Sharon Fennema
194 Adams Circle
Farmington, ME 04938
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A small seminar of people who read and react to one another's scholarship, focusing on the intersections of liturgical studies with recent discourses such as but not limited to post-modernism, post-structuralism and critical theory.
The focus of our seminar will be the consideration of critical theories in practice, describing and analyzing concrete ritual practices using the tools of ritual criticism in conversation with critical discourses. To ground our work together, we will read essays that address the ways in which human ritual behavior changes beyond and/or beneath the perception of meaning, coalescing around the consideration of ritual as transformative beyond meaning. Our common texts will be:
The schedule for our time together will be:
FRIDAY JANUARY 6
10.30a Introductions
1.30p KIMBERLY BELCHER – Presentation on Efficacious Engagement: Sacramental Participation in the Trinitarian Mystery
3.30p BRUCE MORRILL – Performing the Rite of Marriage:Agency, Identity, and Ecclesiology
Utilizing the theories of Bell, Grimes, Kapferer, and others, this paper will describe and analyze the dissonance between the theology (meaning) intended in the post-Vatican II Rite of Marriage (in the specifics of the ritual) and the kinesthetic and imaginal priorities of American Catholic couples in their preparation and performance of their weddings.
4.30p BENJAMIN ANTHONY – The Sacrament of Marriage: Repetitions and Dissolutions
This essay presents a constructive reading of the Anglican rite for marriage in light of contemporary theologies of the body and sacramentality. In this reading, marriage appears as a space of eschatological preparation that is constituted by repetition and a vulnerability to dissolution.
SATURDAY JANUARY 7
9.00a CHRISTOPHER GRUNDY – A Body for Us: Strategic Misrecognition and Objectification in Holy Communion
This paper will briefly examine the role of objectification in violence against women, and then, with the lens of Catherine Bell’s concept of strategic misrecognition, attempting to surface the role that objectifying practices play in the production of Jesus’ body as a ritual object. The paper is part of a larger work in progress on Holy Communion and violence.
10.30a KARI VEITEBERG – ‘We Just Had to Do Something’: Ritualization Following Terror in Norway
This presentation investigates the patterns of ritualization in the aftermath of the terror attacks on July 22nd in Oslo and the island Utøya. Specifically, it will investigate the ritualized patterns used to address individual as well as collective anguish, grief and mourning and the need for collective common ritual places, actions, symbols and symbolic acts in a multicultural society.
1.30p GERALD LIU – Generosity of Ritual for a Taiwanese Centenarian: a Plural Funeral?
This presentation will explore Don Seeman's Levinasian explication of ritual practice through reflection on a funeral service that combined United Methodist liturgy and elements of Taiwanese funerary rites, all taking place in an evangelical reformed context.
3.00p Closure and planning for 2013
The 2010 seminar will discuss Jean Luc Marion's God Without Being. One seminar member will present on each set of chapters, and another will respond to the presentation. The focus will be on engendering the subsequent discussion among the whole seminar. Visitors are welcome but should have read God without Being in preparation, given that the focus is on all-seminar-discussion.
Friday, January 8
10:30 - 12:00
Introductions, and reports by participants on their recent work.
1:30 - 3:00
Chs.1&2 Presenter: Bruce Morrill, Responder: Gerald Liu
3:30 - 5.00
Chs.3&4 Presenter: Kim Belcher, Responder: Darren Henson
5:00 - 5:30
Consolidation and a bit of seminar business.
Saturday, January 9
10:30 - 12:00
Chs.5&6 Presenter: Tim O'Malley, Responder: Dirk Lange
1:30 - 3:00 Ch.7
Presenter: Jim Farwell, Responder: Sharon Fennema
3:00 - 3:30
Closure and making plans for next year.
The 2009 seminar will discuss post-colonial theory and liturgical studies. All those wishing to participate should read Homi Bhaba's The Location of Culture, as this will form the basis of our work together this year. Five papers are offered to stimulate discussion of our theme.
Louis-Marie Chauvet: liturgy and theology in postmodern dialogue. A discussion of the implications of Chauvet’s work for liturgical theology and practice. Visitors are especially welcomed!
Papers (tentative titles):
Sharon Fennema, Language, Materiality and Performativity: Protestant Free-Church, Traditions and the Sacramentality of the Word after Chauvet.
Bruce Morrill, Sacraments, Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of L.-M. Chauvet and Time, Absence, and Otherness: Divine-Human Paradoxes Bonding Liturgy and Ethics.
Siobhan Garrigan and Claudio Carvalhaes, Who the Hell is the Other? -- A Research Position Paper.
Thomas Burke, Kenosis and the Sacraments: Exploring the Constructive Work of Louis-Marie Chauvet.
Joseph Mudd, From De-ontotheology to a Metaphysics of Meaning: Louis-Marie Chauvet and Bernard Lonergan on Foundations in Sacramental Theology.
Works in progress:
James Farwell, The Eucharist: Ritual, Ethics and Belief in Western Christianity.
Dirk Lange, Awakened to Life: Testifying to Human Suffering in Theology and Practice.
Number of participants: 6-8
A list of papers developed by members from this seminar will appear here