Launch of the Centre for the Study of Religion in Society, Culture, and Law (SCALA)

Aaron Hughes

The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, is proud to announce the launch of SCALA - the Centre for the Study of Religion in Society, Culture and Law. SCALA is a new interdisciplinary hub for research and education that will explore how religions are understood, produced, and recognised across historical periods, cultural contexts, and contemporary societies.

The centre will be inaugurated with an opening lecture by Professor Aaron W. Hughes on “The Tyranny of Authenticity.” The lecture will be followed by a reception.

Programme

  • Welcome by Carsten Selch Jensen, Jan Loop, Niels Valdemar Vinding, and Jesper Petersen
  • Opening lecture by Aaron W. Hughes - “The Tyranny of Authenticity”
  • Reception with light refreshments

 

In 2015, Aaron Hughes published Islam and The Tyranny of Authenticity, in which he argues that a significant number of scholars within Islamic studies are primarily engaged in constructive theology such as apologetics, but their work is published as academic studies of Islam, even by some of the field’s most prestigious presses. This, he contends, stems from an increasing emphasis on identity-based solidarity within Islamic studies – a solidarity that tends to marginalise critical or non-conforming voices by branding them as Islamophobic or Orientalist. Today, a decade later, Hughes maintains that the core arguments of his book remain valid, even if many of the names and faces have changed. In this lecture, he examines the current state of Islamic studies as pursued within the academic study of religion, and to a lesser extent in adjacent disciplines. He explores how the “tyranny of authenticity” endures, now refracted through the lenses of identity politics and decolonial discourse. Most importantly, he offers a vision for how the field might move forward.

Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. He is the author of many books including An Anxious Inheritance: Religious Others and the Shaping of Sunni Orthodoxy, published by Oxford University Press in 2022.