Migration, Faith, and Action: Shifting The Discourse

University of Oxford, May 8th and 9th, 2014

Sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and Las Casas Institute

Call For Papers

In a time when globalization emphasizes the free flow of ideas, goods, and capital, migration appears at the forefront of political agendas in many countries around the world. Discussions on migration tend to focus on the economy, emphasizing the protection of the working class and the attraction of highly skilled migrants; on national identity, emphasizing nationalism and “us versus them” sentiments; and on national security, emphasizing protection from external threats. Economists, politicians, and media outlets primarily shape the discussions around migration, while religious and faith traditions play, at best, a marginal role in defining the discourse.

The conference will explore two themes:

1. Faith: What discourses do faith traditions provide surrounding migration?

2. Action: What is the role of faith communities and faith-based organizations in the complex landscape of migration?

We encourage submissions that reflect on the following related items, among others:

● What narratives do the theological and faith traditions have about migration, migrants, and those who receive them?

● Does the blessed life, does the good life, involve migrating or receiving migrants?

● What practices prevail now in the theological traditions regarding migration?

● Which values or specific attitudes should prevail regarding migration?

● How are narratives from faith traditions manifest in the world through the projects and programs of faith-based organizations?

● Could a fresh way of speaking or discourse generate new approaches to migration in law and policy?

The first day of the conference will feature a documentary screening and discussion with Norma Romero, a member of “Las Patronas”, Mexico’s 2013 National Human Rights Award winners.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts (300 words max) with title to migrationfaithaction@gmail.com with “Migration, Faith, and Action” as the subject line by 15 March 2014. If you have any questions please contact the organizers, Robert Heimburger, Alejandro Olayo-Méndez, Lena Wettach, Paul Kellner, at migrationfaithaction@gmail.com.

Please note: Travel funding for this conference is the responsibility of participants.

Conference:

“Religion in Urban Spaces”

09.-11. April 2014, Göttingen

Urban spaces have always functioned as cradles and laboratories for religious movements and spiritualities. The conference Religion in Urban Spaces will therefore explore the intense and complex interplay between the (post)modern city and religion, bringing the city to the fore in religious research. Both renowned and young scholars from all over the world will present their latest research and bring into discussion the ways the experience of the urban – the cityscape with its pluralist culture – inscribes itself in religious practices, and vice versa: how religions appropriate and transform (the meanings of) the urban.

organized by the Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology of the University of Göttingen and the University of Amsterdam (European Ethnology) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science

Funded by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony

Contact:

Victoria Hegner: victoria.hegner@phil.uni-goettingen.de

Peter Jan Margry: peterjan.margry@meertens.knaw.nl

Program

Wednesday 9 April

At the Holbornsche Haus, Rote Str. 34

17.00-17.15

Welcome

Regina Bendix (Dept. Chair), Victoria Hegner, Peter Jan Margry

17:15-18:00

Keynote Rik Pinxten

God and the City: contemporary perspectives and challenges

18:00-19:00

Reception

19:00-20:00

Guided tour to “sacred” spaces and places in Göttingen

Thursday 10 April

At the Historische Sternwarte (Historical Observatory), Geismar Landstr.11

Negotiating new religious spaces in the city

Chair: Peter Jan Margry

9:00-9:30

Dorothea Nold

Moving churches, changing cities - Spatial and iconic strategies of new congregations in Berlin and Istanbul

9:30-10:00

Gertrud Hüwelmeier

Religious place-making and the production of urban localities – new migrants in Berlin

10:00.10:30

Jill Sudbury

Buddhism in the British urban landscape: negotiation of new religious spaces

10.30-11:00

Coffee break

11.00-11.30

Marie Stephanie N. Gilles and José Edgardo A. Gomez, Jr.

Accommodating God in the Temples of Mammon:

The phenomenon of building chapels within the shopping malls of Metro Manila

11.30-12.00

Mary McCampbell

Loving the City (Not the World?): Three Contemporary Approaches to Urban Christianity

12.00-14.00

Lunch

Migration and religious practice in the (sub)urban realm

Chair: N.N

14.00-14.30

Eleni Tseligka and Georgios Trantas

Home is where the Church is: Greek migrant communities and their spatial reestablishment in the German urban environment within the context of Greek Orthodoxy.

