Category Archives: Calls for Papers

CFP: Workshop on Women Negotiating Secularism

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Invitation and call for papers

Women negotiating secularism and multiculturalism through civil society organisations

Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations, Coventry University, UK, June 30 – July 1st 2015

This workshop is the second of a series of international workshops on the theme “Is secularism bad for women? Women, Religion and Multiculturalism in contemporary Europe” focusing on the relation between the role of religion in women’s lives and gender equality (https://womenreligionandsecularism.wordpress.com ). This is an important question to debate, given the increased visibility of religion in the globalized world of the 21st century. While some scholars and political actors argue that a form of political secularism is the best way to ensure gender equality, others consider secularism a bad political arrangement for religious people, because it excludes them from the political and public sphere. Taking forward discussions initiated by Susan Moller Okin’s controversial 1997 essay ‘Is multiculturalism bad for women?’ and continued recently in works of
scholars including Saba Mahmood, Joan Scott, Nilüfer Göle, Nadje Al-Ali, Linell Cady and Tracy Fessenden, these workshops address the following questions:

  • How can European societies secure religious women’s freedom and flourishing?
  • What political arrangements offer the most to those who are religious and female? Is religion – at least some forms of it – an impossible impediment, something that must be destroyed in order for women to be free?
  • Or can religion be a positive force in women’s lives, something that enhances their wellbeing and aids social justice?

This workshop will approach these issues by focusing on the organisational or group level; the first workshop at Uppsala University (May 2015) examines the individual or everyday level, and the third at University of Coimbra, Lisbon (November 2015), will address the public and political context. In the Coventry workshop we will investigate what women’s and religious organisations are doing to address issues of secularism and multiculturalism. How do these differ by geography or faith group? To what extent do faith-based organisations working for religious inclusion in civil society press for gender equality too? How do women’s organisations approach religion, and do they consider religion to be an equality issue alongside ethnicity, gender, sexuality or disability? How are women’s faith-based organisations’ working across secular/religious spheres and with other civil society organisations?
How do theological/hermeneutical approaches inform religious organisations’ work on gender and women’s issues?

Keynote speakers:  Dr Line Nyhagen (Loughborough University) and Dr Niamh Reilly (National University of Ireland, Galway)

We invite papers that discuss these questions. Abstracts should be sent by 10th April, written in English and not exceed 300 words. Notification of acceptance will be given by April 30th. Please send abstracts to: wrsworkshops2015@gmail.com

Practical information:

The workshop will run from 4 pm on 30th June to 5 pm on 1st July. Papers will be presented in thematic, parallel sessions. Participation fee is £15 per participant or £10 for PhD, post-doc or civil society organizations, which includes refreshments. The workshop is funded by the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and organized by Dr Kristin Aune (Coventry University), Prof Mia Lӧvheim (Uppsala University), Dr Terhi Utriainen (University of Helsinki), Dr Alberta Giorgi (Centre of Social Studies, University of Coimbra; GRASSROOTSMOBILISE, Eliamep) & Dr Teresa Toldy (Fernando Pessoa
University, Porto; Centre of Social Studies, University of Coimbra). A book publication featuring some of the papers is planned.

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CFP: Religion, Art, and Creativity in the Global City

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114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
Denver  CO
November 18-22, 2015

PANEL: RELIGION, ART, AND CREATIVITY IN THE GLOBAL CITY

Contemporary cities pride themselves about being havens of cutting edge creativity. They celebrate art, culture, and innovation with highly publicized festivals, glossy brochures, and clever slogans. Religiously inspired creativity, lived religious arts, and their vernacular expressions play no role in such celebrations of urban originality. Secular fashionable definitions, dominant intellectual and artistic networks, and political and economic contingencies define some features of social and cultural innovation and artistic expression as relevant, and others, like religious ones, as insignificant.
This panel examines manifestations of social, cultural, artistic, and aesthetic innovation produced by pious individuals and their communities in global cities. Papers analyze the complex and largely neglected role of faith-based urban art and creativity. They explore exemplary contexts of pious creativity and cultural innovation. Analyzing contemporary artistic production (e.g. visual arts, music), aesthetic creativity (e.g. places of worship), social and spatial configurations (e.g. places of worship as innovative cultural centers), social innovations (e.g. faith-based associations/activities), and novel cultural formats (e.g. religious events), panelists illustrate that pious individuals are artistic and creative contributors to globalized cityscapes. Religious communities are rarely seen as havens of urban art and creativity. Instead, especially, minority communities (e.g. Muslims in Europe) are often viewed with suspicion, and their creative contributions remain contentious.

