About the Film In 2010, the Arizona Senate passed controversial immigration law SB1070, also known as the “papers please” law, igniting a national maelstrom. Supporters call it a common sense law-enforcement tool; opponents feel it will inevitably lead to racial profiling. Neighborhoods empty, businesses shutter, and immigrants flee the state. Those who choose to stay organize boycotts, mass demonstrations, daring acts of civil disobedience, and prepare families for the possibility of separation by sudden deportation. Mixing in interviews with…

As part of the university's on-going effort to engage with the realities of climate change raised in Pope Francis's recent encyclical, Laudato Si', the Religious Studies Department at UIW will host a lecture by theologian Colleen Mary Carpenter, Ph.D., of St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN. Dr. Carpenter will take up the pope's call for our ecological conversion by presenting the possibilities of a forest spirituality, grounded in the human relationship with the landscape of the forest in a…

Dr. Christopher Ellison will speak about the Religion-Demography Nexus:  Recent Developments and Future Directions.  Dr. Ellison holds a B.A. in Religion (1982) and a PH.D. in Sociology (1991) both from Duke University.  His research centers on several main issues:  the implications of religion and spirituality for mental and physical health and mortality risk; religious variations in family life; the role of religious institutions, practices, and values among racial and ethnic minority populations in the U.S.; the influence of religious factors…