Registration and coffee
9:00 – 9: 30 am
Faculty Lounge
Room H-765
Session 1
9: 30 – 11: 00 am
Panels 1, 2, 3 & 4 concurrently
Session 2
11: 15 am – 12:45 pm
Panels 5, 6, 7 & 8 concurrently
Lunch
12:45 – 2: 00 pm
Department of Religion
2060 Mackay, Room FA 202
Session 3
2: 00 – 3: 30 pm
Panels 9, 10, 11 & 12 concurrently
Session 4
3:45 – 5:15 pm
Panels 14, 15, 16 & 17 concurrently
Keynote address
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Reception
7: 00 – 8 :00 pm
Department of Religion
2060 Mackay, Room FA 202
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SESSION 1
9: 30 – 11: 00 am
PANEL 1: #online
Room H- 763
Chair:
When it doesn't get better: youth trauma
Joanne Farrall (Queen’s University)
The recent death of Amanda Todd captured the Canadian and worldwide imagination in part because of her
impassioned plea on youtube, a month prior to her suicide, for help. Todd never speaks but uses a series of
flashcards to communicate her experiences of peer based sexual violence and harassment. My interest here is
less in the bullying she experienced—which could arguably be called sexual abuse, criminal harassment, and
stalking—but the pressures to confess one's trauma in particular, what Lauren Berlant would call cruelly
optimistic, ways. In a neoliberal system where happiness is, as Sarah Ahmed argues, mandatory, young people
are compelled to frame even the most horrifying of their stories in an optimistic light. There is a substantial
body of youtube videos that have sprung up in the past two years by young people about their trauma;
Amanda Todd offers us but one typical example in the genre. These silent videos use flash cards to talk about
multiple traumas: sexual and family abuse, relationship violence, self-harm, and suicide attempts, alongside
experiences of homophobia and constant harassment by peers over perceived sexual choices. I claim these
self-made videos are a new genre of visual autobiography meant to both articulate personal trauma and to
reach out to other youth in crisis. Leigh Gilmore argues that trauma victims are often compelled to put into
language that which is inarticulable and autobiography as a genre imposes further constraints to articulation.
The limit cases of autobiography, she claims, offer a potential site for resistance. I use poststructural analysis
and affect theory drawing on Foucault, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Sarah Ahmed, Leigh Gilmore, and Ann
Cvetkovich to analyze seven videos in this genre with an eye to how these youth articulations of trauma shed
light on the failures of our neoliberal system to deal with the realities of youth crisis, violence and pain.
A Perspective on the Social Implications of the Evolution of Social Media User Interface Design
Asen O. Ivanov (University of Toronto)
Social Media Networking Websites (SMNW) are advanced interactive web platforms that allow users to create
personalized online profiles, publish personal content, and interact with other users. The history of SMNW is
roughly a decade old. It can be traced to the launch of the website Friendster in 2002. Today, roughly one-sixth
of the world’s population uses SMNW. In October 2012, one of the leading contemporary SMNW, Facebook,
reached 1 billion users. While some commentators have praised SMNW as egalitarian virtual communities that
empower self-expression, creativity, intellectual exchange, and democratic values, others have criticized their
capacity to negatively affect individual identity, personal relationships, social bounds, professional careers, and
even individual’s well being. One thing is clear, for better or for worse SMNW have become deeply embedded
in our lives. Despite that the positive and negative consequences of SMNW’s use have been extensively
discussed, surprisingly few people have investigated the factors that have allowed SMNW to evolve from a
marginal form of youthful entertainment into an ubiquitous global social and cultural phenomenon. In this
presentation, I attempt to shed some light on this question by chronologically tracing the evolution of the user
interface design of two prevailing SMNW (Myspace, and Facebook). My investigation draws on empirical
research from the social and behavioral sciences to pinpoint how the evolution of user interface design might
have contributed to the imbrication of SMNW in the social and cultural spheres of life. The critical framework
informing my analysis draws on Luciano Floridi’s ideas from the field of Philosophy of Information, Daniel
Miller’s recent anthropological investigation of Facebook, and the critical work of Michel de Certeau.
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To Wear or Not to Wear Hijab Online: A Study of the Identity Performance of Muslim Canadian Women on
Facebook
Fatemeh Mohammadi (Carleton University)
The issue of veiling has been remarkably under-studied in North America. As such studying the adoption and
abandoning of the hijab by Muslims in Canada is an important avenue to decipher the identity of this group of
people. This paper looks at how Muslim women with an Iranian background and now living in Canada perform
their identity through wearing the hijab in the post 9/11 era. This was achieved by observing the behaviour of
six members of this community on Facebook for thirty days using Erving Goffman’s stigmatization theory. The
paper uses the results to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the theory. The one month
observation reveals that women who wear the hijab are more likely to identify themselves as Muslim-Canadian
while those who have abandoned the hijab after immigration are more likely to identify themselves as IranianCanadian. Moreover the research results show that while Goffman’s theory is very useful in trying to
understand the stigmatization of the veil after the 9/11 attacks, the pressures that this created on Muslim
women, as well as the behaviour of some women in dropping the veil in order to ‘pass’ such stigmatization, his
theory is of limited use in understanding the more complicated performance of women who kept their hijab in
spite of the discrimination they faced. Goffman’s theory is unable to account for such diversity because it
overgeneralizes and oversimplifies the reaction of individuals to the pressures of society. The theory also
assumes that there is a single hegemonic discourse on what is considered ‘normal’ and what is considered a
stigma. Moreover ‘society’ is presented as all-powerful and dominating over the individual, robbing the
individual of his/her agency to resist and fight back.
PANEL 2: Human / Nature
Room H-760
Chair:
When Mountain Meets Road: Humankind’s Connection to Nature through Sublime Theory in Percy Bysshe
Shelley’s Mont Blanc and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Catherine E. Elliott (University of Massachusetts)
The connection between Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mont Blanc and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road could be
described as a comparative look using Freud’s epistemic theory. The Road, written in 2005, could be said to
draw from the 1816 text by Shelley; however, such a comparison would be overly simplistic. There are other,
more subtle connections between the texts; a mirroring in internal structures for instance, that suggests there
may be a deeper connection between the two, regardless of literary allusion. I argue that Foucault’s theory of
the episteme works in conjunction with my texts, highlighting similar societal, historical and environmental
concerns that have produced two texts that are implicitly connected to one another despite being written two
hundred years apart.
Both authors are concerned with how mankind can connect with nature. I demonstrate how sublime theory
interacts with androgynous theory through a literary mechanism in order to help humankind to connect with
nature. This textual analysis allows us to see the text in a new way – outside of comparative boundaries, and in
proving this, there is both a new understanding of the text available, and a strong argument to support
Foucault’s epistemic theory.
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A Study in Dissonance: Performing Alternative Food Systems
Natalie Doonan (Concordia University)
Founded in Montreal in 2011, le/the SensoriuM is an alternative tourism bureau of sorts, presenting an ongoing
series of performance art events that aim to generate conversation through and about food. Using artist-led
tours and tastings as frameworks, these performances explore urban systems of circulation, regulation and
exchange. In this paper, I analyze Botanical Animal, a performance presented by le/the SensoriuM in November
2012. This case study serves to demonstrate an artistic strategy for undermining the rhythms imposed through
the neoliberalization of cities. In his book Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre argues that in “our urban-Statemarket society” everyday rhythms are dictated by capital. He maintains that: “(social) space and (social) time,
dominated by exchanges, become the time and space of markets” (6). In Botanical Animal, Toronto-based
artist Amanda Marya White challenges these rhythms by presenting a closed-loop system for growing and
consuming tomatoes. In this project, White collects tomato seeds from her excrement, plants these, then
harvests and eats the resulting tomatoes. In Botanical Animal, participants are introduced to this project while
canning their own tomatoes to take home. I argue that Botanical Animal counters the rhythms of consumption
imposed by capitalist food systems, relying instead on those of the seasons and the human body. White thus
playfully demonstrates a tactic for evading alienation by reconnecting urban humans with their food
production processes.
Work Cited:
Lefebvre, Henri. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Continuum, 2004.
