We are situated at a nexus where environmental “tipping points” – finally – are addressed and engaged in a manner that takes seriously human responsibility and, indeed, complicity. We are coming to the realization that change must happen. And, it needs to happen now! Our anthropogenic practices are terminal. War, as we know it, is detrimental in all manners, sizes and shapes. Not only does it kill and cause severe suffering amongst us humans, it also generates immense stress on the environment, producing toxic and uninhabitable topographies. Whereto from here? Perhaps we are in need of some sort of divine intervention…
Committed to producing knowledge and contributing to knowledge production
At TF, we are committed to producing knowledge and contributing to knowledge production that problematize, destabilize and rupture understandings and ideas that shape and inform our ways of being in the world. One of the ways in which we contribute to the circulation and dissemination of knowledge is through our University of Oslo’s Open Day – an annual event aimed at providing high school students with information about our University and our study programmes; in short, what are all the “exciting things” folks can study at the University of Oslo.
Open Day at the University of Oslo
Also this year, TF committed to give a number of timely, inspirational, and thought-provoking lectures. In solid TF style, four of our fine scholars contributed with engaging and topical mini-lectures. Professor Marius Timmann Mjaaland started us off with a lecture on the climate crisis and climate anxiety in the age of the Anthropocene – the epoch characterized by significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. The lecture not only captured “Generation Greta”, it also placed religion and theology at the center of critical meaning-making about our living environment and our place in it. Next up was Professor Anne Gudme who spoke on the topic of divine sex appeal in the Old Testament – wait, what? Yes, indeed, the Old Testament is filled with interesting stuff about sex, sexuality and sexual relations that might be perceived as provocative even judging by today’s sexualized milieu. Assistant Professor Markus Keller, spoke on the theme “religion and war and peace and politics… and stuff like that”, indeed a serious parodic title inspired by speeches emanating from the 1990s beauty pageants. The lecture took seriously arguments concerning the role of religion in creating conflicts and/or religious persuasions as foundational for divisive politics, with an eye towards the ways in which religion and politics play out or into Norwegian publics. The final lecture was held by Associate Professor Kaia R?nsdal, who engaged and problematized the notion of hospitality. Particularly examining the Norwegian context and the debates that emerge concerning refugees and asylum seekers, she asks: What is hospitality in the context of Norway? And, how do we practice being hospitable?
TF contributes to and are responsive to different sites of struggle
Our mini-lectures all bear testimony to the multifaceted ways in which our scholarship here at TF contributes to and are responsive to different sites of struggle. We are attentive to processes of being and becoming, to the politics of inclusion and exclusion, and we take seriously the narratives that help us problematize the relationships between religion and being and between religion and living in a world that is on the move and that moves us!
Stay healthy and stay safe!