UQ Studies in Religion Seminar Chris Dalton. ‘What’s Fraccing Theology Got to Do with the Mining of Coal Seam Gas?’ In the polarised public debate surrounding the mining of Coal Seam Gas, that industry’s use of hydraulic fracturing (fraccing) generates much emotion and conflict. This paper suggests an interrogative rather than propositional process to ‘release’ an alternative public theology approach for a post-secular age. It encompasses visiting a Divine Art Gallery, initiating a conversation about the Rights of Nature, engaging in imaginative apologetics and regarding Land as a Beloved Companion. It is an approach, however, that is not without its risks.

Janice McRandal. ‘Dancing Abandonment: Theology, Time, and Eternal Memory’. For contemporary theology, time is a matter of both physics and metaphysics. Whether in the search for ‘narrated time’ (Ricoeur), or reclaimed Trinitarian accounts (Augustine), systematic theology tends towards a concept of memory to shape hermeneutical approaches to time and relativity. Contemporary dance theory frames time within a subtle dialectic of keeping and abandoning time, of embodied memory and embodied forgetfulness. However, the relationality implied — of dancer, music, movement, time, performance etc. — resists moves towards a concrete conception of time. This paper will explore the double demand of dance: a passion for the moment and stillness for time, and consider the ways through which the dancer empties out memory into an excessive ‘elsewheres’ beyond the normative questions of time, beyond all necessity.

Friday April 7, 2017, 2pm-4pm Room W349 in Forgan Smith Building (No. 1) at the University of Queensland.