Cosmogenetic Labour in the Crisis of the Anthropocene
Joseph Kirby (Institute for Christian Studies)
As the insights from anthropology slowly filter into philosophy, it is becoming clear that technology should not
be thought of as a contingent product of the European Enlightenment; instead, in the words of archaeologist
Timothy Taylor, “technology, within the framework of some 2 to 3 million years, has, physically and mentally,
made us.”1 Our huge brains, our dexterous hands, our upright stance, our ability to speak – these distinct
characteristics of our biology could only evolve in the context of a new kind of development, a complexifying
matrix of techniques and artifacts. Taylor calls us “a new, symbiont form of life,” with the technology that we
project around ourselves forming “the nonbiological aspect of the artificial ape.” 2
I argue that this insight calls for a massive change in perspective. In short, we need to understand life as an
explosion. Growing out of geothermal vents into the oceans, out of the oceans onto the land, this explosion is
now constrained by the barrier of the atmosphere, beyond which lies the void of space. The only way the living
explosion will ever be able to transcend this barrier is through the kind of symbiosis between technology and
biology described by Taylor. With reference to the long neglected ecological thought of Krafft Ehricke, I argue
that the ecological crisis should not be seen as the death-throws of nature, but rather as the birth-pangs of a
new mode of life, the crisis whereby the biosphere expands beyond the geosphere, to infuse extraterrestrial
fields of matter with the beauty of living form. As the progenitors of technology, this cosmogenetic labour is
one of the duties of humanity with regard to the living process that birthed us.
1
2
Timothy Taylor, The Artificial Ape (), 198.
Taylor, The Artificial Ape, 194.
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PANEL 3: Artistic Vision
Room H-762
Chair:
Embodied Witnessing and the Precarious Apprehension of Identity in Imogen Stidoworthy’s I Hate... (2007)
Megan Toye (McGill University)
How can we understand identity when the tools of language have been removed; when the ability to speak
and use words has been diminished, and when our voice struggles to be heard and comprehended by others?
These are the questions that artist Imogen Stidworthy brings to the fore in her piece entitled I Hate... (2007).
Exhibited at Documenta 12 in 2007, I Hate... bears witness to the debilitating effects of aphasia: a condition
cause by stroke or brain damage that impairs one’s ability to speak. How can the self be situated outside of the
logic of language, and can it do so in a fulfilling and meaningful way? In I Hate... we occupy a space where the
self is suspended between a state of coherence and instability, pressed up against the limits of knowledge as it
is normatively conceived through language. As language fails to situate and secure us we are left to flow with
the unnameable, beyond and in-between the alienating terrain of the symbolic order. By sticking with this
disorderly flow of part-iterations and partial subjectivity, this paper will explore I Hate... as a possible site for
the precarious apprehension of self and others. In this installation, the vulnerability of the linguistic terrain, and
the loss of a stable self, is marked in and through the spectator’s bodies as we witness, in an embodied
manner, the struggles imparted by aphasia and the ways in which it complicates the expression of identity.
Félix Fénéon and the Anarchist Tradition in Luther Bissett/Eva and Franco Mattes’ Darko Maver
Maureen Jolie Anderson (University at Albany)
Commodity production in art institutions has already assimilated the avant-garde break with tradition of the
early 20th century into their sense of historic tradition. It is exactly this kind of historical sense that negates or
seemingly makes impossible an authentic transgression or subversion, but only if done under the unquestioned
implicit rules of established social constructs of what is recognizable as subversive. For the 18th annual
Interdisciplinary Conference at Concordia University this coming February 14th, 2013, I propose to discuss the
expectations of subversion in art institutions as well as public discourse as critiqued through the invention of
Darko Maver by Luther Blissett, and Eva and Franco Mattes. This invention/intervention will be tied to the
political and aesthetic work of Félix Fénéon. First, I will elaborate on the distinction between historic
consciousness and the institutional dependency on historicizing references as a means of recognizability.
Second, I will give a quick history of Darko Maver and Félix Fénéon’s political activity in 19th century anarchism
and art criticism, specifically his rhetoric during the Trial of the Thirty and his differentiation between love and
esteem in art objects. Third, I will connect the rhetoric of the Luther Blissett declaration/manifesto of invention
to the anarchist tradition of the 19th century, specifically Fénéon’s specific critical and aesthetic practice within
it. It might appear to be a contradiction in terms to call something an “anarchist tradition,” but this only
appears as a contradiction if one historicizes either term, turning them into instruments of either revolution or
a conservative status quo.
Sheepish: posthumanist perspectives on ovine tropes in art historical and contemporary practices
Martha Robinson (OCAD University)
Contemporary artists engage the animal through cataloguing, classifying, and documentary photography,
processes specular to transgressive historical practices, as the collector-ghosts of Darwin, and Gould shadow
this appropriation into contemporary idiom. Examining cultural and art historical tropes of sheep, however,
involves a reconfiguring of subject outside of natural history iterations and occupying a long metaphoric
relationship with man. The sheep persisted as signifier long after humanity distanced itself from liturgical text
or agrarian past that rendered these ovine tropes intelligible; the history of art from Zurburán’s Agnus Dei
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through Bonheur to Andy Goldsworthy offers works with sheep occupying the subject, and sometime specular
position. Outside the landscape or farm portrait– sheep painting as precursor to great equine portraiture from
Stubbs to Munnings is worthy, however, of examination–do these works offer a tangential prefiguring of the
posthumanist position or something contradictory– Derrida’s cat offers up the gaze of the Other, but have we
not through history removed our gaze to a position in the culturally constructed metaphorical position
occupied by sheep? Human/animal bridging of thought in the posthumanist world necessitates reconfiguring
the ovine as animal, reclaiming one of Jakob von Uexküll’s Umvelts. Investigation of artists’ work who are
current stakeholders in the cultural construction of sheep, and those practices embracing a posthumanist
aesthetic–will attempt to answer these questions. Long after the birth of Christianity situated mankind as the
lamb that strayed from the fold, Damien Hirst’s expectation is that his work, Away from the Flock, speaks to a
larger secular audience. Understanding ways in which the idiom of flock, lost lamb and good shepherd prevail
in our art and culture leaves us to conclude whether sheep have returned to the fold–theirs, not ours–and
return our gaze with the gaze of the other, and not our own.
PANEL 4: The Gender Challenge
Room H-767
Chair:
Family, Women & Children A Qualitative Comparative Ethnographic Reinterpretation of Changing Roles in
Azilal and Marrakech
Mejene Roger Emeh (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Much of the available literature on anthropology of Morocco deals with the classic segmentary lineage theory
debate of Gellner and Geertz. There is little literature published by contemporaries in the field of anthropology
that relates to gender roles. Other sciences however, including development studies, sociology, political
science and gender studies are producing copious volumes on Morocco. Among the available literature today
in anthropology of gender in Morocco include the contributions of Anne Kapchan. This paper aims at
contributing to this available data and literature on Morocco from the perspectives of social and cultural
anthropology by building on the works of Anne Kapchan. Thus, it uses the methods of qualitative research
through participant observation and semi-structured interviews of 60 persons of both male and female gender
and 6 families, all ages and educational level, Arab and Berber speaking, urban and rural dwellers as well as
religious and traditional leaders. It studies the Family, Women and Children: Comparative Interpretation of
Gender Roles in Azilal and Marrakech. A theoretical framework is developed to establish the concepts within
family and society in general. The resulting findings challenge the ongoing debate as being too exaggerative of
the reality of changing gender roles in Morocco. While change is occurring and urban women are beginning to
play several roles, rural women still find solace in adhering to traditional roles. The findings open the way for
future research on the topic from an anthropological point of view.
Hierarchy, Identity, and Gender in Early Christian Martyrdom: The Case of Blandina
Stéphanie Machabée (McGill University)
As one of the earliest Christian martyrologies, the second-century Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne (M.Lyons)
wishes to construct and perpetuate its own ideology of martyrdom. This paper will demonstrate how the
author of M.Lyons is fixated on the terminology of martyrdom as well as the creation of a hierarchical structure
of martyrs. The author wants to honour the arrests and deaths of community members, which is made evident
by his need to rank them within this martyr hierarchy. Gender is especially interesting in this kind of obsession.
Of the victims narrated in this letter, the female slave Blandina, who would have been positioned on the lowest
stratum of society according to Greco-Roman norms, fits near the top of this martyr hierarchy, just below the
position of Christ. This letter narrates how Blandina makes three separate appearances in the amphitheatre
and each time she invokes an authoritative, gendered image: the noble athlete, crucified Christ, and mother to
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the martyrs. Gender is here used in a metaphorical way in order to create, define, and negotiate the boundaries
of a martyr identity in early Christianity. I will explain two important aims in shifting Blandina’s gender. First, it
renders martyrdom accessible to all. It wishes to change the reader’s prejudice regarding the weakness of this
female slave, or the potential weakness of any Christian body, in order to demonstrate that all Christians are
capable and ought to embrace martyrdom. Second, it constructs the boundaries of a martyr identity within a
Christian discourse through providing an example of a ‘super martyr.’
