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        • Devotional Absurdity and the Efficacy of Failure
        • The Need for Developing an Afro-Latinx Theology
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        • Religion and Relationality: Insights from Indigenous Studies
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        • Maddened Pedagogies
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Center for Religion & the Human
A research center of the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University Bloomington

  • Home
  • Announcement of Award
  • News & Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
  • Projects
    • American Religion
    • The Being Human Summer Institute
    • Black Religious Studies
    • Religion and the Human Book Series
    • Religion, Science, and Technology
    • Knausgaard Project
    • Religion & Literature
    • Teaching Journalists
  • Noli Me Tangere
  • Teaching Religion in Public
    • Engaging Religion
    • Teaching Religion in Public
  • About Us
    • Mission
    • People
    • Contact
    • Faculty Advisory Board
    • Friends of CRH
    • LUCE
  • Search
  • Contact
  • Giving

Being Human

What it means to be human is a matter of renewed urgency today.

Welcome to the Center for Religion and the Human (CRH)


As we are pressed by advances in technology and biology, on the one hand, and by rapid social and political change, on the other, theology and religious studies promise a space of reflection, perspective, and new possibilities. Funded by grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the Office of the Vice Provost at Indiana University Bloomington, the Center for Religion and the Human supports interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research on religion which attends to these new realities while being rooted in IUB’s traditions of excellence in humanist, social-scientific and historical scholarship.


 

Upcoming Events

Jul 01

Religious Studies graduate student work/writing space

10 a.m.—1 p.m.

1211 E. Atwater Avenue, Bloomington IN 47401

-

Jul 08

Religious Studies graduate student work/writing space

10 a.m.—1 p.m.

1211 E. Atwater Avenue, Bloomington IN 47401

-

See all upcoming events.

Featured News

CRH receives second major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation

Unstately Black Religion: A Three-Year Study

We are pleased to announce that co-directors J. Kameron Carter and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan have been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the initiative “Unstately Black Religion: A Three-Year Study.”

Learn more about the Henry Luce Foundation grant

Enjoy our recording of the Iris Book Award Prize Ceremony!

FROM FEBRUARY 9, 2022

The Center for Religion and the Human announces Terence Keel’s Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science (Stanford University Press, 2018) as winner of the second annual Iris Book Award. 

This year’s ceremony featured a discussion with Terence Keel, J. Kameron Carter, and Myrna Perez Sheldon, moderated by Lisa Sideris. 

Watch the recording of the Iris Book Award Prize Ceremony

Teaching Religion in Public

Afrofuturism and the Post-Human

Is Religious Studies equipped to address what it means to move beyond the category human? How do the methods of Religious Studies allow us to imagine life beyond earth? Do we as scholars attend to the fact that humanity evolves—in all senses—and how that evolution impacts religion? Using Afrofuturism and speculative thought as the methodologies, these sessions invite us to redress the role of religion—informed by Enlightenment religious thought—in creating “normative” figurations of the human.

Learn more about teaching religion in public

Noli Me Tangere Project debuts website

reflections on the pandemic

Our project takes the words spoken by Jesus to Mary Magdalene in the garden after she discovers his empty tomb — noli me tangere (“touch me not”) — as a provocation for reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic, and on other pandemics, viral and social, that engulf us.

Featuring original music, paintings, photography, essays, poetry, talks, conversations, and more, with a new reflections added every two weeks.

Visit the Noli Me Tangere Project's website

Maddened Pedagogies: Teaching Religion and Black Popular Culture

BY JAMES HOWARD HILL, Jr.

"At its core, this teaching module highlights pedagogical gaps and silences that might occasion the opportunity for professors teaching at the intersection of religion and black popular culture to lean fully into the disturbing, mad and maddening epistemic possibilities found within the architecture of black popular culture."

Explore the Maddened Pedagogies teaching module

A Cat in the Basket and Other Scholarly Stories

by Anand Venkatkrishnan

"Spend enough time being broken down by your teachers and you will think that criticism is a form of love. But bring your whole being into the life of learning and your values change. This is what I’ve learned from students who agitate for a more just and democratic educational space."

Read A Cat in the Basket and other scholarly stories

Now in paperback

Theologies of American Exceptionalism

A collection of fifteen interlocking essays reflecting on the vagaries of exceptionalist claims in and about the United States. Loosely and generatively curious, these essays bring together a range of historical and contemporary voices, some familiar and some less so, to stimulate new thought about America. Available in paperback, or in a free e-book version.

View Theologies of American Exceptionalism

Asian Women, Christianity, and American Purity Culture

BY MIHEE KIM-KORT

"Through an engagement of the discourses of evangelical purity culture we can see how the figure of the Asian woman in Asia and in diaspora, particularly in the U.S., acts as a canvas on which expectations and anxieties around domesticity, sexuality, and nation-state converge to produce more than a scapegoat, but a particular objecthood and aesthetic that evokes a racialized femininity." 

Explore the Asian Women, Christianity, and American Purity Culture teaching module.

Let the Past Fail Me

BY HSIAO-WEN CHENG

Engaging Religion presents a short essay by Hsiao-Wen Cheng (University of Pennsylvania).

"When I fail to make sense of what I see in a historical record, or when I fail to apprehend someone’s response to my question, maybe that means I am asking a failing question."

Read the Let the Past Fail Me essay

The Matter of Black Religion: Thinking with Charles H. Long

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW

From editors Cooper Harriss and Sarah Imhoff: This is a special issue of American Religion: “The Matter of Black Religion: Thinking with Charles H. Long”—edited by J. Kameron Carter. The legacy of Charles Long, who died in February of 2020, is one that both cannot be underestimated and, improbably, too often has been.

Read the new issue of American Religion

Church State Corporation

Symposium Essays

The journal Political Theology hosts an online symposium on CRH Co-Director Winnifred Fallers Sullivan's newest book Church State Corporation (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

The sympsium features an introduction by Vincent Lloyd and essays by Yael Almog, Spencer Dew, Joshua Mauldin, and Méadhbh McIvor, followed by Winnifred Sullivan's response.

Read the Political Theology's collection of essays

Zakiyyah Iman Jackson in conversation with J. Kameron Carter

From Wednesday, March 24

Please enjoy our recording of this event!

J. Kameron Carter hosted a conversation with Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, author of Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (NYU Press, 2020).

Watch Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's conversation with J. Kameron Carter

Engaging Religion: Essays and Teaching Modules on Teaching Religion in Public

Photo by Bertie Kibreah

Devotional Absurdity and the Efficacy of Failure

A short essay by Bertie Kibreah (Indiana University).

Engaging Religion

Browse all essays and teaching resources.

All events follow current campus-wide directives

The Center for Religion & the Human follows all Indiana University campus-wide directives regarding COVID-19. See updates.

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