Professor Speaks on 'Nomadic Spirituality of Home' at Next Faculty Colloquium

 

Denise Starkey

Denise Starkey, chair of Theology and Religious Studies at The College of St. Scholastica, will speak about "A Nomadic Spirituality of Home" at 3:40 p.m. Friday, May 4, in room 4119 of Tower Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

The presentation will conclude St. Scholastica's 2011-2012 faculty colloquium monthly lecture series, which highlights diverse faculty research projects. Her presentation will include a 40-minute lecture followed by 20 minutes of questions and answers.

The full title of Starkey's discussion is "A Nomadic Spirituality of Home: An Alternative Map for Survivors of Childhood Violence."  She is concerned with the experience of spiritual homelessness, particularly for survivors of child abuse and the compounded experiences of suffering in adulthood in the forms of interpersonal violence, addiction, material homelessness, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. She aims to construct a nomadic spirituality of home that travels beyond conventional metaphors and notions of home and belonging.

Her work is informed by empirical studies underway that explore the contributions of spirituality to healing for survivors, as well as the impediments spirituality sometimes represents, particularly in the form of mainstream notions of suffering as well as the idealized mythos of home and belonging.

Starkey works from the commitments and insights of feminist philosophies, cultural history, and liberation theologies, which recognize that insights and understandings arise from the concrete experiences of those who suffer - whether material poverty, migration, or a number of experiences of exclusion and oppression based on racism, sexism, etc.