“ReligionInterruptus: The Affects of Sex, Politics, and Bodies”

Syracuse University Graduate Student Conference

February 27–28,2015

Schedule: Friday, February 27

1:00 – 1:45    – Registration (table will be available through the afternoon) — 207 Hall of Languages

1:45 – 2:00    – Welcome — 207 Hall of Languages

2:15 – 3: 45   – Panel Session A  — 111 Hall of Languages

A: “Queer Theology and ‘Deviance’” (Seren Gates Amador, chair)

• Adrian Hernandez-Acosta, Harvard Divinity School:  “When God Puts a Rainbow in the Sky, Notes on Queer Theology and American Empire”
• Terry Reeder, Syracuse University “Sodomy: A Feminist Retraversal of a Genealogy”
• Samuel Castleberry and Adam D.J. Brett, Syracuse University: “What is Queer about Queer Christian Theology?”
• Stephen Lloyd, Boston University: “Zulu Sexuality and the Destabilization of Mission Institutions, 1840-1860”

4:00 – 5:15    – Panel Session B — 115 Hall of Languages

B: “History of Madness and Mad for Foucault” (Dan Moseson, chair)

• Karen Bray, Drew University:  “Mad for the World: the faithful interruptus of affect alien prophets”
• Brandy Daniels, Vanderbilt University: “Virtue with No After? Towards a Post-Moral, Erotic (Theological) Ethics”
• Marina Malli, Binghamton University: “From Confession to Parrhesia: Coming Out as an Act of Truth”

5:30 – 6:45    – Keynote: Dr. Lynn Huffer “Strange Eros”  — 107 Hall of Languages

7:00 – 8:00    – Dinner (co-sponsored) — Goldstein Alumni Center

8:30               – Reception — Goldstein Alumni Center

Schedule: Saturday, February 28

10:30 – 12:00 – Panel Session C — 111 Hall of Languages

C: “Transgressive Bodies, Transgressed Bodies” (Lauren McCormick, chair)

• M.W. Bychowski, The George Washington University: “Mad for Narcissus: Transgender Suicide in Medieval Confessional Literature”
• Jonathan Jackson, Syracuse University:  “Useful and Inhuman: Inversions of Queer and Correction of the Jewish Body”
• Amy Clanfield, University of Toronto: “[Untitled]: A Queer Re-telling of the Acts of Paul and Thecla”
• Lisa Gasson-Gardner, Drew University “Queer Resurrection? Reading Jose Muñoz, Jürgen Moltmann, and Jean-Luc Nancy”

12:00 – 1:00     – Lunch  — Off Campus

1:00 – 2:30       – Panel Session D — 105 Hall of Languages

D: “Affect, Space, Ecology” (Maria Carson, chair)

• Holly White, Syracuse University:  “Patterns in Comparative Utopia: Eliade and Jameson on the Archaic”
• Courtney O’Dell-Chaib, Syracuse University:  “Desiring Devastated Landscapes: Cultivating Biophilia Within Ecological Collapse”
• John Borchert, Syracuse University:  “Disinterred: New Urban Necro-Politics”
• Robert Warren, Drew University: “A Theology of the Vibrant City-Body Through Micropractices of Affective-Aesthetic Perception”

2:45 – 4:15    – Concurrent Panel Sessions E and F

E: “Islam and Political Transformation” — 111 Hall of Languages (Duygu Yeni, chair)

• Sara Swenson, Syracuse University: “Gendered Asceticism and Foucault’s Political Spirituality”
• Clara Schoonmaker, Syracuse University:  “‘An unfolding revolution under the banner of Islam’: Heterotopia, Political Spirituality, and the Iranian Revolution”
• Julia Sweet, Rutgers University: “Islam and Orthodox Christianity as Political Agents in Russia (1991-2013)”
• Parnia Vafaeikia, University of British Columbia: “The Representation of the Feminine Body in Shi’a Jurisprudence”

F: “Sex and Sexuality in American History and Film”  — 105 Hall of Languages (Emma Brodeur, chair)

• Aureliane Narvaez, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne/Columbia University: “Infidelitas Interrupta: From religious dissidence to Protestant common sense, the biopolitical apparatus of mental, sexual, and social control in antebellum America”
• Andrew Walker-Cornetta, Princeton University: “When Religion Becomes Sex, When Sex Becomes Religion: Victoria Woodhull, Perfected Reproduction, and Free Love in the Late Nineteenth-Century”
• Dai Newman, Syracuse University: “What really interests me is practice: Mormonism, Mahlzeiten, and New German Cinema”
• Carolyn Keller, Binghamton University:  “‘The Chickening’: Foucault, Feminism, and Interstitiality at Play in Orange is the New Black”

4:30 – 5:45    – Concurrent Panel Sessions G and H

G: “Gender, Sexuality, and Contemporary Christian Practice”  — 107 Hall of Languages (Fu Cong, chair)

• Daniel Reid, Yale Divinity School: “The Violence of Language and Womenpriests’ Response”
• Mandi Veenstra, Queen’s University:  “The ‘Good’ Christian Mother: Manufacturing an Unattainable Ideal”
• Sierra Schnable, University of Florida “That All May Worship: An Exploratory Ethnography of LGBTQ-Affirming Protestant Churches”
• Yookyeong Im, Seoul National University:  “Coevolving: Queer Christian Citizenship in an LGBTQ-Affirming International Church in Seoul, South Korea”

H: “Foucault and Sexuality in Literary Analysis”  — 114 Hall of Languages (Rebecca Moody, chair)

• LaJoie Ward, Binghamton University: “How William Thornhills Filled up the Whole World: Foucauldian Penality, Invested Bodies, and Individual Responsibility in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River”
• Jihye Kang, Binghamton University: “Madness and Sexuality in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea”
• James Fitzgerald, Binghamton University: “Sexual Preconceptions and Fowles’ Fiction: Genealogical Discourse and a Rethinking of the Victorian Metanarrative”
• Adam Ferguson, Binghamton University: ‘“Where art thou, Friend’: The Queer Poetics of Gerard Manley Hopkins”

6:00          – Conference Conclusion