Negotiating Norms, Challenging Stereotypes: Male Athletes’ Performance of Gender and Sexuality On and
Off the Field
Jessica Légère (Concordia University)
Sport is a major cultural force often correlated with socially positive aspects and benefits such as elevated selfesteem, academic success, and financial rewards. But sport participation can also be psychologically and
socially damaging to athletes. Indeed, sport can be seen as a socially constructed site where individuals often
feel pressured to conform to dominant gender and, by extension, sexual norms. Male athletes often find
themselves negotiating norms and managing stigma where gender and sexuality are concerned as they
endeavour to fashion identities that will be deemed acceptable to the culture in which they find themselves.
This paper investigates the changing pressures placed on male athletes to conform to strict definitions of
masculinity in the sportsworld. First, using the watershed work of psychologists Robert Brannon and Deborah
Sarah David (1976) as well as that of sociologist Michael Kimmel (2008), this paper considers the four
normative ways in which young boys and men are taught to be anything but what females are. Second, using
sociologist R.W. Connell’s (1995) theory of hegemonic masculinity, this paper exemplifies the link between the
sportsworld and various subordinated masculinities and femininities. Finally, this paper explores the significant
transition of values and traditions within the sportsworld using British sociologist Eric Anderson’s (2009)
theory of inclusive masculinity which is characterised by various masculinities, femininities, and sexualities,
social inclusion, and acceptance. As this paper discusses the noteworthy identity-related shifts in the culture of
sports, it exposes the complex symbolic significance of sport in the construction and performance of various
male identities.
SESSION 2
11:15 – 12:45pm
PANEL 5: Internal Strife
Room H-760
Chair:
Diaspora, Religion and Media: Representations of Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Islam in Serbian
Ethnic Radio
Ivana Previsic (University of Ottawa)
Canada’s official multiculturalism promotes cooperation among various cultural, ethnic, racial and religious
groups. This involves the relationships between the majority and minority groups, minority groups themselves,
as well as the way they represent each other in dominant and ethnic media. The role of ethnic media is to
maintain attachments to a minority group’s culture and/or religion, whilst simultaneously facilitating
integration into the new society characterized by cultural, ethnic, racial and religious diversity. Drawing upon
Bakic-Hayden’s (1995) theory of nesting Orientalisms and Todorova’s (1994) concept of Balkanism, two Serbian
ethnic radio programs were examined using a qualitative content analysis. The study revealed that the
programs use references to Serbian Orthodox Christianity to assert the group’s Christian and oft-contested
European character. In relation to Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity is represented as the genuine, original
Christian denomination and the Orthodox/Catholic distinction is firmly maintained. At the same time, the
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attempts of the newly-independent Montenegro to establish its own Orthodox Church are ridiculed. In relation
to Islam, the East-West Christian schism is discarded and Catholics and the Orthodox fuse into homogenous
Christians. Reflecting the anti-Muslim discourse of terrorism observed in Western media after 9/11, the Serbian
ethnic programs represent Orthodox Christianity as Antemurale Christianitatis, defending Europe from Islam
ever since the 14th century to this date. In diasporic contexts, where the Serbs’ reputation may be tarnished as
a result of the media portrayal of the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, the assertion of the group’s Christian and
European character, as well as the adoption of global anti-Muslim discourses serve as a self-soothing strategy
to fit to into the predominantly Christian Canada where a group’s Christianness and Europeanness are
perceived as a measure of its civilizatory properties, especially since the influx of non-Christian immigrants and
the events of 9/11.
Culture War, Cultural Violence: The Challenge to Protestant Hegemony in 1960s America
Lauren R. Kerby (Boston University)
The concept of a “culture war” has become commonplace in both scholarly and popular discourse. It typically
identifies a clash between conservatives and progressives on any given issue, usually a dispute between
traditional morality and liberal individualism. Yet this static definition of a culture war obscures the multilayered power struggles over culture that occur as society changes. This paper takes a new approach to the
culture war by employing Johan Galtung’s typology of violence to distinguish between direct, structural, and
cultural violence and to demonstrate how the latter two are contested in a culture war. Through an analysis of
the 1963 Supreme Court decision Abington School District v. Schempp that declared state-sponsored prayer and
Bible-reading in schools unconstitutional, this paper demonstrates how Protestant hegemony and the
exclusionary practices it legitimated were overturned as pluralism became the dominant narrative of American
society. It thus redefines the culture war 1) as the struggle through which cultural violence is brought to
consciousness and openly challenged through attacks on embedded structures of violence; and 2) as the
struggle of the beneficiaries of particular structures to maintain them and the underlying culture.
Image of God, resilience, and the imaginary: A study of Vietnamese Canadians who have experienced losses
Thanh-Tu Nguyen (Saint-Paul’s University)
Recent research has been increasingly concerned with human resilience; however, resilience in relation to
spiritual components (i.e., God image) among Vietnamese Canadians who have experienced loss is absent from
the literature. Moreover, using Western measurements to examine spiritual resources, losses (i,e., fleeing the
home country by boat, witnessing loved ones dying, resettling in host countries where the culture, language
are totally strange), and resilience (i.e., self-worth, adaptation, and perseverance) in a Vietnamese Canadians
sample may yield inconsistent results because of cultural differences (Yu, 2011). The current investigation
introduces resilience into an existing framework for understanding spiritual variables from an Object Relations
perspective (i.e., God image seen as an internal working model to deal with existential anxiety) (Rizzutto,
1979), together with G. Durand’s Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (1999). The use of a more
universal approach based on the work of G. Durand, particularly the use of the AT. 9 test (a projective test
using nine universal elements for drawing and story telling), may help to bridge the cultural gap. Grounded on
these theories, the present study will examine a) to what degree God image predicts resilience among
Vietnamese Canadians, b) to what degree God image mitigates emotional distress, and also to explore c) how
Vietnamese Canadians perceive experiences of God, loss, and resilience in relation to the imaginary. 150
participants from 18-65 years of age will be administered the questionnaires on God image, losses, resilience
and socio-demographics. Thirty persons out of 150 participants will take an AT.9 test to explore the imaginary
vision. The present research hypothesizes that a positive God Image would positively predict resilience, and
that a positive God image would mitigate emotional distress. Low scores on emotional distress, high scores on
God image and on resilience would be found to relate to the synthetic imaginary (a more balanced one) in the
AT.9 test. Finally, we will undertake a qualitative interview with six persons, to have an in-depth understanding
of how God image activates resilience in the face of loss. This research will help to more completely clarify how
8
spiritual /religious involvement or how Vietnamese Canadian’s God image impacts health, resilience and
adaptation, and also how the anthropological test would bridge the gap between East and West in these
circumstances (i,e., the synthetic vision for a meaningful life in the face of losses).
PANEL 6: States of Utopia
Room H- 763
Chair:
New and old paradises: How Catholic and Anarchist visions of a utopian future shaped the Spanish Civil War
Steven Henry Martin (Trent University)
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was, in its day, defined by the Nationalists as a defense of a Catholic and
conservative Spain, and on the other side by the Republicans as a fight for a new social order, often times as a
revolution. On the Republican side, the Anarchist movement did not believe they fought for a liberal republic,
but preferred to regard the conflict as the beginning of a revolution that would create an egalitarian society.
This was a radical vision of the future, one which they attempted to put into practice: the elimination of the
state, the elimination of property, money and coercion. Further, many Anarchists believed in purging religion
and especially Catholicism from society, because it represented the old way of life that was anathema to the
new. On the Nationalist side, the Catholic Carlists did not fight for Franco, but for an old vision of Spain that
dated back to the Middle Ages, of a pure Catholic state in which everyone had their place of dignity within a
hierarchy, both low and high, based on “ancient rights” that the Catholics believed gave them an autonomy
over local affairs. In short, they fought to make Spain a Catholic utopia. The Catholics and the Anarchists saw
each other as the deadliest of enemies, mainly because each movement’s vision of an ideal future required the
annihilation of the other’s existence: in each vision of heaven, the other saw a vision of hell. The result was the
Spanish tragedy.
