A free public lecture by Dr. Anna M Gade, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, will be given on 7 October.
Gade outlines future agendas for understanding religious responses to conditions of environmental crisis among Muslim communities worldwide. Viewing overlapping Qur'anic moral perspectives that relate to the natural order, she presents Islamic approaches to the human challenge of accepting and preparing for changes such as global warming. Recognising that Muslim communities in Asia and Africa are increasingly affected by climate change, deforestation and rising sea levels, Gade surveys some emerging aspects of specific Muslim movements of environmental sustainability and related trends in global religious ethics.
Anna M. Gade has been Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand since 2007. She holds a PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago (1999). She has held positions at Cornell University, Princeton University, and Oberlin College in the USA. Her research focuses on religious and social change in Muslim Southeast Asia, especially in areas of education and development. She has carried out fieldwork in Indonesia and Cambodia, and is author of the book, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion and the Recited Qur'an in Indonesia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2004) and also editor of the book by Ysa Osman, The Cham Rebellion: Survivors' Stories from the Villages (Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2006). Her forthcoming book, The Qur'an: An Introduction, will be available 2010 and in January 2010, she will take up a position as Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Lecture details
• Wednesday 7 October, 5pm
• Old Government House Lecture Theatre
More details about the Islamic Studies Research Unit are available from the Faculty of Arts website