Religion and Public Life Series
The Religion and Public Life lecture series presents public conversations that expand on current theories and spur debate about religion and secularism, considering the range of secularisms and institutionalizations of religion in Europe, the US, and other parts of the world. Lectures in the series examine specific approaches to how something called “religion” is manifest in public life, and cover timely topics including law, museums and cultural institutions, education and health provisions, politics/diplomacy, prisons, and protest and social movements.
Christian Lee Novetzke is College of Arts and Sciences Term Professor in the South Asia Program, the Comparative Religion Program, and the International Studies Program at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies. He teaches and writes about religion, history, and culture in South Asia, as well as theoretical issues in the study of religion in general and its intersection with historiography. He works with Marathi and Hindi materials, including textual, ethnographic, and visual/filmic sources. He specializes in the study of Maharashtra from the second millennium CE to the present, ranging from the medieval period, through the colonial and modern periods, to the postcolonial era. Professor Novetzke’s first book, Religion and Public Memory (Columbia University Press 2008) won the American Academy of Religion’s award “The Best First Book in the History of Religions” in 2009. The book has been published in India under the title History, Bhakti, and Public Memory by Permanent Black. His second book, co-authored with William Elison and Andy Rotman, is Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation, published by Harvard University Press in 2016. His third book, solo authored, is The Quotidian Revolution, published by Columbia University Press, 2016.