Upcoming Events

PREVIOUS EVENTS

October 27th, 2022, 4:00-5:30:

Wanting: Eliza Suggs, Religion, and the Good Disabled Subject

A Health Humanities Colloquium led by Dr. Andrew Walker-Cornetta, Georgia State University

Flier for colloquium with Andrew Walker-Cornetta, to be held Thursday, Oct 27, at 4pm. For more info, please email hhum@bu.edu


This work-in-progress explores how religion appears and disappears within the work of disability history. It focuses on representations of Eliza Suggs, an early-twentieth century African American preacher and author, and argues that scholarly preference for a particular kind of subject—one defined in terms of oppositional agency—often obscures accounts of the past. The paper returns to Suggs’ 1906 memoir, Shadow and Sunshine, as an incitement to think more carefully about how practices of devotion, submission, and piety have shaped experiences of embodied difference.

 

March 2nd, 2022, 7:00pm:
An Evening with Bill T. Jones

Boston University’s Conversations in the Arts & Ideas

The renowned dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones will appear in a public conversation about his life and work with the writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei, Professor of English, George and Joyce Wein Chair in African American Studies, and Director of BU’s African American Studies Program.  Admission is free, but a reservation is required.  Registration opens Feb. 1st at billtjonesbu.eventbrite.com.

 

November 15th, 2021, 1:30-2:45:
Being Street: The Trans Woman of Color as History

 

February 17th, 2021, 5:00-6:30:
Working Against Domestic and Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities:
A Conversation

Juliane Hammer, PhD, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 

Nadiah Mohajir, MPH, HEART: Women & Girls  

Moderated by Lance Laird, ThD, Boston University Medical Center


What are the barriers to effectively addressing gender-based violence in Muslim communities? How do systems of power and privilege affect which victims are (and aren’t) believed and protected? Who gets access to services, information, and safety and how can access be expanded? How can those working against domestic and sexual violence center the Islamic value of mercy?


Recording of “Working Against Domestic and Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: A Conversation”


Organized by the Department of Religion and the Health Humanities Project at Boston University, with support from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, School of Public Health, Boston Medical Center Domestic Violence Program, and the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum. Funded by the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

October 29th, 2020, 4:30-5:45:
Islam, Race, and COVID-19:
A Conversation

 

Shabana Mir, American Islamic College

Kameelah Rashad, Muslim Wellness Foundation

Donna Auston, Rutgers University

Moderated by Kecia Ali, Boston University


Dr. Donna Auston discusses how Black Muslims in the US, by virtue of their multiply marginalized social location, have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the “pandemic of white supremacy”—and how Black Muslim activists have organized and mobilized resources on behalf of their communities in response to both crises.

Dr. Kameelah Mu’min Rashad uses survey data to explore how Black Muslims have coped with COVID-19 and its physical and economic impacts alongside social unrest and racial violence by “holding on to the light of faith,” shifting some religious practices and drawing on spiritual and cultural resilience to resist oppression and make meaning of suffering, violence and white supremacy.

Dr. Shabana Mir speaks about “Muslim religious responses to COVID-19,” exploring how Muslims adapt and organize in response to the demands and challenges of this time as well as in sensitivity to diverse Muslim ideologies and agendas, with particular attention to women’s struggles and strategies to gain access to Muslim religious and spiritual spaces.


Recording of “Islam, Race, and Covid-19: A Conversation”: Panel Discussion

Recording of “Islam, Race, and Covid-19: A Conversation”: Post-Panel Discussion

 

Organized by the Department of Religion and the Health Humanities Project at Boston University, with support from the African American Studies Program, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum.

 

October 14th, 2020, 5:00-7:00: Titicut Follies Film Screening

 

Titicut Follies, a documentary by Frederick Wiseman about Massachusetts’s Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Christopher Ricks will briefly introduce – and afterwards lead a discussion of – the award winning 1967 film, which lasts 1 hr. 25 minutes.

Organized by the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum and the Health Humanities Project at Boston University.

 


October 21st, 2020, 3:00-4:15: Quarantined Faith: Rome, Religion and Coronavirus Film Screening + Q&A with the Film-maker

Join us for a screening of the film Quarantined Faith: Rome, Religion and Coronavirus, Jenn Lindsay’s documentary account of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist responses to living and practicing religion during the pandemic as it first surged in Italy. The 33-minute film will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Jenn Lindsay in conversation with BU’s Stephen Prothero.

 

 


Jenn Lindsay is a social scientist and documentarian who has crafted ethnographic research and compelling visual stories about social and religious diversity since 1998. She is based in Rome, Italy, where she teaches as a Lecturer in Sociology and Communications at John Cabot University and is a co-founding Producer and Director at So Fare Film Productions.

Stephen Prothero is the C. Allyn and Elizabeth V. Russell Professor of Religion at Boston University, specializing in American religions, and the author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–and Doesn’t. His most recent book is Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions.

Co-sponsored by the Arts & Sciences Core Curriculum and the Department of Religion.