Faculty members Faye Ginsburg (Culture and Media) and Angela Zito (Religious Studies/ Anthropology) co-direct the interdisciplinary Center for Religion and Media, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of their Centers of Excellence Program for 2003-2008. The Center, a joint project of the Religious Studies Program and the Center for Media, Culture, and History, develops and broadens interdisciplinary and cross-cultural scholarship, pedagogy, and public knowledge of religion and media as a global phenomena with deep local roots.

The Center, a joint project of the Religious Studies Program and the Center for Media, Culture, and History, will develop and broaden interdisciplinary and cross-cultural scholarship, pedagogy, and public knowledge of religion and media as a global phenomenon with deep local roots. While this project was conceived before September 11, that event and its aftermath have dramatized the need for understanding the spread of religious ideas and practices through a variety of media. Jay Rosen (Chair, Dept. of Journalism) will be directing the Center's innovative web journal.

The Center will start officially in May 2003. This summer
(July 11 – 20, 2003), we will be collaborating with Diana Taylor and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU in hosting an international encuentro on Spectacles of Religiosity: Religious Mediation in the Americas.

By the Fall of 2003, a new faculty position in Religion and Media will be appointed, a joint position between Religious Studies and Performance Studies. Each year, The Center will host one Research Scholar and two Postdoctoral fellows. While pursuing personal projects, they will also participate in the Center’s working activities. Postdoctoral candidates should have completed the PhD within the last five years. Research Scholar should be advanced assistant professors or more senior. (For information, contact barbara.abrash@nyu.edu)

Our theme for academic year 2003-04, is Confession, Testimony and Witnessing. Faculty-run interdisciplinary working groups are at the heart of this project, representing a number of disciplines and linked to their own and colleagues' particular research interests around the topic of religion and media. The Key Working Groups for 2003-04 will be:

The Islamic Public Sphere.
Convener: Michael Gilsenan, Chair, Middle Eastern Studies

Jews, Media, and Religion.
Convener: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Performance & Hebrew /Judaic Studies

Media, Religion, and Human Rights
Convener: Meg McLagan, Anthropology

The conveners and participants in these groups will work with the directors to organize workshops. The workshop topic for Fall 2003 is Digitizing Religious Diasporas and for Spring 2004 is Voices Within: Prison Letters and Religious Experience.
We also will be organizing a major Conference for May 2004 entitled Powers of Persuasion: Ethical Action in a Mass-Mediated Age.

In conjunction with these, we will be developing new graduate and undergraduate courses on Religion and Media, Human Rights, Islamic Discourses and the Media, and Mediating Jewish Identity.

In 2004-05, our theme will be Memory, Media, and Religious Experience. Our bridging seminar will focus on The Sensorium and Material Culture. The Key Working Groups for 2004-05 will be:

Circulating Media and the East Asian Diaspora
Convener: Angela Zito

Alternative Voices and Images in Christian Media
Convener: Fred Myers and Bambi Schieffelin


The workshop topic for Fall 2004 is Lost and Found: Translation, Missionizing and the Production of Religious Subjects, and Spring 2005 is Marketing the Spiritual. Our Annual Conference, May 2005, is entitled: Circulating the Spirit: Memory, Media, and Religious Experience.

Rufus D. Smith Hall 25 Waverly Place New York, NY 10003

telephone: 212.998.8550 fax: 212.995.4014 anthropology@nyu.edu