Religion, Secularism, and the Novel

FAIN: FS-261675-18

University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA 52242-1320)
Lori Branch (Project Director: February 2018 to March 2021)
Mark Knight (Co Project Director: August 2018 to March 2021)

A three-week seminar for 16 college and university faculty examining the history of the novel as it relates to theses about the secularization of society or the continuing hold of religion on society, to be held at the University of Iowa.

Postsecular studies and the "religious turn" in the humanities speak to the need for more complex scholarly accounts of the relationship between religion and the secular in modernity. Our seminar focuses on the implications of postsecular studies for our understanding of the novel. Literary scholars have traditionally seen the rise of the novel as a clear sign of secularization. Although there are good reasons for this, as we will acknowledge, religion does not disappear in fiction, and we need to expand our histories and theories of the novel to better understand the changing roles played by religion in modernity. Following the classic NEH seminar format, our three-week seminar will meet three mornings a week to discuss five representative novels from the eighteenth century to the present and a range of interdisciplinary work on postsecular studies. Through shared conversations, the seminar will provide a stimulating environment to participants' individual projects on related topics.