[Discussion] CFP: Spiritual Identities (UK) (6/30/04; 11/5/04-11/6/04)

[sule tarakcioglu]

Call for Papers

Spiritual Identities
Lancaster University, UK
5-6 November 2004

Keynote speakers: Zygmunt Bauman, Sara Maitland, John Schad

Deadline for abstracts:  June 30th 2004

Spiritual Identities is designed to bring together academics and writers 
from across the disciplines to address the place of religion in the 
formation of identity (personal, national, cultural).

Recently, John D. Caputo has argued that 'religion was reported missing 
mostly by the intellectuals; no one outside the academy thought that it 
had gone anywhere at all'. This conference will tackle the pervasive 
influence of religious discourse on identity construction both 
historically and in the present day. We therefore invite papers from 
across the chronological range.

In the same piece Caputo claims that ' "Religion", in the singular, as 
just one thing, is nowhere to be found; it is too maddeningly polyvalent 
and too uncontainably diverse for us to fit it all under one roof.' This 
approach resonates with our desire to explore the complexities of 
religious identity and experience in our various disciplines.

The conference will reflect the fact that apparently 'secular' projects 
such as Derridean deconstruction, French Feminist thought, postmodern 
fiction and studies of sexuality have increasingly confronted and/or 
re-interpreted theological frameworks.

Areas for discussion might include:
spiritual autobiography and conversion narrative;
national identity and religion;
rituals, festivals and ceremony;
gender and religion;
post-secularity: modernity, postmodernity and belief
world religions in political discourse
science and religion debates;
fictions of faith in recent literature and cinema;
sexuality and divinity.


Please send 200-250 word proposal to j.carruthers@lancaster.ac.uk by 30 
June 2004.
Proposals should be sent as part of the body of an email, not as 
attachments.