Dr Elizabeth Burns Coleman
- BA (Hons.) Ph.D (ANU)
- Lecturer
- Contact details
- Full Curriculum Vitae
(PDF)
Background
Elizabeth Burns Coleman is a Lecturer in Communications and Media. She has previously lectured in moral and political philosophy (La Trobe University), philosophy of law (Wollongong University) and aesthetics (Australian National University), and has held two postdoctoral fellowships, one at ANU’s Centre for Cross Cultural Research in 2003-4 and another as Monash University Faculty of Arts Postdoctoral Fellow in 2007-8. Her books include Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation (Ashgate, 2005) and three edited collections: Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society (ANU E-press, 2006, co-edited with Kevin White), Negotiating the Sacred II: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society (ANU E-press, 2008, co-edited with Maria-Suzette Fernandes Dias), and Religion, Medicine and the Body (forthcoming, Brill, co-edited with Kevin White).
Research Interests
My research is engaged in debates about multiculturalism and religious pluralism in contemporary liberal societies, particularly as they relate to cultural policy and law (such as intellectual property and inalienable property). I am currently writing a book analysing blasphemous art. In this research I will analyse blasphemy as a communicative act and look at its social implications.
My research into the negotiation of the sacred has spanned several years and includes the organisation of a series of conferences on different aspects of the theme. In collaboration with Dr Kevin White (reader in Sociology at the Australian National University), and Dr Maria-Suzette Fernandez-Dias (formerly at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at the ANU), I have organised conferences on Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society (2004), Blasphemy and Sacrilege in the Arts (2005), Religion, Medicine and the Body (2006), Tolerance, Education and the Curriculum (2007) and Governing the Family (2008). These are cross disciplinary, cross faith conferences that aim to bring new approaches to religious difference by understanding how the sacred is negotiated within religious frameworks and between these frameworks.
Areas of supervision:
- freedom of expression
- theories of meaning and visual communication
- politeness and civility
- ethics and aesthetics
- religion and multiculturalism
- indigenous arts
- cultural law
I am interested in supervising cross-disciplinary projects in communications, fine arts, anthropology, law, and indigenous studies.
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation (Ashgate, 2005)
The belief held by indigenous people that their art is intimately related to their identity, and the continuing existence of their cultures, has made the protection of indigenous people’ art a pressing matter in many postcolonial countries. The issue has prompted a call for stronger protection of their art in law. This book analyses the claims Australian Aboriginal people make about their art, identity and appropriation, and finds their claims to be substantially true. Aboriginal art is an insignia linking people to images, land and culture. It should be protected in the same ways that other insignia is protected.
Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society (ANU E-press, 2006)
Contemporary societies have constituted their identities as ‘secular’, both in terms of a division between the church and the state, and in terms of public discourse. Without an understanding of the sacred, however, we cannot understand or engage with the claims made by religious groups for special accommodations to law, or to the respect of the religion. This book explores the place of religion in contemporary societies, and the effects of attacks on religious groups through blasphemy and sacrilege, and the role of the state in regulating religion and managing disputes. It seeks to establish the ground for a dialogue not only between religious faiths, but between believers and non-believers.
Negotiating the Sacred II: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in the Arts (ANU E-press, 2008)
Blasphemy and other forms of blatant disrespect to religious beliefs have the capacity to create significant civil and even international unrest. The sacrosancity of religious dogmas and beliefs, stringent laws of repression, and codes of moral propriety have compelled artists to live with occupational hazards such as uncertain audience response, and accusations of deliberate misinterpretation. Yet we cannot reduce this situation to a simple equation of the rights of artists to freely interpret the world against repressive religious authority. In recent years, issues surrounding the rights of minority cultures to recognition and respect have raised new questions about the contemporariness of the construct of blasphemy and sacrilege. This edited collection endeavours to move beyond ‘simplistic’ points about the rights of freedom of expression to explore how different conceptions of the sacred may be negotiated. It recognises that blasphemy may be justified as a form of political criticism, as well as a sincere expression of spirituality, but it also recognises that self expression and criticism may occur within, and despite, restrictions on production.