee’s work.

On October 4, Madhuri Desai led several colleagues in discussion of an article published posthumously by our late colleague Kumkum Chatterjee, “Goddess Encounters: Mughals, Monsters and the Goddess in Bengal.”  A conference in honor of Prof. Chatterjee’s life and scholarship was held at Penn State on October 5-6.

Henriette-Rika Benveniste, Jon Brockopp, Samar Farage, Art Goldschmidt, Gregg Roeber, Annie Rose and Rebekah Zwanzig attended the seminar, which focused on several of the major themes in this article, including the relationship of vernacular texts and Persian histories and a re-imagining of the role of the Mughals in the local history of Bengal. Contrary to views that Indian perceptions of religion are timeless and unchanging, Chatterjee demonstrated in this article that changing images of the Goddess responded to local and regional perceptions.

Our broad-ranging discussion included comparisons with representations of Mary in 19th and 20th century America and also perceptions of the Mughals as Muslim rulers “interrupting” a continuous sense of Hindu history. This relationship that Chatterjee describes between religious symbolism and political power is a very fruitful one that has implications for many other religious traditions.

Wanner leads discussion of Russian immigration to Israel

The first meeting of the Society this year was held on September 6 in 102 Weaver. Cathy Wanner led a lively discussion of a book chapter by Larissa Remennick and Anna Prashizky entitlted “Russian Israelis and Religion: what has changed after twenty years in Israel?”

Alan Benjamin, Brad Bouley, Jonathan Brockopp, Nina Safran and Rebekah Zwanzig engaged in a broad discussion of the Russian Jewish diaspora, delving into questions of modernity, identity and the specific history of being Jewish in the Soviet Union (and Russia) in the 20th century.

What particularly struck me was the development of strong socio-religious practices by Russian Jews that have often (but I think wrongly) been characterized as secular. These practices were developed as a result of the restrictions placed on public expression of religion by the Soviet regime, but now these practices themselves are seen as illegitimate representations of Judaism in Israel. Ironically, the states of both Israel and Russia are highly controlling of public religious expressions, putting Russian Israelis in a difficult situation.