14.30-15.00

Thorsten Wettich

Yezidi funerals in Lower Saxonian cities as an expression of urban religiosity

15.00-15.30

Claire Dwyer

Encountering the divine in W7 and off Highway 88: suburban miracles and stories of the ‘everyday enchantment’ of suburbia

15.30-16.00

Coffee break

16.00-17.00

Keynote Sabina Magliocco

Animal Spirits and the Urban Landscape

17.00-17.15

Coffee break

Creating religious coherence and identity in the city I

Chair: Victoria Hegner

17.15-17.45

Eva Dick and Alexander Kenneth Nagel

Urban diversity governance: The interplay of religious and state representatives in local interfaith networks

17.45-18.15

Anna Strhan

Aliens and strangers? The struggle for coherence in the everyday urban lives of Evangelicals

18.15-18.45

Tricia C. Bruce

Building space, place, and collective identity through personal parishes

20.00

Dinner

At the Sambesi Restaurant, Wendenstr. 8

Friday 11 April

At the Historische Sternwarte (Historical Observatory), Geismar Landstr.11

Creating religious coherence and identity in the city II

Chair: Victoria Hegner

9.00-9.30

Jamelyn B. Palattao and Marjorie Joy S. Almario

Contemporary responses of urban Protestants to the challenge of secularism in Iligan City, Philippines

9.30-10.00

Riem Spielhaus

Urban representation, visibility and institutionalization of Islam in three German cities

10.00-10.30

Coffee Break

Chair: Sabina Magliocco

10.30-11.00

Anna Niedźwiedź

Pope and “his city”: transformation of urban space of Kraków to a “lived shrine” of John Paul II

11.00-11.30

Shamin Golrokh

Contribution of urban space and religious event to make collective meanings

11.30-12.00

Mykhaylo Yakubovych

Modernity and Religion in the Sacred Space of Islam: being a Muslim in modern Mecca

12.00-13.30

Lunch

Transforming religious norms of gender and social authority

Chair: Carola Lipp and Rupa Viswanath

13.30-14.00

Julia Schwartzmann

The rise of female preaching and urban integration of Orthodox Jewish women in Israel

14.00-14.30

Shruti Mukherjee

Moving beyond religious boundaries: A case study of Sai Adhyatmik Samiti (Spiritual Centres) in India

14.30-15.00

Coffee break

Body, music, soul and the making of urban religious spaces

Chair: Birgit Abels

15.00-15.30

Sarah M. Pike

The dance floor as urban altar: How bodies transform the lived experience of cities in a New Age Dance Church

15.30-16.00

Raphaela von Weichs

Music is prayer two times‘. A transnational perspective on cultural performance and urban religiosity in Cameroon and Switzerland

16.00-16.30

Peter Jan Margry and Daniel Wojcik

A Saxophone Divine: The transformative power of Jazz and the Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco.

16.30-16.45

Coffee Break

16.45-17.15

Final discussion, concluding remarks

Final Discussants: Jayeel Serrano Cornelio (MPI, Göttingen) and Victoria Hegner (Göttingen)

Registration via https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/426457.html

Registration Fee: 30 €

For students, people on social welfare, unemployment relief, parenting time: 10 €

Payment is made directly and in cash.

For any further questions feel free to contact us:

If you need any assistance concerning hotel reservation, please contact us as well.

Victoria Hegner: victoria.hegner@phil.uni-goettingen.de

Call for Papers
Summer School Workshop

RELIGION AS RESOURCE: LOCAL AND GLOBAL DISCOURSES

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology Asia-Orient-Institute University of Tübingen Graduate Academy for Academics and Scientists (Excellence Initiative, DFG funded)

Convenors: Dr Vibha Joshi and Dr Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg

18-20 July 2014

Venue: Schloss Hohentübingen

Over the last decade, debates and discussions on religion have gained in importance as its relevance has increased in global politics and international relations. The Summer School Workshop takes into account the continuing contemporary relevance of religion (and secularism) as an integral part of modernity. The Summer School Workshop focuses on religion as resource. It will address its role in ideology, education, healing practices, shaping and marking the landscape, art, ritual economy, religious revival and conversion.

The theme ‘Religion as Resource’ will explore the (dictionary) meaning of the term resource as ‘assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively’ and as ‘an action or strategy which may be adopted in adverse circumstances.’ The concept of resource can be broad and take account, for instance, of such widely varying approaches as that concerned with divergent modes of religiosity or with religion as a cultural system. In accepting that what constitutes religion for a person and community is as varied as the idea of religion itself, the Summer School Workshop will explore different interpretations communities and individuals place on religion in times of both peace and conflict.

The Summer School Workshop, ‘Religion as Resource’, draws on the research expertise of invited, international scholars and current projects of faculty members of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Tübingen University: International scholars who have confirmed participation are: Dr Masooda Bano (Oxford, UK), Prof Dr Simon Coleman (Toronto, Canada), Prof Dr John Cort (Denison, USA), Dr Sondra Hausner (Oxford, UK), Dr Jonathan Miles-Watson (Durham, UK), Prof Dr Magnus Marsden (Sussex, UK). Faculty from Tübingen, Germany: Prof Dr Roland Hardenberg, Dr Vibha Joshi, Dr Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg, Dr Shahnaz Nadjmabadi.

