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.
Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, affiliated with the Social-Cultural and the Linguistic subfields in the Anthropology Department, as well as the Interdisciplinary Program in Anthropology and History and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His most recent book, Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories, was published by Princeton University Press. His first book, Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society, is based on 2 years of fieldwork on the island of Sumba in Indonesia. His second book, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, concerns the impact of Protestantism and the project of being modern from colonial mission to postcolonial church. He is also a co-editor of The Handbook of Material Culture and an occasional contributor to the Immanent Frame and Material World blogs.