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Global Currents

Amalek, Hamas, and Kant: Thoughts on Evil in the Time of War

Shaul Magid
March 26, 2025

Likening Hamas to Amalek is self-serving. It is as if saying, “we are good people who can act badly, but they are simply evil.”
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On Political Boundaries and Christian Love

MT Dávila
March 18, 2025

The measure of Christian love is not a set of boundaries around specific kinds of people, but, rather, the gift of God’s crossing all boundaries through the Incarnation.
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Rejecting Project Esther: Understanding Christian and White Nationalism as Racism and Antisemitism

Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council
March 13, 2025March 13, 2025

The Heritage Foundation provoked widespread outrage with the publication of their Project 2025, a policy agenda that targets immigrants and…
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Theorizing Modernities

(Settler) Colonial Logics Beyond Europe

Series: Symposium on Colonizing Kashmir

Hafsa Kanjwal
April 15, 2025April 15, 2025

Values that are seen as having a “positive” valence, such as state-building, democracy, development, and secularism are often weapons of colonial occupation.
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Sovereignty and Silence in Modern India

Series: Symposium on Colonizing Kashmir

Matthew Shutzer
April 9, 2025

Kanjwal’s book seeks to imagine a social world outside the varied bonds and discourses of states.
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The Politics of Life as a Colonial Governmentality: The Bakshi Regime and the Indian Occupation of Kashmir

Series: Symposium on Colonizing Kashmir

Amen Jaffer
April 2, 2025

Understanding politics of life as a colonial governmentality directs attention to the desires, interests, and motivations that the Bakshi regime sought to produce in Kashmiri subjects.
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Decoloniality

No Peace without Decolonization: A Lecture and Interview with Nelson Maldonado-Torres

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Atalia Omer and Joshua S. Lupo
April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Decolonial love is about the possibility of connection (and relation) when connection seems completely impossible.
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On the Advantage of Not Fitting In: Religious-National Identities as Border-Living

Slavica Jakelić
November 2, 2022February 1, 2024

Only when the Balkans are considered as succumbing to neither Northern nor Southern theoretical or praxis-oriented frameworks, can we ensure that all ways of being and living locally are truly listened to.
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The Myth of the Secular Revolutionary: On Fanon’s Religion

Series: Reconsidering Fanon and Religion

An Yountae
April 7, 2022February 1, 2024

Fanon’s critique of religion winds up being a powerful critique of the secular. Contrarily, Fanon seeks refuge in the secular in order to resignify the human but he ends up repurposing religion along the way.
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Field Notes

Safety through Solidarity: A Book Launch

Contending Modernities
January 27, 2025January 27, 2025

White supremacy, under the pretense of fighting antisemitism, is mounting an assault on minoritized communities. Understanding how antisemitism works is central to fighting back.
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David Grossman’s Camouflage of Violence

Omri Ben Yehuda
December 27, 2024December 27, 2024

Grossman’s story is first of all the story of a mother whose burning love for her young son collapses under the national narrative of violence and death.
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Israel’s Genocidal Assault on Gaza: A Lecture with Raz Segal

Contending Modernities
December 17, 2024December 18, 2024

How do scholars distinguish genocide? What does intentionality, defense, and the Holocaust have to do with it?
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Teaching Contending Modernities

Religious Nationalism: Narratives, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

Victoria Basug Slabinski and Prithvi Iyer
August 14, 2024September 30, 2024

This module provides an account of how religious nationalisms shape global politics and allows readers to examine the convergences and divergences among various forms of religious nationalism in diverse contexts.
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The Politics of the Gender, Sexuality, and Religion Nexus: Perspectives from the Margins

Victoria Basug Slabinski and Nicolas "Nicola" Chehade
April 1, 2024April 4, 2024

This module draws on the resources of the Contending Modernities blog to explore the interlocking dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and coloniality in modernity.
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Religious Studies and Theology: Decolonial Perspectives in/on the Disciplines

Victoria Basug Slabinski
September 13, 2023February 1, 2024

This introduction to religious studies through a decolonial lens explores the contestation over the colonial Christian heritage of the field, the role of the secular in maintaining hegemonic Christian norms in the academy, and the importance of thinking interdisciplinarily about the future of the field.
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Research Areas

Featured Publications

Editors Atalia Omer and Joshua Lupo examine the tenacious, lingering impact of European colonial ideology on religion and politics around the world in Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism. Part of the Contending Modernities series through Notre Dame Press.

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Blog Leadership

Atalia Omer, CM Co-Director and Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peace Studies

Josh Lupo, CM Assistant Director

A Note on Published Content

The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the individual authors and do not represent the official opinions of the Contending Modernities research initiative, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the University of Notre Dame, or their faculty and staff.

Featured

Global Currents

Amalek, Hamas, and Kant: Thoughts on Evil in the Time of War

On Political Boundaries and Christian Love

Rejecting Project Esther: Understanding Christian and White Nationalism as Racism and Antisemitism

Theorizing Modernities

(Settler) Colonial Logics Beyond Europe

Sovereignty and Silence in Modern India

The Politics of Life as a Colonial Governmentality: The Bakshi Regime and the Indian Occupation of Kashmir

Decoloniality

No Peace without Decolonization: A Lecture and Interview with Nelson Maldonado-Torres

On the Advantage of Not Fitting In: Religious-National Identities as Border-Living

The Myth of the Secular Revolutionary: On Fanon’s Religion

Field Notes

Safety through Solidarity: A Book Launch

David Grossman’s Camouflage of Violence

Israel’s Genocidal Assault on Gaza: A Lecture with Raz Segal

Teaching Contending Modernities

Religious Nationalism: Narratives, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

The Politics of the Gender, Sexuality, and Religion Nexus: Perspectives from the Margins

Religious Studies and Theology: Decolonial Perspectives in/on the Disciplines

Research Areas

Madrasa Discourses

Science and the Human Person

Reexamining Religion and Modernities

Authority, Community, and Identity

Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism

Featured Publications

Upcoming Events

Blog Leadership

A Note on Published Content