Lectures

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Professor Angie Heo – “Redemption at the Edge”
- Pilgrimage to the Holy Lands turns on ritual imaginaries of space and time along with material sensations of mobility. In this forum, Prof. Heo will explore Coptic Orthodox traditions of travel and the Coptic politics of sharing saints with Roman Catholics and Arab Muslims. Focusing on the historical period of Arab nationalism in the 1960s, she will further examine how the geopolitics of war and anticolonial identity shaped the sacred geography of Egypt relative to Palestine, Israel, and Ethiopia. Ultimately, this forum’s discussion will address critical intersections of holy boundaries and state borders, drawing together epistemologies of space with political questions of unity and difference… (Read More)

Professor Shahla Talebi – “From Caves to Mountain Summits: Theopolitics of Contemporary Iran”
- Pre-revolutionary Iran, especially since 1960s, was marked by a grave anxiety about modernity and religiosity. Questions of submission, autonomy, and subjectivity were crucial preoccupations for many Iranians, especially for political dissidents. From mountain hiking, which was used as a platform for the revolutionaries, to be revolutionaries, and the secret police to respectively recruit, be recruited, or prey, to the Muslim dissidents’ attempt to live an exemplary life without appearing religiously pretentious, meticulous techniques were deployed to at once reveal and conceal what lay behind each individual’s “intentional” performative acts. Invisible authorities, sacred rules of conduct, and demand for faithful submission were essential to the formation of subjectivities both for Marxist and Muslim revolutionaries. As with the theatrical reenactment of Karbala Event staged as shabih-khani (reading similar), … (Read More)

Professor Jonathan Massey – “Infrastructure Worth Building”
- Massey’s research looks at how architecture mediates power by forming civil society, shaping social relationships and regulating consumption. In “Infrastructure Worth Building,” he reviews the politics of US infrastructure and explores progressive counterproposals—alternative architectures of sovereignty, soil, and the sacred… (Read More)