Conversation Sessions Schedule - 2021
Associate researcher, IZEW, University of Tübingen
September, 4th - Saturday at 1 pm US Eastern Time
Digital Hermeneutics - Hermeneutics and Technology
Alberto Romele will discuss with us the main theses of his monograph entitled Digital Hermeneutics in which he develops a hermeneutic approach to the digital—as both a technological milieu and a cultural phenomenon.
Professor of Theology
October, 3rd - Sunday at 2 pm US Eastern Time
Poor Hermeneutics Are Killing Us! Why Evangelicals Fall for Conspiracy Theories
One of the largest demographics in the U.S. that has supported Donald Trump and conspiracy theories has been white evangelicals, the famed 81 percent support of his election in 2016 and that largely continued. On the surface, this support is counterintuitive and has astonished observers. One factor in this support, provocatively, is hermeneutics. The evangelical hermeneutic was forged in the fires of slavery and was refined through another century of Jim Crow and other racist practices, as detailed now by a number of scholars. It is a hermeneutic that not only facilitated support of racism, it enables uncritical support of and even allegiance, based on biblical support, for other questionable beliefs, such as Creationism and end-of-the-world predictions. It is a short step to their support of radical conspiracy theories like Qanon. How is a hermeneutic like Ricoeur’s (and many others) an urgent alternative?
Associate Professor of English
November, 6th - Saturday at 1 pm US Eastern Time
Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, & General Education
That rhetoric and hermeneutics constitute the bedrock of a 21st century liberal education grows directly and unambiguously out of Gadamer's mature philosophical reflections. I will cite the key texts that support this assertion, and then give a thumbnail history of rhetoric’s long-standing reciprocity with hermeneutics: (1) the fusion of Aristotelian rhetoric and the doctrine of prudence in classical Roman education, (2) the Protestant inversion of the rhetorical canons for instruction in a reading and preaching culture, (3) the dawning realization, from Schleiermacher to Heidegger, that this rhetorical-hermeneutic praxis has been wrongly displaced by the ascendant paradigm of scientific knowledge, and (4) the hermeneutic standpoint as an appropriate grounding for a 21st century liberal education. The required public speaking course at Indiana University will be offered as example of this paideia.
Professor of Religion and Theology
December, 5th - Sunday at 1 pm US Eastern Time
Critical Interfaith Pedagogy
Based on her experience as an educator teaching religion at the university level to classes composed of students from diverse faiths, Marianne Moyaert develops in her presentation a critical interfaith pedagogy, drawing upon Ricoeur's hermeneutical anthropology and taking into account patterns of prejudice, power, and privilege.