Thucydides’ Revolution in Corcyra; Chaos as disease within the Political Organism
Ian Tewksbury (San Francisco State University)
Political philosophy is founded on the revolutionary insight of the classical historian Thucydides: the city-state is
an organism that can be infected by the chaos of the individual and cured by order of the state. The revolution
in Corcyra is Thucydides’ case study on revolution and human nature. This paper provides a close reading of
Thucydides’ representation of revolution and argues that, for this early historiographer, the cause of revolution
within the political organism is the contagion and disorder of
human passion. Ultimately, this paper considers Thucydides’ understanding of the infection of the
healthy city-state. Passion in the individual is not just dangerous but antithetical to the health and
order of the political organism. Thucydides’ revolutionary idea is his representation of man as an
unstable and potentially dangerous biological component, who must be incorporated within and inoculated by
the order of the state organism. This insight is taken up by Plato and ultimately influences political philosophies
as disparate as Machiavelli’s and the Carter Administration’s. I conclude this paper with the observation that in
order to understand modern political philosophies’ ability to defend violence against individuals in the name of
order, we must attempt to better
understand its intellectual foundations.
Natural Religion in Utopian Literature
Richard Greydanus (McGill University)
This paper examines recent attempts to domesticate the early modern ideal of Utopia as a strategy for social
criticism against a reading of the function of natural religion in a number of early attempts at describing
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Utopia. It will be argued that present interests in social criticism malign the intrinsically constructive character
utopian literature. Much like the ambiguous status of the ‘state of nature’ in early modern political theory, the
ideal served as a ‘this-worldly’ point of reference for economic, political, and social reforms. The heart of 17 th
century utopian literature was found in a program of education for disseminating coherent body of natural
knowledge, whose intelligible unity presupposed the existence of a Creator God. Initiating the early modern
movement of utopian literature, Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) proves the exception to this rule. The subtle
difference in More’s concern to regulate and satisfy bodily appetites versus the concern to establish scholarly
communities in other contributions to the genre like those provided by Hall (Mundus Alter et Idem, 1605),
Andreae (Christianopolis, 1619), Bacon (New Atlantis, 1626), and Campanella (The City of the Sun, 1623) only
serves to underscore the argument that creators of utopias believed rational knowledge possesses a moral
unity.
PANEL 7: Martyrs and Saints
Room H-767
Chair:
Torture Dreamscapes: Reimagining the Martyrdom of Jean de Brébeuf
Orenda K. Boucher-Curotte (Concordia University)
Torture writes its self on the bodies of its victims. The titillating and gruesome details of the early Christian
Martyrs' deaths have inspired both a desperate desire to end their suffering, and a ravenous need for more.
The stories of the North American Jesuit martyrs are no different. As part of both the Jesuit and colonial
narratives, these Christian martyrs held a special place in the history and development of Nouvelle France
throughout the seventeenth century. However brute violence does not only write itself only on the bodies of
the tortured. The torturer equally becomes part of the narrative. They are integral to the drama, yet often
times that part of the narrative is ignored. We see the torturer as the perpetrators of violence. We have
labelled them as the oppressor, the savage, the ugly mark on our story. But what if we listened to their
perspective, what would their story tell? What if suffering gave the victims purpose; and more importantly,
what if the torturer was playing a part in transforming the victim into a martyr, through their role as the
executioner? These questions lead us to understand that although we have traditionally told the story from the
vantage of the martyred, there is obviously a far more complex web of causation that existed between each of
the characters involved. Using the martyrdom of one of Canada's most famous Jesuit martyrs, Jean de
Brébeuf, I will explore the relationship between the Wendat Nation, with whom he lived for decades, the
Iroquois Nation, responsible for martyring him, and Jean de Brébeuf's visions that lasted well over a decade. It
is my contention that while the act of martyrdom is itself a unique phenomena, critically examining it through
the Indigenous worldview, and in particular the notion of prophetic dreams, allows us to see that his
martyrdom was less about defending the Christian faith, and more about engaging with existing complex
cultural practices which were rooted in Wendat and Iroquois creation stories.
Navigating the Margin and the Mainstream: A Village, a Saint and their Bodies
Alexander Nachaj (Concordia University)
St. John de Britto is a saint with many faces. On the one hand, he is the calm, passive and disciplined guardian
of order and the village space, on the other he is a fierce, wild-tempered bachelor who rides along the outskirts
at night stalking those who would transgress his boundaries. As a Catholic saint wedged into a role normally
reserved for complimentary pairs of male and female Tamil deities, John is popularly understood to embody
both the hot and cold temperaments necessary to punish, safeguard and instruct his village devotees. In this
paper I argue that the peculiarities of his hagiographical tradition along with the nature of his abstinent saintly
body have shaped the local understanding of this figure into a powerful supra-male able to move beyond the
constraints and temperaments normally associated with the male body and, in doing so, create a space within
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the village sphere where the villagers can equally experiment with transcending or transgressing against their
own bodies.
Towards an “Holistic” hagiography of Brother André: Reading a Saint with Williams and Orsi
Shaun Leslie Turriff (Concordia University)
When placed in an appropriate historical context, about Catholic saints, in particular about Brother André, can
be used to examine the social role of saintly persons. The re-reading of these hagiographic narratives, using the
insights of modern scholarship on sainthood, allows for the continued refinement of what the saints represent
to the Church, both as a system and as a body of believers, how they function in society, and further
contributes to the evolving understanding of the role of the Catholic church in the social fabric of Quebec.
David Williams suggests a more complete hagiographic form, considering three elements from Saint’s lives
together to form a “holistic text”, which is greater than the sum of its parts, and which does not privilege the
written text. Williams likens his work to Stanley Fish’s reader response theory, where meaning is found not in
the text, but rather in the interpretive strategies shared by a community of readers (Fish 2001). For Williams,
the Lives of the saints, understood in his holistic sense, have their meaning only in the communities that
interpret and share them. Williams calls these elements, word, image, and enactment (Williams 2010). Robert
Orsi presents a model of religion where religion is “a network of relationships between heaven and earth,
involving humans of all ages and many different sacred figures together” (Orsi 2005, 2). For Orsi and
the study of religion in general, and of saints and Catholicism in particular, intersubjectivity is an important
element. Like the understanding of intersubjectivity deployed by Orsi, Williams’ use of Fish’s reader response
theory highlights how a community is responsible for the meaning inherent in the holy figure. This paper aims
to develop a “holistic” reading of Brother André’s life, while tempering the work of Williams with the work of
Robert Orsi and others.
PANEL 8: Negotiating Muslim Identities
Room H-762
Chair:
Order and Chaos in the Colonial World System since 1492: the Case of Islamic Civilization
Jason Sparkes (Université de Laval)
While the global Western-centric system may seem like a world order from the centre, it presents itself as
chaos from the peripheries. This paper examines the impact of global coloniality on Islamic Civilization
since1492. The first section discusses global coloniality as analysed in the writings of decolonial thinker, Ramón
Grosfoguel (UC Berkeley). The second section concerns the historical impact of coloniality on Muslims and the
chaos it produces to this day in their societies. The third examines the decolonial challenge to Western
hegemony in the world today. Whereas postmodernism and post-colonialism challenge Eurocentrism from a
Eurocentric perspective, decolonialism challenges coloniality from the vantage point of peripheral
epistemologies. For a Muslim academic like the author of this paper, this entails thinking critically from an
Islamic perspective rather than simply thinking about Islam. The last section of this paper deconstructs the
colonial narrative that portrays Islamic civilization as having declined due to internal decadence. Rather, it will
be argued that in the modern era Islamic societies have been victims of the same unfathomable violence
unleashed on all non-Western peoples by colonial forces.
If we are what we eat, does eating foie gras make me French? Traditions and transitions in Muslim food
practice in Paris, France
Rachel Young (Wilfrid Laurier University)
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Identity negotiation is a central part of the immigrant experience. When face to face with a culture or context
that is different than one’s homeland, the immigrant must often address what parts of his/her identity are fluid
and which parts will remain fixed. For those immigrants who hold particular religious identities and find
themselves in contexts where the dominant religious tradition is different than their own, the negotiation of
religious identity is particularly evident. Food plays an important role in the negotiations of identity. The things
that we eat and the manner in which we eat them can define who we are in relation to those who eat different
things and in different ways. Drawing on fieldwork and structured interviews in Paris, France this paper will
explore how North African Muslim immigrants use food to negotiate their changing identities in their
immigrant location. On the one hand, this paper will discuss how maintaining particular food traditions allow
immigrants to hold to a strong religious and community identity. By reasserting Muslim food practices in
France, sometimes more strongly than one had in the Maghreb, the Muslim immigrant places themselves
firmly within a particular identity. On the other hand, the paper will explore how transitions and adaptations in
food consumption and practice lead these immigrants to adopt new “French” identities, leaving some of the
more common religious and cultural food practices aside.
