Author Archives: Janaki

CFP: Zürich conference, June 2016

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Please consider submitting proposals for this conference:

Pray without Ceasing: Spiritual Wisdom and the Practice of Theology

Second International Conference and inauguration of the Center for the Academic Study of Christian Spirituality will be held June 20-23, 2016 in Kappel, Switzerland.

Dr. Rebecca A. Giselbrecht
rebecca.giselbrecht@theol.uzh.ch
Director of the Center for the Academic Study of Christian Spirituality
University of Zurich
Theological Faculty
Kirchgasse 9
8001 Zürich

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CFP: 4th Annual “Ways of Knowing: The Graduate Conference in Religion at Harvard Divinity School”

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We wanted to remind you that proposals are due by Friday, July 17th, for the 4th Annual “Ways of Knowing, The Graduate Conference on Religion at Harvard Divinity School,” October 22-24, 2015, open to all graduate and post-doctoral early career scholars. Our call for papers (attached) is open to all work related to the study of religion, broadly conceived. In addition, we are featuring four special topic modules with targeted calls: 1) Religion and Crisis, 2) The Promise and Peril of Textual Religion, 3) Magic/Science/Religion, and 4) Food Practices Across Religious Traditions.
Our keynote speaker will be Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religious Studies, American Studies, History and Divinity at Yale University. Her address will be titled “A Problem of Culture: The Goldman Sachs Group in Crisis.”
In addition, we will feature a faculty panel on Religion and the Media, and two professionalization panels with Harvard faculty and alumni: The Academic and Non-Academic Job Markets, and Building a Family and an Academic Career.

Once again, the deadline for submissions is Friday, July 17. Check our website for updated information and for the submission form, http://hds.harvard.edu/gradreligionconference.

Don’t hesitate to email Kirsten Wesselhoeft at gradreligionconference@hds.harvard.edu with any questions.

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CFP: Liberal Rights for Illiberal Purposes? Workshop 15-17 Oct 2015

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Call for Papers for the Workshop

Liberal Rights for Illiberal Purposes? Comparing Discursive Strategies of Conservative Religious and Right-wing Actors in the Public Spheres

October 15-17 2015

European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder (Germany) and Słubice (Poland)

A battle between institutions expanding liberal rights  and  conservative or right-wing forces has flared in most western societies since the mid-nineties. Whereas the promotion of gender mainstreaming, the recognition of cultural and sexual diversity or of „reproductive rights“ is naturally seen as part of a liberal agenda and as reliable tool for combating discrimination, also conservative coalitions base their claims on liberal argumentation. This is a novum in this debate.

Instead of opposing gay-marriage on religious grounds, coalitions against the political implementation of gay rights increasingly formulate their demands on the basis of respect for freedom of expression or religious liberty. In a similar vein, political groups and parties opposing Muslim immigrants,  also claim to  defend the „western heritage“ of liberalism.

In the light of these observations, we invite scholars from different disciplines such as social science, philosophy or communication studies to an international workshop. The aims of the workshop are:

a)   a) To map and compare the public rhetoric or discursive strategies of conservative religious and right-wing actors on liberal norms:

b)    b) To investigate the implications the mentioned empirical insights have for liberal thinking – taking into account that liberal theory considers the translation of religious reasons into a secular language before entering the public sphere a desirable condition for „post-secular“ societies (Habermas);

c)   c) To analyze the effects such clashing interpretations of or reference to fundamental liberal democratic values (equality and liberal freedom) have for politics, society and research as well.

d)    d) To think about publishing and further research on that issue.

Against this background, paper-givers should address one or more of the following questions:

Empirical:

In which ways, under which conditions and for which ends do conservative religious and/or right-wing groups apply a secular language of liberal rights in the public spheres?

Conceptual and Methodological:

How to conceptualize and methodologically approach the public reference to “liberal rights for illiberal purposes”?

Normative:

Which normative implications does the apparently strategic use of liberal rights language have for liberal theory on the one hand and the use of political/liberal concepts on the other?

Analytical:

What are effects or implications of such „liberal“ rhetoric for politics, society and academic research alike? To what extent does it trigger the formation of new patterns of conflict or cleavages? In the case of religious groups: What are the effects for boundaries between religion and politics?

The workshop is organized by the Chair of Comparative Politics at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Science at European University Viadrina. It will take place from October 15-17, 2015 at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder and Słubice on the other side of the river Oder. The European University Viadrina is situated approximately 1h (by local train) from Berlin.

