At The Interface Project – Second Global Conference
Sins, Vices and Virtues: At The Interface of Morality
Wednesday 13th March – Friday 15th March 2013
Lisbon, Portugal
This interdisciplinary conference seeks a new, provocative, intercultural perspective on some enduring truths concerning virtues and vices, sins and transgressions. Do we need a new list of moral commandments in the globalised, multicultural 21st century? Should they be religious or secular in nature? Who are these aimed at? And, finally, is it possible, reaching back to the origins of humanity, to find common denominators between religious/spiritual definitions of vices and virtues of all belief systems? Can discussions of ‘sin’ not introduce theology and religion into the contemporary discussion?
We are inviting scholars, theologians, anthropologists, artists, teachers, psychologists, therapists, philosophers, teachers of ethics, etc. to present papers, reports, works of art, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels on issues related but not limited to the following themes:
- The genealogy of the idea of sin or religious transgression around the world
- Anthropology of transgression
- Sinful/Transgressive actions, evil thoughts, religious taboos in Christian and non-Christian cultures
- What are the pre-Islam Arabic ideas of sin? How do these influence Islamic thought and how do they shape or not shape fundamentalist Islamic political thought?
- Lexicon of sinfulness/transgression and virtuousness in Christian and non-Christian cultures
- Social functions of sins and virtues
- Modern sins and vices: Individual and social; religious and secular; intercultural
- Social ‘sins’: ‘Institutional’ and ‘structural’; their social ramifications
- ‘-isms’ in religious and spiritual discourse
- Communal versus individual sins/transgressions: Do societies sin? How are societies
- policing them?
- The concept of sin or spiritual transgression/deviation and philosophy
- The notions of ‘sins’, vices and virtues on the political arena (secular morality or no morality)
- Psychology of sin (‘sinful’ or ‘abnormal’?; the concept of sin after Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud)
- Emotions and moral decision-making
- How to represent evil and morality in art: Representation of sins and sinners, vices, transgressions and virtues in art, literature, movies in Christian and non-Christian cultures
- Genderisation of sins, vices and virtues in Christian and non-Christian cultures
- Ideology of sin/religious transgression and technological progress: G/god or the Machine; ‘sins’ of productive necessity
- Theologies and Nature: Environmental studies and the notions of ‘sin’, transgression and virtue
- Sins/Vices and/in the Media (ie adveritising)
- Medieval crusades and modern (holy) wars
- Sinless, non-transgressive life in 21st century: Possibility or wishful thinking?
- Fear of the confessional or ‘McDonald-isation’ of spiritual life; is confession needed at all?
- Public and penitential practices across the ages and cultures
- Punishment for sin/transgression and rewarding virtue across the ages and cultures: individual and collective
- Visions of Hell, Paradise and other afterlife Realms across cultures
- Virtues in the modern times; virtues in a modern man
What to Send
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 12 October 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 18th January 2013.
Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Sins and Virtues 2 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs:
Katarzyna Bronk: bbronkk@gmail.com
Rob Fisher: sins2@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the At the Interface series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.