Religious Communication Conference
26 - 27 November 2009, Monash University Conference Centre, Melbourne
Image © Elizabeth Burns Coleman
This conference explored religious communication and religious aesthetic forms. The underlying impulse was to bring into dialogue scholarly work undertaken in religious studies and theology with debates and research in the fields of communications and cultural studies, including performance, literary, visual and aesthetic analyses. The premise of the conference was that communication and aesthetic forms play an active role in shaping a religious culture’s sensibility rather than merely reflecting that religious community’s ideology, logic or worldview. In short, religious communication makes religious experience meaningful, possible and effective. Sponsored by Monash University's School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and convened by Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Gil-Soo Han.
Download recordings of papers from the links below. For more recordings, see our podcasting page.
Keynote Lectures
Religious clothing and appearance as performative statements Lori G. Beaman Canadian Research Chair in the Contextualisation of Religion in a Diverse Canada and Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada |
Communication and Revelation Massimo Leone Research Professor of Cultural Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy, University of Torino, Italy and Endeavour Research Visiting Scholar at the School of English, Communication, and Performance Studies, Monash University |
Invited Speakers
Thirty years of Christian punk: Style over substance? Ibrahim Abraham |
Communicating to religious voters in twenty‐first century national elections Charlotte Bains |
The silent narrative of trees in the cultural/religious landscape Thor Beowulf |
Fracals on the rocks: San rock art and symbolic spiritual representation Rose Marie Bezuidenhout |
‘But play you must…’ The dilemma of attempting religious communication Veronica Brady |
Religious interpretation through affective mediums Rachel Bucchannen and Ron Laura |
Iconic illusions: Mapping lines of flight through and between mother/child iconographyKaren Crinall |
Beyond the opposition between art and religion: From Max Weber to contemporary faith and art programs Eduardo de la Fuente |
Representing the religious other: Orientalism in British television discourse Ruth Deller |
Reconciling the pagan and the sacred: A Bakhtinian study of some Goan Catholic traditionsMaria‐Suzette Fernandes Dias |
Telling our story: Autobiography and the changing belief of AustraliansAllan Ewing |
Home spun and studio‐made: Aesthetic differences in the websites of Catholic and Evangelical men’s ministries Joseph Gelfer |
Foolish Jesus: An analysis of the material Korean church in Australia Gil‐Soo Han |
Choral synagogue music: The transplantation in Melbourne by South African Jews of a distinctive liturgical music Kerrin Hancock |
Fractures in continuity: Christian literature as interpretative revolutionLorenzo Leucio Domenico Incardona |
Mediated spirituality: Experiencing the numinous through and in contemporary media Danielle Kirby |
Theological communication: Representations of piety in post‐Reformation English media David Manning |
What’s so funny about faith? Christian stand‐up comedy and religious valuesElisha McIntyre |
Women enjoy preaching more than males: A Bandung case study Julian Millie |
The good story as story for good Michael Mullins |
Finding God, Losing Self: Homogenised identity in church communication Angelique Nairn |
The Cybersangha and its Place in Contemporary Buddhist Scholarship: A look at DhammaWheel.com Edwin Ng |
The Santa Nino likes to come out and play: Partying so hard it hurts at Ati‐Atihan William Peterson |
The circular dance and the spirit of orthodox Christianity Tamara Prosic |
The wicked and the sacred in popular culture: Cinematic myth and memory in between Islam and globalisation in post 9/11 Bangladesh Zakir Hossain Raju |
‘You can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore’: Battlestar Galactica and the ‘clash of civilisations’ Eric Repphun |
Communication or Community? The liturgical heart of religious practiceJohann Rosouw |
Screens for projections Claudia Terstappen |
The Spiritual Cyborg: A case study of Australian Christian bloggers Paul Teusner |
Faith interfaith and YouTube: Dialogue or derision? Simon Theobald |
Fortunatus in concert: The juxtaposition of the sacred and secular music of the middle agesJulie Williams |
Panel Session
A conversation about religion and culture John Carroll, Peter Murphy and David Tacey |
Past and Present Conferences and Seminars
Visit our archives of conferences and seminars - recordings of many papers are available for download: