Donnerstag, 16.09.2010 – Samstag, 18.09.2010

Religion and Modernity in a Secular City

Tagung // Postgraduate conference in Berlin

Eine Konferenz für fortgeschrittene Studierende und Doktoranden der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften, insbesondere der Theologie und Philosophie. In englischer Sprache.

Writing from Vichy, France in early 1940, Walter Benjamin articulated what many theologians secretly feared in his Über den Begriff der Geschichte by portraying theology as the hunchback that must keep out of sight. However, Slavoj Žižek has recently suggested that it is time to reverse Benjamin’s first thesis on the philosophy of history: “The puppet called ‘theology’ is to win all the time”. This startling reversal reveals that the extent to which Enlightenment secularization imagined it could map the rational world onto a manipulable grid, manifested in the global spread of political, economic and social structures that have attempted to inscribe the sacred within a strictly private sphere, is increasingly being called into question by the continuing public presence of political theologies. However, the question of what this new visibility of religion might mean in the context of the supposedly secular city remains less than clear.
The organizers had invited proposals for papers that address this broad theme from theology, philosophy, political theory, economics, sociology, as well as cultural and biblical studies in a Call for Papers (lasted til 30th. of April 2010).
A keynote  will be delivered by Professor Graham Ward who is also engaged in a public panel discussion with the Muslim Ataullah Siddiqui, Markfield Institute of Higher Education.

Detailed program

Further Particulars

The language of the conference will be English.


Venue and Registration:                                        
The conference will take place in the centre of Berlin at the Katholische Akademie.
Generous grants are available for presenters to cover the costs of registration, accommodation and meals. Every speaker is responsible for arranging his/her own transportation to and from Berlin.

Conference costs for participants are as follows:

Registration and meals:    €60 (includes lunch on Thursday through lunch on Saturday)

Accommodation on-site at Hotel Aquino:  €70 (2 nights) or €105 (3 nights) (limited)

For further information please contact the conference organizers at the following addresses:
Martin Knechtges              knechtges@katholische-akademie-berlin.de
Kyle Gingerich Hiebert     kyle.gingerichhiebert@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

 
A postgraduate conference co-sponsored by the Katholische Akademie in Berlin, the Program on Religion, Politics and Economics at Humboldt University and the Centre for Religion and Political Culture at The University of Manchester.

Gastreferenten: Professor Graham Ward, Manchester

Ort: Katholische Akademie in Berlin