October 3, 2013
Science as Myth: Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age
Dr. Lisa Sideris of Indiana University will deliver the Religion and the Environment Lecture addressing the role of science on religion and Dark Green Religion.
Dr. Sideris' research broadly focuses on the intersection of religion, science, and environmental ethics. She addresses how religious environmental thought incorporates, or fails to incorporate, knowledge gained from the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary theory and ecology. She is the author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia, 2003), and co-editor of Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY, 2008). Her recent research is on the role of wonder and enchantment in (and with) science, nature, and religion, and the variety of ways in which scientific narratives, particularly those involving evolution, are being “re-enchanted” and recast as mythopoeic stories with moral content.
Her lecture will be given on Thursday, October 3, at 6:30 p.m. in Harper Center 3023.
To be rescheduled in the Fall
“Marriage Is Half of Your Religion”: Negotiating Gender, Sexuality, and Matrimony in American Muslim Communities
The Eleventh Annual Women and Religion Lecture will be presented by Prof. Juliane Hammer on Muslim gender and marriage relations.
Juliane Hammer is assistant professor of religious studies and Kenan Rifai Fellow in Islamic studies at the 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in the study of American Muslims, contemporary Muslim thought, women and gender in Islam, and Sufism. She has taught at Elon University, UNC Charlotte, George Mason University, and Princeton University. Her publications include Palestinians Born in Exile: Diaspora and the Search for a Homeland (2005), a co-edited volume on "Critiques of the West in Iran, Turkey and Japan" in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2006), and another volume on "Muslims and Media" in Contemporary Islam (2010). Her most recent book, American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer (2012) examines gender discourses in American Muslim communities through the writings of American Muslim women and with a focus on the 2005 woman-led and mixed-gender congregation Friday prayer in New York City. She is currently working on a book project focusing on American Muslim efforts against domestic violence, and on a larger project exploring American Muslim discourses on marriage, family, and sexuality. She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to American Islam and of an online volume honoring the academic and activist achievements of Professor Amina Wadud, called A Jihad for Justice, which is a free e-book available online.
Prof. Hammer’s lecture will be given in the Fall.