By Joe Arney

Typical academic conferences are better known for showcasing new theories than inspiring public conversation. 

The Center for Media, Religion and Culture does not put on a typical academic conference. 

“We want to extend these conversations to people who care about these issues—who may not be sitting in classrooms or going to conferences, but who want to be part of an intelligent conversation around important ideas,” said Nabil Echchaibi, director of the center and associate dean of scholarly and creative work at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

  “It’s important to think about these problems from a media lens. We are in a different media ecology that requires a more sophisticated way of interpreting what’s going on.”
Nabil Echchaibi, director, Center for Media, Religion and Culture

Expect plenty of discussion from experts, members of the public and the media in January, when the center and CMCI host Fire on the Mountain, a conference on media, religion and nationalism. The conference will explore topics such as the rise of both Christian and Hindu nationalism, xenophobia against refugees, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine; uniquely, it will do so with an eye to the media’s role in reporting these phenomena and how its coverage imbues these topics with different kinds of meanings as the news travels.

“Usually, when you have topics like this, people go to political scientists, sociologists, historians, as opposed to media,” Echchaibi said. “But it’s important to think about these problems from a media lens. We are in a different media ecology that requires a more sophisticated way of interpreting what’s going on.”

The conference will include talks from four featured speakers. Each of these discussions is open to the public:

• Philip Gorksi, Yale University. Gorksi studies religion and politics in Europe and North America. He is the co-author of “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.”
• Raka Shome, Villanova University. Shome writes about postcolonial cultures, transnational feminism and nationalism as they intersect with media/communication cultures, especially in Asia. 
• Ramesh Srinivasan, UCLA. Srinivasan is an expert in the intersection of technology, innovation, politics, business and society.
• Reiland Rabaka, University of Colorado Boulder. Rabaka is a scholar of W.E.B. Du Bois who studies religion and Black nationalism.

Notably, the keynote speakers will offer opportunities to discuss solutions, not just problems created by religion and nationalism. 

“I always say that we live in very dangerous times, and this specter of nationalism is upon us,” Echchaibi said. “It’s not enough for us to say, here is this problem. We need to figure out, is there a way out of this? Or are we just going to keep yelling at one another, excluding one another and killing one another?

“I’m hoping we have an event that really matches the chaos of our time while helping people understand these forces, and find ways to move toward solutions.”

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In its simplest form, a border is a barrier; a way of letting some things in and keeping others out. 

If you go:

• Who: All keynotes and the workshop “On the Decolonial Hows: Interrogating and Making (Our) Praxis” are free and open to the public. Other events require registration.
• What: Imagined Borders, Epistemic Freedoms: The Challenge of Social Imaginaries in Media, Art, Religion and Decoloniality.
• When:Jan. 7 through 11
• Where:Williams Village Center

  Learn more

While we often think of borders in a physical sense––a line on a map, a concrete wall or a series of checkpoints––there are also intangible borders that shape the ways we think, learn and teach. 

This month, scholars will gather on CU Boulder’s campus for the Center for Media, Religion and Culture’s ninth international conference, Imagined Borders, Epistemic Freedoms: The Challenge of Social Imaginaries in Media, Art, Religion and Decoloniality. The conference will be held from Jan. 7 through 11, with several events that are free and open to the public.

“This is about trying to challenge people to think about other ways of seeing the world,” says Nabil Echchaibi, the center’s associate director.

Colonization and dispossession have weakened, misplaced, and destroyed the cultural and intellectual heritage of many people, Echchaibi says. Through this process, many cultures have lost their voices––or their voices have gone unnoticed. 

“For this conference we want to invest in cultures, histories and civilizations––groups who have been speaking for quite some time but people have not been paying attention, and modes of knowing that have been silenced,” he says.

Free and public events will include:

• Keynote: “Colonial Diffractions in Illiberal Times,” Ann Laura Stoler

  • ​9 to 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, Jan. 8 

• Keynote: “The Decolonial Everyday: Reflections on Indigenous Education and Land-Centered Praxis,” Leanne Betasamo-Sake Simpson

  • 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 9

• Workshop: “On the Decolonial Hows: Interrogating and Making (Our) Praxis,” Catherine Walsh

  • 9 to 10:30 a.m., Friday, Jan. 10

• Keynote: “Once Were Maoists: Third World Currents in Fourth World Anti-Colonialism,” Glen Coulthard

  • 2 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 11

Registration for the full conference––including daily lunch and refreshments––is $250 for faculty and $150 for non-OECD county residents and students, with a $50 day rate available as well. Visit the conference website to learn more and register.

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University of Colorado researchers are examining how the digital age influences the way people worship and explore their spirituality.

They are finding there is a shift from religion being something located only in houses of worship, and limited to institutions and authorities, to a broader market of media and public and popular culture, said Stewart Hoover, the director of CU's Center for Media, Religion and Culture.

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Grad students reporting in the Yukon, alumni at the Olympic Games and honoring CU Boulder's first black female graduate—all of that and more in the Spring 2018 edition of CMCI Now.

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