Spring 2013 Seminar - ITSF 6902: Religion and Failure
People in all walks of life inevitably encounter failure at one time or another, and have developed ways of coping when things go wrong. Failure—a disruption, or inflection point, at which someone’s worldview or belief system is questioned, upended, challenged, re-synthesized, or even ignored—can offer a vantage point to assess the human experience.
This seminar brings together a range of interdisciplinary scholarship from the social sciences, examining the question of how religious persons or communities have dealt with failure in their lives, or in the lives of those close to them.
The seminar is open to anyone who wishes to attend, but it can also be taken for credit. In this case, participation includes attendance at all presentations and discussions, and the submission of a final paper.
For more information, please contact Elaine Christian (eec2148@columbia.edu) or Daniel Souleles (dss2145@columbia.edu), or just show up – Thursdays from 1:00 to 2:40, in Grace Dodge Hall 365, starting January 24.
ITSF 6902 / CRN 50307
January 24
Introduction
Dry Spells: Struggles with Growing in Faith Among Teenage Missionaries
Elaine Christian, Teachers College, Columbia University
January 31
Conversion as Well-Being Wayfinding: Samoan Spiritual Responses to Heart Attacks, Strokes, and Sepsis
Jessica Hardin, Brandeis University
February 7
The One Who Speaks: Affliction, Healing, and the Ritual Logic of Place in Garhwal
Aftab Jassal, Emory University
February 14
The Failures of Hagiography: Narrative and the Politics of the Miraculous in a Roman Catholic Enclave
Marc Loustau, Harvard Divinity School
February 21
Responses to Macro and Micro Trauma in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Community
Zalman Newfield, New York University
February 28
Hishtadlut and Bitachon: Negotiating Autonomy and Divine Intervention in the Face of Reproductive Catastrophe
Michal Raucher, Northwestern University
March 7
What is Radical Change? Emerging Evangelicals Respond to Double Failure
James Bielo, Miami University
March 14
Demons as Failed Modernity: Catholic Exorcism in the 21st Century
Sara Bergstresser, Boston University
March 21
Spring Break
March 28
Signaling Trust and Coping with Uncertainty: An Adaptationist Account of Ritual
Jordan Kiper, University of Connecticut
April 4
Failing to Think about God: Prayer in the Life of an English Benedictine Monastery
Richard Irvine, Cambridge University
April 11
Maintaining Faith as History is Revealed: Current Dynamics in the Brahma Kumaris
Tamasin Ramsay, School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University
April 18
Mrs. Tabesh and the Jang-e Narm (Soft War) against Iran
Amina Tawasil, Teachers College, Columbia University
April 25
Beyond Consolation: The Significance of Failure for Faith
Heather Wise, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University
May 2
Performative Failure among Aspirants to Mystical Islam in Macedonia
Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic, University College London
May 9
The Transformation of God in Northern Zambia
George C. Bond, Teachers College, Columbia University