The Summer School will be conducted in English and take the form of a workshop with lectures by the international academics in the field of religion. Separate panels will include papers on a particular theme presented and discussed by a mixture of established academics, doctoral students and recent post-doctorates. The aim is to bring together experts from universities within and outside Germany in an intensive academic exchange and to facilitate networking of PhD students from Tübingen and other German/European universities with each other and with the visiting academic experts.

The Summer School Workshop invites papers from post-fieldwork doctoral students from within Germany and other European Universities on the following related themes in which religion is drawn on as a resource or asset by a person or a community in order to function effectively or to deal with an adverse situation: religion as ideology, religion in diaspora, religion and nationalism, religion and healing, religion and development, religion and education, religion and landscape (sacred cartographies, pilgrimage), religion and materiality, religion and ritual economy and religion and renunciation. We invite applications for
10 doctoral bursaries which will cover accommodation for four nights in Tübingen for the duration of the workshop 18th - 20th July 2014. To apply for participation and bursaries please send a 300 word paper abstract along with a short bio-data to reach by 10 April 2014 to: Dr Vibha Joshi (vibha-joshi.parkin) and Dr Andrea Luithle-Hardenberg (andrea.luithle-hardenberg)

Call for Applications

Summer School “Cityscapes and New Religiosities in Asia”
10-17 August 2014, University of Goettingen (Germany) Application Deadline: 28 February 2014

Theme

China, Southeast Asia and India are entangled not only through complex histories, but also through multi-faceted contemporary ties in the political, religious, economic and cultural sphere. India and China now boast strong and steadily growing economies and are already global political and economic players, while the Southeast Asian states are eager to follow them: ASEAN as a politically and economically ambitious alliance has become an actor to be counted for in Asia. The booming Asian economies have not only affected the economic sphere. Rapid urbanization, the emergence of an aspiring middle-class, the spread of consumer culture and a growing civil society are also features of these transformations. Cities are the future in Asia: the World Development Bank estimates that within the next 20 years, 1.1 billion people will move to cities in Asia. In 2030, 55 per cent of Asia’s population will live in urban environments.

While modernisation was long believed to result in secularism, Asian modernities refute this thesis as euro-centric: far from becoming secular, Asian societies see a revival, a reformulation and transformation of religion in modernity, and striking religious dynamics. Religion is not an antithesis to modernity but is in complex interaction with it. Since modernity implies a number of far-reaching social, political, and economic changes, it results in not only new aspirations and practices, but also in new constraints and fears. These are articulated and addressed in religious practices and ways of expression, in new conceptualisations of religion or, in extreme cases, in acts of religiously motivated violence. Cities are spaces of longing in Asia, as they promise a modern lifestyle, economic opportunities, global connectedness, entertainment and educational upward mobility. At the same time, they stand for the loss of social and economic safety nets, for changing norms and values and the loss of close social relationships. Religious life in the city is an answer to these hopes and fears and to the changing social make-up of communities.

The Summer School “Cityscapes and New Religiosities in Asia” brings the contexts of ‘religion’ and ‘urbanity’ in Asia to the centre stage. It will engage with urban spaces and religiosities through case studies especially in India, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines. While paying attention to the specific contexts and ethnographic details of the case studies, we will also make visible their transnational and transurban connections, as urban spiritual lives and spirit worlds have been informed by the changing cultural maps of migration, adaptation, and transformation across Asia. Metropolitan centers are particular receptacles and laboratories for such global encounters, as they interweave with middle-class consumer power and diasporic identities.

The summer school therefore invites participants to engage with, and develop, their own work through an exploration of three key thematic intersections, including (1) transformations of religious sites in contexts like architecture, city planning, heritage, urban place-making and re-habitation; (2) religious communities, in which different classes, castes, generations, ethnicities and genders intersect; and (3) religion and media, exploring how spirituality is visualised, sensed, communicated, staged or experienced across urban landscapes.

With this explicitly transurban focus, we also acknowledge the growing imperative for a “global-studies” perspective in postgraduate research, through which new demands are placed on students to manage the disciplinary boundaries of “regional” or “area studies”, while wondering what actual research tools they need to do so effectively and competently within the limited time frame of a thesis.

