Call for papers: Special Issue of Gender & Society
Gender is one of the most salient features of religious movements and religious institutions. Women are the majority of participants in religious life and they are increasingly significant actors in religious movements and politics. In many religious traditions, cultural and religious continuity hinges on gendered practices and sexual regimes.
Many regions of the world are experiencing important transformations with respect to religion. For instance, China has seen an enormous upsurge in participation in religious and spiritual movements, including large numbers of women. Evangelical Christianity is an increasingly significant player in society and politics across the Global South.
Buddhist women in Asia are taking on positions of greater authority in their religious tradition. Hindu nationalism in India and Islamist governments coming to power in the Middle East and North Africa, have given renewed urgency to questions about women and religion. And in the United States, many political debates continue to be polarized by religious affiliation and these debates have become significant issues in public discourse.
Despite the growing popular and scholarly interest in religion, scholarship on gender and religion remains under-conceptualized and marginalized in the discipline of sociology.This special issue of Gender & Society seeks to bring together a range of empirical studies at the intersection of gender and religion in diverse contexts to in order to develop new theoretical concepts and perspectives that can illuminate these issues.Gender & Society is one of the most highly cited journals in sociology, and we expect this issue to become a significant platform for emerging scholarship that will point toward new directions and continuing conversations in the study of gender and religion.
We welcome papers that interrogate the gendered nature of religious communities, movements, and experiences while recognizing the centrality of religion in the lives ofmany communities and individuals. Especially welcome are papers that highlighttransnational work that is grounded in deep regional knowledge, papers that bridgedifferent religions, and papers that contribute to theorizing of major conceptual debates in the study of gender and sociology more generally. Empirical and theoretical issues may include:
* Religion, structure, and agency
* Religious social movements
* Religious sexual cultures
* Religious masculinities
* Gendered religious practices
* Religion, gender, and politics
* Religion, gender, and everyday life
* Gender and secularism/post-secularism
* Religious law and gender
* Religion and activism for social/gender justice
* Religion, gender, and economic life / and or class
* Intersectional perspectives on gender and religion
* Religion, gender, and nationalism
Completed manuscripts, due September 1, 2013, should be submitted online to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gendsoc and should specify in the cover letter that the paper is to be considered for the special issue.
For additional information, please contact any of the guest editors for this issue:
Orit AvishaiDepartment of SociologyFordham University avishai@fordham.edu
Afshan Jafar Department of SociologyConnecticut College ajafar@conncoll.edu
Rachel RinaldoDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Virginia rar8y@virginia.edu