Author: Clayton Mitchell

Posted on

04/17/2013: Buddhism and the Ethics of Memory

kopfpromopicWednesday, April 17 7:00 p.m., Olin 101

Gereon Kopf received his Ph.D. from Temple University and is currently professor of Asian and comparative religion at Luther College. As a research fellow of the Japan Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, he conducted research in 1993 and 1994 at Obirin University in Machida, Japan, and at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, from 2002 to 2004. In the academic year of 2008-2009, he taught at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Beyond Personal Identity (2001), co-editor of Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism (2009), and editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy.

The act of remembering is central to a variety of Buddhist responses to suffering, offering a foundation for responses to historical tragedies and political evil by drawing upon the relationship between the Buddhist principles of suffering, memory, and compassion. Taking various perspectives to the Nanjing massacre as its case study, Dr. Kopf’s lecture will identify and analyze four ways in which individuals and nations commemorate significant events, proposing an ethics of expression that examines the ideological, religious and moral dimensions of various remembrance practices. Ultimately it seeks to provide a theory that reveals the connections between ideological commitments, religious ritual, and moral agenda, reminding us that our self-understanding is inextricably tied to our values and
vice versa.

PowerPoint of Kopf’s lecture

Transcript of Kopf’s presentation

Listen to Kopf’s lecture:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/05/2013-04-17comparisonupdated.mp3″]

Posted on

04/04/2013: Innovative Jewish Responses to Holocaust

Thursday, April 4 at 7:00 p.m., Olin 101 

8 September 2011, CAHS Fellows stand for their informal portraits
Photo courtesy of the USHMM

Steven T. Katz is Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Boston University. He has also taught at Dartmouth College, Cornell University, and at numerous other universities both in the US and abroad. In addition, Dr. Katz is presently the Chair of the Holocaust Commission of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Academic Advisor to the Academic Working Group of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Dr. Katz has published over 100 articles in scholarly journals in the fields of Judaica, Holocaust studies, philosophy of religion, and comparative mysticism, and has lectured all over the world. In 1999 he was awarded the University of Tübingen’s Lucas Prize for Holocaust studies. And his most recent book, Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust, was selected as the runner-up for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. He is currently the editor of the journal, Modern Judaism.

Dr. Katz’s lecture will review and critique the main Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust and the “problem of evil.” It will include six responses that are, essentially, based on the adaptation and recycling of biblical explanations as to why the righteous suffer. After this opening analysis, he will turn to the five or six responses that present a novel “modern” accounting. This second group will include the views of Richard Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim, Eliezer Berkovitz, Ignaz Maybaum, Emanuel Levinas, and Elie Wiesel.

Listen to Katz’s lecture:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/05/2013-04-04comparisonupdated.mp3″]

Here is the section of Dr. Katz’s “Wrestling with God” upon which his lecture drew

Posted on

03/07/2013: Above + Beyond Cancer’s Journey to the High Himalaya: Creative Nonfiction Narratives of Recovery, Discovery, and Advocacy

 

ABC group

Thursday, March 7 7:30 p.m. in the Cowles Library Reading Room for a creative nonfiction reading by Ruth Bachman and Andy Fleming, two member of Above + Beyond Cancer’s recent journey to the High Himalaya.

Writers will read from the creative nonfiction narratives inspired by their recent trek through the High Himalaya with Above + Beyond Cancer. These narratives are part of an ongoing Drake and Above + Beyond Cancer Community Writing Project.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact Yasmina Madden at yasmina [dot] madden [at] drake [dot] edu

Listen to audio from the presentation:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/04/20130307mixedtrim.mp3″]

Posted on

A Guide to the Supplementary Resources for 2012-2013

Below you will find supplementary resources pertinent to The Comparison Project’s 2012-2013 theme of Religious Responses to Suffering. These resources come from students in Prof. Knepper’s Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course and Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion course. They are ordered from most recent (top) to least recent (bottom).

The Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course first examined then compared religious responses to suffering in Sikhism, Lakota traditions, and Islam. Below you will find some of their analytic and comparative papers as well as a few of their encyclopedic entries.

The Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion first examined religious responses to suffering in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, then compared and evaluated religious responses to suffering in all six of the religions considered in 2012-2013. Below you will find some of their comparative-evaluative papers.

