On Thursday, August 2, at 5:00pm – 7:00pm (Australian Hearing Hub, Level 5, Room 212, Macquarie University) the Markers of Authenticity Seminar Series will recommence for Semester 2, 2018 with two speakers, Associate Professor Jay Johnston from the Department of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney, and Dr Ian Stephen from the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University.

Our theme this seminar is the Authenticity of Identity, that is the way identity is performed, construed, inferred, enacted, recognised, and regulated by society. At issue is the relationship between appearance and the self and how the former may be used to affirm or deflect the latter. Associate Professor Johnston’s paper ‘Slippery Species: Considering Human–Non-Human Identity as a Contemporary Spiritual Subculture’ and Dr Stephen’s paper ‘Are our faces and bodies authentic markers of identity?’ consider the ways in which we understand how identity can be externalised at the level of body and face and the processes we engage in when making judgements about appearances. These papers are shadowed by the complicated politics of authenticity brought into being by the baggage of mind-body dualism. From the perspective of religious studies and evolutionary psychology, these papers look at the way authenticity is crafted in skin.