Mesmerizing America – From Missionaries to 'Media Preachers'

Workshop B: seminar room P104 (2nd floor, Philosophicum)

John Andreas Fuchs (LMU München), Christine Gottstein-Strobl (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)

 

1. Florian Freitag (JGU Mainz), "The Typology of Martyrdom: Jérôme Lalemant’s Hagiographic Life of Isaac Jogues"

2. Astrid Haas (Bielefeld), "Saint or Scoundrel? Remembering and Representing Padre Martínez"

3. Markus Faltermeier (LMU München), "An Analysis of Personalist and Narrative Constructions of the Self in Entertaining Angels, The Dorothy Day Story"

4. Nina Weißer (LMU München), "The U.S. and the Holy See in the 1970s: Changes in the Political Relationship"

5. Jan an Haak (Potsdam), "Immigrants to the Sublime—Being Born-Again as an Idiosyncratic Practice of 'American Religion'"

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Contact:

Florian Freitag, M.A.
freitagf@uni-mainz.de

Dr. Astrid Haas
astrid.haas@uni-bielefeld.de

Markus Faltermeier, M.A.
markus.faltermeier@gmail.com

Nina Weißer, M.A.
nina.weisser@gmx.de

Jan an Haack, M.A.
jhaack@uni-potsdam.de

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Religion has been an essential and vital part of America's history ever since the first missionaries set foot there. Not only has the idea of the City upon the Hill laid the foundation of America's self perception, but America has brought forth some new denominations such as the Mormons and influenced and integrated others. Within religious denominations there are multiple developments and there still is the ongoing debate about the special kind of American Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism as well. The lives of religious people, actively showing their faith, have helped to shape the US and have always provided the necessary friction for polishing and refining American culture and history.

The overarching theme of the 2012 GAAS Conference “American Lives” will welcome “a discussion of all aspects of the presentation and representation of individual and/or collective lives in the United States”. This workshop looks into religious lives and the different ways in which true believers (and doubters) – whether real or fictional – have mesmerized, and keep mesmerizing, America. We invite proposals for papers exploring the following issues: 

• Religious lives in history: Joseph Smith, John Bunyan, John Wesley, Orestes Brownson, Bishop John England, Cardinal Spellman, among others, helped to shape America. How are they remembered and why are they still influencing American lives?
• Religious lives in politics: Al Smith, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, John F. Kennedy, Dorothy Day, George W. Bush did not always mind the separation of church and state. In how far has the church influenced politics and vice versa? 
• Religious lives in literature: Writers from John Winthrop to Allegra Goodman have chosen the religious road into the realms of literature. Whether manifesting their religious beliefs, questioning their origins and communities or looking for new harbors – religious journeys taken or not taken reflect American lives in manifold and new ways.
• Religious lives on screen: From West Wing's President Jed Bartlet to Gran Torino's Walt Kowalski and Bones' Seeley Booth – characters on the big and flat screen are often given a religious background in order to define them.
• Religious lives and punditry: Are Fox's Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin or Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert the next generation of missionaries? "Yahew or No Way?", as Colbert keeps asking.
• Second religious lives: "Born again" Christians and the American Way.