Below you will find supplementary resources for The Comparison Project’s 2013-2015 theme of Religion Beyond Words. These resources come from students in Prof. Knepper’s Fall 2013 Comparative Religions course, Spring 2014 Philosophy of Religion course, Fall 2014 Comparative Religions course, and Spring 2015 Philosophy of Religion course.
The Fall 2013 Comparative Religions course first examined then compared discourses of ineffability in Indian Buddhism and Christian mysticism.
The Spring 2014 Philosophy of Religion first examined then compared and evaluated discourses of ineffability in Daoism, West African religion (of the dozos), and Sikhism.
The Fall 2014 Comparative Religions course first examined then compared discourses of ineffability in Zen Buddhism and the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism.
The Spring 2015 Philosophy of Religion course will examine then compare and evaluate discourses of ineffability in Jewish and Muslim mysticism.
Timothy Knepper, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Drake University
NEW DATE/LOCATION: Thursday, December 5, 7:00 p.m. in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center)
How does one say what can’t be said? How does one speak about an unspeakable God? This “problem” is central to the influential writings of the anonymous sixth-century Christian mystic known to us as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. While Dionysius’s Trinitarian God remains the cause of all, it is at the same time beyond all words, names, and assertions. And although Dionysius sometimes simply asserts this apparently paradoxical claim, he more frequently performs it through a series of grammar-violating linguistic techniques. Prof. Knepper’s lecture will begin by examining this discourse of ineffability in the Dionysian corpus; it will then put it into comparative conversation with the other discourses of ineffability that The Comparison Project has examined this semester.
Timothy Knepper is an associate professor of philosophy at Drake University, where he chairs the Department of Philosophy and Religion and directs The Comparison Project. He teaches and publishes in the philosophy of religion, comparative religion, late ancient Neoplatonism, and mystical discourse. He is the author of books on the future of the philosophy of religion (The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave, 2013) and Dionysius the Areopagite (Negating Negation, Wipf & Stock, 2014). And he is currently working on edited collections on “Philosophy of Religion for Religious Studies” and “Discourses of Ineffability in Comparative Perspective.”
Barbara Stafford, Distinguished University Visiting Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture
Response by Lenore Metrick-Chen, Associate Professor of Art History, Drake University
Thursday, October 24, 7:00 p.m. in Cowles Library Reading Room
Barbara Stafford’s research strives to find precise ways of bringing neurobiology, cognitive science, and the new philosophy of mind together with cultural phenomena without falling into reductivism on either side. In this lecture, she will tackle a comparatively understudied and relatively under-researched area in the contemporary neurosciences—an area where the imaging side of the humanities has much to contribute—the importance of selective attention. What are the inducements for attending carefully to the subtleties of the world?
Barbara Maria Stafford is an independent writer, curator and speaker. Her work has consistently explored the intersections between the visual arts and the physical and biological sciences from the early modern to the contemporary era. Her current research charts the revolutionary ways the neurosciences are changing our views of the human and animal sensorium, shaping our fundamental assumptions about perception, sensation, emotion, mental imagery, and subjectivity. Her most recent book is The Field Guide to a New Metafield: Bridging the Humanities-Neurosciences Divide [2011].
Listen to audio of the lecture: [sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://comparisonproject-migration.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/143/2013/10/Stafford_Lecture.mp3″]
Amy Donahue,Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Kennesaw State University will present a lecture on Thursday, October 3, 7:00 p.m. in Cowles Library Reading Room.
Buddhist “no self” teachings wend rather quickly in South Asia, first, into phenomenological nominalism and skepticism about language, and, second, into recognition that speech must, in at least some cases, be fruitful. Buddhist “apoha” theorists such as Jñānaśrimitra work to accommodate these competing drives, on the one hand, by reducing word meanings to practices of “exclusion of the other” (anyāpoha) and, on the other hand, by appealing to notions of “conventional truth” (samvṛtisatya). We’ll examine the meaningfulness of modern social identity expressions, such as “caste,” “gender,” and “conventional society” to consider how fruitful these efforts are.
A scholar in the fields of Indian philosophy, feminist and gender theory, and philosophy of language, Amy Donahue is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2011. Her recent paper, “Suffering Free Markets: A ‘Classical’ Buddhist Critique of Capitalist Conceptions of ‘Value’” is forthcoming from Philosophy East and West (October, 2014). She is currently working on research projects that explore intersections of postcolonial theory and comparative philosophy.
Listen to audio of the lecture:
Download the powerpoint presentation of this lecture: Donahue_PPT
The Buddhist Monks from Gaden Shartse Monastery will offer lectures, teachings and cultural performances from September 9-13.
Visitors may also view the ongoing construction of the sand mandala in the Cowles Library Reading Room between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Monday, September 9, 9:00 a.m., Collier Heritage Room, Cowles Library
Sand Mandala Opening ceremony
View a time lapse video of the mandala process from beginning to end:
Monday, September 9, 7:00 p.m., Collier Heritage Room, Cowles Library
Lecture: Path of the Bodhisattva
Listen to audio of the lecture:
Tuesday, September 10, 7:00 p.m., Sheslow Auditorium
Parking for visitors to the Mandala building is located in the visitor pay parking lot at 28th/University or street parking in the surrounding neighborhoods.
For the performance in Sheslow on Tuesday evening, parking is closest in Lot #1 (Fine Arts Lot), which becomes a visitor lot after 4:30 p.m. This lot could also be used for parking for the other events.
The Comparison Project 2012-2013 explored a range of religious explanations of and responses to suffering through a variety of public programing—everything from lectures on the Holocaust and the Lakota Ghost Dance, to community and Drake inter-faith dialogues, to creative non-fiction readings by Above + Beyond Cancer trekkers. Our culminating event invites three philosophers of religion, of varying methodological commitments and religious expertises, to reflect on these responses to suffering, drawing tentative comparative, explanatory, and evaluative conclusions about them.
Bradley Herling is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. He is the author of The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778-1831 (Routledge, 2006) and co-editor of Deliver Us From Evil (Continuum, 2009), an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examines the problem of evil and unwarranted suffering. Prof. Herling is currently working on a second edition of his textbook, A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion, which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2014.
Jin Y. Park is Associate Professor of philosophy and religion at American University. Park is the author and editor of several books including Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics.
John J. Thatamanil is Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Immanent Divine: God, Creation and the Human Predicament (Fortress Press) and is currently working on a book, The Promise of Religious Diversity: Constructive Theology After Religion, that explores the meaning of the category “religion” for interreligious dialogue.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 17 7:00 p.m., Olin 101
