CFP: Material Religion in Modern Britain

[Monique Ingalls]

Material Religion in Modern Britain and her Worlds
8-9 June 2012
University of Glamorgan, Cardiff


This two-day symposium will explore material cultures of religious
belief and faith in modern Britain. As Birgit Meyer, David Morgan,
Crispin Paine and S. Brent Plate have recently pointed out, studying
material objects provides us with an alternative evidence base in the
study of modern religious belief (Birgit Meyer et al; 2011). Yet few
attempts have yet been made to do so. While many scholars now concede
that Britain’s religious landscape is more varied and rich than the
narrative of secularisation allows, a tendency remains in the
historiography of religion to privilege written sources over material
manifestations of religion. This means that all sorts of belief
practices have been overlooked. Analysing the material past, we
propose, will provide scholars with new and exciting ways of
understanding the apparently fraught relationship between modernity
and religion. As Jane Bennett points out, objects are culture
constructions and lead active lives in our social and cultural
landscape. Religious historians have too often been guilty of adopting
an implicitly Protestant binary (set up in opposition to Catholicism)
in which words are privileged over objects. Yet everyday cultures of
Protestant belief in Britain relied on all kinds of material cultures
which sustained religion in an age of uncertainty.

Despite Britain’s ‘official’ Protestant past, we are nonetheless keen
to encourage papers which explore religious denominations or groups
beyond the official cannon and which made up Britain’s multi-faith
landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Papers are
welcome which consider either formal or informal aspects of religious
materiality. We would especially like to encourage papers that
consider ‘Britain’s worlds’, including investigations of religious
objects in the Empire or commonwealth or geographical locations
inhabited by British people.

We hope to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue by bringing
together scholars in history, religion, art/design history,
architecture and sociology.

Keynote speakers to be annouced

Possible themes or topics include:

Religious objects
Religious ephemera
The materiality of religious and sacred texts
Sacred Dress and Clothing
Religious Architecture and the built environment
Construction of sacred space
Social identity/identities including class, gender and life stage
Ideas surrounding materiality and religion
Advertising and Consumption
Making of religious objects
Religious Interiors and the domestic display of material objects
Religious aestheticism
Iconography

Please send abstracts of 400 words either Lucinda Matthews-Jones
[l.matth...@ljmu.ac.uk] or Tim Jones [twj...@glam.ac.uk] by 31st
March.
The Conference will be hosted by the University of Glamorgan, Cardiff
Campus.
We plan a number of publication outputs from this conference. If you
are unable to attend, but would like to express your interest for
future events or outputs, please email Lucinda Matthews-Jones
[l.matth...@ljmu.ac.uk] with a brief description of your work and
a short CV.