What's new

IRCPL News

Applications now open: dissertation fellowships for PhD students

The IRCPL Dissertation Fellowship provides students with $5,000 towards the completion of their dissertation over the course of an academic semester (typically the fall semester). IRCPL Dissertation Fellows are expected to attend a monthly seminar with the Director of IRCPL, in which they will have the opportunity to present a chapter on which they are working and receive feedback.

Applications for the 2022 Dissertation Fellowship are due on Wednesday, May 18th, 2022.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
Masterclass: Indigenous Environmental Justice

The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life is pleased to announce a master class for students in the Columbia University community on the topic of Indigenous Environmental Justice: Transforming Sustainability, Empowering Climate Action. The master class will be run by Kyle Powys Whyte, Professor of Environment and Sustainability and George Willis Pack at the University of Michigan.

This master class will take place over four sessions, each of 75 minutes, on February 9th, February 23rd, March 9th, and April 6th.

Deadline for applications: January 18, 2022

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
Public Writing Workshop

The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life will host a public writing workshop over three to four sessions during the spring 2022 semester. The aim of the workshop is to provide graduate students with advice and support in producing a sample op-ed or book review essay aimed at a broad, non-specialist audience. This sample might be used for job applications (academic and non-academic) or for submission to a publication.

Participants will receive the input of Columbia faculty with experience writing for such news outlets as the New York Times and the Guardian, as well as periodicals and online venues such as the Nation, the New York Review of Books, Public Books, and the Immanent Frame.

Apply by December 1, 2021.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
Apply now: dissertation fellowships for PhD students

The IRCPL Dissertation Fellowship provides students with $5,000 towards the completion of their dissertation over the course of an academic semester (typically the fall semester). IRCPL Dissertation Fellows are expected to attend a monthly seminar with the Director of IRCPL, in which they will have the opportunity to present a chapter on which they are working and receive feedback.

Applications for the 2021 Dissertation Fellowship are due on Friday, June 11th, 2021.

Read More
Guest User
ZIP Code Public Humanities Fellowship

Extended deadline: Monday, May 24, 2021.
Public Humanities Fellows will each work closely with one of the community, arts, or religious organizations participating in the ZIP Code Memory Project to organize group meetings and discussions, reparative memory workshops, larger public roundtables and memorial events, the building of an interactive website, and a final exhibition. Fellows receive a stipend of $4000.

This fellowship is offered in partnership with Heyman/SOF and CSSD.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
Events postponed in support of the Graduate Workers of Columbia strike

Please note that, in support of the Graduate Workers of Columbia strike, the following events have been postponed:

  • March 30 | Grieving One-Self: Mortuary Care for Social Singles in Japan

  • April 7 | Gestures of Protest and Piety: Race, Politics, and Faith in the World of Sport

  • April 15 | Monument Lab: A Memorial to the Pandemic

Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates.

Read More
NewsGuest User
Applications now open: summer fellowships for graduate & undergraduate students

Graduate students: apply by March 11, 2021. The fellowship provides each student a maximum of $4,000 to cover expenses related to their research during the Summer of 2021 (including living expenses). No travel is allowed, per Columbia policy.

Undergraduate students: apply by March 25, 2021. The fellowship provides a maximum of $2,500 to support research or an internship that focuses on any aspect of religion or secularism. Please note that graduating seniors are not eligible for this fellowship.

Email Marianna at mp3699@columbia.edu with any questions.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
This Week | "Catholics and the Court" on January 28

Join us on Thursday, January 28 at 5:30PM for a panel with Julie Byrne (Hofstra University), Jonathan Calvillo (Boston University), and Mary Anne Case (University of Chicago), moderated by Katherine Franke (Columbia Law).

Six out of nine judges on the Supreme Court identify as Catholic, and as long ago as 2008 the political scientist Barbara Perry referred to the Supreme Court as “the Catholic Court.” What might this mean? How—if at all—can we trace the influences of Catholicism on judicial reasoning?

Register here to receive the webinar link.

Read More
EventsGuest User
Call for Abstracts: Roundtable on Religion and Climate Change

The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life invites submissions for a two-day roundtable on “Religion and Climate Change,” to be held virtually on March 25-26, 2021. The first roundtable invites scholars whose work addresses religious, spiritual and theological engagements with the climate crisis, broadly conceived. The second roundtable engages scholars examining the intersections, overlaps, or commonalities between science and/or environmentalism and religion and the ways in which beliefs are engaged. Participants will not be asked to write a paper, but will present a brief summary of their ongoing work for discussion.