Speakers will include, among others:

· Lily Kong (National University of Singapore)

· Dan Smyer Yü (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen)

· David A. Palmer (University of Hong Kong),

· Julius Bautista (National University of Singapore)

· Andrew Alan Johnson (Yale-NUS College)

· Rupa Viswanath (University of Göttingen)

· Michael Dickhardt (University of Göttingen)

While keynotes and morning lectures will provide theoretical frames and ethnographic snapshots from diverse Asian cityscapes, the summer school’s main focus will be on small working and reading groups moderated and mentored by each of the invited speakers over two-day units. Mandatory readings for these sessions will be shared in advance.
Participants will have the opportunity to introduce their own work, especially through a poster but we do not expect full presentations.
Instead, students will be invited to use the working groups to connect their research to each of the three theme blocs, in order to develop new ideas and learn new approaches for their own work. All students will have to actively participate in the working formats of all three topics to gain a comparative perspective and to broaden their horizons beyond the limits of their own PhD-projects. While the two-day units take off with a strong input from outside, the students are expected to work with growing autonomy over the course of the unit.

As a follow-up to the summer school, we will also feature an essay competition for interested participants, with the best paper selected for submission in an edited volume prepared by DORISEA in 2014.

About the organizers

DORISEA and CETREN are two key platforms building research, network and outreach capacities in the study of religions at Göttingen Research campus (GRC). Bringing together scholars in the humanities and social sciences for inter-disciplinary dialogue, the networks in particular foster an appreciation of regional diversity and intra- and cross-regional entanglements in Asia. With DORISEA’s expertise on Southeast Asia and CETREN’s core competence in China and India, both networks complement each other, join creative forces and pool their excellent academic networks to organise this summer school.DORISEA and CETREN as inter­disciplinary area study research networks opt for a Summer School with a decidedly transregional studies character. Instead of limiting the study of religion in Asia to one discipline alone, we strive to combine the disciplinary competences of social and cultural anthropology, history, sociology, media and visual studies, religious studies, and area studies.

Applications

We invite applications from interested doctoral and research-based masters’ students of all cultural-studies disciplines, whose work relates to East, South and/or Southeast Asia. We offer expertise especially in social and cultural anthropology, history, sociology, media and visual studies, religious studies, and area studies. The number of participants is limited to 20.

Applicants should submit an abstract of their thesis or dissertation (max. 500 words), a statement of motivation (max 1 page), a brief statement by the applicant’s supervisor, as well as proof of current university enrollment.

Scholars of DORISEA and CETREN will select the participants. Free accommodation will be provided. A participation fee of 250 Euros will be charged. Fee waivers and travel stipends will be available to fund participants otherwise unable to attend due to the financial burden of travel costs. Please e-mail your application to Karin Klenke at dorisea@uni-goettingen.de.

Application deadline: February 28, 2014.

Successful applicants will be informed by mid-March.

Please see our Summer School website at https://www.dorisea.de/de/node/1502.

Call for Applications

Humphrey School of Public Affairs

University of Minnesota

Andrew Carnegie Centennial Fellowship

in Support of Visiting Scholars in the Social Sciences from Arab Universities

The Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota announces the availability of a limited number of fellowships for social scientists from Arab universities to spend a semester in residence at the Humphrey School in the Fall semester of 2014. The fellowships are funded by Andrew Carnegie Centennial Fellowship, a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The visiting scholars will work closely with Professor Ragui Assaad, Professor James Ron, Professor Sarah Parkinson and other faculty members at the Humphrey School and the University of Minnesota on research relating to youth and gender, human rights, and mobilization in the context of the Arab Spring. Sub-themes include, but are not limited to:

• Youth unemployment and school-to-work transitions

• Transitions to adulthood, including transitions through schooling, work, marriage and sexuality

• Inequality of opportunity in education and labor markets

• Obstacles to youth and women’s employment and ways to overcome them

• Informality, poverty, social protection, and job quality

• Migration, displacement, and refugees

• Youth social movements and mobilization

• Multi- and cross-generational political activism

• Participation in high-risk mobilization and militant organizations

• Trends in and consequences of political violence

• Youth civic and political engagement

• Role of youth and youth groups in transitions to democracy

• Participation in local movements and organizations for human rights, broadly construed

• Popular attitudes towards human rights

• Analysis of public opinion and household surveys

Eligibility Requirements

Visiting scholars must be a member of the staff of a university situated in the Arab World and be in a social science or related discipline and is working in areas relating to the above research theme and sub-themes. The ideal candidate is a junior faculty member who has obtained his/her PhD in the past five years, but pre-doctoral candidates (ABD status) and those with more than five years since the PhD will also be considered.

