01/07/2026 09:00 - 12:20

HALL: Parenzo - A8

Contact: Battistel L.

Chair: Battistel L., Walker R.

Religious traditions, even if based on universalistic principles, are mostly governed by hierarchical normative networks, which inevitably imply inequalities - whether in terms of gender, religious affiliation, physical and social status. Similarly, written discourse, and thus its textual organisation, is also permeated by dynamics of selection and hierarchisation of meaning and, once produced, is in turn inserted into hierarchies of canon. However, both theological discourse and literary texts that hold and 'function' incorporate processes of self-reflection and critical negotiation, necessary for their historicity. Sometimes, it is literature itself that encourages and causes theological discourse to become dialectical, welcoming and reworking theological conceptual nuclei which, through intertextual practices, activate critical tensions within the text itself: in these cases, literary texts become places of religious meaning production, making visible forms of diversity and inequality that are often marginalised in doctrinal canons.
In line with this year's theme, the panel thus aims to investigate the relationship between religions, diversity and inequalities through an interdisciplinary approach combining critical literary studies and theological reflection. Particular attention will be paid, though not exclusively, to female religious experiences as spaces of negotiation between theological normativity and lived experience.
We invite papers on any aspect of Italian literature. Contributions that focus on one or more of these subtopics are particularly welcome:
• incorporation and literary reworking of theological concepts;
• representations of confessional diversity and religious asymmetries in literary texts;
• literary texts as mediation between normative theology and lived practices;
• literary criticism of theological hierarchies;
• female religious experiences and feminist theologies;
• literary reflections of embodied theology.