Registration begins on Monday, April 20th, for the fall 2009 semester. Contact the program administrator Mercer Crenshaw at religious.studies@nyu.edu to receive your registration clearance if you have not already done so.
The Religious Studies Program is proud to present our spring film
series,
Holy Celluloid!
Film has always promoted new and exciting forms of artistic
expression and allowed audiences to interpret a language framed through images.
Our spring film series, “Holy Celluloid!” features an aspect of film
long underrated: its ability to communicate sacred things.
Friday, Feb. 20th - Groundhog Day
presented by Angela Zito
2:00pm to 5:00pm, 726 Broadway room 542
Legendary SNL player Billy Murray stars in Groundhog Day,
a film generally classified as a blockbuster comedy, but one which has been
taken seriously by religious practitioners for what it tells us about spiritual
possibilities.
Come join us for a screening and discussion with Professor
Angela Zito, co-director of the Center for Religion and Media and Professor of
Religious Studies at NYU, where we’ll explore just why MOMA led off its
pathbreaking “Faith on Film” series with Groundhog Day.
Friday, Mar. 27th - Star Trek episode: "The Apple"
presented by Adam H. Becker
2:00pm to 5:00pm, 726 Broadway room 542
"The Apple" (1967) tells the story of how the crew of the starship USS
Enterprise finds what seems a new Eden on the planet Gamma Trianguli VI. Little do they know that, in the end, they will have to destroy
paradise in order to save it. This classic Star Trek episode provides a
heavy-handed, silly, yet scary narrative about colonialism, religion,
sexuality, and the necessity of secular violence.
Come join us for a
screening and discussion with Adam Becker, Director of the Religious
Studies Program, Professor of Classics, and Star Trek Fan.
Friday, April. 3rd - Tongues Untied
presented by Ann Pellegrini
2:00pm to 5:00pm, 726 Broadway room 542
This critically acclaimed
account of Black gay life by Emmy Award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs uses
poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance to describe the
homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men. The stories are fierce examples of homophobia and racism:
the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his color; the college student
left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing; the loneliness and isolation
of the drag queen. Yet they also affirm the black gay male experience:
protest marches, smoky bars, "snap diva", humorous
"musicology" and Vogue dancers.
Friday, April 17th - Satyajit Ray's Devi
presented by Varuni Bhatia
2:00pm to 5:00pm, 726 Broadway room 542
1860. As English education and enlightenment ideas seep into
traditional, upper-caste Hindu sensibilities, how does a young woman negotiate
her position as at once a goddess and a wife? Satyajit Ray’s brilliant film,
Devi (the Goddess) explores a changing Indian society with sensitivity and depth.
Set in the context of the Bengal Renaissance, British colonialism, and
socio-religious reforms in India,
this film portrays the travails of a woman who is deeply loved as a wife and a
daughter-in-law, deeply revered as a goddess, and is herself confused about who
she is. The film brings into focus the intense debates that took place in the
nineteenth century on Hindu religious practices and beliefs and explores the
changing nature of patriarchal authority. And finally, the film asks an
unanswerable question: just who is a goddess?
Friday, April. 24th - Tykocin- A Purimspiel in Poland.
presented by Brigitte Sion
2:00pm to 5:00pm, 726 Broadway room 542
The Jews of the Polish town of Tykocin were killed by the Nazis in 1942. For
the last ten years, however, the villagers put up a Purimspiel--a carnivalesque
play based on the story of Esther saving Jews in ancient times. Today, all the
actors are Poles dressed as "Jews," and the performance takes place
in front of the synagogue--a performance about Jews, but without Jews.
Join Brigitte Sion, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in
Religious Studies and Journalism, who was on the film shooting of Tykocin.
We'll discuss roles, representations, and ghostly reenactments.
Center for Media,
Culture and History/Center for Religion and Media
Culture,
Religion and the Politics of Change
SCREENING/ ARTIST’S TALK
Thursday/ January 29/ 6-8 PM
The Great Room, 19 University Place
At Home with Their Books
Artist's Talk with Elena Climent
Screening: Writers' Rooms: The Making of a Mural(2008, 30 min)
Directed by Marcia Rock
Introduction, Una
Chaudhuri (English,NYU), Discussion with Marcia Rock (NYU, Journalism)
and Elena Climent.
NYC-based Mexican artist Elena
Climent discusses her 5-part mural painted on the walls of 19 University Place, depicting the writing
spaces of famous NY writers Washington Irving, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale
Hurston, Jane Jacobs and Pedro Pietri.
Followed by a reception and viewing of the mural
Co-Sponsored by The
Departments of Anthropology, English, and the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism
Institute.
SCREENING/DISCUSSION
In Search of Bene Israel
Friday/ February 6/4-6PM
Kevorkian Center Screening Room
50
Washington Square South at
255 Sullivan Street
In
Search of Bene Israel(2008, 36 min)
Directed by Sadia
Shepard
Documentary filmmaker and writer Sadia Shepard grew up in
the US
with a Muslim mother, Christian father and Jewish grandmother. In 2001 she
journeyed
to India
to connect with her grandmother’s Indian Jewish community. This film-and her
acclaimed 2008 book ,The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked
Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and A Sense of Home—offer
an account of what she discovered.
Post screening discussion with the filmmaker.
