Tilman Lanz

 

Tilman Lanz Visiting Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2005
Office: Spaulding 368
Phone: (716) 645-0492
Email: tlanz@buffalo.edu

 

Dr Tilman Lanz awarded an Interdisciplinary Humanities Institute Workshop 2011-2012

Islam and the West

Principal Coordinator: Dr. Tilman Lanz

This workshop brings together faculty and graduate students from a variety of disciplines within UB and also reaches out to the larger academic community in the Buffalo area. Its goal is to examine important issues of common interest to Muslims and non-Muslims in their historical trajectories, their contemporary manifestations, and their future implications. These issues include but are not limited to:

  • The long-term consequences of 9/11 on relations between Muslims and non-Muslims
  • Transnational links of Muslims in the West
  • The development of a diasporic Islam in the Western world
  • The recent transformation of leadership in Muslim Middle Eastern countries, such as Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, and Egypt
  • The spiritual dimension of Islam (Sufism) and its appeal to Westerners
  • The relationship between terrorism and Islam.

As all the members of this group are working, in various ways, with conceptions of Islam, the specific focus of the group is to familiarize each other with these varying conceptions and to provide a forum for productive and fertile discussion of specific topics and issues related to Islam. It is our explicit goal to further and foster relations between and among scholars within the larger UB community and their colleagues in other institutions in the greater Buffalo area, as well as local Muslim communities. The workshop will provide a venue for faculty and graduate students alike, to discuss their work in progress, to exchange ideas across disciplinary boundaries, and to make connections that will facilitate and further future collaboration. We will also bring to UB four renowned specialists on various topics related to Islam for public lectures as well as in-depth workshop sessions on their research. In addition, we will read key texts relevant to the topic of Islam. The group will meet weekly on Tuesdays for two hours during the Fall semester 2011 and the Spring semester 2012.

For further information conctact Dr. Lanz

 

Research Interests

Western Europe (Germany, France, Spain); Islam; symbolic constructions of identity in migrant contexts; subjective approaches in anthropology; symbolism and anthropology of religion; terrorism and religion; immigrant integration and social policy

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

2010 Force of Islam: Muslim Temporal Spacing in the German Diaspora. In: Insight Turkey (special issue: European Encounters with Turkish Islam), 12 (1), pp. 81-102.

2009 Rethinking Balanced Bilingualism: The Impact of Globalization in Catalonia. In: Language Problems and Language Planning, 33 (1), Spring 2009, pp. 1-21. (with Eva Juarros-Daussa).

2009 Behind the Fantasy Screen of Multiculturalism: Turkish Immigrant Comedy in Germany. In: Kucukcan, Talip and Gungor, Veyis (eds.): Turks in Europe. Culture, Identity, Integration. Amsterdam: Turkevi Research Centre, pp. 7-34.

Non-Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

2005 The Limits of Resignification - Turkish Immigrants in the German Region of Schwaben, in: Pi-Sunyer, Oriol (ed.): The Organization of Diversity. Essays on a Changing Europe, Research Report 31, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, pp. 181-212.

2004 Postkoloniale Subjekte: Moderne und Tradition unter Anatolischen Schwaben. In: Sökefeld, Martin (ed.): Jenseits des Paradigmas kultureller Differenz. Bielefeld: transkript-verlag, pp. 73-94.

Undergraduate Courses Offered

Islam and the West
Introduction to Anthropology
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
World Civilizations, Part 1
World Civilizations, Part 2
The Anthropology of War
Introduction to Islam

Graduate Courses Offered

The Anthropology of Europe
The Anthropology of Modern Life
Culture and Concept
Classic Ethnographies
Anthropological Perspectives on Terrorism
Violence and Non-Violence
Time for Culture
Social Theory I