[Discussion] CFP: Religion and Nation (1/15/06; 4/7/06-4/8/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: echilds <echilds@utk.edu>

CALL FOR PAPERS

RELIGION AND NATION
A NEXUS Interdisciplinary Conference
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Friday April 7 - Saturday April 8, 2006

Keynote Speaker: John Caputo (Syracuse)
"Beyond Sovereignty: The Weakness of God and the Postmodern Situation"

Reading by Diane Glancy (Macalester College)

Website: http://web.utk.edu/~nexus/

Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2006

In the January 7 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Stanley Fish wrote,
"When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what
would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the
center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."
 In recent years inquiries into faith, spirituality, and religious practice have
begun to multiply in the academy, and post-secular studies in a wide range of
disciplines have reintroduced religion as a province within rather than a
refusal of intellect. However, in today's globalized political climate, religion
can connote terror, fundamentalism, and what John Caputo calls "impossible
people."

This conference aims to study the role and the value of religion in a
post-secular academy as well as in the formation and maintenance of the nation,
nationhood, and national identity.

We welcome submissions from all disciplines, including activists and scholars
without academic affiliation. Abstracts (250-300 words) are invited on a broad
range of topics including but not limited to the following:

*Religion and Globalization
*Postsecularity and Film
*Literary Religions
*Religion and Science
*Religion, the Body, and Nation
*Narrating Spirituality
*Religion in the Post-9/11 US
*Ritual Building
*Fundamentalism
*Religion and Pedagogy
*Sacred Spaces in the Arts
*Saints and Martyrs
*The Queering of Religion
*Sacred Aesthetics
*Religion and Social Change
*The Institutionalization of Christianity
*Religion and Critical Theory

Please email proposals for a twenty-minute paper or presentation as a .doc
attachment to
Elaine Childs at echilds@utk.edu
or
Misty Krueger at mkrueger@utk.edu
or mail to
Elaine Childs
Department of English
University of Tennessee
301 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

Deadline for submissions is January 15, 2006.

All general inquiries about the conference may be directed to Elaine Childs.
The NEXUS series is organized and hosted by the Graduate Students in English.



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