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Date: March 18, 1999
Center for the Study of Religion to Promote Scholarship on Social, Cultural Practice
PRINCETON, N.J. -- "We believe that religion is the most under-studied social phenomenon of the 20th century," says Robert Wuthnow, Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University.
"Perhaps in part because of church-state concerns, the study of religion has been excluded from the agendas at research universities. Yet religion is a social and cultural practice that wields extraordinary influence in world events."
Wuthnow is founding director of Princeton's new Center for the Study of Religion, which will nurture the understanding of religion within disciplines other than religious studies -- such as history, literature, sociology and anthropology -- and facilitate interaction among scholars across these various disciplines.
"While we're aware that other universities have recently developed new initiatives in the study of religion," says Princeton President Harold T. Shapiro, "we know of no other institution in the United States pursuing efforts as interdisciplinary and wide-ranging as those Princeton proposes. As part of a world-class research and teaching institution, our distinguished faculty is, I believe, well positioned to play an important role in nurturing the academic study of religion."
Princeton will mark the establishment of the center with an inaugural lecture by Richard Bernstein on "Freud and Moses: The Psychological Power of Religious Tradition." Open to the public, the lecture will be given at 4:30 p.m. on March 29 in McCormick Hall 101. Bernstein is Vera List Professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Over the past two decades, Princeton has emerged as one of only a few universities in which teaching and research are being conducted on the diverse manifestations of religion through the distinctive lenses of varied disciplines, says Wuthnow. In addition to the Department of Religion, more than 50 faculty members in a dozen other departments and programs contribute regularly to the understanding of religion through their various scholarly perspectives. These include disciplines as diverse as Anthropology, Creative Writing, English, Music and Politics.
"Many faculty members are attracted to Princeton by the availability of the Mesoamerican Archive, the Index of Christian Art and other scholarly resources important to the interdisciplinary study of religion," says Wuthnow, "but they find themselves wanting opportunities to interact with one another. Many are in small departments or are the only members of larger departments who may be working on religion. We believe the new center will fill this need."
In general, he says, the center "will provide a place for doing serious scholarly studies that acknowledge the diversity of religious expressions and that may be relevant to immediate questions of public policy."
With support from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lilly Endowment, the University established the Center for the Study of American Religion in 1991. This center offered a program of postdoctoral fellowships, visiting scholars, graduate student support, affiliate fellows, conferences and symposia focusing on religion in the United States. The new center will subsume that entity, permitting work to continue on religion in the United States while also promoting scholarship on other religions and societies. The Pew Charitable Trusts has granted $1.5 million to help launch the new center while the University works to raise $10 million in funding for long-term support through its 250th Anniversary Campaign.
The Center for the Study of Religion will sponsor an interdisciplinary seminar, rotating thematic research projects, and the development and teaching of new undergraduate courses.
Thematic projects will typically consist of a planning year, followed by a programmatic year that features a topical seminar and a conference organized by one or two faculty members with the help of an advanced graduate student or postdoctoral fellow. An example is "Religion and the Senses," sponsored by the Center for the Study of American Religion in 1998-99 and developed by Professor of Religion Leigh Schmidt.
Schmidt is offering a graduate seminar on this topic and has organized a conference that will take place May 21 to 23. During the conference, an international group of sociologists, anthropologists, historians and religious experts will examine "how the senses are used to imagine the body and soul -- and God -- in the Western religious tradition," Schmidt says. He is also completing a book, "Hearing Things: The Mystic's Ear and the Voices of Reason," based on the research that framed the graduate seminar and the conference.
Examples of possible thematic projects for the future are religion in African American literature; Islamic revivalism; the spirituality of 20th-century European artists; the significance of Confucian values in the economic development of the Pacific Rim; changing understandings of gender in American Judaism; conflict among ethno-religious groups in Eastern Europe; and the role of faith-based communities in responding to the needs of at-risk youth in inner cities.