Watson Events

Religion and Internationalism Colloquium -- Religion and Revolution

The next meeting of the Religion and Internationalism Colloquium, co-sponsored by the Religious Studies Department and the Watson Institute, will be on Tuesday, March 1, from 2-4 pm in the 3rd floor Kim Koo library of the Watson Institute. 

This session will be an approach to the theme, “Religion and Revolution.” We will look at this theme from two quite different perspectives. The first reading is an excerpt from Michael Löwy, The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America (Verso 1996). This reading situates Liberation Theology in relation to modern intellectual history, the history of Catholicism, and Latin American history. Löwy is a Paris-based Brazilian sociologist and philosopher. The second reading consists of two essays from the 1970s by Ali Shariati, a key Iranian writer on Islam, social justice, and Marxism: “What is to be Done” and “Humanity between Religion and Marxism.” Although writing from a different context and in a very different genre than Löwy, Shariati engages with the same kind of intellectual lineages (including Marx, Weber, and Fanon) in order to present his vision of an emancipatory conception of religion. The goal of this session is both to provoke an interrogation of this theme as well as to provoke a discussion of future directions for the Colloquium.

The event is open to faculty and graduate students.  Please email Nukhet_Sandal@brown.edu for readings.

Location: Kim Koo Library, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.