Aronov Lecture at UA Focuses on Democratic Social Life in Light of Controversies

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Ann Pellegrini, associate professor of performance studies and religious studies at New York University, will speak on “Discomforting Democracy: Religion, Performance, and the Space of Political Exchange” for the 10th annual Aronov Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in 205 Gorgas Library on The University of Alabama campus.

The lecture, sponsored by the department of religious studies, is free and open to the public.

Focusing on controversies over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York and the “anti-Shariah” law passed by Oklahoma in 2010, this talk asks how we might generate conditions for democratic social life that make room not just for “being” different but for “doing” difference.

Pellegrini is the director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU.

She is the author of “Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race” (Routledge, 1997); co-author with Janet R. Jakobsen of “Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance” (NYU Press, 2003; Beacon Press, 2004); co-editor with Daniel Boyarin and Daniel Itzkovitz of “Queer Theory and the Jewish Question” (Columbia University Press, 2003); and co-editor with Jakobsen of “Secularisms” (Duke University Press, 2008).

She is completing a book on the performance and politics of religious feelings.

Named after the late Aaron Aronov, the founder of Aronov Realty, this annual lecture series was established in 2002. Its aim is to introduce to the University of Alabama community a nationally recognized scholar of religion who is capable of reflecting on issues of wide relevance to scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.

Co-sponsors are University Libraries, the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity Committee and the Anonymous Lecture Fund. For more information, visit http://web.as.ua.edu/rel/events.html or contact Dr. Steven Ramey at sramey@as.ua.edu or 205/348-4218.

The department of religious studies is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All-American Teams.