Identifications

IDENTIFICATIONS: Faith, Theory, and Identity-Making

The English and Philosophy Ph.D. Program
Graduate Student Conference
February 6-8, 2004

Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Merold Westphal
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University
Faith and (non)Identity

The Conference is sponsored by the English and Philosophy Ph.D. Program together with the Department of English, the Department of Philosophy, Women's Studies Program, Modern Fiction Studies, the Jewish Studies program, the Religious Studies Program, and St. Thomas Aquinas Center at Purdue University.

For other inquiries, contact Dr. Martin Beck Matustik, mmatustk@purdue.edu, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the English and Philosophy Ph.D. Program. This conference is free and open to the public.

Friday, February 6

2:00?3:45
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Continental Philosophy of Religion
Moderator: Joel Krueger, Purdue University

  • Shannon Nason, Purdue University, ?Absolutely Different? Faith and Knowledge in Heidegger?s ?Phenomenology and Theology??
  • John R. Hartmann, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, ?A Return to the Turn in French Phenomenology?
  • Harrison Kleiner, Purdue University, ?A Critique of Radical Alterity in Lévinas and Derrida?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Modernism and Religion
Moderator: Namrata Mitra, Purdue University

  • Melissa Simmermeyer, Duke University, ?Modernism and Religion: A Resurrection in Reverse?
  • Maren Linett, Purdue University, ?Supersessionist Rhetoric as Feminist Modernism in Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf?
  • Michael John Roeschlein, University of Wisconsin at Madison, ?Repetition, Repetition and Theology in T. S. Eliot?s ?Four Quartets??

4:00?5:45
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Moderator: Daniel W. Smith, Purdue University

  • Jeffrey Courtright, Loyola Chicago, ?Nietzsche?s Dionysian Religiosity: On the Importance of the ?Religious? for Nietzsche?s ?Yes-Saying? Philosophy?
  • Michael R. Michau, Purdue University, ?Lévinas and Kierkegaard: Judaism, Christianity, and an Ethics of Witnessing?
  • Bertha Alvarez, Purdue University, ?Against an Irrational Interpretation: Exploring Johannes Climacus' (Kierkegaard's) Religious Philosophy?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Interfaith Dialogue After Modernity
Moderator: Mindy Tan, Purdue University

  • Alexis Shotwell, UC Santa Cruz, ?Faith in Reincarnation: Theory and Practice of Mediated Identity Formation?
  • Jack Mulder, Jr, Purdue University, ?Satori in Climacus? Christian Existence and the Zen Charge of Dualism,?
  • Leena Taneja, George Washington University, ?The Liminal Space of Alterity and Faith: Relationality in Martin Heidegger and Gaudiya Vaishnava Theology?

7:00?10:00 dinner and creative writing
Purdue Memorial Union
Fiction

  • Matthew Vollmer, Purdue University, short story: "Oh Land of National Paradise, How Glorious Are Thy Bounties"
  • Ryan J. Jack McDermott, Duke Divinity School, short story: ?The Holy Adultery?
  • Lindy Patterson, Purdue University, novel excerpt


Saturday, February 7

9:00?10:45
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Violence and Faith
Moderator: Laura Baker Shearer, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  • Marta Brunner, UC Santa Cruz, ?Transcending Oppression: Faith and Social Change?
  • Ada Jaarsma, Purdue University, ?What?s Religious about Homophobia??
  • Amy Carr, University of Chicago Divinity School, ?Religious Identity After Clergy Sexual Abuse: The Theological Limits of Confessional Religious Identifications?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Critique and Mysticism: The Question of Religion in Gadamer, Foucault, and Bataille
Moderator: Brad Evers, Loyola Marymount University

  • Corey McCall, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, ?Autonomy, Revolution, and Religion in Foucault?
  • Russ Couch, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, ?In the Wake of Kant Searching for More Realistic Conception of the Divine: Gadamer and the Question of God?
  • Matt Sanderson, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, ?Immanence Lost: George Bataille?s Mysticism of Mortality?

