The Religious Body Imagined

This symposium will probe the porous edges of the religious body and examines the ways in which it has been imagined, imaged, and discursively produced in particular places, times, and religious traditions. It seeks to theorize the religious bodys various functions, roles, and transformative effects through a range of disciplinary and theoretical lenses. It asks, How does our experience of the body shape our conceptions of the sacred (however defined), and conversely, how do the invisible contours of the sacred re-instantiate or re-embody themselves in concrete physical form? The symposium explicitly seeks to engage theories of the body, materiality, performance, and visual culture, as well as cultural studies, space / place, ritual, postcolonial theory and / or social justice as it pertains to embodiment.

Conference co-conveners:

Pamela D. Winfield, Associate Professor of Religious Studies (消消犯)

Mina Garcia, Associate Professor of Spanish油(消消犯)

Direct all inquiries to Dr. Brian K. Pennington, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, at bpennington4@elon.edu.

Keynote

Searching for the Soul in the Dolls Body: Spiritual Technologies from Golem to Barbie, Sex Dolls to Artificial Intelligence

S. Brent Plate (Hamilton College)

Convinced that religion has less to do with beliefs than with bodies, Professor S. Brent Plates research, 消消犯, and writing center on the ways people connect with physical objects through sense perception. The things we humans see, hear, smell, taste, and touch are what give us our spiritual dimension. He is the author of four books, including油A History of Religion in 5 遜 Objects, and editor of another ten books, including油Key Terms in Material Religion油and油Religion in Museums. His essays have appeared in油Newsweek,油Slate,油Los Angeles Review of Books,油The Christian Century,油The Islamic Monthly,油Huffington Post, and油Religion Dispatches. He is the President of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life/Cross Currents, co-founder and managing editor of the academic journal Material Religion, and serves on the board of the Interfaith Coalition of Greater Utica, in upstate New York, where he lives with his partner, two kids, and a black mutt. He is Associate Professor by Special Appointment of Religious Studies at Hamilton College.

 

Prof. Elizabeth Rhodes

Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Boston College, will offer closing remarks.

 

 

 

Symposium Schedule

(Unless otherwise indicated, all sessions are in the Numen Lumen Pavilion)

Thursday, Feb. 7

  • 3:00:油Check-in, Coffee
  • 3:45:油Welcome, Brian K. Pennington, Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society
  • 4:00-5:15:油Session 1: Transfigured Bodies
    • Ariela Marcus-Sells (消消犯), presiding
    • Shuxi Yin (Hefei University of Technology, China), Formation and Transformation of Virgin Marys Image in Ming-Dynasty China
    • Clyde Ellis (消消犯),油The Son of Power: Indigenized Christianity and the Image of Christ in Native North America
  • 5:30-7:00:油Keynote Address油(Yeager Recital Hall)
    • S. Brent Plate (Hamilton University), Searching for the Soul in the Dolls Body: Spiritual Technologies from Golem to Barbie, Sex Dolls to Artificial Intelligence
  • 7:00:油Dinner (Isabella Cannon Room)

Friday, Feb. 8

  • 9:00-10:15:油Session 2: LGBTQ Bodies
    • Lynn Huber (消消犯), presiding
    • Saqer Almarri (Binghamton University), The Khuntha in the Congregation
    • William Gilders, (Emory University), Harvey Milks (Sacred and Sexual) Body
  • 10:15-11:00:油Coffee, Sponsored by Religious Studies Department
  • 11:00-12:15:油Session 3: Traumatized Bodies
    • Sarah Bloesch (消消犯), presiding
    • Sarah Dove (The Ohio State University), A Myth of Holism: In/Visible Fragmentations and Wounded Being
    • Mina Garcia Soormally (消消犯), Lopes油Hamete de Toledo: The Infidels Body as Conquered Land
  • 12:30-2:00:油Lunch (McEwen Hall)
  • 2:15-4:00:油Session 4: Lived Bodies
    • Evan Gatti (消消犯), presiding
    • Katherine Zubko (University of North Carolina, Asheville), The Embodied Palimpsest: Dancing Kinesthetic Empathy in Bharatanatyam
    • Anandi Silva Knuppel (Emory University), The Body of the Senses, Imagined and Lived: Seeing Krishna in Transnational Gaudiya Vaishnavism
    • Megan Adamson Sijapati (Gettysburg College), The Instrumentality of the Body in American Shadhiliyya Sufism
  • 4:30-6:00:油Opening reception for exhibit of Cowan Collection of Religious Art
    • Undergraduate Research Poster Presentations
  • 7:00:油Dinner (Home of Brian Pennington and Amy Allocco)

Saturday, Feb. 9

  • 9:00-10:15:油Session 5: Dead Bodies
    • Andrew Monteith (消消犯), presiding
    • Anca Sincan (University College Cork), The Afterlife of Bishop Evloghie Oas Dead Body and its Disputed Ownership
    • Pamela Winfield (消消犯), Body Building: The Architectural Corpus of the Japanese Zen Monastery (monastic vs. lay memorial halls)
  • 10:15-11:30:油Elizabeth Rhodes (Boston College), Concluding Remarks