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Department News

Professor Bill Hart on panel: “Black Writers Writing While Black” presented by Vanderbilt University Department of African American and Diaspora Studies and Callie House Research Center

LNP | F&M professor’s book explores the contentious dispute in modern Islam between 2 theologies

SherAli Tareen ’05, associate professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College, is the author of “Defending Muhammad in Modernity.”

History and Religious Studies Mini-Symposium

Of Blasphemy and Miracles: New Approaches to Old Catholic Puzzles

In collaboration with the History and Spanish and Portuguese Departments the Religious Studies Department is sponsoring two dynamic individuals at a mini-symposium Sunday, March 8, at 4 p.m. in Arts Commons 102. The speaking engagement is titled “Of Blasphemy and Miracles: New Approaches to Old Catholic Puzzles.”

University of San Francisco Professor Katrina Olds’s work focuses on early modern Spanish history. Her research interests include popular culture and religion; Counter-Reformation history and hagiography; the history of the book; and religious and intellectual exchange in Spain and the Americas. She is a Macalester alum, and when she was at Macalester, she concentrated in Religious Studies and Spanish, wrote an honors thesis on the Virgin of Guadalupe, and studied abroad in the Dominican Republic, where she learned to speak Spanish, got to see the pope (from very far away), and became fascinated with popular Catholicism.

Professor Karin Vélez is a member of the faculty of Macalester College. She received her doctorate from the History Department of Princeton University and her research interests  include the history of the Atlantic World, early Modern Iberian and French empires, and popular religion. She has received several awards for her recently published book “​The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World.”

“Lecture in 5 Tweets” from Candace Mixon

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Visiting Assistant Professor Candace Mixon participated in the @Macalester Twitter account’s “Lecture in 5 Tweets” series, tweeting a lesson about Islamic art to the Macalester community. Check out the thread here!

Professor Erik Davis is quoted in The Phnom Penh Post

Read the article here: “How serious are Cambodia’s land rights protesters about their curses?” 

Christian Lee Novetzke ’93 writes book

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A new book, The Quotidian Revolution – Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India by Christian Lee Novetzke ’93, was published by Columbia University press in 2016. Novetzke is professor of religious studies, South Asia studies, and global studies at the University of Washington.

Jacob Bessen ’17 publishes article in JUIS

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Jacob Bessen’s ‘17 article, Worship and Success in Global Capitalism: West African Pentecostal Immigrants in The Netherlands, was published in JUIS, Journal of Undergraduate International Studies, Spring 2016 Issue.