Co-sponsored by NYU’s HagopKevorkianCenter
LECTURE/ SCREENING
Friday/ February 13/ 3-7pm
The KevorkianCenter, 50 Washington Square South
at Sullivan Street
Female Trouble: Women's Representation in
Iranian Cinema
Hamid Naficy, (Communications, Northwestern)
A leading scholar on exilic and diasporic cinema and media,
Naficy examines the ideological work surrounding the filmic representation of
women and their participation as filmmakers in this new era of Iranian cinema.
Followed by a
screening of
Under
the Skin of the City(2004, 92 minutes)
Directed by
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
Tuba, a mother of four, faces challenges to her way of life
when her oldest son sells the family home for a foreign work visa. When his plans
crumble, Tuba takes drastic measures to save her house and her son.
After-film
discussion with Hamid Naficy
Co-sponsored with
NYU's HagopKevorkianCenter
Hosted by The HagopKevorkianCenter
for Near Eastern Studies at New
YorkUniversity.
SCREENING/DISCUSSION
Friday/ February 27/4-6:30PM
Kevorkian Center Screening Room
50 Washington Square South at 255
Sullivan Street
A Jihad for Love(2007, 81 min)
Directed by Parvez
Sharma
Muslim
gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma filmed in twelve countries and nine languages,
often in nations where government permission to make this film was not an option.
Post
screening discussion with the filmmaker.
Co-sponsored by
Law and Society Program of the GraduateSchool of Arts and Sciences
CSGS, SCA, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the KevorkianCenter
SCREENING/
DISCUSSION
Friday/ March 6/ 2-5:30PM
Cinema Studies Screening Room
721 Broadway, 6th floor
Devoted to discipline: religion, education and
punishment in prison
The
Dhamma Brothers: East Meets West in the Deep South
Directed byJenny Phillips, Anne Marie Stein,
Andrew Kukura (2008, 76 min)
A 10-day meditation retreat held
in an Alabama
men’s maximum-security prison makes a decisive difference in several lives.
A post-screening discussion with
filmmaker Jenny Phillips, will be followed by a roundtable exploring the
paradoxes of discipline as religion, college education and punishment in American
prisons. Do religious practices and education programs simply serve the
punitive regime of the prison, rendering inmates manageable? Or are they the
lifeline for moral integrity and dignity of the individuals who live inside?
With Tanya Erzen (OSU),
an anthropologist researching the role of faith-based initiatives in southern
prisons, and Daniel Karpowitz (Bard), a lawyer and academic director of
the Bard Prison Initiative in New York state. Moderator: Angela Zito,
(NYU)
Cosponsored by SCA, CSGS, and Religious Studies.
SCREENING/
DISCUSSION
Thursday/ March 26/ 7PM
721 Broadway, 6th floor
Cinema Studies,
Room 646
US Premiere:
Half Moon Files (2007,
87 minutes)
Directed by Philip Scheffner
In this experimental search “The Halfmoon Files,” Philip
Scheffner traces prisoners at the Halfmoon prisoner of war camp in Germany during
World War I to the origin of their recording.
Post screening discussion with the filmmaker.
Co-sponsor Cinema
Studies
FILM FESTIVAL
March 26-29
NationalMuseum of the American Indian,
U.S.
Custom House/One Bowling Green
4th Native American
Film + Video Festival
Celebrating 30
years of screening outstanding Native film and media.
Webb Keane (Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan)
Co-sponsored by Anthropology
SCREENING/
DISCUSSION
Thursday/ April 9th/
6:30-10PM
CantorFilmCenter,
Theater 101
36
East 8th Street
Take Out (2008, 87 min.)
Directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou
This film presents an unvarnished view of a day in the harsh
life of Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese immigrant and deliveryman for a NYC
Chinese take-out shop.
Post screening discussion with the filmmakers.
RSVP at apa.rsvp@nyu.edu or 212.992.9653 or visit
www.apa.nyu.edu.
Co-sponsors: The
Center for Media, Culture & History, The Museum
of Chinese in America.
DISTINGUISHED
LECTURE
Thursday/ April 23/
6-8PM
Casa Italiana, 24 West 12th Street
Jews, God, and
Videotape: Religion and Media in America
Jeffrey Shandler (RutgersUniversity)
From cantors’ early sound
recordings to contemporary Hasidic outreach on the Internet, American Jews have
become much more than the “people of the book”
during the past century. Drawing
on his lively new book, Jews, God, and Videotape (NYU Press), Shandler argues
that such engagements with media of all kinds have become central to defining
contemporary religiosity not only for Jews but more broadly.
Co-sponsored by the department
of Anthropology
SCREENING/ DISCUSSION
Friday/ May 1/
4-6PM
Space TBD
Sync
or Swim (2008, 90 min.)
Directed by Cheryl
Furjanic
An in-depth look at a marginal sport: U.S.A.’s top
synchronized swimmers endure rigorous training and overcome unthinkable
obstacles to compete for Olympic glory.
Post screening
discussion with the filmmaker.
All events are co-sponsored by Cinema Studies (TSOA), Anthropology and Religious Studies. PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE
All events are free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Seating is first come, first served. Persons with a disability are requested to call the Center for Media, Culture, and History in advance at (212) 998-3759. Funding has been provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