Please send your abstract (300 words), and a short bio note, to Anja Hennig (ahennig@europa-uni.de) by August 4 2015. Applicants will be informed about the acceptance of their submission no later than September 1 2015.

Travel costs and accommodation of a few selected participants can be covered.

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Symposium: Religion and the Global City

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A one-day symposium, sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust, the Department
of Religious Studies, and SSPSSR, University of Kent

10 am – 6 pm, Friday 11 September, The Common Room, Cathedral Lodge,
Canterbury

This symposium adopts a non-reductive stance in exploring city dynamics
of religious presence in global contexts. How do religious groups make
space and ‘take place’ in the global city? What kind of spatial models,
morphologies and ‘religeopolitics’ do they produce and adopt? To what
extent does religion contribute to the ‘hyper-diversity’ of
multicultural cityscapes? What kind of religious centralities and
peripheries are produced or reproduced in global cities?

The day will consist of four sessions:

  • Power, Visibility, and the Politics of Space
  • Centralities, Peripheries, and Religious Reterritorialisation
  • Religious Media, Publics, and Global Cultural Flows
  • Global Migration, Everyday Multiculturalism, and Religious Place-making

Phil Hubbard (University of Kent), John Eade (University of Roehampton),
Jeremy Carrette (University of Kent), and Paul-François Tremlett (Open
University) will be the discussants for the event.

The event is free, but spaces are limited. To register, please email the
event organisers, David Garbin (D.Garbin@kent.ac.uk) and Anna Strhan
(A.H.B.Strhan@kent.ac.uk).

For the full programme, please see the page here:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/thrs/events/?eid=13555&view_by=month&date=20150904&category=&tag=religious

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Call for communications: International and Interdisciplinary Colloquium – Religious facts and media

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Religious Facts and Media International and Interdisciplinary Conference
March 23-24, 2016
Paris
École Pratique des Hautes Études
Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités

The Ph. D. candidates of the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (EPHE-CNRS) organise a colloquim, devoted to Religious Facts and Media. It will take place in Paris, at the GSRL, on the 23rd and 24th of March 2016.

This colloquium will open for discussion the processes and issues at stake related to the mediatization of religion in a French society that largely considers itself to be secular. It will focus on the mainstream news media, both in their conventional and digital forms. It aims to encourage reflection about the mechanisms of information production on religious facts and to question the specificity of the media coverage of religious facts in France compared to foreign media practices.

It is opened to researchers, post-doctoral fellows and ph. D. candidates, French and foreign, from all fields.

The communications proposals, written in French or English, must contain the following elements: LAST NAME, First name, electronic adress, statute and academic institution of belonging of the author(s). They must indicate the direction(s) into which they fit. They must count 3000 characters (with spaces). They must be at the formats .rtf ou .doc. They must be received by September 15, 2015, with the following object: “colloquium proposal“, at this address: faits.religieux.et.medias@gmail.com.

Learn more at https://faitsreligieuxetmedias.wordpress.com

 

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CFP: Ibadan Journal of Sociology

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CALL FOR PAPERS: Ibadan Journal of Sociology

Background
Ibadan Journal of Sociology, published by Department of Sociology, Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, is now accepting manuscripts for its June 2015 Volume 2 edition. Authors should submit original manuscripts addressing pertinent academic and policy issues but must be of relevance to Sociology. Manuscripts can be either empirical or theoretical but must be interesting and accessible in language and style to both sociologists and non-Sociologists. The use of jargons should therefore be very minimal. Submitted manuscripts will be considered if they have neither been previously published nor under review in another journal or publisher in whatever form or language. Otherwise, the author(s) must inform the editor(s).

Review Process
Manuscripts adjudged suitable, in the first instance, will be subjected to at least two peer reviews. Articles and book reviews will only be accepted based on originality, content, currency, accuracy, relevance, compliance with editorial styles and other technical issues. All articles will be checked for plagiarism with the aid of anti-plagiarism software. Articles that do not comply with preparation/editorial styles/guidelines, stated below, will automatically and immediately be rejected without proceeding to peer reviews. United Kingdom (British) English Standard is the journal’s approved style. The maximum word count for articles is 8000, 5000 for book reviews, excluding tables, photographs, references and endnotes. Manuscripts must be in Ms Word for PC and must only be submitted as e-mail attachment. For accepted manuscripts, it must be noted that the editor(s) may make revisions to manuscripts but major revisions will be shared with author(s) for approval.

