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Recent ICIS Events
Monday, March 3rd & Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Michael C. Carlos Museum Reception Hall
(click here for conference poster)
(click here for directions to the Michael C. Carlos Museum)
NO Registration is required, but seating is limited.
A conference with leading scholars from universities in the U.S. and abroad.
(click here for press release)
(click here for paper abstracts)
(click here for participant bios)
Conference Schedule
Monday, March 3, 2008
8:45am - 9:15am Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Robert A. Paul (Dean, Emory College)
Bruce M. Knauft (ICIS Executive Director)
Vincent J. Cornell (MESAS)
Morning Session: Islam
9:15am - 10:30am
Bruce B. Lawrence (Duke University) -- Is Suicide Bombing an Unqualified Evil?
David S. Powers (Cornell University) -- Jewish and Christian Roots of Islamic Martyrdom Discourses
Vincent J. Cornell (Emory University) -- God's Roadmap to the Emerald City: Islamic Reconstructionism and the Cosmic Shari'a
10:30am - 10:45am Coffee break
10:45am - 12:15pm
Gary R. Bunt (University of Wales-Lampeter) -- Jihadi Networks of Cyber-Authority
George Michael (University of Virginia College at Wise) -- Common Discourses of Islamic and Euro-American Extremism
Gordon D. Newby (Emory University) Discussant
General discussion
Afternoon Session: Judaism
2:00pm - 3:30pm
David Novak (University of Toronto) -- How the Talmud Tamed the Bible
Shlomo Fischer (Tel Aviv University) -- The General Will, Charisma, Prophecy and the Politics of the Avant-Garde: Yehuda Etzion and the Theology of the Jewish Settler's Underground
Don Seeman (Emory University) -- Jewish Mysticism and the Phenomenology of Violence
3:30pm - 3:45pm Coffee break
3:45pm - 5:00pm
Warren Rosenberg (Wabash College) -- Revenge of the Diaspora: The Land of Israel and the Problem of Jewish Male Violence
David R. Blumenthal (Emory University) Discussant
General discussion
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Morning Session: Christianity
9:30am - 10:45am
R. Scott Appleby (Notre Dame University) -- Infinite Justice in the Righteous Empire: Biblical and Traditional Roots
Kurt Anders Richardson (McMaster University) -- Gracious God/Wrathful God: Theological Models of Violence and Its Overcoming
10:45am - 11:00am Coffee break
11:00am - 12:15pm
Patrick Provost-Smith (Harvard University) -- Avenging an Injured God: Just War Theory in a Colonial Context
Steven Tipton (Emory University) Discussant
General discussion
Afternoon Session: Religious Extremism and Ideologies of Modernity
2:00pm - 3:00pm
Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia University) -- The Psychological Structure of Identity in Identity Politics
Bruce Knauft (Emory University) -- Modernity, Religion, and Extremism in the Twenty-First Century
3:00pm - 3:30pm Coffee break
3:30pm -5:00pm
Laurie Patton (Emory University) -- Postcolonial Ideologies of Sanskrit and Religious Extremism among Women: Some Portraits
Bradley S. Clough (American University in Cairo) -- Ideologies and Practices of Buddhist Extremism
Gyanendra Pandey (Emory University) Discussant
Closing discussion
Organized by/Sponsored by: Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS)
Time: All Day
Building: Michael C. Carlos Museum Room: 3rd floor reception hall
Co-Sponsors: Emory University's Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS); Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding Initiative; The Michael C. Carlos Museum; Candler School of Theology; Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies; Department of Religion, South Asian Studies Program; the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, and the Hightower Fund
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"Subaltern Citizens and their Histories: Investigations from India and the USA (Part II)"
Workshop at Emory University, December 7-8, 2007
PLEASE NOTE: This workshop is open to participation by invitation only. Please contact Art Linton at alinton@emory.edu for details.
Workshop theme and questions
We are concerned centrally with the question of changing modes of disenfranchisement, and the historical struggles over them. For the December meeting, we will focus on languages of class (more generally privilege), and how these intersect with (i) constructions of caste/race/ethnicity and (ii) gender and sexuality. An important part of our task is to investigate how one or other dimension of these divisions might be privileged over others, and what such privileging tells us about the history, politics and self-consciousness of our different societies. The larger question before us is one of how Americanness and Indianness (Indian and American "exceptionalism") is constructed, and what are the roles assigned or allowed to the subordinated and the marginalized in such a construction?
Some of the proposed papers will investigate abstract notions of the people/nation/folk; and the meanings of concepts like democracy, politics, difference and equality (as articulated in philosophy, history, the media and the law). Others focus on the politics of peasants, slaves, women, "backward" minorities, all of which are seen as being not quite modern, in the making of the "modern" state and society. In charting these histories, several contributors will document the continued subalternization -- the denial of full rights as citizens -- to many groups in our "advanced" democratic societies. Participants will also analyze the normalization of social scientific categories and particular languages of political and intellectual discourse, as well as the normalization and institutionalization of what are seen as being necessary practices of "modern civilization", such as education and marriage.