Theoretically the panel engages debates about urban art and creativity, and cultural production (engaging among others Richard Florida’s concept of the “Creative City”), which understand urban innovation as originating in small circles of creative actors and neglect religiously inspired vernacular contributions to urban creative transformations. Using examples of religiously inspired art and social and cultural creativity, panelists illustrate that only a more inclusive focus on all urban constituencies can produce a thorough understanding of urban creativity and creative processes. The challenge in trying to understand urban creativity is not to applaud the usual “creative suspects,” but to examine the creative contributions of all urbanites regardless of class, ethnicity, religion, and (desired) outcomes.

Panel Organizer: Petra Kuppinger
Discussant: James Bielo

For questions and inquiries send emails to petra@monm.edu<mailto:petra@monm.edu> .

Please submit abstracts (250 words) by April 4, 2015 to petra@monm.edu<mailto:petra@monm.edu>

Petra Kuppinger
Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology/Anthropology
Monmouth College
Monmouth IL 61462

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CFP: Summer Workshop on Faith-Based Violence

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We would like to draw your attention to the call for applications for the 2015 UCSIA summer school on “Religion, Culture and Society: Entanglement and Confrontation”. This summer school is a one-week course taking place from Sunday 23rd of August until Sunday 30th of August 2015 (dates of arrival and departure). This year the programme will focus on the topic of Is Faith-based Violence Religious?

Topic:

Despite the predicted secularization process that would make religion less salient in the global world, the topic of faith biased violence remains hugely relevant, both from a societal and an academic perspective. Whether the movements are pro-democracy or pro-theocracy, religious movements are often instrumental in political change. Political tensions mapped onto religious discourse may also de-contextualize historical events, mythologize agendas and transform neighbours into ‘others’ while the struggle for ‘Truth’ renders defence into an act of aggression. Given UCSIA’s mission to delve into academically timely and challenging topics we will approach this phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective. More specifically, the UCSIA summer school  will investigate both sides of the subject matter: Is religion inductive of or instrumental for violence?

Guest lecturers are Jonathan Fox (Religion and State Project, Faculty of the Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University); Peter Neumann (Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and  International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation); Marat Shterin (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London); & Thijl Sunier (Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam).

Practical details:

Participation and stay for young scholars and researchers are free of charge. Participants should pay for their own travel expenses to Antwerp.

You can submit your application via the electronic submission on the summer school website. The completed file as well as all other required application documents must be submitted to the UCSIA Selection Committee not later than Sunday 19 April 2015.

For further information regarding the programme and application procedure, please have a look at our website: http://www.ucsia.org/summerschool.

Please help us to distribute this call for application among PhD students and postdoctoral scholars who might be interested in applying for this summer school.

For all further information, do not hesitate to contact us on the address below.

Best regards,

Sara Mels

Project coordinator

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Conference & Call for Papers: ““Religiones en cuestión: campos, fronteras y perspectivas””

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XVIII Jornadas sobre Alternativas Religiosas en América Latina
Mendoza, Argentina, Nov 16-19, 2015

Las XVIII Jornadas sobre Alternativas Religiosas en América Latina son realizadas por la Asociación de Cientistas Sociales de la Religión del Mercosur (ACSRM). La organización local estará a cargo de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Las XVIII Jornadas se realizarán en la ciudad de Mendoza, Argentina, entre los días 16 y 19 de noviembre de 2015.