Lunch
12:45 - 2:00pm
Department of Religion
2060 Mackay, Room FA 202
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A) Hall Building, 1455 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Room H-765
B) FA Building, Department of Religion, 2060 MacKay, Room FA-202
SESSION 3
2:00– 3:30 pm
PANEL 9: Constructing the Other
Room H-760
Chair:
Representations of Muslim Women in the Quebec News Print Media: A Critical Textual Analysis
Amanda Rose Pichette (Concordia University)
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Between 2006-2007 in Quebec the passage of a controversial code of conduct in the rural municipality of
Hérouxville cast the issue of Reasonable Accommodation into the media spotlight. Integrating minorities and
immigrants into contemporary Quebec society has caused many people to express anxiety over the
accommodation and rights of newcomers. Some conceive that Muslim beliefs and practices threaten a modern
Quebec identity based on fundamental values such as gender equality, secularism and tolerance. My
conceptual framework engages in a discourse analytic approach based on the work of van Dijk (1987; 1991) that
examines style, rhetoric, structure, language and narrative structure of Quebec news print articles. To
understand the context of media representation, the syntactic structures are also examined to reveal instances
of discrimination and racism. A deeper, more critical analysis of the news texts is taken up here by grounding
the issues within the context of Reasonable Accommodation to explain the dimensions of this social discourse.
Does a critical textual analysis of representations of Muslim women reveal a subtle, racialized discourse at play
in the news media? This research explores this question and further anchors the implied meanings of Muslim
women and its attendant imagery in the particular experience of the Québécois Francophone majority
group. The Québécois embody a distinct language, culture and historical experience within Canada. Against this
backdrop, Muslim women are marginalized and discriminated against on the basis of their race, gender and
cultural identity within the news print media. During the reasonable accommodation debates in Quebec, La
Presse and the Gazette created damaging portrayals of Muslim women in an effort to stir hysteria and reinforce
an insulated and protectionist collective identity in Quebec.
Fort Devens: Civil Rights Unrest and African-American Identity in a Northern Military Community during
World War II
Janine Hubai (UMass Boston)
African Americans who served in the military during World War II often spoke of fighting a double V victory,
victory against the Nazis overseas and victory against the racism and oppression in America. While there is
much scholarship on this subject, the focus tends to be on southern military camps. African American soldiers
are lumped together in one large mass of similar experiences, largely ignoring the diverse background that
African American military personnel came from. This narrative is important, but scholars fail to view the black
experience as individual and dynamic. By focusing on a military base in Massachusetts, I argue that northern
military camps were hotspots of civil rights unrest, that the military both promoted and held back civil rights,
and that African American military personnel during World War II included more than poor, male southerners
conscripted into the army. Using three case studies, I provide a compelling look at how African Americans in
northern military camps fought for civil rights and found new identities. Two case studies focus on female,
African American nurses and the third case study focuses on an African American male soldier who grew up in a
white neighborhood in Cambridge, MA and learned about black culture in a segregated army. These stories
debunk myths of the African American experience in the military, and speak of how a segregated army shaped
their identity and united many African Americans to fighting civil rights in both military and civilian society.
The Dangers of Articulating the Barbarian Other
Carina de Klerk (McGill University)
A barbarian, according to one of the definitions offered by the OED, is a “rude, wild, uncivilized person.” The
barbarian is external to civilization and threatens to destroy and overtake civilization, to make it wild. In order
to preserve the integrity of civilization, boundaries must be inscribed and maintained. The negative
connotations of ‘barbarian’ can be traced to the period of the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC) in which the
eastern Persian empire made inroads into the west. This geographic transgression along with the ensuing
conflicts initiated the process by which the original meaning of
‘barbarian’ developed beyond its onomatopoeic denotation of non-Greek speaker to include other more
negative connotations of what is perceived to be (and what must remain) not Greek: the feminine, the slavish,
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and indulgence in luxury. The barbarian is the other par excellence. An other seen and defined from the
perspective of the Greeks, an other which helped forge a new sense of a shared Greek identity. Aeschylus’
Persians, a tragedy staged in 472 BC at the City Dionysia festival in Athens, stands at the beginning of this
intensified definition of the ‘barbarian’ other and contributes to that definition through its representation of
the Persians. Indeed, Edith Hall has gone so far as to call it “the first unmistakable file in the archive of
Orientalism”.1 In this paper, I submit the ‘othering’ of the Persians to a new analysis through an examination of
the role of language in the formation of the other. Along with Kathleen Glenister Roberts, I consider alterity to
be discursively produced.2 But I hold and test the hypothesis that language is necessarily insidious in that
production, that it destabilizes the boundary between the Greeks and the Persians at the moment when the
articulation of that boundary is most keen.
PANEL 10: Material Culture
Room H-763
Chair:
Mural painting tradition, past and present in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
Tesfalidet Tezera Habitegiyorgis (Addis Ababa University)
This study presents the in-depth analysis of the mural fragment in late medieval Ethiopia churches. Mural
fragments are produced to influence and electrify the faithful by their descriptive story and eye catching
colors. Mural fragments of medieval churches of Ethiopia are distinctive for their cycle of miniatures depicting
the different stories of religious texts. They demonstrate to believers with traditional symbol of power and
holy figures with objects associated with religious life and practices, like nimbus, robes and crosses etc. During
the medieval period Ethiopian orthodox churches are evidenced by their massive painting traditions. This
paper describes the multi –functional nature of religious painting traces its historical development and by
looking at case studies, seeks to identify some of the issues, characteristics, benefits and pitfalls of mural
paintings used as a conveyor of messages. However, the tradition faces multifaceted challenges across time
and places. Thus this study traces the origin and development of mural painting tradition and changes driven
by different factors.
Seeing Red: Characterizing Historical Bricks at Sylvester Manor, Long Island, NY
Martin Schmidheiny (University of Massachusetts)
The goal of this project is to demonstrate whether the bricks excavated in middens at the Sylvester Manor site
on Shelter Island, NY exhibit compositional variation in the early Manor period of 1650-1690 and beyond. The
source for the construction materials used throughout the tenure of the provisioning plantation supplying
Barbadoan sugar plantations is unclear, yet accounting for the range of defects and material properties of the
bricks suggests on-site manufacture. I propose an analysis of these architectural ceramics by using
petrographic thin- sections to demonstrate their internal composition and firing environments, as well as
chemical testing series and XRF. An archaeometrical demonstration of regularity and variation in these
architectural ceramics will allow a more nuanced reading of this multi-cultural colonial plantation in an early
colonial industrial context, using material properties rather than stratigraphic regularity to assess spatial
distribution of these bricks as the landscape changed. Archaeology can draw in architectural and industrial
history to target an analysis of the built environment through the very materials that create it. Historical
archaeology is uniquely capable of demonstrating continuity and refinements of construction methods,
aggregate industries and materials which underpin the growth of urban space and industrial landscapes
through the present.
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The Sanskrit Inscriptions of Pedjeng: a case study of the utility of Sanskrit epigraphy in the study of Bali’s
socio-religious history
Sophia Van Zyle Warshall (University of California, Berkeley)
Balinese religion is a frequently discussed but poorly understood phenomenon. It is generally characterized as
a mixture of Śaivism, Mahāyāna Buddhism and indigenous animism, taking shape through a period of
fundamental cultural redefinition between the third and fourteenth centuries and since surviving as a largely
atemporal entity. The inscriptions of Bali offer an interesting opportunity for gaining further insight into
medieval Balinese religion, adding much needed complexity to this basic definition. As a first step in the larger
project of clarifying medieval Balinese religion through the study of its inscriptions, I will discuss a subset of the
Sanskrit inscriptions of Bali as discovered at Pedjeng in southern Bali. These inscriptions—their text, physical
form and location—provide a diversity of data on the philosophies and practices of medieval Balinese religion.
PANEL 11: Alchemy of the Soul
Room H-762
Chair:
How to adapt dualist thinking to understand inner cultivation in Early China?
