Thursday 8 June

10:00-10:30 Introduction: James Hodkinson and Silke Horstkotte

10:30-12:00 Panel A: Thinking the (post)secular (Chair: Linda Shortt)
Christiane Alpers (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt): Post-secular according to whom? Pluralising contemporary contextualisations from the perspective of Christian theology

Kevin Kennedy (Paris III): Divine Inexistence and the Eternal Return: Meillassoux, Nietzsche and the Problem of Eschatology

Marie Chabbert (Oxford): The Unexpected Advent of a Religious Utopia in Contemporary France: Thinking (Post)Secularism, Laïcité and French Youth Islamist Radicalisation

13:00-14:00 Keynote 1 John Milbank (University of Nottingham): The End of Religious Freedom and the Return of Religious Influence (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)

14:30-16:00 Panel B: The substance of the secular (Chair: James Hodkinson)

Alex Holznienkemper (Baylor University): Articulating the Afactual

Kailum Ijaz (Independent scholar / Ohio State University): Articulation, Authenticity, and the Development of Tradition in Thomas Merton: A Taylorian Account of Merton's Engagement with Secularism

Matthew Wickman (Brigham Young University): Why the Humanities Need a Theory (or Theories) of Spiritual Experience

16:30-17:30 Panel C: Contemporary cultures (Chair: Douglas Morrey)
Clive Marsh (Leicester): Refreshing cultural theology in (post)secular times: The expanding significance of popular culture

Nadine Söll (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin): Fandom and fanaticism as (pseudo-)religious experiences in the arts

20:00-21:00 Film screening and discussion: Hanan Dirya, Diving Within (2015) (Chair: James Hodkinson)

Friday 9 June

9:00-10:30 Panel D: (Post)secular fictions (Chair: James Hodkinson)
Dan Muhlestein (Brigham Young University) and Makayla Steiner (University of Iowa): From Elimination to a Broken Hallelujah: Rethinking Stevens’ Strategies for Establishing a Modernist Secular Imagination in light of Fredric Jameson’s Theory of Metacommentary

Britta Kölle (Oldenburg): Postsecular Thought in Contemporary Fiction: Synchronized Belief/Disbelief in Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season

Erin Tremblay Ponnou-Delaffon (Illinois State University): Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s postsecular apologetics

11:00-12:00 Panel E: Sites and spaces (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
Sebastian Zeidler (Yale): Secularity at Vence

Lilia Sokolova (Cologne): Towards a Post-Secular Symbol: Transformation of the Visual Language in German Churches, 1987-2017

13:00-14:30 Panel F: Transgressions (Chair: Douglas Morrey)
Guy Austin (Newcastle): Voices of Islam: the sonic representation of the Muslim faith in contemporary Algerian film

Eser Selen (Kadir Has University, Istanbul): The Work of Sacrifice: Gender Performativity, Modernity and Islam in Contemporary Performance in Turkey

Darja Filippova (Princeton): Translating Sacrilege: Discrepancies between secular and orthodox ways of seeing religious offence in the work of Russian political performance art

20:00-21:00 Keynote 2 Uwe Steinmetz (Berlin / Liturgiewissenschaftliches Institut der VELKD, Leipzig): Contemporary Jazz in Sacred Spaces (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)

Saturday 10 June

9:00-10:00 Keynote 3 Heather Walton (University of Glasgow): Uncertain practice: Imagining faith through writing (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)

10:30-12:00 Panel G: Textual-historical intersections (Chair: Maria Roca Lizarazu)
Rim Feriani (University of Westminster): Rethinking Faith in The Satanic Verses

Mahmoud Abdel-Hamid Mahmoud Ahmed (Modern Sciences and Arts University, Cairo): The immanent prophet: Muslim cultural memory and Muhammad’s life narratives. Secular versus sacred poetics

Joseph Twist (NUI Galway / University of Limerick): Islam and the Enlightenment Today: Post-Secularism and Post-Atheism in Contemporary German Literature

13:00-15:00 Panel H: Post-secularism in contemporary France: Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
David Lees (University of Warwick): Writing (in) the crisis: the political and social contexts of Houellebecq’s Soumission

Louis Betty (U of Wisconsin Whitewater): F*%& Autonomy: Houellebecq, Submission, and the disappointment of history

Douglas Morrey (University of Warwick): The banality of monstrosity: On Houellebecq’s Soumission

Fraser McQueen (Stirling): (Post)secularism and islamophobia: Reading Michel Houellebecq through Emmanuel Todd