Religion, Secularism, and Nationhood (Conference)

The Fourth Annual British Modernities Group Conference

Religion, Secularism, and Nationhood

April 3 - 4, 2009
IPRH Lecture Hall
805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
Urbana, Illinois

Friday, April 3 - IPRH Lecture Hall

7:30-9:00 pm: Plenary Panel, Catholic Studies:
J. Barton Scott (Duke), “Anticlerical Modernities in Dayanand Saraswati's Satyarth Prakash”
James Chappel (Columbia), “A Machine for Making Catholics: The Constitution of the ‘Catholic Intellectual’ in Edwardian Britain”
Ewa Krynski (Trent University-Peterborough, Ontario), “‘The Truth of the Matter’: Faith, Knowledge and Fiction in Muriel Spark’s The Comforters”
Eleanor Courtemanche (English), Respondent

Saturday, April 4 - IPRH Lecture Hall

9:00 am: Morning Reception / Welcome

9:15 am: National and Global Ethics:
Tony Russell (Purdue), “Idolatry and Infinity in Chris Cleave’s Incendiary”
Emily Madsen (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Cromwell is no Hero of Mine”: Unitarianism and the Industrial Movement in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South”
Olivia Bustion (University of Michigan), “The Theological Ethics of Democracy in W. H. Auden’s ‘New Year Letter’”
Bruce Rosenstock (Religious Studies), Respondent

11:00 am: Sin, Space, and Cities
Joseph Stubenrauch (Indiana), “Evangelicalism and Public Spaces: Crowds, Social Networks, and Anonymity in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain”
Barry Hudek (Eastern Illinois), “Tracing Virag: Jewish Migration and the Construction of James Joyce’s Ulysses”
Michael Verderame (UIUC), “‘Portentous, Unexampl’d, Unexplain’d’: Cowper’s The Task and the Summer Fog of 1783”
Kelly Innes (English), Respondent

12:30 pm: Lunch

1:45 pm: Keynote
Gauri Viswanathan (Columbia), “Crypto-Conversion and the Secret of History”

3:30 pm: National Bodies: Marriage, Martyrs, and Sexual Expression
Shannon Sears (Michigan State), “Corrupted British Bodies: The Catholic Threat to Eugenics in The Heavenly Twins”
Tania Lown-Hecht (UIUC), “The Martyr as a Figure of Sexual Liberation in the Fin de Siècle Novel”
Filiz Barin (Illinois State), “Caught Between Two Worlds: Receptiveness and Resistance to the Westernization of Turkey in Halide Edib Adivar’s The Clown and His Daughter”
Vicki Mahaffey (English), Respondent

This event is sponsored by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the Department of Religious Studies.

The conference is free and open to the public.