October 28th, 2009

• Classical Studies Program Colloquium Series Presents The Trireme: Ancient and Modern by Gordon Kelly

  3:30pm

October 15th, 2010

• Islamic Law in the (Bulging) Eyes of al-Jahiz: (Rep)resenting Shari`a in Early Islamic Culture by Paul Powers (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm Abu `Uthman `Amr b. Bahr al-Fuqaymi al-Bahri, known famously as al-Jahiz (“the goggle-eyed”), lived and died (d. 868 CE) in Basrah, Iraq, then one of the major centers of Islamic cultural activity. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in shaping early Muslim Arabic prose literature. I show that al-Jahiz, though no jurist himself, was well-informed about the emergent legal-ethical frameworks of his day, and he robustly took part in trying to shape them. He deftly parodies the highly symbolic figure of the qadi, or Muslim judge, a stoic dispenser of justice brought low, in al-Jahiz’s portrayal, by a pesky fly. He further skewers what he sees as the convoluted and self-serving formal reasoning of legal theorists and sharply attacks the leading scholarly lights of Mecca and Medina while systematically defending the legal status of nabidh, or date-wine. All this in the service, I assert, of promoting a Mu`tazilite “rationalism” and a broader self-reliance in ethical and legal matters. This is part of a wider project exploring the ways Islamic legal discourses are reflected in and shaped by their wider cultural contexts, especially in the pre-modern, Arabophone Muslim world.

October 20th, 2010

• Meet Your Major - Religious Studies Dept.

  5:30pm Are you thinking about majoring in Religious Studies? Below are some topics that will be discussed: – Highlights of course work – what’s exciting about work in your major
  – Opportunities outside the classroom–internships, research opportunities
  – What can you do with a Religious Studies major? What are some of your majors doing? So please stop by our offices and meet some of our Professors and majors. Pizza will be served.
  Click Here to RSVP 

March 30th, 2011

• “And the Word Became Flesh in Hip-Hop Culture” by Monica Miller, Visiting Post-Doc Candidate in Religious Studies

  1:50pm The Department of Religious Studies welcomes a candidate for the 2011-12 Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences:
  
  Monica R. Miller
  (Ph.D. 2010, Chicago Theological Seminary)
  
  She will teach a class session on the topic:
  
  “And the Word Became Flesh in Hip-Hop Culture”
  
  Dr. Miller is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Africana Studies, School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania; and Senior Research Fellow, The Institute for Humanist Studies, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University (IRAAS).

September 7th, 2011

• Tenth Anniversary Commemoration of 9/11

  3:30pm In honor of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, Lewis & Clark will host an academic symposium featuring perspectives from across the institution.
  
  Janet Bixby, associate professor of education and associate dean of the graduate school, will moderate the panel of Lewis & Clark speakers, who will focus on the following subjects:
  
  Barry Glassner, president of Lewis & Clark: “9/11 and The Culture of Fear”
  
  Paul Powers, associate professor of religious studies: “Americans, Muslims, and Modernity after 9/11”
  
  Heather Smith, assistant professor of international affairs: “9/11 as a Test of Commitments to Human Rights”
  
  Tung Yin, professor of law: “The Legal Architecture of Counterterrorism since 9/11”

February 23rd, 2012

• Living Humanism: Material Culture and the Remaking of Religion

  3:30pm What’s this religion in material culture? How does the performativity of religion in material cultural practices often remake religion into forms of humanist expressions? Although the Pacific Northwest, in particular, has been dubbed the ‘None Zone’ due to low rates of institutional religious participation, scholars have suggested that the cultural cartography of religion points towards a more “spiritual” remaking of religion. What does this landscape look like, especially among young people in Portland, Oregon?
       
       This one day symposium brings scholars together, whose scholarship, in divergent ways, gives thought to the shifting context, understanding, classification, and modalities of how material culture (broadly understood), reshapes how we think about the category of religion, both theoretically and methodologically. The shape shifty landscape of contemporary culture offers a robust terrain to interrogate and rethink how we give thought to categories such as religion, as expressed in the multiplicities of material cultural products.
       
       This symposium is dedicated to the theme “Living Humanism” to consider the complex ways in which religion and religious rhetorical housing often provides a space to negotiate human interests, means, and ends. Here, we consider how material culture, as both product and context, forces a rethinking of how religion is remade, often providing a cosmology of Humanism as both practice and posture in seemingly un/conscious ways.
  
  
  3:30 - 5:00 Panel Discussions:
  
         Patricia O’Connell Killen, Gonzaga
         University
  
         Cassie Trentaz, Warner Pacific
         College
  
         Susanna Morrill, Lewis & Clark
         College
  
         Diabolus Rex, Chaos Imperium
  
         Monica Miller, Lewis & Clark
         College
  
  7:30pm Dr. Anthony B. Pinn, Keynote Speaker
  What Are We to Each Other?
  Thoughts of Ethics in the Age of “None” 

March 19th, 2012

• Opportunity to Discuss Life with a Religious Studies Degree!

  3:30pm - 4:30pm The department will welcome an alumnus, Dusty Hoesly, who graduated in ’02 with a double major in Philosophy and Religious Studies. Having finished a master’s degree in ‘04 at Yale Divinity School in the history of Christianity (and an MAT at the LC Grad School in ’06), Dusty is currently a PhD student in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He will be on campus to visit classes in the Philosophy Department and has also graciously agreed to make himself available to RELS majors and minors who are interested in discussing life after LC for Religious Studies students.
  
  Come join us in the department lounge for light refreshments and conversation. Bring your interested and interesting friends!    

April 27th, 2012

• Senior Thesis Presentations

  2:00pm - 5:30pm Please join us for our year-end academic and social gathering. On Friday, April 27 (the first “reading day”), 2:00-5:30pm, JRHH 202, our senior majors will present capstone projects (seminar or thesis papers):
  
  Natalie Saing
  Georgia Cary
  Nathan Tucker
  Hannah McCain
  Lizzy Leider
  Helen Vernier
  Khnik Haefner
  
  Each will present for about 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions and comments from the audience.
   
  

May 5th, 2012

• Departmental Senior Reception

  2:30pm By invitation to department majors and their families.
  For more information, please Claire Kodachi at ckodachi@lclark.edu or (503) 768-7450.