Contact Us
Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee Lecture
The Annual Durfee Lecture was initiated in 2007 by a generous gift from Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee. Held every spring, the series provides our students and American University community with the opportunity to meet distinguished scholars in religious studies.
“Seeing and Believing: Social Media and Social Justice”
“Seeing and Believing: Social Media and Social Justice”
presented by Ellen T. Armour
16th Annual Durfee Lecture, Spring 2024
Abstract
We call social media the new public square. How is this new visually saturated media landscape affecting the struggles for social justice? What role is photography playing in it and on it, and thus in and on those struggles? We live (virtually) in social media “bubbles,” research tells us. What we see there tends to reinforce what we already believe, it seems, and what we already believe shapes what we see. And yet the #BlackLivesMatter movement (among others) demonstratesthis new media landscape’s power to draw (at least some of) us together across lines that tend to divide us. Drawing onSeeing and Believing,Armouranalyzes these challenges and opportunitiesoffering strategiesdrawn from religious ways of seeing for navigatingthem to advance social justice.
Bio
Ellen T.Armouris Professor and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair of Feminist Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School where she directs the Carpenter Program in Religion,Genderand Sexuality. In addition toSeeingand Believing: Religion, Digital Visual Culture and Social Justice(New York: Columbia University Press, 2023),she is the author ofSigns and Wonders: Theology after Modernity(Columbia University Press, 2016) andDeconstruction, Feminist Theology, and the Problem of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). She also co-editedBodily Citations: Judith Butler and Religion(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
Past Lectures
15. "God and Hip Hop," 2023
Alex Nava
Professor of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona
video.
14. "Postcolonialism, Interreligious Engagement, and Peacebuilding,"2022
Kwok Pui Lan
Dean's Professor of Systematic Theology, Emory University, Candler School of Theology
13. "The Pre-Monastic Ascetic Landscape of Mesopotamia: Marcionites, Manichaeans, and Other Conversation Partners", 2021
Father Columba Stewart, OSB
2020 Phi Beta Kappa Fellow, Benedictine Monk, and Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John's University
12. "Prophets, Profits, and Pain: The Politics of Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria", 2019
Anthea Butler
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the graduate chair of Religious Studies
11. "Reading TheQur'an InAmerica", 2018
Jane McAuliffe
Inaugural Director of National and International Outreach
Library of Congress
10. "Rest, Bullet: Ritual Homecoming Practices among Combat Veterans", 2017
Kathryn McClymond
Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies
Georgia State University
9. "Locating Contemporary Spirituality: New Thoughts on the Changing American Religious Landscape", 2016
Courtney Bender
Professor of Religion
Columbia University
8. "Religious Difference Without Religious Conflict", 2015
Stephen Prothero
Professor of Religion
Boston University
7. "The Religious-Secular Binary as a Space of Pluralism", 2014
Slavica Jakelic
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Thought
Valparaiso University
Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
University of Virginia
6. "God's Fifth Abode: Entrepreneurial Faith in the Hindu Himalayas", 2013
Brian K. Pennington
Chair,DivisionofHumanities;ProfessorofReligion
MaryvilleCollege
5. "Islam and Human Rights: Religious and Secular in Conversation", 2012
Abdulaziz Sachedina
Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
4. "A for Antigone: Reading Derrida's Difference Again", 2011
Amy Hollywood
Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies
Harvard Divinity School
3. "Sheep Gone Astray: The Tragic History of the Religious Right", 2009
Randall Balmer
Professor of American Religious History
Bernard College, Columbia University
2. "Religion and National Conflict: Reflections on Myanmar, Iraq, and Other Current Examples", 2008
David Little
Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and
International Conflict, Harvard Divinity School;
Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
1. "Parmenides in the 21st Century", 2007
Harold A. Durfee
Professor Emeritus
Department of Philosophy and Religion
American University