08: Politics and Religion: Spaces and Boundaries of Freedom
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Hauptschule
Seminar
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in englischer SpracheThe doctrine of separation between religion and state (church and state) seems to be taken for granted today, but in fact, it is relatively young. For millennia, politics and religion were interwoven in manifold ways, often inseparably, and even today, religious matters continue to influence political discourse. This seminar will explore this intricate relationship from a long-term perspective and across different religious traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Since the development of religions and of political systems are long-term cultural processes, historical inquiry is key for understanding contemporary issues in depth. This seminar will combine historical expertise with contemporary relevance.
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Masooda BANO
Professor of Development Studies, Oxford Department of International Development; Principal Investigator, Changing Structures of Islamic Authority, University of Oxford
| Professor Masooda Bano is Professor of Development Studies at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. She specialises in the study of political Islam and historical and contemporary evolution of major centers of Islamic learning. Professor Bano builds large scale comparative studies using ethnographic and survey data and has studied Islamic movements across the Middle East, South Asia and West Africa. She also has done extensive work on examining the role of women in spread of Islamic knowledge. She is the author of The Rational Believer: Choices and Decisions in the Madrasas of Pakistan (Cornell 2012) and Female Islamic Education Movements: The Re-democratisation of Islamic Knowledge (Cambridge 2017). She has also edited many volumes including Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2); these two volumes examine writings of leading Muslim scholars on the subject of Islam and modernity. Professor Bano did MPhil in Development Studies at University of Cambridge and DPhil at University of Oxford. She teaches on MPhil Development Studies and supervises doctoral students. |
Holger ZELLENTIN
Lecturer in Classical Rabbinic Judaism, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge
| Holger Zellentin teaches classical rabbinic Judaism at the University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD from Princeton University, and has previously held faculty appointments at the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Nottingham, where he remains Honorary Associate Professor. He has worked on Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism and on the relationship of the Qur’an to Late Antique law and narrative. His publications include The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (2013) and Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (2011), as well as two edited volumes, The Qurʾān’s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity: Return to the Origins (2019), and, with Eduard Iricinschi, Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (2008). In his free time, he likes to climb rocks, ski, hike, cycle or spend time with his family, or, on a really good day, climb rocks, hike, or cycle with his family. |
