On November 2, the Wesleyan community gathered in Exley 150 for Agency and Improvisation: Exploring Modes of Individual and Collective Power to Make Change, the Bailey COE’s 21st Annual Robert F. Schumann Where on Earth Are We Going symposium.
Justine Quijada
think tank explores agency: affect and action
Every academic year, the COE invites a small group of Wesleyan faculty and undergraduate students, plus a noted scholar from outside the University, to gather together for the Think Tank: a yearlong discussion of a critical environmental issue. The 2024-2025 Bailey COE Think Tank feature Sonia Sultan, Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies; Justine Quijada, Associate Professor of Religion, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and Environmental Studies; and Garry Bertholf, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, alongside undergraduates Maryam Badr ’25, Hannah Podol ’25, and Nic Galleno, ’25. These University fellows will be joined by the 2024-2025 Menakka and Essel Bailey ‘66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar Roxy Coss: Jazz saxophonist and Founding President of the Women In Jazz Organization, as well as a Grammy-award winning musician, composer, educator and activist.
quijada publishes new book
Congrats to Assistant Professor of Religion and COE fellow Justine Quijada, whose new book, Buddhists, Shamans, and Soviets: Rituals of History in Post-Soviet Buryatia, will be published in March by Oxford University Press.
In an early review, Laurel Kendall, chair, division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History says, “In Justine Buck Quijada’s thoroughly engaging ethnography of contemporary Buryatia, a miraculously preserved Buddhist corpse counters the artificiality of Lenin’s ‘scientifically preserved’ remains and the body of a Russian Orthodox saint visits the local Cathedral where celebratory bells drown out the drum beats inaugurating a new urban center for shaman practice. Simultaneously inhabiting the chronotypes of multiple historic pasts-indigenous, Buddhist, Russian Orthodox, Soviet-the rituals and celebrations of Quijada’s subjects blur and blend and defy any attempt to effectively categorize them by religion, ethnicity, or nationality politics. The result is a provocative read for anyone interested in these subjects.” –Laurel Kendall, Chair, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History
Click here to read more about Justine’s work and to watch her presentation, “Is Animism Good to Think With?” from this year’s Where on Earth Are We Going seminar.