Logistical Arrangements

The fellowship will cover economy class round-trip air fare and will provide the visiting scholar with a monthly stipend to cover expenses while in residence in Minnesota. The duration of the fellowship is negotiable, but is not to be inferior to three months or exceed six months. The visiting scholar will be provided with a university ID, access to university libraries and to the internet, and a place to work.

Application Procedure

Interested candidates should send the following:

• A cover letter detailing:

o The research project the candidate would undertake during the fellowship;

o A description of previous research and academic preparation; and

o A statement of why and how a fellowship at the University of Minnesota may benefit, deepen, or extend his/her own research.

• A detailed curriculum vitae

• A sample of written work (published paper, conference paper, book chapter, etc..)

These materials should be sent by e-mail to:

Professor Ragui Assaad (assaad)

The application deadline for fellowships during the Fall semester of 2014 is March 31st, 2014.

[Category
Professional Development]

Centennial Fellowship annoucement Fall 2014.docx

Teaching Fellow in Religious Studies
University of Edinburgh -School of Divinity

College of Humanities and Social Science

Applications are invited for the position of Teaching Fellow in Religious Studies in the School of Divinity from candidates with expertise in at least two comparative religious traditions and theories of religion from the following: Islam, African Indigenous Religions, New Age and Paganism, Christianity.

The successful candidate will be expected to provide teaching to cover research leave in the Religious Studies Subject Area in 2014/15, and to take responsibility for designing and delivering course materials and assess student performance

The successful candidate must have a PhD in Religious Studies or equivalent, or must have submitted before taking up the appointment.
They must demonstrate good teaching ability at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A proven record of publications in related subjects will be an advantage.

The successful candidate will also contribute to the knowledge exchange and impact profile of the School by engaging in professional development, funding bids and other events for external audiences.

This is a full-time, fixed-term post available from 1 August 2014 to 31 May 2015.

Salary: £30,728 - £36,661 per annum

Closing Date: 5pm (GMT) on Tuesday 4th March 2014

Vacancy Ref: 025608

For further particulars:
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AIC788/teaching-fellow-in-religious-studies/

The International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage is a high-quality, international, open access, online, double blind reviewed publication which deals with all aspects of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage.

The International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage (IJRTP) was founded in 2013 by an international group of researchers (the Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Expert Group), in association with ARROW@DIT.

https://arrow.dit.ie/ijrtp/

CFP: Religious Indifference

The Emmy-Noether-Project, “The Diversity of Nonreligion,”
(www.nonreligion.net) is happy to be hosting a workshop on “religious indifference” in Frankfurt am Main, from November 13th to 15th.
The concept of religious indifference has been used to describe a specific mode of nonreligiosity that is an expression of extremely low concern for religion. As such “indifference” is to be distinguished from religiosity on one hand and avowed atheism on the other. Furthermore, religious indifference can take various modes, for example that of “existential” or “cognitive” indifference (Pollack, Wohlrab-Sahr, and Gärtner 2003).

As with other modes of nonreligiosity, the social status of religious indifference varies according to the constitution of the religious field and the general socio-cultural context (Quack 2013, 2014). Referring to the British case, Bagg and Voas (2010) argue that current indifference is primarily the result of changes in the religious landscape of Britain and the increasing religious and social acceptance of people who do not practice any religion. Conversely, if religion is deeply embedded in civil culture, religious indifference might be negatively perceived as a form of social dissent (Wohlrab-Sahr and Kaden 2013). Bullivant (2012) by contrast, has introduced an alternative meaning of religious indifference by hinting at the seemingly paradoxical situation of rising interest and concern with religion in European secularized societies; what is at stake here is not a positioning towards personal religious belief, behavior, or belonging, but the (dis)interest in public-political manifestations of religion.

While anti-clericalism or other anti-religious expressions have visibly accompanied processes of secularization, indifference seems to be an important yet unaccounted feature of contemporary societies. In the upcoming workshop, we seek to bring together different scholars who wish to (further) engage with the concept of religious indifference. The workshop will take place in Frankfurt am Main, from November 13th-15th.

Please note that the workshop’s primary goal is to develop a joint publication. In order to do so, we suggest that all participants write a draft article and distribute it to the other participants prior to the workshop. These articles will be discussed during the workshop itself.
We welcome theoretical contributions and methodological and methodic reflections as well as case studies from different national or regional contexts.

Please send a short abstract for consideration to schuh@em.uni-frankfurt.de. Deadline for application is February 28th. The working language will be English.

Further dates of importance:

. All participants will be provided an extended conceptual sketch: Spring 2014
. Participants submit a draft article: October 2014
. Revision of articles by participants: Spring 2015
. Final Submission: Summer 2015