Claims of American and Indian exceptionalism are tied to questions of modernity and nationhood, democracy, pluralism, secularism; and, with these, to a particular language of representation and of morality. It is noteworthy that official discourse and popular history alike have long emphasized the idea of tolerance and openness in both India and the US -- the idea of the melting-pot, of syncretism and of assimilation; not the exceptionalism of slavery (in the US) or untouchability (which, in India, has marked relations between the bulk of Hindus and Muslims too). The question we might ask, as against this, is how effective democracies are to be established in these deeply hierarchical and unequal societies.
In India, this comes as a question in a society with a long inherited regime of inequality. In the USA, the regime of extreme inequality (the institutionalized subordination of slavery and of Native American reservations) is erected at the same time as the regime of freedom. And yet, let us recall, "modernity" is not seen as a problem -- or question -- in American history and society; America is modern by definition. By comparison, the relation to modernity, and the ambition to be modern, is a much more anguished one in India.
This may be one of the reasons why the US papers deal predominantly with very recent struggles, here and now, when the question of "who belongs?" has finally become a matter of open and animated debate; whereas the Indian contributions look rather more to the "pre-history" of contemporary struggles, in the 19th and 20th centuries, and earlier. But there are clearly others, including the accident of the particular interests of the scholars assembled at the workshop.
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OFF-CENTERED STATES:
POLITICAL FORMATION AND DEFORMATION IN THE ANDES
SEPTEMBER 28 - 29, 2007
Andean state systems are currently undergoing radical transformations that will have a profound impact on the organization of political society for years to come. Ongoing state restructuring in these countries has led to protracted struggles between subaltern populations and elites over the machinery of state, over the ability to define emergent forms of state and over the state's role in mediating (or accentuating) the region's longstanding disparities of power. The international community has responded with expressions of concern about the risks to hemispheric security posed by the proliferation of unstable governments and unorthodox political regimes. It is in this context that decentralization projects have come to define Andean experiments with statecraft in the 21st century. These projects seek to establish a measure of security by coordinating the divergent understandings of democratization, participatory governance, and political "modernization" that characterize the region. But what conceptions of the state under-gird these current restructurings and the "risks" they are meant to alleviate? How attendant are they to the highly disjointed, locally specific, and often privatized formations of political rule, past and present, in the Andes?
To shift our inquiry into these questions, we have organized this conference around the idea of "off-centered states." This framing sidesteps both bureaucratic languages of "decentralization" and the assumption that state systems and political activity in the Andes were ever fully centralized or limited to officially codified channels. We seek to examine Andean states both as off-centered political fields and from off-centered locations of analysis. What kinds of actors have been able to carry out political projects under the umbrella of 'state'? How are these attempts legitimated (if at all), and what challenges or competitions arise from them? How do local performances of statecraft coordinate or conflict with national political structures and articulate with newly enhanced regional and municipal governmental institutions?
The "off-centered state" also foregrounds questions of political subjection, including shifting frontiers of citizenship and distinctions between normative and incomplete or deviant citizens. Amid expanded rhetorical assertions of democracy and inclusion, what locations of identity, personhood, and place are being newly marginalized or "off-centered?" What consequences attend these dislocations in relation to purported functions of state in relation to health care, security, education, and juridical process?
Paper Presentations:
Javier Albo, Centro de Investigacion y Promocion del Campesinado, Bolivia
Charles Briggs, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Catherine Conaghan, Queens University, Canada
Lesley Gill, American University, USA
Penelope Harvey, University of Manchester, UK
Nils Jacobsen, University of Illinois, USA
Chris Krupa, Emory University, USA
David Nugent, Emory University, USA
Discussants:
Roger Rouse. Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Gavin Smith, University of Toronto, Canada
Mary Weismantel, Northwestern University, USA
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- Intervening in Africa: Interrogating International Operations in West Africa -
- March 30 & 31, 2007:
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Click on image for Conference Schedule
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War in Iraq Conference
In November, 2006, ICIS held a conference on the War in Iraq:
"The war in Iraq is a pivotal international issue of our time. What is the ongoing legacy of this bitter conflict, and what are its political, social and very human implications? How does the Iraq war relate to the wider conflict in the Mid-East, and what does it portend for the future?
Internationally recognized invited speakers and scholars from the Emory community will address these questions across national and religious contexts, historical parallels and contrasts, and the human experience of war and associated violence, including for women and children. Our goal is to engage fresh scholarship and critical new insight concerning the Iraq war and its wider conflict, and to promote greater public awareness and understanding.
Click on the links below to download streaming video of the proceedings:
Video Available: Video footage from the ICIS conference held in November on the War in Iraq is now available. Please click on the following link to find downloadable streaming video of each conference session: video.