Next week, Kent will play host to the biannual conference for the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture. Organised by Professor Gordon Lynch from the Department of Religious Studies, the conference will explore how we can understand societies where the public encounter with religion takes place through media and in which religious life takes place through a multiplicity of mediated practices and networks.
The programme is notable for drawing together scholars working on digital religion research. Several prominent themes include the portrayals of gender in religion digital media, how new media influences religious authority and the ways religion and religious identity is lived out through social networking and mobile media.
The keynote speakers include Professor Jonathan Walton (Harvard), author of Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism, and Professor Kathryn Lofton (Yale), author of Oprah: the Gospel of an Icon, with an address also given by the inaugural President of the Society, Professor Stewart Hoover (Colorado).
The conference will be held from Monday 4 August to Wednesday 6 August, 2014.
The conference will be followed by a post-conference workshop on Thursday 7 August. The conference will be held in the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge conference centre.
This event is sponsored by Kent, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture, and the Porticus Family Foundation.
For full details on the conference, including PDFs of the programme, please see the webpage here:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/thrs/events/event2014-08-06.html