Call for Papers
RELIGION AND THE NATION: A NEXUS Interdisciplinary Conference
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Friday 7 - Saturday April 8, 2006
Keynote Speaker: John D Caputo (Syracuse)
"Beyond Sovereignty: The Weakness of God and the Postmodern Situation"
Reading by Diane Glancy (Macalester College)
Deadline for Submissions: February 10, 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. 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.