Monthly Archives: February 2013
CFP: IS THE POST-COLONIAL POST-SECULAR?
A Call for Papers
Conference in Syracuse, NY
September 20-21, 2013
Across the humanities, critical scholarship on the secular / secularism / secularization has recently ballooned. Scholars of history, anthropology, political theory, and religion have begun revisiting questions of enchantment and disenchantment, political theology, blasphemy, religious freedom, and much more. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age in particular has garnered wide attention, but Taylor’s narrative focuses on the disenchantment of modern Christian Europe. Before and after A Secular Age, scholars have probed the boundaries of the secular beyond Christian Europe, and beyond the confines of intellectual history.
Some have asserted that the ideologies of secularism and colonialism are deeply intertwined. Others have asserted that post-colonial religiosity remains a symptom of colonial control of reason and affect. Still others have pointed to neo-liberalism as the shared basis of contemporary racial, religious, and post-colonial regimes.
We invite proposals that probe the question, “Is the Post-Colonial Post-Secular?” Projects may employ methods of history, literary criticism, theoretical reflection, ethnography, or cultural studies. We are interested in projects from a variety of regions and periods, for example contemporary Africa, the early U.S., or nineteenth century Haiti.
Please send 300 word abstracts, or questions, to: Owais Khan (mokhan01@syr.edu) and Vincent Lloyd (vwlloyd@syr.edu).
CFP: *Vision, Visuality and Visual Culture: Islamic Contexts and Publics*
Call for Papers
AAA, Nov. 20-24 2013, Chicago
Vision, Visuality and Visual Culture: Islamic Contexts and Publics
*
This panel recuperates an understanding of visuality beyond Western histories by ethnographically exploring visual culture as a key site for thinking out the different trajectories of religion in contemporary Muslim societies. With Christianity usually posited as a *”visual” religion and Islam as an “auditory”; one, most scholarly works looking at the intersections of visuality and religion have done so in a (Western) Christian context. In keeping with the AAA’s interdisciplinary emphasis this year, this panel puts into conversation anthropological studies of how the materiality of different media contributes to religious formations at particular historical moments with the interest of other scholars of visual culture in everyday, socially-grounded practices of seeing. We hope that attending more closely to visual fields in Muslim societies will contribute theoretically to long-standing disciplinary concerns with ritual, personhood, performance and the sacred.
What modes of (not) seeing are privileged or denounced within historically authoritative Islamic frames? How are different notions of visuality negotiated and/or contested in the age of rapid transnational television imports and exports? What do jurisprudential and popular debates over the production of dramatic serials visually depicting Qur’anic prophets tell us about the politics and ethics of sight? What visual analogies and metaphors do Islamic preachers and activists draw upon to connect with their imagined audiences? What new scopic regimes arise at the interface of new media technologies and Islamic exhortatory traditions? How is the faculty of seeing a site of ethical cultivation, affective pleasure or sensory excess? We invite papers addressing these questions through ethnographies and analyses of the production, circulation, consumption and framing of the
visual in Muslim societies.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words and CVs to Yasmin Moll (yasmin.moll@nyu.edu Yasmin.moll@nyu.edu>) and Wazhmah Osman (wazhmah@gmail.com) by March 12.
Call for Papers - “International Conference on Education, Culture and Identity” (ICECI 2013).
The International Conference on Education, Culture and Identity (ICECI 2013) is organised by the International University of Sarajevo in partnership with Deakin University, Australia and Erciyes University, Turkey. The conference will be held at the International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina on 6-8 July 2013. For more information please visit the conference website: www.ius.edu.ba/iceci
Abstracts must be submitted online via the conference website:
www.ius.edu.ba/iceci
Conference Deadlines:
Submission of Abstracts April 1, 2013
Notification of Abstract Acceptance April 19, 2013
Registration Ends May 17, 2013
Conference Date July 6-8, 2013
Contact information:
Gulsen Devre +387 33 957 116
iceci@ius.edu.ba
Announcing Palgrave Macmillan’s new series: Religion and Global Migrations
As the first series of its kind, Religion and Global Migrations will examine the phenomenon of religion and migration from multiple disciplinary perspectives (for example, historical, anthropological, sociological, ethical and theological), from various global locations (including the Americas, Europe and Asia), and from a range of religious traditions. The Series Editors are interested in monographs and edited volumes that explore the intersections of religion and migration from a variety of approaches, including studies of:
- Shifting Religious Practices and Ideas in sending and receiving communities, among migrants and also among those who interact with migrants in places of origin and destination;
- Public Responses to migration such as religiously informed debates, policies and activism among migrants and nonmigrants alike;
- Gender Dynamics including shifts in gender roles and access to power in sending and receiving sites;
- Identity in relation to religion and migration that may include constructive, as well as descriptive, scholarship;
- Empire, from the ancient Mediterranean through the height of European colonization to contemporary relationships between the developing and developed world, and the way it has profoundly affected the movement of people and development of religions;
- Other topics connecting to the theme of religion and global migrations.