 

Posted on

Student Comparisons (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

After studying Sikh, Lakota, and Muslim responses to suffering throughout the Fall 2012 Semester, students in Professor Knepper’s class were tasked with performing unique comparisons of their own design on some aspect of these three faiths and their responses to suffering. These papers were designed to ask students to think critically about the similarities and differences of religious responses to suffering between these three faiths, and to come to some insightful conclusions about what the implications of these similarities and differences are. Some of these essays, which were wide-ranging and creative, can be found below:

Posted on

Student Resources on Lakota (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

Our section on Lakota traditional ways began by exploring Lakota understandings of and responses to suffering (with the help of a local Lakota, Howard Croweagle).  We then considered the late nineteenth-century “Ghost Dance” as a (religious) response to suffering, followed by some late twentieth-century re-memorizations of and resistances to the 1890 massacre of Wounded Knee as (religious) responses to suffering.

Some students, whether individually or collectively, chose to write short, encyclopedic pieces on Lakota traditions in general, Lakota responses to suffering, and what the class learned about Lakota responses to suffering.

Other students instead wrote papers on Lakota responses to suffering either as the late nineteenth-century “Ghost Dance” or in a variety of more recent re-memorizations of and resistances to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee such as the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, the reburial of Zintkala Nuni, and the Big Foot Memorial Ride (all of which we read about in the essay of The Comparative Project’s guest speaker on Lakota responses to suffering, Michelene Pesantubbee’s “Wounded Knee: Site of Resistance and Recovery”). Here are some of them:

Posted on

Student Resources on Islam (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

Our section on Islam began with a consideration of Muslim responses to suffering in general (by way of John Bowker’s chapter on Islam in Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World), then read John Kiser’s 2010 book on the nineteenth-century Algerian freedom-fighter, Abd el-Kader (Commander of the Faithful).

Some students again chose to write short, encyclopedia-like entires on Islam: a introduction to Islam in general, an introduction to Muslim responses to suffering, and a reflection on what we learned about Muslim responses to suffering:

Other students instead wrote longer essays about the role that Abd el-Kader’s Muslim faith played in his responses to suffering during his resistance to French occupation of Algeria.  Here are some of them:

Posted on

Student Resources on Sikhism (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

Our section on Sikhism began with Sikh explanations of suffering in general (in Pashaura Singh’s “Sikh Perspectives on Health and Suffering”), then turned to two instances of Sikh responses to suffering: the 1699 establishment of the Sikh Khalsa, and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh’s 2005 feminist re-memorization of the Khalsa (The Birth of the Khalsa).

One student offered to try her hand at encyclopedia-like entries for The Comparison Project website on Sikhism: a basic introduction to Sikhism, a basic introduction to Sikh responses to suffering, and a short essay on “what we learned” in our section on Sikhism.

The other students wrote papers either on the establishment of the Khalsa itself or on Prof. Singh’s feminist re-memorization of the Khalsa as a religious response to suffering.  Here are some of them:

Posted on

02/14/2013: Who Ended Slavery? Secularization in Context

DrAvalosPHOTOHector Avalos, Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University

Response by Jennifer Harvey, Associate Professor of Religion, Drake University

Thursday, February 14 6:30 p.m., Olin 101

A number of prominent writers have claimed that Christian and biblical ethics were ultimately responsible for the abolition of slavery in Africa and the New World. Dr. Hector Avalos, in contrast, argues that biblical arguments against slavery began to be abandoned by abolitionists themselves because the pro-slavery side actually had an advantage in biblical support for slavery.  Thus, more secularized forms of argumentation, which rested on universalized humanitarian and legal premises, became more attractive in abolitionist movements.

Dr. Hector Avalos is Professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, where he was named Professor of the Year in 1996, and a 2003-04 Master Teacher. Born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Dr. Avalos received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1982, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 1985, and Ph.D. in biblical and Near Eastern Studies from Harvard in 1991. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (2005), and The End of Biblical Studies (2007).

Download Prof. Avalos’s presentation

Listen to audio of Avalos’s lecture:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl= “http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/03/TheComparisonProject-Avaloslecture.mp3”]

Posted on

11/29/2012: Religious Responses to Suffering: An Interfaith Dialogue

Thursday, November 29 at 7:00 p.m., Tifereth Israel Synagogue, 924 Polk Blvd.

The dialogue features five representatives of Des Moines area religious communities: Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank, rabbi of the Tifereth Israel Synagogue; Howard Croweagle, American Indian advisor to the governor of Iowa and president of Central Iowa Circle of First Nations; Shuji Valdene Mintzmyer, an ordained Soto priest at the Des Moines Zen Center; Baljit Navroop, an executive member of Iowa Sikh Association; and Ako Abdul-Samad, the Iowa State Representative from the 66th District.

The topic of the dialogue, religious responses to suffering, provides for an exploration of how the religions of the world both explain and empower responses to suffering.

Listen to audio of the dialogue: