Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

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AROUND THE QUADS COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Courtney Bender is an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Religion. She is the author of several books, including The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination, which won a 2011 Association of American Publishers PROSE Book Award. She was co-chair of the Social Science Research Council’s Initiative on Spirituality, Political Engagement and Public Life and will chair SSRC’s new interdisciplinary research initiative on prayer. Bender earned a B.A. from Swarthmore and a Ph.D. from Princeton. Where did you grow up? Until I was 11 I lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and then my family moved to Lancaster, Pa. What did you want to be? I wanted to be an architect or an archaeologist. I wanted to build things or dig things. How did you become interested in studying religion? By the time I went to college I had abandoned my architecture plans and thought I would be an English major, maybe write poetry. I needed a fourth course to fill out my first semester, so I took a course called “War and Peace” in the Department of Religion. The professor lectured standing on one leg, which kept our attention. He was a very brilliant, very odd man, and it was gripping material. Religion also interested me personally. I grew up in a Mennonite community that went through a rather big schism when I was a teenager, which effectively split a community that had been tightly tied together by family and cultural traditions. “How could this happen?” I wondered. With encouragement from professors, I spent my senior year writing an ethnography of the split-off group. By then, I was hooked on both ethnographic method and religious studies. How did you end up at Columbia? I was living in New York and finishing my dissertation when I received a call from a friend in Columbia’s sociology department who was going on leave. His department needed someone to teach his “Mass Media and Popular Culture” course. I had never taught a class, but I said I would do it, and they agreed to let me. One hundred undergraduates appeared on the first day — they thought they were getting him. Most of them stayed, and I learned how to teach pretty quickly. The year after that, a job opened up in religion. What have you been working on? I’m starting up some projects and finishing some others. My most recent book, The New Metaphysicals, asks how spiritual identities take shape in the United States. Scholars of all types have tended not to ask good questions about people who call themselves WINTER 2011–12 14 spiritual, or about the institutions — secular or religious — that support them. As the percentage of Americans in this category continues to grow, the questions about how spiritual identity comes to make sense, and how it comes to be connected to particular social and political aspirations, seem important to pursue. The questions that this research posed to me have subsequently led me in a number of directions, including explorations into the legal and political implications of American religious pluralism and the role of mid-century art museums in shaping certain secularspiritual dispositions. What are you teaching these days? This fall, I’m teaching an un- Five Minutes with … Courtney Bender dergraduate seminar on religion in urban life, “Religious Worlds of New York.” Each student is conducting a study of a religious site or community; we are primarily concerned with investigating how the city shapes religious practice, and in some cases how religious action impacts city life. In the spring I will teach “Sociology of Religion” and a graduate field methods class. What’s your favorite food? I will eat almost anything, as long as care and attention has gone into its preparation. Where do you live? Claremont Avenue. Are you married? Do you have kids? I am married. My husband is an associate professor in the microbiology and immunology department uptown. I have two kids, 13 and 7, who attend the School at Columbia. What do you do to unwind? I hang out with my kids in New York. We try to take one day a week out of the neighborhood and if possible out of Manhattan. I also garden in the corner outside my office on 120th and Claremont — I guess I haven’t fully given up my interest in digging! If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be? I’d be nowhere but here. I appreciate the opportunity to leave the city sometimes, but this place has such wonderful, challenging energy. What’s your favorite spot in New York? This will be different in a few months, but right now, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Park on the Hudson, which is always cool and has a gorgeous vista. What’s the last book you read for pleasure that you really enjoyed? Great Expectations, which I read for the first time this summer, and Teju Cole’s novel Open City. What are you most proud of on your resume? My most recent book. It’s won some awards, and it’s being read in classrooms and discussed publicly, so I am glad that the ideas are getting out there. But more importantly, I felt truly alive when I was researching and writing it — I hope each of my students has that experience at least once, and hope I will again, soon. Interview and photo: Ethan Rouen ’04J, ’11 Business To watch videos of Bender discussing additional topics, including her upcoming Mini-Core class, “Religious Pluralism and Secular Society,” which will be taught in February, go to Web Extras at college.columbia.edu/cct.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY AROUND THE QUADS CC Fund Welcomes New Executive Director Allen Rosso has joined the Alumni Office as executive director of the Columbia College Fund (college. columbia.edu/alumni/fund). Rosso is an industry leader in annual giving with 17 years of experience. He started at Columbia in mid-October after working at Mindframe, a startup that develops technology and social media solutions to enhance relationship-based fundraising. Prior to joining Mindframe, Rosso was executive director of annual giving at Chicago and Vanderbilt. At Chicago, he managed the college’s and the university’s annual giving campaigns, raising in excess of $18 million annually, and led a staff of PHOTO: MERIDETH KERBY ’04 GS Contact CCT Online Travel with Columbia Learn more. Stay connected alumni.columbia.edu 25. He managed the college reunion program, launched a revamped classbased volunteer program that resulted in a threefold increase in the number of volunteer solicitors and made major strides in increasing participation from alumni and from seniors. At Vanderbilt, Rosso managed the annual giving programs for eight schools and the library system, increasing annual fund dollars by 27 percent and participation by 9 percent; managed a faculty, staff and community giving campaign; created a consistent donor stewardship program; and managed recruitment and renewal for an annual giving society. It’s easy to get in touch with CCT via the web (college.columbia.edu/cct/contactus). Update your contact information, let us know what you think in a letter to the editor, send us an email or submit a Class Note, Class Note photo, information for an obituary or a classified advertisement. Help Support CCT Columbia College Today brings you news of your alma mater and profiles of its people you won’t find anywhere else. Wherever you are — Los Angeles, Louisville, London or the Lower East Side — CCT is the best way to stay connected with your classmates and with Columbia. Your tax-deductible contribution helps make all this possible. CCT remains free of charge — no donation is required to receive the magazine or to access our website (college.columbia. edu/cct). But if you choose to support us, you may do so online (college.col umbia.edu/cct/giving), by phone (212- 851-7852) or by mailing a check, made payable to Columbia College Today (Columbia College Today, Columbia Alumni Center, 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530, 1st Fl., New York, NY 10025). All donors are recognized each fall, after the close of the fiscal year on June 30, on the CCT website (college.columbia.edu/cct/ fall11). We greatly appreciate your support, and ask that you stay in touch and share news at college.columbia.edu/ cct/contactus. Wild AlAskA Journey June 25–July 2, 2012 Experience Alaska firsthand as we travel from Fairbanks to Anchorage on an eight-day exploration of the state’s rugged coasts, temperate rainforests, and rolling inland tundra. Travel with alumni and friends as expert local guides lead hiking, kayak, and canoe excursions through the wilds, or relax and soak in the wildlife-rich scenery. This exclusive Columbia Alumni Travel Study program is limited to just 16 guests, allowing intimate access to Alaska’s wilderness and a more personal experience in the far north. For more information about any of our trips, visit alumni.columbia.edu/travel or call 866-325-8664.
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Page 3 and 4: 20 Tohoku Diary A firsthand account
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Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

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