Series Editors
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre, and Junior Research Fellow in Refugees Studies at Lady Margaret Hall elena.fiddian-qasmiyeh@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Jennifer B. Saunders is an independent researcher who has published on transnational Hinduism jbsaund1@yahoo.com
Susanna Snyder is Assistant Professor in Contemporary Society and Christian Ethics at Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA ssnyder@eds.edu
Editorial Board
Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College, USA)
Kim Knott (Lancaster University, UK)
Zain Abdullah (Temple University, USA)
Proposals
If you are interested in submitting a proposal to be considered for the series, please contact one of the Series Editors or:
Burke Gerstenschlager, Palgrave Macmillan Burke.Gerstenschlager@palgrave-usa.com
Call for papers: Second annual conference of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR)
at the Clinton Centre, University College Dublin, 10th -12th May 2013
Conference theme:
Ireland, America and Transnationalism: studying religions in a globalised world
Extended deadline for abstracts: March 8th 2013
Keynote speakers:
Prof. Crawford Gribben (Queen’s University Belfast) “Ireland, America and the End of the Worldâ€
Prof. Alicia Turner (York University, Toronto) “Religion, the Study of Religions and other Products of Trans-locative and Trans-colonial Imaginationsâ€
Public lecture:
Prof. Brian Victoria (Antioch University) “Reflections in a Catholic Mirror: The Struggle to Create a Buddhist Chaplaincy in the US Militaryâ€
We are pleased to invite scholars to take part in the second annual conference of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR). For information on the society, see:
https://isasr.wordpress.com/. The Conference will take place Fri-Sun May 10th-12th, 2013 at the Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin (UCD), and is open to scholars of all disciplines that approach religions, both past and present, from a non-theological, critical, analytical and cross-cultural perspective.
Proposals for papers may relate to the conference theme ‘Ireland, America and Transnationalism’ or any other aspect of the Society’s work in the history, anthropology, folklore and sociology of religion in Ireland or the Irish diaspora, but also the work of Irish-based researchers on topics in the academic study of religions elsewhere in the world.
Although 19th and 20th century discourses often highlighted national, including Irish, religious uniqueness, this has always been at best a half truth. Megalithic architecture and pre-Christian myths are routinely studied in relation to other west European contexts. Christian conversion and medieval texts, early modern wars of religion and nineteenth-century ultramontanism also locate Ireland in a wider religious world. The conference theme encourages the study of religions in a global and comparative context, with particular reference to North America, the home of the largest Irish diaspora outside these islands.
From Ireland’s ‘spiritual empire’ of Catholic institutions to American enthusiasm for all things Celtic to imported Pentecostalisms, the religious exchange between the two has been intense. Adopting a transnational perspective highlights the networks of wider global relationships within which religions both in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora are enacted.
Please send a 150-200 word abstract for papers to Adrienne Hawley (Adrienne.hawley [at] ucdconnect.ie) by the closing date of Friday 8th March, 2013. Notification of abstract acceptance will be given by Friday March 15th, 2013.
Graduate students and early career researchers are invited to participate in a roundtable discussion. Each presenter will be given a maximum of 10 minutes to discuss their work in an informal setting.
Extra time will be provided after these presentations to facilitate questions and discussions. If you wish to participate in a roundtable please send a 100 word summary of your topic.
Proposals for themed panels from ISASR members are welcomed and may be made directly to the conference organisers via Adrienne Hawley (email above). The following panels have already been proposed:
- Folk Religion in Ireland: Meaning and Context (Convenors Dr. Marion Bowman, Open University & Dr. James Kapalo, University College Cork)
- Children’s Subjectivities and the Experience of Religious Educations (Convenors Dr. Karl Kitching and Dr. Yafa Shanneik, University College Cork)
- Gender and Religion
- Sacred landscape and indigenous imaginary (Convenors Dr. Lidia Guzy, University College Cork & Dr. Cécile Guillaume-Pey, Queen’s University Belfast).
- The Theosophical Society in Ireland and India: Activism, Identity and the work of James and Margaret Cousins (Convenor Colin Duggan, University College Cork)
If you wish to submit an abstract for these panels please indicate this in your abstract submission
The conference programme will be made available here once it has been finalised, probably in late March or early April.
Practical information
The conference will last from lunchtime on Friday 10th May to lunchtime
on Sunday 12th.
Conference fee: €75 waged, €35 unwaged. Payment details will be posted
on the website nearer the time.
UCD is a short journey from central Dublin; travel details are available
here. A map highlighting the Clinton Centre is available here.
There are a very large range of accommodation possibilities both in
south-central Dublin and in the city centre. ISASR is currently
exploring the possibility of organising accommodation with a nearby
provider and will announce this if successful; however we can offer no
guarantees at this point.
