The Immanent Frame

On October 7th, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakul Karman, three women who have worked to foster peace and gender equality in Africa and the Arab world.  Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia, and Gbowee, a Liberian peace activist, are both featured in the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which aired on October 18th on PBS as part of the “Women, War and Peace” series.

The global feminist blog Gender Across Borders, in partnership with  Violence is Not Our Culture: the Global Campaign to End Violence Against Women in the Name of ‘Culture,’ is seeking writers for an upcoming series on gender-based violence, culture, and women’s rights. The series will run on October 27th and 28th, and will feature personal narratives, profiles, book reviews, journalistic articles, analytical pieces, critical essays, and editorials.

Participation in online religious communities and practices (“liking” religious pages on Facebook, posting religious messages, and joining online religious communities) has become an increasingly widespread phenomenon. A recent “Room for Debate” in The New York Times discussed the pros and cons of religious life online.

Opening on September 13th, Storefront for Art and Architecture will present ”Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings: a New York Archive,” a project by Matilde Cassani.  This collaborative project is open for submissions and seeks to explore the hidden landscape of New York religious life.

The journal Practical Matters is now seeking submissions for the Spring 2012 issue on Violence and Peace.  Practical Mattersis an online, multimedia, transdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal designed to ask and provoke questions about religious practices and practical theology.  Multimedia and interdisciplinary works are especially encouraged.  The submission deadline is September 1, 2011.

Must human rights be grounded in a religious or metaphysical worldview in order for them to be understood and implemented globally? Or should they be developed based on broad consensus, divorced from religious grounds?  These are the questions that open Grace Kao’s new book Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World. Kao situates herself between these two positions, developing a rationale for human rights that is based on her retrieval of particular elements of the most prominent methods for justifying human rights approaches.

April 3^rd marks the first day of the 2011 Carter Center Human Rights Defenders Forum.  The theme for this year’s forum is Religion, Belief, and Women’s Rights. The formal conference on April 5-6 will be webcast live on the Carter Center’s website, and select portions of the conference will be live tweeted by Carter Center staff. Follow the Carter Center’s twitter feed @CarterCenter and join in the discussion at #Women’sRights11.

A new study presented by researchers at Northwestern University at a recent American Heart Association conference challenges assumptions about the positive effects of religiosity on health.  This study finds a link between obesity and religiosity (measured by religious service attendance) among young adults in the United States.  The study contends that the more often young adults attend religious services, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese in middle age.

The University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative has announced a new dissertation fellowship to support research on the science of generosity.  Five fellowships of $25,000 each will be awarded for the 2011 – 2012 academic year.  Applications are currently being accepted and must be postmarked no later than March 28, 2011.  Along with faculty scholars, recipients will present their research at a Science of Generosity conference at the close of the award period.

Tuesday marked the first day of the 55^th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meeting.  In addition to conversation about the annual and review themes, the question of women’s right and roles following revolutions in the Middle East has been a key topic of conversation.  UN Women hosts a panel today (February 25^th) titled, “Breaking New Ground: Arab Women and the Path to Democracy.”  Find out how to attend or watch the webcast online here.