Conference Schedule
FRIDAY, APRIL 7
9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m.
Registration and Refreshments, University Center
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Session 1
Panel 1: Religion and Social Change
Chair: TBA
- Brendan Osawa-de Silva, Emory University
“Religious Practices and Religious Imagination as Resources for Social Change” - Anthony Kolonic, Michigan State University
“Wag the God: American Civil Religion and Social Change” - Mark Hulsether, University of Tennessee
“Rethinking the Place of Religion in Scholarly Narratives about Oppositional Youth Culture in the 1960’s”
Panel 2: Religion and Nation-Building
Chair: Elizabeth Cecil, University of Tennessee
- John Dreyer, University of Tennessee, and Chris Lewis, University of Tennessee
“Catholicism, Capitalism and Control: The Catholic Church’s Role in the Economic Development of Quebec, 1760-1960” - Abraham Lotha, CUNY
“Christianity and Modernization of Naga Tribes in Colonial India” - Veda Khulpateea, Binghamton University
“State of the Union: Christianity and Britishness in the Colonial Context”
12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.
Lunch
1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
Session 2
Panel 1: Visualizing Religion
Chair: Heather Hirschfeld, University of Tennessee
- Bobbi Dykema Katsanis, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
“Touching Humanness: Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the Garden of Eden” - Anne Blue Wills, Davidson College
“‘Creative Memories’: Memory Albums as Religion” - Temenuga Trifonova, University of New Brunswick
“Transcendence and the Nature of Belief in Post-Secular Cinema”
Panel 2: Religion and Political Identities
Chair: Chris Lewis, University of Tennessee
- David Hall, Centre College
“Followers of the Lamb: The Rhetoric of Suffering and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Apocalypticism” - David Dault, Vanderbilt University
“‘But if they say we are not even to believe…’: Stanley Fish and the Critique of the Liberal Option” - David Dunn, Vanderbilt University
“Sacred Hunger: Fasting as Economic Resistance”
3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
Session 3
Panel 1: Religion and Theory
Chair: TBA
- J. Aaron Simmons, Vanderbilt University
“Rethinking Religion and Nation with Kierkegaard and Levinas” - Anthony Smith
“The Vital Practice of Religion: Or, How Religion Becomes Resistance” - Travis E. Ables, Vanderbilt University
“A Restless Nomination: Badiou and the Topology of Fundamentalism”
Panel 2: Religion and the Idea of Progress
Chair: Brenda Alexander, University of Tennessee
- Peter Paik, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
“From Utopia to Apocalypse” - Srikanth Mallavarapu, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Problematizing the Secular: Rethinking Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary India” - Wendy Roberts, Northwestern University
“What Would Jesus Do?: The Hyper-Local and Globally Open Ethic of Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps”
Panel 3: Documenting Religion
Chair: Rosalind Hackett, University of Tennessee
- Brian Grim, Pennsylvania State University
“Global Overview of Religious Freedom: Description and Indicators of Low Religious Freedom” - Heather Kindall, Pennsylvania State University
“Sources of Religion Data: The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)” - Ed Lambeth, University of Missouri
“Narrating Spirituality: Can Literary Journalism Cut It in the Post-Modern Era?”
7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Keynote Address and Reception, Crowne Plaza Hotel
John Caputo, “Beyond Sovereignty: The Weakness of God and the Postmodern Situation”
SATURDAY, APRIL 8
9:00 a.m.-9:30 a.m.
Registration and Refreshments, University Center
9:30 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
Session 4
Panel 1: Religion, Pedagogy, and the Classroom
Chair: Abe Whaley, University of Tennessee
- Joseph Wagner, Mississippi State University
“Faith in the Composition Classroom: A Pragmatic Approach to Common Ground” - Harry Newburn, University of Tennessee
“Teaching 'Faith and Reason'” - Brenda Glascott, University of Pittsburgh
“Literacy Education as a Conversion Pedagogy in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Literacy Narratives”
Panel 2:
Religion and Contemporary Politics
Chair: Ole J. Forsberg, University of Tennessee
- Robert Pirro, Georgia Southern University
“Tragedy, Theodicy and 9/11” - Holly Randell-Moon, Macquarie University
“Representations of the Pope’s Death by the Howard Government: Religion and Politics in an Australian Context” - Ellen Armour, Rhodes College
“The State of the Union(s): Terri Schiavo and Religion in America”
11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Session 5
Panel 1: Religion, Narrative, and Literature
Chair: TBA
- Safet Dabovic, Stony Brook University
“African Muslim Displacement: The Unusual Journey of Abd ar-Rahman” - Ana Antón-Pacheco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
“‘My Own Mind Is My Own Church’: Manifest Destiny, Religious Fundamentalism and American Playwrights” - Donald Dow, Rutgers University
“Whitman’s Sea-Drifts: Death, Religion and Transnational Publication” - Dawn Coleman, University of Tennessee
[Title pending]
Panel 2: Queering Religion
Chair: Dustin Parrott, University of Tennessee
- Mona West, Church of the Trinity MCC
“Learning to Drink from Our Own Wells: Queering Spirituality in America” - Harry Coverston, University of Central Florida
“Talking Past Each Other: Same Sex Marriage and States of Moral Reasoning” - Third panelist: TBA
1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Lunch at University Center, Hermitage Room, for Conference Registrants
2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Session 6
Panel 1: Roundtable
MARCO Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
- Panelists TBA
Panel 2: Gender and Religion
Chair: TBA
- Sandra Rubinstein Peterson, University of Missouri
“New Priorities, New Friends, and New Horizons: The National Council of Jewish Women and Civil Rights in St. Louis, 1950-1960” - Sheila Hassell Hughes, University of Dayton
“Maternal Mysteries: Presence, Absence, Plot, and Spirit among Erdrich's Anishinaabeg" - Andrew Battista, University of Kentucky
“‘Every Day is a God’: Re-mythologizing the Pauline Tradition in Evangelicalism”
Panel 3: Religion and History
Chair: John Dreyer, University of Tennessee
- Misty Anderson, University of Tennessee
“Fielding, Methodism, and the Sexual Politics of British Identity" - Harrison Taylor, Mississippi State University
“‘Promoting the General Interest of the Redeemer’s Kingdom’: The Interdenominational Transformation of the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, 1783-1801” - Paul Maltby, West Chester University
“Fundamentalist History, Postmodern Critique”
4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Hodges Library, Lindsay Young Auditorium
Film, Theologians Under Hitler
Introduced by Andrew Sneed, University of Tennessee
7:00-9:00 p.m.
Reading and Reception, Downtown Gallery (downtown Knoxville)
Diane Glancy, Reading from Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea