Call for Papers, Poetry, Fiction, Performance Art:
Purdue University
The English and Philosophy Ph.D. Program
Graduate Student Conference, February 6-8, 2004
Identifications:
Faith, Theory, and Identity-Making
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Merold Westphal: Faith and (non) Identity
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
Fordham University
Responding to recent post-secular turns in philosophy and literature, this
conference seeks to bring together graduate students in the humanities who
are interested in thinking through interconnections between faith and
theory.
The conference is responding to the possibility that how we learn to
understand subject-formation might facilitate and in turn be sharpened by
theorizing faith and religious-identifications. We invite proposals for
papers and panels, as well as performance pieces, poetry, and fiction.
Deadline for Submissions: October 15, 2003
Please send either a full paper (no longer than 12-15 pages) or a detailed
abstract or panel proposal to:
Ada Jaarsma, jaarsma@purdue.edu
Department of Philosophy, BRNG 7th floor,
Purdue University
100 North University Street,
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067
or
Mindy Tan, tanh@purdue.edu
Department of History, University Hall,
Purdue University
672 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907
Possible questions include:
• How do the processes by which we gain singular and collective identities
(psychoanalytic, existential, critical-theoretical) resonate with
confessions of faith? How do sexual, gender, ethnic, and racial
identifications cohabit with religious identities?
• Do increasing resonances between deconstruction and religious apophatic
teachings point to a contemporary mystical presence in current theoretical
discourse? Can we mobilize this possibility, after the anti-essentialist
thinking of the 90s, to rethink the subject’s relation to theology and faith
without falling back on essentialist concepts?
• Can we reread philosophers of faith (Augustine, Kierkegaard, Weil,
Lévinas, Marion, Irigaray) as well as philosophers of atheism/humanism
(Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) in and through the
problematic of identifications? How do they help us to think through
identity-making?
• Can we mobilize contemporary literary theory to attend to relations of
faith within a text? For example, can we re-envision relations between
modernism and religion through encounters with T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster,
Edith Sitwell, D. H. Lawrence, Salvador Dali?
• If we see a transcendent turn in theory today (Derrida, Caputo, Zizek,
Radical Orthodoxy), what does it say about the state of theory that the
"secular suspension" under which we have been functioning is itself being
suspended?
• In the increasing despair over progressive politics these days, is there a
place for eschatological thinking again? What does it mean that we are
increasingly understanding our politics in transnational and global terms?
How have faith traditions contributed to this discussion and conversely, how
must we rethink our traditions in light of these conditions?
• What is at stake in the ethical injunction to remember? Between memory and
expectation, what is the role of literature in relation to the ethical
demands of realism?
• Can the mystical tradition provide resources for dialogue between
"philosophers of faith" and "philosophers of atheism"?
• Following the “scientific crisis” of disciplines like literary criticism
and history, can we re-define the way we go about academic work to include
an understanding that all method research is informed at some point by an
“illumination” or epiphany that is not culled from, and is rather external
to, the materials with which we are working?
This conference is free and open to the public.
Dinner checks of $15 are payable to Ada Jaarsma, and can be mailed to Ada
Jaarsma, Department of Philosophy, BRNG 7th Floor, Purdue University, 100
North University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2067.
The conference is sponsored by The English and Philosophy Ph.D. Program
together with the Department of English, Women's Studies Program, Modern
Fiction Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Religious Studies
Program at Purdue University.
For other inquiries contact Martin Beck Matustik, mmatustk@purdue.edu,
Professor of Philosophy and Director of The English and Philosophy Ph.D.
Program.
For updated conference information, please see the English and Philosophy
Ph.D. Program website: http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/idis/phil-lit/
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From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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