10:45?12:30
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Theorizing Faith
Moderator: Chris Lee, Brown University

  • Patricia Huntington, Loyola Chicago, ?Witnessing and Love: A Dialogue with Caputo?
  • Wilson Brissett, University of Virginia, ?On Being Christian and Human?
  • Ryan J. Jack McDermott, Duke Divinity School, ?The Pathos of Christian Literature and Criticism?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Postmodern Religious Rituals
Moderator: Todd Hoffman, Purdue University

  • Clarence W. Tweedy III, University of Kentucky, ?The Sacrifice Redeemed?
  • Jeremy Hockett, University of New Mexico, ?From Strange, to Weird, to W(h)ol(l)ly Other: Burning Man as a New Religious Movement in a Secular Age?

Lunch break


1:30?3:30
Stewart Center 218A-B
Westphal on Faith and Theory: Engaging Current Continental Issues
Moderator: Jack Mulder, Jr, Purdue University

  • Joel Krueger, Purdue University, ?Being Useless: Westphal on the Transparent Dynamic of Prayer and Sacrifice?
  • Paul Martens, University of Notre Dame, ?Welcoming the Other, Rejecting Derrida: Merold Westphal?s Contested Appropriation of Kierkegaard?
  • Myron A. Penner, Purdue University, ?Whither Continental Epistemology? Westphal and the Prospects for Hermeneutics as Epistemology?
  • Merold Westphal, Fordham University, Response

4:00?5:45
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Fundamentalism and Resistance
Moderator: Kenya Davis-Hayes, Purdue University

  • Rebecca Frischkorn, American University, ?Voting by the Word: Politicization of Evangelical Christian Thought?
  • Martin J. B. Matustík, Purdue University, ?Progress and Evil?
  • Seyed Masoud Mousavi Shafaee, Tehran University, ?Globalization, Islamic Government, and Identity of the Iranian Youth?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Subjectivity and the Self
Moderator: Michelle Darnell, Purdue University

  • Gregory Hoskins, Villanova University, ?Politics of the Called Subject?
  • Creston Davis, University of Virginia, ?Revolution and Revelation: Toward a Christian Epistemology of the Political Subject?
  • Marjolein Oele, Loyola Chicago, ?The Mystical Self: Understanding our Self?

Dinner break (see restaurant guide for local dining options)


7:30?9:00 Keynote Address
Stewart Center 218A-B
Welcome and Introduction
Martin J. B. Matustik
Faith and (non) Identity
Merold Westphal, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University

9:30?
Party (directions & transportation available)


Sunday, February 8

10:00?11:45
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Mysticism and Desire
Moderator: Michael R. Michau, Purdue University

  • Tamsin Jones Farmer, Harvard Divinity School, ?The End of Desire: The Eschatological Interruption of Eros?
  • Ann Astell, Purdue University, ?Facing Each Other: Emmanuel Lévinas and Saint Therese of Lisieux?
  • Peter Hubbard, Columbia University, ?On Modernity and Mysticism?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Contemporary Appropriations of Faith Traditions
Moderator: Erik Garrett, Purdue University

  • Adam Konopka, Fordham University, ?Heidegger?s Turn to the Sacred as a Return?
  • Colin McQuillan, Boston College, ?The Marxist Reformation: Universalism, Ideology, Counter-Empire?
  • Joseph T. Tanke, Boston College, ?On the ?Spirituality? of Michel Foucault?s Final Works?


11:45?1:30
I: Stewart Center 214A-B
Religion and the Demonic
Moderator: Jacqueline Marina, Purdue University

  • Krista M. Paradiso, Purdue University, ?Suicides: Lévinas, the Face, and Self-Mutilation?
  • William McBride, Purdue University, ?Liquidating the ?Nearly Just Society?: Radical Evil?s Triumphant Return?

II: Stewart Center 214C
Psychoanalysis and Identity
Moderator: Robert King, Purdue University

  • Jared Woodard, ?Alain Badiou?s Subtractive Ontology, Or, Why St. Paul is Not a Deconstructionist?
  • Andrew C. Wegley, UC Santa Cruz, ?The History of an Illusion: Religion as Race?
  • Martha Crealock, Trent University, ?This Female God Which is Not One: What is the role of the Divine in Woman Becoming Subject??
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