Symposium: (Dis)comfort in religious and spiritual places and practices (UQ & WSU)
Religious and spiritual practices have been historically understood as providing moral comfort. In fact, for Durkheim, comfort is the express purpose of social participation in religious rites. Sara Ahmed (2014, p.148) describes comfort as a sense of ‘fit’ between the body and its surroundings, that is, “To be comfortable is to be so at ease with one’s environment that it is hard to distinguish where one’s body ends and the world begins”. Conversely, discomfort may come from feeling dis-ease with one’s environment. Certainly, as much as some religious / spiritual communities go to great lengths to create comfortable environments that support belonging, vulnerability and divine connections, the character of many other religious / spiritual rites and practices (such as pilgrimages, fasting and exorcisms) centre around increasing discomfort or even promoting (physical) suffering in the service of piety and / or spiritual enlightenment.
Moreover, just as religious / spiritual spaces are racialised and classed, so too are experiences of (dis)comfort within these spaces. Socially marginalised people, such as those who are negatively racialised (Weng et al 2021, Chui et al 2020) or those who identify as LGBTQ+ (Jennings 2023; Dalton 2023; Baird et al 2024) can experience discomfort, even harm, in spaces of faith where other’s comfort is prioritised, catered to, or sanctified. Indeed, within religious and spiritual places multifaceted experiences of (dis)comfort are calibrated, embraced, resisted, negotiated, and reimagined.
In this online (Zoom) symposium, we discuss nuanced examinations of (dis)comfort in contemporary religious and spiritual communities. The symposium will take place on Wednesday, 24 June from 9:30am-4:30pm AEST. Please register to receive the Zoom link by emailing j.cuperus@uq.edu.au with 'symposium’ in the subject line.
Convenors
- Dr Jerrold Cuperus — University of Queensland
- Dr Kathleen Openshaw — Western Sydney University
Presenters
- Holly Randell-Moon — Charles Sturt University
- R. Anthony Lewis & Joseph T. Farquharson — UTech & The University of the West Indies, Jamaica
- Gracie Cayley — Curtin University
- Larney Peerenboom — Deakin University
- Bernard Doherty — Charles Sturt University/St Mark’s National Theological Centre
- Shweta GoyyaI
- Charlotte Tribouillois — Australian National University
- Cindy Stocken — University of Melbourne
- Yohanes Krismantyo Susanta — Institut Agama Kristen Negeri Toraja, Indonesia
- Scholar Kaaria — University of Nairobi, Faith to Action Network, Kenya
- Louise Gosbell, Erin Hutton & Jenny Richards — Australian University of Theology & Flinders University
For the full program including abstracts, please click here.
Image credit: Glory Window designed by Architect Philip Johnson in Dallas, Texas. Original image from Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress collection. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel, CC BY 2.0