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Programme
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Abstracts
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Sponsors:

PLEASE NOTE:
The conference has now concluded. Many thanks to all those who participated in making the event such a great success!

Keynote speakers Richard Holloway and Tom Altizer

Andrew Hass (Stirling) and David Klemm (Iowa)

Gian Balsamo (Cairo)

For those interested, the details of the conference, including the programme and abstracts, will remain on-line until further notice.

13th Conference of the
International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture

Sacred Space

Stirling, Scotland
20-22 October, 2006

What is sacred space? Does it refer to places that are set aside for particular religious purposes, or set aside because they have special associations with events in history in which the divine somehow touches the human? Or is all space sacred in a world in which everything is created by God? How does the work of artists – writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, film-makers, even musicians – relate to the sense of the sacred that we may feel in ourselves, in others and in the places we inhabit?

As well as academic discussions in both literary and theological fields, such as biblical and postcolonial studies, this conference will offer panels on music, film and the visual arts. On Saturday evening, the conference banquet will be held in the Great Hall of Stirling Castle, followed by modern jazz trio Acoustic Triangle’s performance of a major new composition commissioned especially for the conference to take place in the Castle’s Chapel Royal.

Plenary Speakers:

Tom Altizer (SUNY Stony Brook)
Nina Danino (Goldsmith’s College, London)
Richard Holloway (Edinburgh)
Philip Sheldrake (Durham)

Sponsors include:

Literature and Theology
The Scottish Arts Council
Chaplaincy to the Arts and Recreation
The British Academy
The University of Stirling

Panel Topics:

• Literature and Sacred Space
Convener: Elisabeth Jay (Oxford Brookes)

• Difficult Conversations: Contemporary Visual Art and Sacred Space
Conveners: Ken Mitchell (Glasgow School of Art)
Jim Harold (Northumbria)

• Film/Visual Culture and Sacred Space
Convener: S. Brent Plate (Texas Christian University)

• Sacred Space and Architectural Imagination
Convener: Lissa McCulloch (Muhlenberg)

• Postcoloniality and the Representation of Sacred Space
Convener: Jamie Scott (York)

• Cross-cultural Issues: Sacred Space and Diasporic Literatures
Convener: Eric Ziolkowski (Lafayette)

• Gender and Sacred Space
Convener: Sheila Hassell Hughes (Dayton)

• Biblical Studies and Sacred Space
Convener: Kirsten Nielsen (Aarhus)

• The Religious - the Holy - the Sacred:
Continental Attempts to Open Modernity as a Sacred Space
Convener: Erik Borgmann (University of Nijmegen)

• Theological Humanism: The Soul as Sacred Space
Convener: David Klemm (University of Iowa)

• Changing Spaces: The Changing Face / Function of Religious Buildings
Conveners: Darlene Bird (University of Leeds)
Marije Altorf (St. Mary’s College)

• Music and Sacred Space: A conversation w/ Acoustic Triangle
Convener: Andrew Hass (Stirling)