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, […]
Buddhism and the Ethics of Memory Read More »
Thursday, April 4 at 7:00 p.m., Olin 101 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
Innovative Jewish Responses to Holocaust Read More »
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
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
A Guide to the Supplementary Resources for 2012-2013 Read More »
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
Student Comparisons (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions) Read More »
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
Student Resources on Lakota (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions) Read More »
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,
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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
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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
Who Ended Slavery? Secularization in Context Read More »
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
Religious Responses to Suffering: An Interfaith Dialogue Read More »
