The Center takes on various projects with research fellows to explore religion and media from varied angles and through new, developing theoretical frameworks.
The Center aims to bring together scholars, professionals and the larger public to explore the variety of ways media and religion influence one another and our daily lives.
In addition, the center seeks support for Senior, Faculty and Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program that help shape ongoing research and scholarly projects in the field of media, religion and culture.
[9] In 2007 Journalism and Mass Communication hired a new Assistant Professor, Nabil Echchaibi,[10] who specializes in identity politics among young Muslim in the Arab world and in diaspora.
As developed by Hoover and Echchaibi, this concept serves as an interpretive tool to highlight what we call a “thickening” of the religious experience beyond dichotomous definitions of both religion and media categories.
Digital media reflect and narrativize life experiences and the Center has done so by looking specifically at case studies of the way religion and the religious is articulated and contested online.
The outcome will be information useful to media, scholars, and interested members of the public, and products including a website, a documentary film, and various resources and materials.
The grant also supports a series of round table conversations and informational events bringing together scholars of Islam, members of the media, and representatives of the Muslim community.
[15] Symbolism, Meaning, & the New Media @ Home, 2001-2006 P.I: Stewart Hoover; Associate P.I and Director for Teens and the New Media @ Home: Lynn Schofield Clark; Research Associates: Scott Webber, Christof Demont-Heinrich, Joe Champ, Michele Miles, AnnaMaria Russo, Denice Walker, Monica Emerich, Yuri Obata, Jin Park, and Kati Lustyik.
This project provided the funding that supported the completion of Clark's book, From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford U Press, 2003/2005 paperback).
Moreover, it provided support for the collaborative effort Hoover and Clark engaged in with the Pew Internet & American Life Project to produce the 2004 report, Faith Online.
Invited speakers included: Pradip Thomas, University of Queensland, Australia; Magali do Nascimento Cunha, Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, Brazil; J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Ghana; and Jane Little, Religious Affairs Correspondent at the BBC World Service and Religion Editor at Public Radio International’s The World.
Featured speakers and presenters included Charles Hirschkind,[26] Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley, Zarqa Nawaz, Creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sitcom that chronicles the life of a small Muslim community in a prairie town in Saskatchewan, and Mona Eltahawy, an award-winning syndicated columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues who is based in New York.