Manuscript’s Arrangement
A typical manuscript for the journal should follow the standard arrangement of:
1. Cover page: detailing succinct title of manuscript, author(s) names, institutional affiliation, address, email address, acknowledgement of funders, subjects etc (if any), indicated corresponding author.
2. Maximum of 250 words abstract giving lucid summary of the whole manuscript (on a separate page). This normally should not have citations
3. The main article with introduction/Background, engagement with relevant literature, methodology, findings, discussion, conclusion, endnotes, references, brief autobio.
4. Endnotes. No footnotes please
Ibadan Journal of Sociology

The reference guide for all manuscripts for this journal is University of Ibadan Manual of Style (UIMS). This can be downloaded free from the University of Ibadan website through the PG School link. Otherwise, kindly contact the editor for assistance.

Correspondence
Manuscripts for consideration in this Volume 2 should be sent to the editor, Professor. A.O. Olutayo, at lantopamtu@yahoo.com. All correspondence should also be addressed to the editor. Contributors should kindly be aware that the Department of Sociology, Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, Nigeria reserves the copyright in all articles published in Ibadan Journal of Sociology. In cases of wanting reprint, contributors must seek express permission of the publisher/Department of Sociology, Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, but this will not be granted within 3 years of publication of the article. Contributors will be entitled to 2 hard copies of their artless with the volume number in which their articles appeared. Extra copies may however be accessed by contributors once they contact the editor having paid the appropriate charges per article.

Deadline for Submission
Deadline for submission for this edition is Monday 31 May, 2015 but immediate submissions will still be considered.

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Job Opening: Center on Religion and Chinese Society

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The CRCS is seeking a Program Manager for the Mapping Chinese Spiritual Capital Project, a three-year initiative to expand the social scientific study of religion in China. We will pursue three interrelated goals: mapping the religious landscape and the changing religious markets in China; assessing spiritual capital in the emerging civil society; and nourishing the growing field through publishing first-rate research in a new journal, the Review of Religion and Chinese Society. Review of applications will begin immediately. For more information or to apply, follow this link or visit our website at www.purdue.edu/crcs/.

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CFP – 2nd Annual International Conference: China in the Middle East

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Call for Papers:  2ND ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:
CHINA IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Neoliberalism with Chinese Characteristics and Political Transformations in the Middle East
DOHA, QATAR MARCH 23 AND 24, 2016
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Qatar University, Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies and Department of Central Eurasian Studies Indiana University and Sociology of Islam Journal invite interested scholars and advanced graduate students to submit proposals for the conference below. The event will take place at the Qatar University on MARCH 23 AND 24, 2016. Please submit a 200-word paper proposal along with your CV to china.middleeast@yahoo.com by Monday November 30, 2015.
  
ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
Dr. Mohammedmoin Sadeq, Qatar University, Qatar
Dr. Jamsheed Choksy, Indiana University, USA
Dr. Kemal Silay, Indiana University, USA
Dr. Zan Tao, Peking University, People’s Republic of China
Dr. Tuğrul Keskin, Portland State University, USA
Conference communication assistant: Michael McCall, Leiden University – china.middleeast (at) yahoo.com or Tugrul Keskin tugrulk (at) vt.edu
Description and Objectives:
The increasingly neoliberal economy that has developed since the early 1980s has led to an emergence of a vibrant middle class in China. This new demographic, roughly 350-400 million people, began to consume more. This has continued to shape Chinese Foreign Policy towards oil producing countries, particularly in the Middle East after Xi Jinping came to power in 2013. One of the first signs of these changes can be seen in the proposal of a new Silk Road initiative, introduced by Xi Jinping. Over the last two years, we have seen the increase of Chinese political and social activities in the region, fueled by the economic needs for PRC. As a result of this new political strategy, the PRC started to play a more active role within the Middle Eastern political arena. Hence, Xi Jinping visited Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi and Arabia in March 2015. Additionally, Chinese social and cultural activities began to appear more visibly within the universities and educational institutions in the Middle East.  Hanban Institutes started to open and finance Confucius Institutes in the region that facilitate Chinese cultural and language classes and promote mutual understanding between China and the Middle East. For example these institutes have arisen in Turkey, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, UAE, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Morocco. China has also become one of the largest economic and trade partners with Middle Eastern states such as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel. Therefore, we would like to make this academic initiative a permanent conference meeting, and each year, we will organize a China and the Middle East Conference in different countries in collaboration with other universities.
We organized a very successful first academic conference on this topic in collaboration with Beijing University, on March 17-18, 2015. The conference took place in Beijing University and 24 papers were presented within six different panels. On the second day, the newly opened Indiana University Beijing office hosted two panels. The selected conference proceedings (approximately 6-8) will be published by a peer-reviewed academic journal, the Sociology of Islam, in the Fall of 2015. You will find the first conference program at the following homepage:
http://chinaandthemiddleeast.blogspot.com/2015/02/international-conference-china-in.html
As a result of this conference and academic initiative on China and the Middle East, we established a new academic mailing list on China and the Middle East, hosted by Virginia Tech University. In our second upcoming conference, we will examine social, political and economic relations between China and Middle Eastern states and societies in the context of the neoliberal economy. The conference proceedings will also be published in the Sociology of Islam Journal (Brill – http://www.brill.nl/sociology-islam).
The second conference (MARCH 23 AND 24, 2016) will have six different panels and 24 participants.
Participants are responsible for their travel expenses, accommodation and any other expenses.
This is a purely academic conference.
Tentative Program and Panels’ Titles
Keynote Speech – TBA
Conference Program
MARCH 23, 2016
9:00 – 9:30 AM Opening Ceremony
9:00 – 9:15 AM Welcome Speech by Representative of Qatar University
9:15 – 9:30 AM Opening Remarks by Representative of Qatar University
9:45 – 12:00 Panels
1. Panel: NEOLIBERALISM IN CHINA
2. Panel: NEOLIBERALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
12:00-13:30 PM Lunch
14:00-16:30 PM Panels
3. Panel: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES IN CHINA AND THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE CONTEXT OF NEOLIBERALISM
4. Panel:
MARCH 24, 2016
9:30-12:00
5. Panel: CHINESE POLITICAL ECONOMY TOWARD MIDDLE EAST
6. Panel: ENERGY AND SECURITY IN CHINA AND MIDDLE EAST
Closing Remarks by Dr. Jamsheed Choksy, Indiana University, USA

 

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Tenure Track Position in Religion & Society – San Diego State University

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San Diego State University’s Department of Religious Studies invites
applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant or
associate professor in Religion and Society with a specialization in the
social scientific study of religion (anthropology of religion, or
sociology of religion) to begin fall semester 2016. The faculty member
will bring the methods and tools of the social sciences to researching
the contemporary nexus between religion and social issues. We seek a
specialist in an area outside the USA, including, but not limited to,
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Southeast
Asia, or India. The candidate must be trained in the social scientific
study of religion and should demonstrate expertise in particular areas
of study and in specific religious communities. Areas of specialization
could include racial ideology, gender and equality, environmental
theology, or other possibilities, but the primary requirement is
expertise in social science methods. The successful candidate will
combine historical and language expertise with modern social theory
using their object of study as an example of wider, cross-cultural
social forces and issues. Engagement with issues of methodology in the
academic study of religion is essential. The chosen candidate will show
promise to teach lower, upper, and cross-listed division courses, and
produce a well-planned research/scholarship agenda whose interests will
enhance existing strengths within a department known for its
interdisciplinary and comparative approaches, will participate in
professional organizations, collaborate with other departments, serve
the larger San Diego community, and complement the mission and
collegiality of the department.

Qualifications include demonstrated skills in teaching undergraduates.
Candidates must possess a strong commitment to teaching excellence and
demonstrate promise for and publication. A Ph.D. in the sociology of, or
anthropology of religion, must be in hand at time of appointment.

SDSU is a large, diverse, urban university and Hispanic-Serving
Institution with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusive
excellence. Our campus community is diverse in many ways, including
race, religion, color, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual
orientation, gender identity and expression, national origin, pregnancy,
medical condition, and covered veteran status. We strive to build and
sustain a welcoming environment for all. SDSU is seeking applicants with
demonstrated experience in and/or commitment to teaching and working
effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds and members of
underrepresented groups.

Applicants must apply via Interfolio at
http://apply.interfolio.com/30156. Applicant screening will begin
September 15, 2015 and the position will remain open until filled.
Applications will be accepted until a suitable candidate is found.

The person holding this position is considered a “mandated reporter”
under the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act and is
required to comply with the requirements set forth in CSU Executive
Order 1083 as a condition of employment.

San Diego State University is a Title IX, equal opportunity employer and
does not discriminate against individuals on the basis of race,
religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity
and expression, marital status, age, disability, pregnancy, medical
condition, or covered veteran status.

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