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Theorizing Modernities

Constructing responsive theory to understand and evaluate the dynamics of modernity.

Featured in Theorizing Modernities

  • Scientific Literacy for Madrasa Graduates: A Project for Religious Renewal at the University of Notre Dame

    The goal of Madrasa Discourses is to transform the intellectual culture within madrasa scholarship by bringing it into conversation with contemporary intellectu...


  • Sustainable Resources: Reimagining Our Relationship with the Earth

    In the age of the anthropocene—climate change brought about by human actions—religious traditions can offer vital resources for reimagining a sustainable relati...


  • Border-Crossers: Interrogating Boundaries through Bodies

    What we can infer from this panel is that the political, racial, and religious markers which compose borders are also etched and negotiated on the bodies of the...


  • The Price of (non) Whiteness

    Are American Jews willing to forfeit some of that privilege, whatever that might mean, as a gesture to those whose who cannot “pass” into the space of whiteness...


  • Introduction to Policing Analogies

    The interrogation of normative representation and the creation of multi-racial and multi-gendered spaces are inadvertently rendered invisible and inaudible with...


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Theorizing Modernities Articles

Kinds and Contents of Hope

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age
Andrew Prevot
March 31, 2026

Letting differences in content generate a more differentiated account of kinds of hope might bring us closer to Derrida’s desired future of radical democracy and justice.

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“Remember What Amalek Did to You”: The Weaponization of Biblical Narratives on a Black Church Trip to Israel

Series: Weaponizing Religion: Critical Perspectives on Palestine/Israel
Roger Baumann
March 27, 2026

The weaponization of religious narratives is a powerful force in shaping perceptions and stimulating political solidarities. But so is a brief humanizing encounter as a bridge to empathy.

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Identities, Boundaries, and Nationalisms: A Synthetic Response to Greenberg and Bloch

Series: CM Conversations
Will O'Brien
March 10, 2026

Is there space in the genealogies of religious nationalism for a roadmap away from authoritarian exclusion?

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The Discipline and Gift: A Theological Critique of David Newheiser’s Hope in a Secular Age

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age
Carolyn Chau
March 3, 2026

It is in allowing ourselves to contemplate the mystery of divine being, who gives itself over to us in contemplative prayer, that we are truly alive to our contingency and our belovedness.

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The Politics of Protestant-Catholic Reconciliation in Europe: Brandon Bloch Interviews Udi Greenberg

Series: CM Conversations
Udi Greenberg and Brandon Bloch
February 24, 2026February 26, 2026

Catholics and Protestants understood each other vis-à-vis new movements that sought to transform economic, gendered, and colonial orders.

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Protestant Germany after Nazism: Udi Greenberg Interviews Brandon Bloch

Series: CM Conversations
Brandon Bloch and Udi Greenberg
February 17, 2026

Postwar Protestant intellectuals spearheaded a complementary but distinct form of secularization: one in which the church did not retreat from politics but identified itself as the very source of secular democratic principles.

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Judaism as an Occupied Territory

Moshe Behar
February 10, 2026March 6, 2026

Can the creeping occupation of Judaism by militant ethnonationalist Zionism be disrupted somehow?

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How Democratic is Dionysian Hierarchy?

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age
Eva Braunstein
February 4, 2026

If ecclesiastical or clerical hierarchy is modeled on that of the heavens, on what authority could an ordinary person dispute this power arrangement, modify it, or dissent from it?

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Weaponizing Indigeneity: Zionist Media Discourse on Possessing Palestine

Series: Weaponizing Religion: Critical Perspectives on Palestine/Israel
Sabina Ali
January 29, 2026January 29, 2026

Indigenous peoples articulate Land as part of an interconnected web of relations and responsibilities, a mode of relating that cannot be reconciled with the structural violence of modern nation-states.

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Introduction to Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age

Series: Symposium on Hope in a Secular Age
Devin Singh and Rick Elgendy
January 21, 2026March 6, 2026

Hope thrives not in certainty but in the creative tension of becoming—a disciplined assertion that even amidst dislocation, the potential for renewal persists.

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