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The growing impact of pluralism on modern societies raises issues of stability and adaptability, freedom and discipline, conviction and tolerance, relativism and standards of judgment and scholarship. The absence of dominant monolithic systems of thought highlights the role of social institutions and processes of interpretation in defining acceptable practices and useful modes of perception.

The conference includes papers on the theory and methodology of interpretation (hermeneutics in a wide sense); comparisons between religions, literatures, and philosophies of life; the significance of class, ethnicity, and gender; and the institutions of interpretation.

Strand Co-ordinators

Dr S. Brent Plate (Texas Christian University)
Prof. John Harvey (CSVCR, University of Wales, Aberystwyth)

Programme

John Harvey, Crossing Over: Mainstream Protestant Migration to Spiritualism since the Mid Nineteenth Century, and Its Relevance to Psychic Visual Culture’

S Brent Plate, ‘Religious Visual Culture: Some Preliminary Considerations’

Ulrike Vollmer, ‘Struck by a New Vision? Religious Mystical Seeing Contra Objectifying Looks’

Fredrick Ruf, ‘The Translated Self in Lost in Translation

Gregory L Sushan, ‘Conceptions of Afterlife Experience in Ancient Egypt and Vedic India: A Comparative Study’