About the Center
Research:
The Center for Media, Religion and Culture has been conducting important and internationally prominent studies for the past ten years. This research, supported by the Lilly Endowment and other sources, has made significant contributions to scholarship in media studies, religious studies, and anthropology. Studies have addressed questions of family identity, digital media, consumer culture and the marketplace, youth culture, parenting, schooling, and faith-related education and formation, all in relation to the emerging and growing significance of media culture. This research began a new phase in summer, 2006, focusing on issues of gender, work, career, ideas of vocation and civic engagement, again in relation to religion, spirituality, and media.
Outreach:
The Center's conference and seminar series has placed it at the center of global discourses about relations between religion and the media. Prior to the founding of the Center, faculty at the University of Colorado hosted the first international public Conference on Media, Religion, and Culture in 1996 (the second in a series that began with an invitational meetng in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1994). This series continues with the 6th scheduled for August, 2008 in Sao Paulo, Brazil (for more information, click on "conferences" on the menu to the left). Since its founding, the Center has held invitational meetings on religion journalism, and public conferences on Fundamentalism and the Media (in October, 2006) and Media, Spiritualities, and Social Change (in June, 2008). The next meeting, titled Islam and the Media, is scheduled for January, 2010.
Publishing:
The Center's research activities have been presented in a wide range of scholarly and popular contexts, including scholarly journals and magazines. Researchers and scholars associated with the Center have produced six books, including three edited volumes, and two more edited volumes are currently in progress.
An Ongoing Discourse in Boulder:
The Center also has a teaching mission. This is expressed in a variety of formal and informal ways. Formal graduate courses are offered in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado. The central informal activity is a weekly research seminar which is open to all interested students, faculty, and visitors to the Center. These conversations bring together research and scholarship as well as insights from the professional community and members of the public. An onging series of visitors to the Center have also provided important resources and insights to these discussions.