Anne-Sophie Pratte (McGill University)
While studying Early Chinese philosophy, a framework based on the dichotomization of the psyche and the
soma, or the human and the divine, is inadequate to capture the nuances of the practice of inner cultivation. I
would like to present a dynamic model that aims to position the Neiye, written during the 4th century B.C.,
within the body of literature related to inner cultivation in pre-Qin times. According to A.C. Graham, the Neiye is
probably the oldest meditation text ever found in China. The Neiye proposes a philosophy of the Way that
could be related to Daoism: Harold Roth argues that it constitutes the very textual origin of Daoism. This
author argues that the Neiye departs from earlier traditions of inner cultivation based on macrobiotic hygiene
practices, devoid of spiritual mysticism. Hence, Roth drastically separates the Neiye from medical texts that
emphasize breathing exercises, sexual and alimentary practices aimed at achieving longevity. Yet, I argue that
such dualist framework fails to position the Neiye within the literature of the time: the Neiye is formulated in
language borrowing extensively from macrobiotic hygiene practices and it contains numerous verses on
breathing, sexual and alimentary prescriptions. Hence, I propose a conceptual framework characterized by the
porosity
of boundaries between numinous and physical practices. Such framework will be used to analyze the meaning
of the Neiye, and present the change in inner cultivation practices that occurred during the Warring States
period in China.
Cinnabar and the Philosopher’s Stone, Microcosmic Orbits and Homunculi: Depictions of Alchemy in China
and the West
Adrien Stoloff (Brown University)
16
Recently, scholars of alchemy (particularly Principe) have questioned whether Chinese waidan and neidan
practices can be considered ‘alchemy’. In effect, Western scholars studying the subject of Chinese alchemy
have either been historians of science, who depict alchemy as part of the history of chemistry, or scholars of
Chinese religion, who seek to expose the ritual and religious aspects of the tradition. In this paper I look at
Western and Chinese depictions of alchemical processes in art. By analyzing the symbolism and narratives of
these pictorial depictions, I aim to go beyond the disciplinary boundaries of history of science and religion, and
approach the problem from a more visceral, visual perspective. In doing so I question the naming of Chinese
alchemy as alchemy. Can practices that aim to produce an elixir of immortality still be called alchemy? Do
practices of internal or physiological alchemy (neidan) have analogues in the West? I will also look at some
prior Western
scholarship on the subject, questioning whether depicting these native Chinese practices as alchemy is part of
an orientalist or epistemologically imperialist project. Ultimately, I will argue that Chinese alchemy has
continuities with its Western counterparts, but that in calling such practices ‘alchemy’ we must be cautious and
aware of potential dangers.
Le chaos dans le Zhuangzi : un art de vivre en harmonie avec la « Mère-Cosmos »
Marion Avarguès (Université de Montréal)
Nous nous proposons de mettre en lumière la notion de chaos (houen touen) dans les chapitres intérieurs du
Zhuangzi, une œuvre taoïste de l’Antiquité chinoise. Nous nous questionnerons en particulier sur la possibilité
pour le chaos d’être édifié en une éthique ou art de vivre. Nous nous pencherons en premier lieu sur la critique
émise par le Zhuangzi à l’égard de l’ordre dont il impute l’édification à l’humain. Cette critique prend
notamment pour cible la moralité en tournant en dérision le rite confucianiste. Nous verrons ensuite en quoi le
chaos est considéré par l’œuvre à l’étude comme la dynamique interne au cours naturel des choses ouvrant sur
une pluralité du « je », soit sur un art de la métamorphose qu’il s’agit d’épouser pour renouer avec la « MèreCosmos ». Enfin, nous nous interrogerons sur le pourquoi de cette quête du chaos : en quel(s) sens les
retrouvailles avec la « Mère-Cosmos » sont-elles à rechercher ? Nous articulerons notre réponse autour de deux
quêtes : celle de la pleine liberté et celle de l’intensification de la vie pour elle-même.
PANEL 12: SIS: Order and Chaos
Room H-767
Chair:
“Chaos is come again”: the Metatheatre of Chaos in Othello
Anthony Faber (Université de Montréal)
A considerable fear for early moderns was the fear of chaos; to be more precise, they were afraid that the
providential order governing the universe and everything within it would suddenly cease, resulting in a
complete collapse of the natural world. Conversely, early moderns were obsessed with order. In the tragedy
Othello, Shakespeare exploits this fear of chaos, which, to an early modern sympathy is synonymous with evil,
by conflating the medieval “Vice” figure with the epitome of Shakespearean evil villains, Iago, whose method
and manner is to permeate the fabric of the play with chaos. In this, I want to propose that Iago, in the role of
Vice in Othello, can be read as a metaleptic figure for the theatre. Throughout my reading, I ask how
metatheatre can aid in our recovery for a meaningful understanding of the play. After providing a context for
early modern notions of chaos in relation to evil, I analyze Iago’s role as vice figure. To this end, I draw
attention to Iago’s ability to improvise as well as to dissimulate; that is, to create chaos. In Elizabethan and
Jacobean tragedy, the conclusion is meant to signify a restoration of order from the chaos of the events of the
play. The idea of the restoration of order in Shakespearean tragedy is vastly complex: many scholars are
uncomfortable with having to assign an ordered resolution to the tragedies, particularly Othello. I contend that
17
the denouement of the play suggests the continuation of a negative ontology, which is due in part to the
understanding of metatheatre and the role of Iago.
‘In all chaos there is cosmos’: Complex Systems Theory and Literary Depictions of Free Will from Modernism
to Postmodernism
Francis X. Altomare (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
Since its emergence in the late twentieth century, complex systems theory has continued to break down the
ostensible dichotomy of order and chaos by demonstrating that chaotic systems are often surprisingly orderly.
Popularizations of this idea such as James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science have served to broaden the
impact of “chaos theory” beyond the natural sciences; however, few scholars have addressed how this
development has affected literary representations of free will. My paper discusses the effect of chaos theory
on literary depictions of free will from the early twentieth century to the present. Beginning with the dialectic
between chaos and relativity, I discuss how modernist authors such as Joyce and Proust appropriated chaos as
a means of subverting determinism and celebrating unpredictability. I then trace the transition from this
modernist focus on chaos in physics to the cognitive turn that occurred in the 1950s, discussing this shift in
works by Samuel Beckett, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace. By analyzing how the emerging
compatibilism of chaos theory parallels similar transitions in cognitive science and literature, I argue that one
can better understand recent changes in literary, religious, and philosophical perspectives on free will, and also
delineate the broader cultural effects of chaos theory on the evolution of modernism into postmodernism—
and beyond.
The Machine v. Nature: Civilized Power Dynamics in Dystopian Literature
Michaël Veremans (San Francisco State University)
Taking deep ecological theory as a jumping off point, this paper explores the stability of various
binaries across the social power relations depicted in two complementary literary traditions. By bringing
attention the complex social critiques embedded in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle,
this paper depicts struggle and alienation in the face of different disciplinary regimes that regulate material
human relations in both built and unbuilt environment. It asks how the tensions between binaries such as
nature/civilization, anarchy/control, freedom/slavery, sustainability/decadence relate or collapse within the
dystopian literary impulse exemplified in George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. As the
walls of contemporary society close in, it is
salient to investigate in what spaces nature blooms and whether these temporary autonomous zones actually
escape the seemingly all-encompassing metanarrative of the state and the corporation. As the disciplinary
regimes of both novels are laid bare, the ideal of nature comes more and more to embody the sense of utopia
that remains forever on the bounds of civilization. The paper ends by investigating the role of literature itself in
expressing the stakes of social power relations and the contentious possibility of radical change.
SESSION 4
3:45– 5:15 pm
PANEL 13: Religion as Category
Room H-760
Chair:
Manichaeism, a “world religion”
Pooriya Alimoradi Pilehrood (Concordia University)
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Whenever we hear the term “world religion,” Christianity, Islam and Buddhism are the options which come
first in mind. But they are still alive and active. Their body of believers still constitutes the major populations of
human kind. But a “world religion” is something more than the religion of majority of people. I will argue that a
“world religion” is a religion that focuses on the world, talks about the world, has a plan for the world, spreads
geographically and historically through the world and finally be recognized as a “world religion” by other
religious rivals. In this article, I discuss whether or not Manichaeism is a “world religion” regarding these
factors, and I will argue that notwithstanding the fact that Manicheans had been disappeared centuries ago,
their discourses represent a perfect example of a “world religion”. Historically speaking, Manichaeism had
endured for a significant duration of a thousand years in a considerable strength. One can see remains of their
temples and traces of their beliefs from china and India to the Western Europe and North Africa. For centuries
it was destined to exercise an immense influence on religious thought both in Asia and in Europe.
I will argue that the distinction of a religion such as Manichaeism does not jeopardize its worldly fashion.
Manicheans disappeared from the world but the history would place them among other “world religions”. In
contrast to some scholars, who classify Manichaeism as an ideology and not a “real” religion, or maybe just as
a Christian heresy in its best, Manichaeism in fact covers almost every aspect of religious life for its believers.
