Saturday 2 June

Saturday 2nd June
10 am Arrival and Coffee, Gulbenkian Cafe.

Panels will be held in Gilmore Lecture Theatre 3 unless otherwise indicated. (https://www.kent.ac.uk/maps/canterbury/canterbury-campus/building/grimond-building/glt3)

10.30-1pm

Panel 1: Performing Blasphemy

Chair: Shakila Maan (award-winning British film director, and leader in avant-garde British Asian theatre)

Christa Harris (Les Enfants Terribles theatre group; director Inside Pussy Riot)
‘Staging Pussy Riot’

Iain MacKenzie (Politics and International Relations, University of Kent)
‘AntiChrist or Piss Christ? Blasphemy and the Art of Critique’

Martin Hammer (School of Arts, University of Kent)
‘Francis Bacon’s Blasphemous Crucifixions’

Ryan Perry (School of English, University of Kent)
‘ “By Goddes Bones”- Blasphemy and Characterisation in the Canterbury Tales’

Inna Shevchenko (feminist activist and leader of Femen)
‘Femen: Blasphemous Feminisms’

1pm-2pm Lunch

2pm-4.30pm Blasphemy, Colonialism and the Politics of ‘World Religions’

Chair: Yasmin Rehman (End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Centre for Secular Space)

Gita Sahgal (writer and journalist; documentary film director; former head of Amnesty International Gender Unit)
‘“Blasphemous” Murders: South Asia, free speech and genocide’

Richard King (Religious Studies, University of Kent)
‘Blasphemy, Empire and Hindu nationalism in postcolonial India’

Mitsutoshi Horii (Shumei University and Chaucer College)
‘Translating Blasphemy in Japan’

David Tollerton (Theology and Religious Studies, University of Exeter)
‘Blasphemy and Public Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Britain’

Thomas Hoffmann (Islamic Studies, University of Copenhagen)
‘In/Tolerating Blasphemy: Early and Classical Islamic Positions’

4.30 Break
5pm-5.50 pm Maureen Freely (Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, and President of English PEN)
‘Sticks and Stones: Why Words Still Hurt’

5.50-7pm Dinner

7pm Stewart Lee, Nineties Comedian, Gulbenkian Cinema (free of charge)
https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/event/stewart-lee-90s-comedian/