Public lecture: Žižek on "emancipatory political theology"

New York Public Library (NYPL), Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City, USA, 9 November 2010, 7.00 pm

Public lecture by Slavoj Žižek: "God Without the Sacred: The Book of Job, The First Critique of Ideology"

www.nypl.org/events/programs/2010/11/09/salvoj-zizek?nref=56896

Description: "The three religions of the Book each help us to differentiate the divine from the sacred. This liberating concept culminates in Paul's claim, from Ephesians, that 'our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against leaders, against authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavens.' Can religious fundamentalism be overcome only with the help of an emancipatory political theology? Philosopher Slavoj Zizek debates this and other incendiary questions [...]."

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.

$25 general admission, $15 Friends of the NYPL, seniors and students with valid ID. Tickets can be bought from the website above.

Public lecture: From Political Theology to Vernacular Prophecy

University of Virginia, Miller Center of Public Affairs, Forum Room, 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 3 December 2010, 12.30-2.15 pm

Colloquium with George Shulman: "From Political Theology to Vernacular Prophecy: Rethinking Redemption and Politics"

http://millercenter.org/academic/gage/colloquia/detail/5802

No abstract provided by the organizers.

George Shulman is Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at New York University. His interests lie in the fields of political thought and American studies.

The colloquium is free and open to the general public. Lunch will be served starting at 12.30 pm, and the paper presentation and discussion will run from 12.45 pm to 2.15 pm.

The paper will be posted online one week prior to the colloquium.

RSVP required: gage@virginia.edu

Public lecture and panel discussion/web cast: The Impact and Future of Black Theology

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful, 2121 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois, USA, 15 September 2010, 11.00 am (public lecture) and 3.00-5.00 pm (panel discussion)

James H. Cone (Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York), one of the world's most prominent black liberation theologians, will deliver the convocation address at Garrett-Evangelical's annual convocation: "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen: The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience"

www.garrett.edu/index.php/academic-convocation-2010

After lunch, three other theologians will join Cone in a panel discussion on "The Impact and Future of Black Theology": Andrea C. White (Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture, Emory University), Rothney S. Tshaka (Professor of Systematic Theology, University of South Africa), and William Ackah (Lecturer in Community and Voluntary Sector Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London).

Both events are open to the public.

They can also be seen via live web cast at:

www.garrett.edu/convocation

Internet viewers will need to download and install Apple's free QuickTime Player. Viewers may tune in 15 minutes before both events.

Public lecture: "The Political": The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology

University College Dublin (UCD), Clinton Institute for American Studies/Global Ireland Institute, William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium, 15 June 2010, 6.00 pm

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas will be giving a public lecture on "'The Political': The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology".

No abstract was provided by the organizers.

All are welcome, but early arrival is recommended.

On 16 June, Habermas will receive the UCD Ulysses Medal at a special ceremony. The medal is the highest honour that University College Dublin can bestow. It is awarded to individuals whose work has made an outstanding global contribution.

Public lecture: Alfarabi's Goal: Political Philosophy, not Political Theology

Tulane University, The Murphy Institute, Stibbs Conference Room, Lavin-Bernick Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA,
25 February 2010, 4.00 pm

Public lecture by Charles Butterworth: "Alfarabi's Goal: Political Philosophy, not Political Theology"

http://murphy.tulane.edu/events/lectures/1622.php

No abstract provided by the organizers.

Emeritus Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and currently Visiting Professor in the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Charles Butterworth specializes in medieval Islamic political philosophy. His publications include critical editions of many commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle's logic, as well as translations of treatises by Averroes, Alfarabi, Alrazi, and Maimonides. He has also published translations and analyses of the political teaching of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The lecture is free and open to all.

CONF: Political and Legal Theology in Comparative Perspective

Conference "Political and Legal Theology in Comparative Perspective", co-sponsored by the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy and the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School, 55 Fifth Avenue at 12 Street, Suite 542, New York, 21-22 February 2010

www.cardozo.yu.edu/MemberContentDisplay.aspx?ccmd=ContentDisplay&ucmd=UserDisplay&userid=10374&contentid=14096&folderid=340

Political theology is a mode of inquiry that understands the modern period as incompletely secularized. Theology has been adapted, reworked, and translated for secular use, but its hold on the political imagination remains strong. Although the Enlightenment and the rise of western political liberalism attempted to keep the public, political sphere completely secular while relegating religion to the private sphere, political theology argues that modern political systems have reoccupied the space that was once held by religious and theological systems. With the rise of political Islam abroad, and the increasing political power of the Christian Right in the United States, the exploration of the theological roots of the political imagination takes on great contemporary significance. Political theology, however, has been primarily concerned with ancient and medieval conceptions of the City of God and the theological polity, due to its links to western political nationalism after the fall of Christendom. In an age of political and religious globalization, there is a pressing need to bring non-Christian religions into these conversations.

