The Annual York-Noor Lecture Series 2007-2008

presents

The Open Door – Dargahs and Multi-Religious Devotion in South Asia

Lecture by Dr. Anna Bigelow, North Carolina State University

Date: Sunday March 30, 2008
Time: 3:30 pm
Location: Auditorium, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5

Dr. Anna Bigelow joined the faculty in Philosophy and Religion at North Carolina State University in Fall 2004 as Assistant Professor. She received her Masters degree from Columbia University and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara where her focus was on South Asian Islam.

Her dissertation, “Sharing Saints, Shrines, and Stories: Practicing Pluralism in North India,” won an award for best dissertation from the Department of Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book project Sharing the Sacred, under advance contract with Oxford University Press, is a study of a Muslim majority community in Indian Punjab and the shared sacred and civic spaces in that community. Her research agenda involves further study of contested and cooperatively patronized multi-religious sacred sites in South Asia and the Middle East, focusing on the inter-religious dynamics that complicate or ameliorate these relations in plural communities around the globe. She has also spoken frequently on religious extremism, religion and conflict, and the role of Islam in the world today.