They used to see their discourse as a world discourse and they deserve to be treated as such in every academic
study of religion.
Changing ‘Religion’ / Religious Change
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson (Queen’s University, Kingston)
Faced with religion’s stubborn refusal to disappear, even erstwhile supporters of the secularization thesis have
been forced to revise their predictions concerning religion’s fate in the modern world. As a result,
contemporary inquiries into secularization tend to focus less on whether religion will survive its encounter with
modernity than on how religion will be changed by this encounter. In other words, arguments about
secularization have to some extent been replaced with arguments about religious change. The basic premise of
the religious change thesis is that religion has been transformed in important and measurable ways in its
encounter with modernity. The problem, however, is that this seemingly uncontroversial premise depends
upon a particular conception of traditional (non-modern) religious forms. In this paper I argue that what has
changed in modernity is less ‘religion’ than what we are prepared, as scholars, to categorize as religion. I argue
that supposedly modern (or postmodern) religious trends and dispositions were also characteristic of premodern religious forms but were deemed by early scholars of religion to be magic or superstition – to be other
than religion and by extension less than religion. Drawing on recent critical appraisals of both the academic
discipline of religious studies and the usefulness of the term ‘religion’ itself, I suggest that an accurate appraisal
of secularization and religious change must begin with a renewed appreciation of beliefs, behaviours, and
attitudes that have historically been deemed almost religious – but not quite.
Mystical Movements and the Modification of the Body
Brendan-John Reid Purdie (Concordia University)
As the only species to routinely adopt external affectations of dress, hair, make up, ritual objects and gear, we
humans have created additional layers of symbolic meaning. "We're born naked, and the rest is drag," declares
RuPaul (Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography, 1996) in which she suggests bodily adornment is always a
conscious affectation with layers of meaning both subtle and gross. It seems unlikely that the clothes we wear
can ever be solely utilitarian. With reference to religion and religious practice it is clear that bodily adornment
takes on specific spiritual and metaphysical value. The conceit of this paper is then that these layers of meaning
are demarcations that separate the religious from the secular, religious experts from the laity and a final
separation between the mystic and the rest of the believers. This paper will examine 3 mystical traditions of
the East (Sufism, Daoism and tantra) and argue that the affectations, adornments, hair, make up and
costuming of mystical sects are informed of and by their host tradition but invariably take them to new
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extremes. From this base, we will then examine how a postmodern religious tradition of the West, the Church
of Body Modification, has appropriated this mystical convention but is adrift without a stated and clearly
defined host religious tradition.
PANEL 14: War and Peace
Room H-763
Chair:
Forgiving the Unforgivable: Hannah Arendt’s Theories of Evil and the Possibility of Forgiving the Nazis
Alison Colpitts (University of Toronto)
This paper explores the different theories of evil put forward by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). These two theories are contradictory: the former describes evil as
radical, completely unforgivable and unpunishable, while the latter describes evil as banal, boring, and trite.
The first part of this paper fleshes out the intricacies of these two conceptions of evil. The second part
suggests that one of the implications of distinguishing between these two evils is that in moving from radical
evil to banal evil, Arendt opens up space for the possibility of forgiveness. That is to say, while radical evil is
unforgiveable, banal evil, the evil of Adolf Eichmann, may be forgiven. The third part argues that this possibility
of forgiveness exists because banal evil allows one to imagine a sense of fellowship with the perpetrator of the
evil act in a way that radical evil could not. Insofar as the possibility of fellowship exists, so does the possibility
of forgiveness. This third part looks only at the broader relationship between the Nazis and humanity, not the
relationship between individual Holocaust sufferers and the Nazi perpetrators. Since the Holocaust was a crime
against humanity, humanity has a stake in the relationship that was damaged by Nazi evil. This paper concludes
by arguing that forgiveness is necessary because of its ability to reverse the power dynamic between the
perpetrator of evil and the victim of evil. Forgiveness allows the victim of a crime to reclaim the relationship
with the perpetrator, but this reclamation happens according to the volition of the victim. The final necessity of
forgiveness thus lies in this empowerment.
How to be a Busy (Kosher) Beaver: The Business of Jewish Scouting in Interwar France
E. Corber (Concordia University)
In 1923 a seventeen year old Robert Gamzon, totemized “Castor soucieux” (“worried Beaver”) led a small
group of young Parisian Jews into the old synagogue in Versailles, where over a bimah draped with a French
tricolore flag, the group made their first scout vows to serve God, Judaism, and their country. The postwar
mythologization of the foundation of the Éclaireurs israélites de France (E.I.), a body of young men and women
that had played instrumental roles in the Résistance under the Nazi Occupation, paints Jewish scouting as a
picture-perfect marriage between Judaism, Nationalism, and Internationalism. Yet a closer examination of
organisational records, instructor manuals, and scouts’ accounts reveals a complex interplay between these
three powerful forces. The EI, France’s Jewish scouting movement offers a unique vision of the construction of
a new ‘Jewishness’ from the ground up. The EI distinguished itself from other interwar youth-oriented projects
in that it was organised for
and by young Jews, and, crucially, was a movement, as opposed to a simple organisation or association. The
lessons learned, skills developed, connections made between and among scouts of a variety of ages, were
meant to be used outside the parameters of scouting activities and Éclaireur meetings. These were the tools
and characteristics of a new generation of young Jews for whom physical strength, health, pratical skill, and
varied knowledge were fundamental components of Jewish identity. This paper will examine the dynamism of
the early years of the Jewish boy scouts in France, and will argue that competing visions of Jewishness and
Judaism intersected in discussions about the physical Jewish body, and debates about developing its strength
and flexibility within different material environments.
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In / between Peace: Northern Ireland
Amanda Leigh Cox (Concordia University)
Conflict typically provides two categorical binary choices: war or peace, victor or loser. Peace processes
intended to resolve conflict can and often do act as an ‘in-between’ (Bhabha, 1994) solution to this polarity.
However, while political peace processes can provide the administrative mechanisms for the end of conflict, far
more important to the establishment of a lasting peace is cultural reconciliation. A large part of the latter
process lies in coming to terms with polarities in narratives about identity, community and nation (who ‘we’
are, who ‘they’ are). The focus of such an inquiry cannot simply be the deconstruction (Derrida , 1967) of these
narratives, but rather an acknowledgement of the polyphony (Bahktin XXX) of voices and reconciliation
options present. This presentation seeks to examine Northern Ireland’s difficult path to relative peace,
highlighting how reconciliation between two previously conflicted communities has been fostered, from “The
Troubles” to the present, focusing on the shifting of identity and national narratives in the post-conflict era.
PANEL 15: Textual History
Room H-767
Chair:
‘You Incarnate What I Refuse to Own’: The Uses of Psychoanalytic Theory in Analyses of the Dybbuk Idiom
Annie Ross (Concordia University)
The word “dybbuk,” which in Hebrew refers to the “clinging of an evil spirit,” became popularized among early
modern European Jews as a means of describing a form of malevolent possession whereby a living person is
invaded by the spirit of a dead reprobate. While acknowledging the spiritual origins of the idiom, much of the
existing English-language dybbuk scholarship tends to neglect the religiosity of the possessed in favor of a
psychopathologizing interpretation, despite that the surviving accounts have not been authored by possession
survivors. I do believe that psychoanalytic theory suggests useful ways to examine the content, functions, and
efficacy of the phenomenon. However, I also contest the notion that the subjects of possession themselves
can or should be psychoanalyzed, particularly given the numerous levels of interpretation—cultural,
diachronic, and especially narrative—inherent in present-day studies of historical dybbuk chronicles. My
presentation has two objectives. First, I will critique the state of dybbuk scholarship, focusing on the essays of
psychologist
anthropologist Yoram Bilu. Second, I will bring the insights of Jessica Benjamin and Jane Flax to bear on the
dybbuk phenomenon as well as on the critiqued scholarship. As both practicing psychoanalysts and feminist
academics, Benjamin and Flax offer perspectives that, in my view, are appropriate to the complexities enacted
in possession and exorcism events, emphasizing their gendered aspects and the fluidity of subjective identity.
Finally, I will foreground the importance of reading the accounts not as literal documents but, in Ivan Marcus’
phrase, as “texts that look like history,” at least as revelatory for their narrative contexts and implications as
for their literal matter. By applying these separate lenses, I hope to bring them into conversation and, at the
same time, to enlarge understanding of the dybbuk idiom beyond its present limitations.
