Subtheme:
On the Run: Movement as Resistance and Refuge

Organizer: Lynneth Miller Renberg (Anderson University, Universitet i Tromsø)

Implied in sanctuary creation is the idea of sheltering in place, of stillness; inversely, seeking sanctuary also requires flight. Likewise, resistance implies both holding ground and pressing forward, requiring choreographed movement. In its most obvious forms, movement obscure individuals and enable more successful resistance, a subversive choreography that also makes resistance and refuge difficult to track. This subtheme invites approaches that explore how these moving bodies – social, political, legal, and/or religious – provide potent responses to crises, often from those marginalized in more traditional textual petitions.

How does tracing moving bodies, in all forms, show new ways of resisting systems and structures? What can we learn from the movement inherent in dance, pilgrimage, drama, music, legal revisions, manuscript revisions, or theological reforms? In reading these movements, new elements of resistance and refuge become clear. Dancing mania help point to gendered patterns of protest. Sermon revisions indicate resistance to theological shifts. The addition (or removal) of civic laws exposes attempts to create (or expose) pockets of refuge for groups within the community. Revisions to artwork highlight attempts to protect or to attack individuals and institutions. In short, movement, analyzed through diverse disciplinary and theoretical frameworks, exposes hidden networks of resistance and refuge.

This subtheme asks us to consider how careful analysis of movement might add to our understanding of resistance and refuge. It welcomes submissions that explore moving bodies– human, animal, manuscript, or ideological– and motion in all forms. Papers focused on motion in a modern context, whether within the academy or within scholarly understandings, are also welcomed.