Scholars have, for the most part, studied the impact of theology on our contemporary political commitments, but much less attention has been paid to the theological underpinnings of secular legal systems. Yet, a small but growing body of literature on legal theology has demonstrated that both in its origins and in its content, western law preserves and reoccupies spaces once held by God, revelation, prophets, and priests. The increasing presence of religion in the public square, both in the United States and abroad, has led to a rethinking of time-honored understandings of the relationship between religion, theology, and law. In an age in which political globalization has been accompanied by legal globalization, there is a need not only for disparate studies of political and legal theology, but to bring political theology and legal theology into productive conversation with one another. This conference aims to begin this new comparative and interdisciplinary conversation in political and legal theology.

Please note that this conference is not open to the public. Interested academics or students may want to contact the organizers, though, to see whether and how they can participate.

There will be one public panel on "American Exceptionalism and the Relevance of Political Theology in America", in the Moot Court Room, on 21 February, 6-8 pm (yes, that's a Sunday)

Panelists: Peter Berkowitz (Hoover Institution, Stanford), Paul Kahn (Yale Law School), Hendrik Hartog (History, Princeton), and Samuel Moyn (History, Columbia)

The concept of the qualitative uniqueness of America, known as American exceptionalism, dates back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century description of American democracy as "exceptional". American exceptionalism has been used both to describe and explain America's unique political, legal, social and religious landscapes. It has served as a justification of American foreign policy and America's frequent choice to act alone, rather than among the community of nations. American exceptionalism has been derided as a jingoist manifestation of American arrogance; it has been praised by proud Americans as an expression of their nation’s uniqueness. The term has been used neutrally by scholars attempting to compare America and other nations, and by those attempting to evaluate the validity of the expression. In recent decades, American exceptionalism has been re-examined by a number of scholars and thinkers, and has once again become a subject of heated debate in scholarship as well as public policy.

Claims of uniqueness and exceptionalism can be understood as secularized versions of claims to theological chosenness and uniqueness that lie in the foreground of American history, and the perennial quest to serve as a "city on a hill" or a "light among the nations". In this sense, American exceptionalism merits exploration in the context of political theology, a concept famously encapsulated by Carl Schmitt as the notion that all modern political concepts are secularized theological ones. In a forthcoming book, legal scholar Paul Kahn argues that a re-examination of Schmitt's concept of political theology and his associated understanding of sovereignty can be tremendously useful in a re-examination of American exceptionalism, and the continual tension in America between the rule of law and the concept of popular sovereignty. Panelists will address the nexus between American exceptionalism and the enduring relevance of political theology in contemporary American society.

Followed by a reception.

Please RSVP to: jewishlaw@yu.edu

Public lecture: The Primal Scenes of Political Theology

University of California at Davis, Davis Humanities Institute (DHI),
126 Vorhies Hall, 1st and A streets, Davis, California, USA,
21 January 2010, 4.00-5.30 pm

Public lecture by Jacques Lezra (Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese at New York University):
"The Primal Scences of Political Theology"

http://dhi.ucdavis.edu/?p=2987

"And earthly power doth then show likest God's / When mercy seasons justice." – William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

"This analogy is the very site of the theologico-political, the hyphen [trait d'union] or translation between the theological and the political." – Jacques Derrida, "Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question"

In "The Primal Scenes of Political Theology", Jacques Lezra will approach a cluster of urgent questions in contemporary political and cultural theory by reading Freud's readings of Schiller: Is there indeed a "trait d'union" between the theological and the political, marked (as Carl Schmitt and other proponents of the secularization thesis argue) somewhere in the period of early modernity? Which "early modernity" do we mean? And under what conditions can we approach it? What forms of cultural mediation determine the encounter between theology and politics for us today? And conversely: is our understanding of "cultural mediation" itself marked by the encounter between theology and politics in the early modern period?

This event is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Critical Theory, the Departments of English, German, Comparative Literature, Spanish and Portuguese, and the Early Modern Research Cluster.

For more information please contact Matthew Stratton (UC Davis): mstratton@ucdavis.edu

Public lecture: The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 296, Portland, Oregon, USA, 19 November 2009, 6.30 pm

Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA) will be speaking on "The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood: Political Theological Models for Living in an Open World".

www.publichumanities.pdx.edu/ResearchGroups/cosmo.html

What does the simultaneously political and theological imperative to "love thy neighbor" suggest to us in the challenging contemporary era of globalization? What philosophical and ethical trajectories can be drawn from the ancient injunction of the Book of Leviticus to the arena of the international community?

For Kenneth Reinhard, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, "neighbor love" is as a core element in what he understands to be the tradition of "political theology" in the West.

Reinhard is an expert in early modern English literature, Shakespeare, psychoanalysis, Jewish studies, and critical theory. He is the author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric Santner, of "The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology" (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Currently, he is writing a book on the ethics of the neighbor in religion (Torah, Talmud, and Patristic writings), philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Rosenzweig, and Levinas), and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan) for Princeton University Press.

If you have any questions regarding this event, please feel free to contact the Portland Center for Public Humanities: publichumanities@pdx.edu

The event is free and open to the public.