Interested participants should submit a 300-word abstract and two-page Curriculum Vitae to Marianna Pecoraro at mp3699@columbia.edu by January 21, 2021. Submissions from early career researchers (including PhD students) are especially encouraged.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
New Initiative to Enhance Remote Learning and Teaching

With a challenging academic year ahead, the Center for Science and Society, the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health, the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society will offer new grants for proposals that cultivate student engagement and enhance the online learning experience for Columbia students and instructors.

All Columbia and Barnard faculty, instructors, undergraduate and graduate students, TAs, research fellows and postdocs (if teaching or taking a class in the 2020-21 academic year) are eligible to apply.

Learn more here. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

Read More
OpportunitiesGuest User
Request for proposals - Addressing Racism: A Call to Action for Columbia Faculty

IRCPL is working with the Office of the Provost to provide seed grant funding for faculty and/or academic units within the Columbia community that engage with issues of structural racism. The goal of this initiative is to provide resources to enable collaborative dialogue, action, and insight for systemic change towards racial equity. Awards will be funded up to $5,000.

IRCPL will support 1-2 projects that focus in some significant way on the intersection of race/racism and issues connected to religion, belief and/or secularism.

Submission deadline: September 17, 2020.
See more information here.

Read More
Apply to the Claremont Prize for the Study of Religion

The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University is seeking submissions to its second annual Claremont Prize for the Study of Religion. The prize is dedicated to the publication of first books by early career scholars working in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences. Submissions can be on any aspect of the study of religion, including the study of secularism. Prize-winners will be invited to IRCPL to participate in a workshop and the books will appear in IRCPL’s series, “Religion, Culture, and Public Life,” published by Columbia University Press.

Deadline: September 14, 2020.

Read More
Congratulations to the 2020-21 Joint Projects Award winners

As part of its mission, IRCPL works to facilitate the study of religion and public life for faculty in a wide range of departments. With the annual Joint Projects Award, IRCPL selects a number of projects and works directly with Columbia faculty to organize conferences, working groups, seminars and other programs that bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars.

The winners of the 2020-21 competition are:

Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard, Anthropology) & Lana Tatour (Center for Palestine Studies)
Maria José De Abreu (Anthropology)
Mana Kia (MESAAS) & Debashree Mukherjee (MESAAS)
Timothy Mitchell (MESAAS) & Mohamed Amer Meziane (Religion)
Anupama Rao (Barnard, History)

Read more about the projects.

Read More
NewsGuest User
Funding opportunities for PhD students

2020 SCHOLARSHIP FUND

The 2020 Scholarship Fund places an emphasis on meeting unexpected expenses, on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, that are affecting students’ ability to pursue their research and writing. Each award is $3,000. See more details here.

Deadline: Monday, May 25, 2020 at 12pm.

DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP

The IRCPL Dissertation Fellowship provides students with $5,000 towards the completion of the dissertation. The fellowship is available to students registered full-time at Columbia GSAS who have completed the 5th year of the PhD program. See more details here.

Deadline: Monday, June 15, 2020 at 12pm.

Email Marianna Pecoraro at mp3699@columbia.edu with any questions.

Read More
IRCPL Events Cancellations - COVID-19

Dear IRCPL Community,

Due to the developing situation with COVID-19, we have decided to suspend all events for the spring 2020 term. While Columbia has not closed, all classes are online through May, and gatherings of more than 25 people are strongly discouraged. (More information on Columbia’s response to COVID-19 here.)

We hope to be able to reschedule our events for another time. You can receive our updates by signing up for our newsletter.

Read More
NewsGuest User
Event cancelled: "Life in Proximity to Death" (Wednesday, March 11)

The event "Life in Proximity to Death" (Wednesday, March 11) has been cancelled. Considering the rapidly changing information about COVID-19, Columbia University has decided to discourage non-essential events of more than 25 people. The goal of this policy is to prevent the virus from spreading.

We sincerely apologize, and we hope to be able to reschedule the event in the future.

Read More
NewsGuest User
Karla Rothstein (GSAPP) & John Bruce (Parsons) in conversation

Please join us for a conversation on life in proximity to death - we will discuss questions of design, dignity, and care. As an architect, Karla Rothstein has been at the forefront of efforts to transform the ways in which we commemorate and place the dead, especially given constraints of space in urban cemeteries and environmental costs of cremation. Through his work as a filmmaker, John Bruce documents the power of human connections with the dying, who are all too often marginalized from the wider currents of everyday social life.

Wednesday, March 11 @6:30PM
Avery Hall, room 114

Read More
EventsGuest User
TODAY: A book talk on Soviet Atheism with Victoria Smolkin

Thursday, February 13th at 6:15PM
International Affairs Building, room 1219

Victoria Smolkin will discuss her new book A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton University Press, 2019). When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion. Instead, atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough and eventually Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into public life as the Soviet experiment was nearing its end. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Read More
Guest User