Papers are sought on any and all aspects of what John McClure has termed a "post-modern/post-secular." Are concerns of faith and religion seeping back into a long-secular academy? Is "post-modernism " inherently invested in this return? Is there any actual return, or have such themes been lurking, occasionally surfacing and resurfacing, ever since the supposedly secularizing nineteenth century? Or is the apparent engagement with religiosity in contemporary literature and film being blown way out of proportion? How does the breaching of a new millenium change the discussion? Magic realism; Thomas Pynchon; Walter Kirn; Toni Morrison; J. M. Coetzee; Michel Houellebecq; Salman Rushdie; Roman Polanski; films like Dogma, Dead Man Walking and Contact; the rise of Christian rock music; and thinkers like Jean-Luc Marion, William Bennett, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida are all fair game.

I am especially interested in projects that examine the manner in which religious themes are played to political ends or used to frame a political discourse or social critique in contemporary works, or the way that sacred space is increasingly negotiated within a political context; that said, however, any presentations that engage the broader topic are welcome.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words by 1 October to either

Geoffrey Baker, Dept. of Comparative Literature, Rutgers University, 131 George St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1414, USA

or via e-mail at: gabaker73@yahoo.com or gabaker@rci.rutgers.edu