UW News

February 2, 2011

University of Chicago professor to give comparative religion lecture

UW News

Professor Michael Sells from the University of Chicago will speak on Holocaust, Armageddon, and the Clash of Civilizations at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8, in 210 Kane. The talk is the Founders Annual Lecture in Comparative Religion and Contemporary Life.

Michael Sells

Michael Sells

 

The talk pays particular attention to how such themes drive American public opinion and anti-American rhetoric. “The Clash of Civilizations, risks becoming a self-fulfilling presumption,” Sells says. “Its advocates presume to know the nature of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the civilizations they help shape, to see an affinity between Judaism and Christianity and to reveal the incompatibility of Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds.”

Sells co-edited and contributed to The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy. Currently, he is completing a book entitled Jihad and Crusade: Religion and Violence after the Cold War.

The talk is free and open to the public.