Joint Projects (2024-2025)
Aurality and Devotion in the Premodern World
Principal Investigators: Susan Boynton (Department of Music, Columbia University), Isabelle Levy (IIJS, Columbia University), Georgia Frank (Colgate University)
This Joint Project is a working group bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines and institutions to consider religious sung verse in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the premodern period. In the early centuries of the common era, in the Mediterranean and beyond, from Europe and Byzantium into Asia Minor and Africa, practices emerged in Christianity and Judaism of singing sacred songs that were closely related to scripture. Less is known about such vocalized practices in early Islam, and the working group includes scholars of devotional song in Islam to widen the context for transversal comparisons. Drawing on historical approaches to poetry, religion, and music, we will highlight the mobility of hymnography through a global approach to multi-sited parallel traditions. We will consider the historical conditions of performance in its material surroundings, as well as relationships between the sacred and the secular in sung verse. By connecting different traditions, we hope to provide a space to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to foster ongoing comparative conversations. The group’s activities also include a session at the Byzantine Studies of North America annual conference, visits to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Metropolitan Museum, and concerts.
Columbia Secondary School Enrichment of East Asian Studies Program
Principal Investigators: Eugenia Lean (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia), Zhaohua Yang (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia)
Program Officers: Sarah Jessup (Weatherhead East Asian Institute), Nataly Shahaf (Weatherhead East Asian Institute)
This program aims to cultivate a vibrant learning environment among grade 6-12 students to help them gain a deeper understanding of the role of religion and secularism. We are in a time of increased anger and polarization largely driven by religious intolerance and hostility to the way that other groups’ religions or secularism informs their lives. It is thus at this critical time we hope to offer the next generations a historically grounded understanding of the different ways that religion structures people’s lives, which can, we hope, contribute to a more tolerant and informed perspective on religious differences in the contemporary world. East Asian religions are an often syncretic blend of spirituality and ritual, drawing on Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, popular religion, Shinto, and Korean Shamanism, among other traditions. By studying East Asian religious life through engaging class visits, mentorship programs, curriculum enrichment, and immersive field trips, the project seeks to provide students with diverse resources and expertise while promoting collaboration between educational institutions and research communities in New York City. Addressing educational disparities and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to the program's mission.
Religion, Colonialism and the Built Environment
Principal Investigators: Gale Kenny (Department of Religion, Barnard College/Columbia University), Ralph Ghoche (Department of Architecture, Barnard College/Columbia University), María González Pendás (Department of Architecture, Cornell University), Iheb Guermazi (Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University)
Religion, Colonialism, and the Built Environment examines the complex interplay of religion and secularism, colonialism, and architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Buildings, monuments, and landscapes remain a visible and therefore public expression of histories of colonialism and its religious entanglements. While focused on different traditions and geographies, including European Christian missionary projects, North African Sufi religious networks, and North American Theosophy, the project’s faculty organizers share a common set of questions about how religious groups contributed to and responded to colonialism through the built environment. The research highlights how architecture and infrastructure were deployed to advance religious and political agendas. It considers both Christian efforts to establish hegemony through ideas and institutions, and the resistance strategies of colonized religious communities. By bringing scholars of religion and scholars of architecture into conversation for several panel discussions, the project aims to explore and develop generative methodological and theoretical approaches to studying religion, colonialism, and the built environment. It also aims to shed light on the enduring legacies of colonialism that continue to be visible through its religio-spatial formations.
Rumors, Disinformation, Conspiracy Theories - from Gutenberg to Social Media and AI
Principal Investigator: Stefan Andriopoulos (Department of Germanic Languages, Columbia University)
Co-Investigator: Brian Larkin (Department of Anthropology, Barnard College/Columbia University)
We live in anxious times where the unfolding powers of social media and AI have led to a surge of rumors, conspiracy, and disinformation. But this is not new. Media revolutions have frequently joined with populist ferment to create monsters. From Luther’s attack on the Pope to our current moment, this conference examines the media histories of rumors, disinformation and conspiracy theory. This conference takes place on October 16-17, 2024, and is organized by Stefan Andriopoulos, Matthew Engelke, and Brian Larkin.