Organisers: Dominic Janes, Notre Dame London Center and Birkbeck College, University of London, and Greg Kucich, Notre Dame Professor of English and Director, University of Notre Dame London Program
This conference brings together an international group of distinguished scholars to explore the interconnections between practices, discourses and images of terrorism and martyrdom. The reality and imagery of terrorism is pervasive in contemporary society and media. Yet the suicide bomber condemned in the western media can be hailed by religious and political groups as a martyr. Christendom, of course, has as one of its foundational phenomena the deaths of Christ and of the saints, who, though pacifists, were regarded as criminals and were feared as subversives by the Roman authorities. Participating scholars will engage in inter-disciplinary dialogue in order to explore the key linkages between contemporary debates and historical traditions from Christian, Islamic and other cultures.
The event is sponsored by the University of Notre Dame and held in association with the Centre for the Study of Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, University of London.
The draft conference program (pdf) is available here and further information is available from the organisors.
Greg Kucich (Kucich.1@nd.edu) is Professor of English & Director of Notre Dame’s London Program, and has recently published an edited collection of essays on Nineteenth-Century Worlds: Global Formations Past and Present(Routledge, 2008).
Dominic Janes (d.janes@bbk.ac.uk) is Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Religion, Birkbeck College, University of London. Two of his key publications are God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Victorian Reformation: the Fight over Idolatry in the Church of England, 1840-60 (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is currently working on a study of images of martyrdom in modern Britain.