Timothy Knepper – Page 40 – The Comparison Project

2013-04-05

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

kopfpromopic Wednesday, 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:

2013-03-11

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:

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

2013-02-18

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

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.madden@drake.edu

Listen to audio from the presentation:

2013-01-23

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

Hector 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: