The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, Santa Barbara

 presents

 Rethinking Secularism – A Seminar Discussion

Friday, November 18, 2011 – 12:00 noon, Orfalea Center seminar room – 1005 Robertson Gym

 With:

Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council, and Prof of Sociology, NYU

Jonathan Van Antwerpen, Editor-in-Chief, The Immanent Frame, SSRC online magazine

Mark Juergensmeyer, Director, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies

 Comments by:
Benjamin (Jerry) Cohen, UCSB Political Science
Wade Clark Roof, UCSB Religious Studies
Giles Gunn, UCSB Global & International Studies

 The speakers will discuss the background and content of the multi-year project of the Social Science Research Council on the crisis of secularism that resulted in their recently published, co-edited volume Rethinking Secularism (2011 Oxford UP). The project (and the volume) involved an interdisciplinary group of leading theorists and scholars, including the philosopher Charles Taylor, the literary theorist Talal Asad, the political scientist Peter Katzenstein, the sociologist Jose Casanova, and many more. The project focused on the central issues of how ”the secular” emerged historically, how it is now constituted and understood in different ways around the global, and how it has presented an analytic challenge for the social sciences, the humanities, and international affairs.