Further information on the ISASR Conference 2013 will be posted at:
https://isasr.wordpress.com/events/isasr-2013-conference
The conference is hosted by ISASR in collaboration with The Clinton
Institute, UCD.
Call for Papers: The Jewish Revival in Europe and North America: Between Lifestyle Judaism and Institutional Renaissance
“If we are part of a movement then this movement has a lot of power right now […] This movement has a huge task in front of her: to rebrand God!” Addressing the challenges of contemporary Judaism, Yitz Jordan, an African-American convert and a member of Punk Jews, clearly marks an extreme position in a loose assemblage of social movements and cultural initiatives lumped together under the label “Jewish Revival.”
Notwithstanding this extreme expression, the transnational social field of Jewish revival encompasses a broad range of institutional modalities and individual practices across continents and communities: from Chabad’s global tactics of integration into new religious spaces, to local community-based activities, through alternative cultural initiatives that we can term “life-style Judaism.” Against a history of communal destruction and alongside demographic projections of assimilation, projects of revival have heralded since the 1990s the rebirth of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the US.
This mini-conference seeks to critically engage the concept of Jewish revival across time and scale by bringing together a wide range of scholars from diverse disciplines (including anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies and religious studies).
The conference is scheduled for June 5-6, 2013 and will run as a research workshop (papers will be circulated in advance). The conference will take place at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, and is underwritten by the project ReligoWest (led by Prof. Olivier Roy).
Please send your CV and an abstract of 250 words to Daniel Monterescu (Central European University) at monterescud@ceu.hu and to Nadia Marzouki at nadia.marzouki@eui.eu by March 15, 2013.
Panel at the 12th EASR conference, 3-6 September, Liverpool Hope University
Organised by Dr Abby Day, Chair of SOCREL (Sociology of Religion study group, British Sociological Association) and Dr Bettina Schmidt, Honorary Secretary of the BASR (British Association for Study of Religions)
Visit www.socrel.org.uk for more information on forthcoming Socrel events
Self-identification on instruments such as surveys and censuses presents unique challenges and opportunities. The 2011 census for the UK revealed some interesting developments concerning the religious self-identification within the UK, particularly with the continuing increase of people who declare to have no religion. How does the utility of a census compare with, for example, larger surveys, from British Social Attitudes to the World Values Survey and how accurately can such data from any of those instruments represent changing religious landscapes? How does a faith in surveys and censuses manifest itself by discipline, and what impact does this have on our understanding of research methodology and outcomes? We invite to this panel papers discussing this and other issues concerning national census and survey design and data from the UK or any other country.
Please send abstracts (app. 150 words) to Dr Abby Day a.f.day@kent.ac.uk and Dr Bettina Schmidt b.schmidt@tsd.ac.uk by 1 May 2013.
PhD scholarship and Research Fellow Position at Deakin University
Please circulate news about a PhD scholarship and Research Fellow position at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne. The project, Islamic Religiosity, and the Challenge of Political Engagement and National Belonging in Multicultural Western Cities is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant awarded to Professor Fethi Mansouri, Prof Bryan Turner and Dr Michele Lobo. It explores the role of Islamic religious beliefs, values, rituals and faith-based community participation in shaping belonging in three multicultural cities.
Research Fellow position
https://www.deakin.edu.au/careers-at-deakin/employment/academic.php
| PhD scholarship |
https://www.deakin.edu.au/future-students/research/scholarships/phd-scholarship-islamic-religiosity.php. Extended deadline to Sunday, 24 February 2013
European Association for the Study of Religions Annual Conference, Liverpool Hope University. 3-6 September 2013
RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION
CALL FOR PANELS AND PAPERS IS NOW OPEN
The 12th EASR Annual Conference will be hosted by the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) at Liverpool Hope University. This will also be a Special Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR).
The conference theme will be RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION.
The conference invites papers and panels that examine what happens to religious beliefs and practices when they are displaced, and what occurs to religions when new cultural practices interact with them. The focus on transformation is not only to be taken in connection with movements of people but panels and papers are invited that deal with the issue of mutation in the broadest sense. We invite scholars from different disciplines to participate in the conference. RELIGION, MIGRATION, MUTATION is the 12th annual conference of the EASR and the second to be organised in collaboration with the BASR.
Panels will be 2 hours long and consist of 4 speakers (papers should be no more than 25 minutes long, allowing a 20 minute discussion period).
Proposals should include Panel/Papers information: title, abstract for the panel and the individual papers (150 words), any unusual IT required, list of chair, panellists, and abstracts for both the panel and the individual papers.
Individual papers are welcomed.
Submission deadline: 1st June 2013
Proposed Papers and Panels should be sent to the Conference Administrator (Sara Fretheim): frethes@hope.ac.uk