[Reader-list] CFP: Sacred and Secular conference, Southampton University

[Rana Dasgupta]

Conference on “The Sacred and the Secular” Sept 19-21, 2008 hosted by 
the School of Humanities (English), University of Southampton, UK


At a time when the prevalent rhetoric pitches the relationship between 
the sacred and the secular as one of conflict, this conference will 
focus on a more productive and dialogic exchange between the two 
concepts.  The associations of the “secular” with enlightenment and 
progress and the “sacred” with religious institutionalisation and 
primitivism are not only inadequate but also inaccurate.

The secular and the sacred are constituted by the intersecting 
discourses of the social, political, cultural, legal and the economic. 
This postcolonial conference will address how these intersections are 
manifested through lived, local practices; syncretic music and art 
forms; eclectic religious practices; everyday codes of living and 
resistant activist movements.

The conference will provide a forum for discussion between academics, 
artists, activists, film-makers and arts practitioners.  We invite 
papers which address the relationship between the sacred and the secular 
in some of the following ways:

- How are the sacred and/or the secular performed?  Papers might address 
dance, music, drama, political speech, and how these modes of 
performance function in various sites, such as media, parliament, the 
street, religious buildings.

- How are the sacred and/or the secular represented in literature, film 
and/or art?  What is the relationship between the sacred and/or the 
secular and textual or cultural authority?

- What is the relationship between governance and the sacred?  And in 
what ways must secular states accommodate the sacred in order to sustain 
a functioning civil society?

- What is the relationship between the sacred and the profane?

- Why is conflict so often articulated in terms of oppositions between 
the sacred and the secular?

- How are the sacred and/or the secular fetishized in media and other 
discourses?  What are the justifications and dangers of declared secular 
states fetishizing state power?

- How do sacred and/or secular discourses approach gender, sexuality 
and/or the erotic?

- What are the intersections between the sacred and/or the secular and 
the regulatory discourses of science, medicine, business, economics, and 
the law?


For further details, contact:

Dr. Sujala Singh
English, School of Humanities
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ

Phone: +44 (2380) 593413
S.Singh at soton.ac.uk