Thursday, November 16, 2023 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT
Virtual Event via Zoom
Join us for a discussion with Dr. Levi McLaughlin on the murder of Shinzo Abe, the Unification Church and Japanese religion and politics.
In Japan today, political and religious opponents, lawyers, former adherents, and a host of other activists are advocating for the legal dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the controversial South Korea-based religion formerly known as the Unification Church. This talk will discuss legal, political, and religious ramifications occasioned by efforts to remove religious juridical persons status from the church and the tumultuous events that inspired them.
About the Speaker
Dr. Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University after previous study at the University of Tokyo, and he holds a B.A. and M.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto.
He has worked as a research assistant at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and was a visiting research fellow at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies, the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa. He was previously an Assistant Professor of Religion at Wofford College. McLaughlin’s research focuses primarily on religion in modern and contemporary Japan and considers how the category “religion” takes shape in the contexts of politics, education, and related spheres.
McLaughlin’s research has appeared in English and Japanese in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Asian Ethnology, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Sekai, the Social Science Japan Journal, and other publications. Levi is co-author and co-editor of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and co-editor of the special issue “Salvage and Salvation: Religion and Disaster Relief in Asia” (Asian Ethnology, June 2016). His book Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan was published by the University of Hawai`i Press in 2019.
Registration
The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the online event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.
Speaker
Dr. Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University