The Psychology of Collapse in Mesopotamian Thought and Modern Historiography
Shiyanthi Thavapalan (Yale University)
Concerned with portraying the new dynastic house as the legitimate heirs to kingship, Mesopotamian historical
literature tends to cast the transition between political regimes as Collapse. Poetry, hymns and court literature
composed ex post facto under the new dynasts will ascribe the fall of their predecessors to divine will while
emphasizing how they, favoured by the gods, were able to overcome the forces of Collapse. For modern
historiography, the consequences of using such sources to write history have been twofold: often the results
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of the transition have been mistakenly attributed as the cause. Moreover, Assyriologists have been inclined to
model their own political histories in the genre of Tragedy, searching for events that lead to the period of
Decline and the moment of Collapse. This paper will consider one of the most dwelt-on moments of transition
in the Mesopotamian historical consciousness, the change between the Akkadian (2334-2154 B.C.E.) and the
UrIII (2112-2004 B.C.E.) dynasties, as an example of this paradigm, and highlight the interconnectedness
between the fields of literature and history.
Aspects of Identity, Power, and Gender in the Narrative of Solomon in the Islamic and Jewish Religious
Sources
Bakinaz Abdalla (McGill University)
In both in the Quran and the Bible, Solomon appears in magnificent and majestic features which distinguish
him from other male figures in both scriptures. Yet unlike the Quran whose embodiment of Solomon manifests
in the prophetic realm, the Bible speaks of Solomon first and foremost in political terms. These distinct
attitudes towards Solomon in the Scriptures have governed the exegetes’ treatment of the narratives of
Solomon in the two traditions. After all, it is through exegesis of such figures that each group of exegetes
define their own identity. In case of Muslim exegesis, these figures in particular were used by the exegetes to
“define their identity both in relation to a shared biblical past and in contradiction to exclusive Jewish and
Christian claims to the past” (Wheeler 2002, 10). The paper mainly relies on the Quran (Sura 2, 27, 34, 38) and
the Bible (2 books of kings) as the genuine backgrounds of the two traditions. Early Muslim interpretations are
my primary focus in this paper. In that I mention al-Tabari (310 H), al-Thalabi (427 H), and al-Zamakhshari (538
H). The use of modern sources is not so much essential in this paper, but some examples are cited as a
reference to the modern exegetes’ attitude to eliminating the legendary interpretations of Solomon. Early
Jewish sources are taken in consideration to highlight the development of Solomon’s image and the main
features of this figure in the early interpretive literature before the phase of interaction with Muslims. For late
development, I use Targum Shini, the second translation, of the book of Esther (late 8th century CE) in which I
find reflection of the Jewish borrowing of the Quran and the Islamic exegesis. Through my discussion, I explore
the exegetes’ manipulation of the borrowed materials to serve their ideological ambitions.
PANEL 16: Interpreting Tension
Room H-762
Chair:
The scholar as sage: scholar-practitioners and how to speak the Dharma
Victor G. Temprano (McGill University)
Buddhism in the West has, since the 1960s, witnessed the rise of the 'scholar-practitioner'. This term refers to
someone who is primarily involved with Buddhist Studies as an accredited scholar and who also identifies with
Buddhism on a personal level and ‘practices’ it in some way. While concrete numbers are difficult, Charles S.
Prebish's surveys estimate the number of open scholar-practitioners at about 25% of active Buddhist Studies
scholars today (in addition to a likely large number of 'silent sympathizers' who may practice in some sense but
who do not identify as Buddhist). This is a considerable change from previous decades in which scholars of
Buddhism, often working in linguistics, almost exclusively identified as Christians. Today's scholar-practitioners
exert cultural authority–acting as teachers and writers–in disseminating knowledge about Buddhism within
secular Western culture. Yet in light of their accreditations, they also may hold obligations within their religious
communities as interpretive authorities, a point Thomas A. Tweed has noted. This paper will, in order to discuss
religious identity and the role of the scholar-practitioner, explore a few striking similarities between writers
who are explicitly Buddhist leaders–including Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama–and the writings of authors
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such as David R. Loy and Stephen Batchelor that seem to blur a boundary between scholarship and practice.
These writers have much in common: at times both speak to a shared demographic of relatively affluent,
educated, 'spiritual', philosophically-inclined Western audiences; both emphasize text-study, liberal humanist
values, meditation, and philosophy; both use publishing presses like Parallax and Shambhala. This paper will
explore how these writers 'speak the Dharma' similarly, and shall investigate how their confluence of style,
content, and religious authority says much about the ways in which Buddhism can be identified with and
disseminated by academics in Western culture today.
The Coming of Conscious of the Libyan Diaspora: The creation of a third culture of networking and activism
surrounding the February 17th Revolution in Libya by the Libyan Diaspora
Esma Mneina (University of Ottawa)
The Libyan diaspora constitutes an important, and in some respects, unique force in recent events and Libyan
culture. Recent events in the Arab Spring have awakened a solidarity among diasporic communities abroad.
Young members of the Libyan diaspora - now prominently known for activism via social media and ICT - have
shared their on-going experiences as a part of this diasporic community and the impact the revolution has had
on their personal identities. This paper will explore the
construction of the ‘third culture’, straddled between their parents’ homelands in Libya and their own homes
in the 'west', sparked by the February 17th Revolution and the realization of a shared identity
by the networking-savvy youth of the Libyan diaspora. This paper will explore the origins of the
modern libyan diaspora, the significance of 'sameness' and 'difference' in this diasporic community, vitalized by
the use of social media as a means for social, and political change, and the revolutionary identity shift inspired
by this networking. This paper is based on seven interviews conducted in 2011
and early 2012 after the capture of Gaddafi with student and young professional activists who were raised
outside of Libya. The criteria was not that interviewees should be born outside of Libya - although majority
were. Others had moved or have parents who had been exiled from the country at a very young age and draw
experiences from being raised abroad. Activists had inspired this study and so it is natural the most involved in
the virtual Libyan revolution were interviewed and this exploration of how these activists reconcile their ethnic
and diasporic identities makes for a fascinating study. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that through their
activism and networking with other members of the large global diasporic community surrounding the
revolution unravelling within Libyan borders; the informants had created a space for themselves in the abstract
of 'identity', a balance of 'sameness' among experiences of 'difference' in both Libya and their respective
homes abroad.
Gay Marriage within the North American Anglican Church
Nicola Fendert and Cydney Proctor (Saint Mary’s University)
As LGBT movements within North America are gaining civil liberties for individuals of these sexualities, the
Anglican tradition within this region has been slowly shifting to accept the civil marriage of these individuals.
This paper addresses how the official position on the social issue of gay marriage in this tradition has been
reinterpreted. To examine the impact which growing civil liberties have upon the Anglican tradition, this issue
is examined through two lenses. The first of these lenses is the societal pressure for civil gay marriages to be
accepted as a holy sacrament. The second is how scripture within the tradition has been reinterpreted to
accept gay marriage. The research on this issue comes from extensive reading of scripture as well as critical
analysis of other published works which cover both the issues of how the tradition has been reinterpreting
itself and how movements for sexual minorities have been growing in North American society. The Anglican
Church has been impacted by societal pressure to conform to the growing movements for equal marriage
rights of same-sex individuals and this paper explores how the tradition has been shifting through a reexamination of traditional doctrine in light of growing civil liberties for sexual minorities throughout North
America.
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Keynote Address
Title (TBA)
Dr. Norma Joseph (Concordia University)
5:30 – 7:00pm
Room H-763
Norma Joseph (Bio, TBA)
Reception
7:00 – 8:00pm
Department of Religion
2060 Mackay, Room FA 202
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Organizing Committee
Ildikó Glaser-Hille
Cimminnee Holt
Shaun Turriff
Esti Mayer
Andrew Khoury
Christophe Garlaschi
Hollie McGowan
Pascale Greenfield
Taylor Baruchel
Samantha Senécal
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Munit Merid and Tina Montandon for their kind assistance and incredible support throughout
the year. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Many thanks to the conference's sponsors for their ongoing support:
Department of Religion
Faculty of Arts of Science
Office of Research and Graduate Studies
Graduate Religion Students Association
Dean of Students
Heartfelt thanks to the student volunteers who made
this event run smoothly and professionally.
Finally, thanks to Dr. Lorenzo DiTommasso, Chair of the Religion Department,
and to the faculty and staff of the Department of Religion
for their continuing support of this conference.
Poster Design by Esti Mayer
Program design and layout by Ildikó Glaser-Hille
and Samantha Senécal
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