The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory present:

Rethinking
Secularism
in an Age of Belief

Levis Faculty Center , Third floor
919 W. Illinois Street
Saturday, October 8, 10:00 am –6:00 pm

This event will address some of the most pressing issues of the current political landscape: the apparent global rise of fundamentalisms, the religious underpinnings of empire, and the neoconservative discourse of “moral values.” These phenomena have been interpreted by some as a sign of the “end of Enlightenment.” How should progressive intellectuals respond to this assessment? Should we celebrate the demise of Enlightenment and its normalizing narrative of secularization? Or should we be frightened by the prospect of a post-secular world? In the face of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden, do we need more or less secularism?

Schedule

9:30-10:00 am: coffee

9:55: Introduction by Michael Rothberg (Unit for Criticism) and Matti Bunzl (IPRH)

10:00: Michael Warner (English, Rutgers): “Varieties of Secularism”
Introduced by Lauren Goodlad (English)

11:15-11:30: coffee break

11:30: Dwight McBride (African American Studies, Northwestern): “"Race, Faith, and Sexuality: A Nexus of Our Time".”
Introduced by Siobhan Somerville (English)

12:45-2:00 pm: lunch

2:00: Saba Mahmood (Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley): "Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: Politics of Islamic Reformation"
Introduced by Andy Orta (Anthroplogy)

3:15-3:30: coffee break

3:30: Gauri Viswanathan (English, Columbia University): "Conversion in the Indian Constitution: The Secular Dilemma."
Introduced by Jed Esty (English)

5:00-6:00: Closing roundtable with speakers
Moderated by Michael Rothberg and Matti Bunzl

About the Speakers

Saba Mahmood teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. She is considered to be among the country's leading young anthropologists and has quickly emerged as the most influential voice on the anthropology of Islam. She is the author of the widely acclaimed book Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2004), a path-breaking ethnography of a women's piety movement that is part of the larger Islamist movement in Egypt. Her current work focuses on secular-liberal interpretations of Islam in the context of the Middle East and South Asia.

Dwight McBride is the Leon Forrest Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also Professor of English and Communication Studies. His research interests range from early African American literature to literature, gender and the politics of racial respectability. He is the author or editor of such important books as James Baldwin Now (1999), Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony (2001), Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bi-Sexual Fiction (2002), and Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality in America (2005).

Gauri Viswanathan is Class of 1933 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her fields of interest are education, religion, and culture; 19th century British and colonial cultural studies; and the history of disciplines. She is the author of the groundbreaking Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989) and the prize-winning Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief (1998). Most recently, she edited Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said (2001).

Michael Warner is Professor of English at Rutgers University. A leading thinker on the American public sphere as well as queer theory, he is the author or editor of such influential books as The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (1992), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (1993), The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800 (1996), The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (2000), and Publics and Counterpublics (2002).

Conference co-sponsors

Office of the Provost

African American Studies and Research Program, Anthropology Department, Arms Control, Disarmament & International Security, Center for African Studies, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, English Department, Gender and Women's Studies Program, History Department, International Programs and Studies, Office of Continuing Education, , Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Program for the Study of Religion, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center, Sociology Department, Speech Communication Department, Working Group on Globalization and Empire