Uncanny Homecomings: Narrative Structures, Existential Questions, Theological Visions
26-28 August 2011
As the next in a series of discussions within the human sciences, the 2011 Religion, Literature and the Arts conference will allow participants to bring their various disciplinary backgrounds and interests to bear on the subject of home and homecoming. Poets and philosophers have long identified the human yearning to find a geographic and emotional environment that allows for a feeling of integration, where we understand our place in the greater whole. If we linger with this notion, however, the paradoxical nature of the term and our desire for homecoming emerges: the home that we remember from our past is not the place that we are ever able to find in our present, and the places that we find or create in our present that have an aura of “home” are frequently disconcerting in their ability to provide comfort. There is something unheimlich in returning home, a lesson learned by individuals from Odysseus or the Prodigal Son in the Western tradition to those facing crises of homecoming in 21st century Palestine or Algeria.
In order to address such uncanny homecomings—in whatever historical or cultural form they take—several different and helpful frames emerge. As a narrative structure, we will investigate the stories that shape and alter our trajectories, helping us to find a home in and through language, to root ourselves in a plot of land. Existential questions may include a focus on the historical, philosophical, political, psychological and temporal desire for locating ourselves in a home. Theological visions incorporate the depth dimension of the human desire for integration within the rich tapestry of religious narratives that frame our cycles of exile and return.
Papers can speak about a particular historical figure or group, event, practice, text or work of art, reflecting on its capacity to disclose the provocative problem of homecoming in relation to human well-being. They can reflect on the nature, origin and effects of this desire in human history, using resources from any of the disciplines represented at the conference, and discussing how particular religious or secular communities have understood, interpreted, or reused myths, symbols or ideas about homecoming. Session papers should be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes reserved for questions and answers. Please submit your abstract into the most appropriate of the following categories listed below. Each topic has a set of questions designed to helpfully frame the topics of papers for the most productive interchange; naturally, these will not all be addressed in any one paper, and it is not necessary that a paper answer any of them in particular.
Submission of Abstracts:
Submit paper title and an abstract of no more than 350 words, along with your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), street address, telephone number, and email address by 15 May 2011. Send abstracts and questions to: UIowaRLA@yahoo.com
Religious Studies:
- How does the dual nature of home as both a source and an end trouble its conception and realization in religious thought? Is the home exterior, interior or nonexistent?
- In what ways does the narrative structure of 'homecoming' shape religious thinking? How do narratives of life as a “journey” evince within religious contexts?
- How does the notion that home has been “left” (and so must have once been) figure into theological perceptions of “the fall” and “sin,” of innocence and redemption?
Literature:
- How do theories such as psychoanalytic (tomb/womb), postcolonial (homeland/colony) and feminism (domesticity/patriarchy) help us understand contradictory constructions of the home in a particular text?
- How does the home or a homecoming help organize a texts narrative? How do prodigality or return shape notions of story?
- In what way does religious thought concerning home (sanctuary, afterlife, place of rest) manifest in a piece of literature or a genre?
Art and Art History:
-How does a piece of art, its artist or genre address home as a conflicted space, contested and contesting?
- In what manner does narrativity, the passage of time, occurrences of events or movement characterize a piece of art's relation to home or homeland? Returning to a war-torn country, a domestic space, a place of childhood memories or others?
- How does a work of art or an artist speculate/imagine the possibilities of a place of rest or safety, particularly within a religious or spiritual framework.
Popular Culture:
- How is the home and return complicated by a global community? A “wired” community? What changes are visible following shifts away from the nuclear household and a growing reliance on social networks for connection?
- In what way does a new and growing crisis regarding origin in the communication and information age spawn hopes and theories regarding getting back to ones “roots”?
- Regarding the so-called “return of the religious,” how is religious thinking and spiritual striving framing desires to return to/find something authentic lost?
Postcolonial Approaches:
- How does an author or text trouble constructions of home or homeland in a colonial/post-colonial world, the same (sacred?) land forever changed by a colonial presence?
- How does a particular text address narratives of looking for a new homes (pilgrims, colonists, refugees) or returning after displacement or diaspora?
- How has religious thinking operated as the justification for or the resistance against seeking out land in inhabited places?