A lo largo de los cuatro días, se desarrollarán mesas redondas, grupos de trabajo, coloquios, presentaciones de libros y actividades culturales. Normas para la presentación de propuestas de Grupos de Trabajo: Los Grupos de Trabajo deberán contar con dos coordinadores, de preferencia provenientes de dos países diferentes de América Latina. Al menos uno de los coordinadores deberá poseer el título de doctor y ambos deben ser, hasta el inicio del evento, asociados de la ACSRM.

Las propuestas deberán incluir:

  • Nombre del Coordinador/a 1:
  • Adscripción Institucional:
  • Título Académico:
  • Nombre del Coordinador/a 2:
  • Adscripción Institucional:
  • Título Académico:
  • Título del GT:
  • Fundamentación: (Entre 200 y 250 palabras )

Las propuestas de GT deben enviarse hasta el 31 de marzo de 2015 al siguiente correo electrónico: jornadas.acsrm@gmail.com

 

 

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Workshop & CFP: “Women’s Religious Agency

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Invitation and call for papers: Women’s religious agency: negotiating secularism and multiculturalism in everyday life

Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, May 7-8, 2015.

This workshop is the first of a series of international workshops on the theme “Is secularism bad for women? Women, Religion and Multiculturalism in contemporary Europe” focusing on the relation between the role of religion in women’s lives and gender equality.  This is an important question to debate, given the increased visibility of religion in the globalized world of the 21st century. While some scholars and political actors argue that a form of political secularism is the best way to ensure gender equality, others consider secularism a bad political arrangement for religious people,  because it excludes them from the political and public sphere. Taking forward discussions initiated by Susan Moller Okin’s controversial 1997 essay ‘Is multiculturalism bad for women?’ and continued recently in works of scholars including Saba Mahmood, Joan Scott, Nilüfer Göle, Nadje Al-Ali, Linell Cady and Tracy Fessenden, these workshops address the following questions:

  • How can European societies secure religious women’s freedom and flourishing?
  • What political arrangements offer the most to those who are religious and female?
  • Is religion – at least some forms of it – an impossible impediment, something that must be destroyed in order for women to be free?
  • Or can religion be a positive force in women’s lives, something that enhances their wellbeing and aids social justice?

This workshop will approach these issues focusing on the individual or everyday level; the second workshop at Coventry University, UK, will address the group level, and the third at University of Coimbra, Lisbon, will address the public and political context. In the Uppsala workshop, we wish to connect research on the growing fields of ‘lived’ or ‘everyday religion’ with research on the impact of debates on secularism and multiculturalism on women’s lives, rights and identity. In everyday life women perform religion in symbolic and material ways, for example through clothing, cooking and caring work. These practices link private and public spheres and identities, and are crucial to the process of transmitting and transforming religion and secularity – however, they are sometimes overlooked or misinterpreted. This workshop will explore similarities and differences between different religious and social contexts in the dynamics between gender, religion, spirituality, non-religion and secularism. How do women’s everyday practices of religion challenge understandings of religion, agency and change in sociology of religion and in society? How can we find analytical tools to analyze complexities of power and agency in women’s performance of religion?

Confirmed keynote speakers will be Professor Elina Vuola (University of Helsinki), and assistant professor Pia Karlsson Minganti (Stockholm University).

We invite papers that discuss these questions. Abstracts should be sent by 9th March. Abstracts should be written in English and not exceed 400 words. Notification of acceptance will be given before April 7th. Please send abstracts to: linnea.jensdotter@gmail.com.

Practical information:

The workshop will run from 4 pm on the 7th of May to 5 pm on the 8th of May. Papers will be presented in thematic, parallel sessions. Participation fee is 30 euros per participant or 15 euros for PhD,
post-doc or civil society organizations, which includes refreshments. The workshop is funded by the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and organized by Prof Mia Lӧvheim (Uppsala University), Dr Terhi Utriainen (University of Helsinki), Dr Kristin Aune (Coventry University), Dr Alberta Giorgi (Centre of Social Studies, University of Coimbra; GRASSROOTSMOBILISE, Eliamep) & Dr Teresa Toldy (Fernando Pessoa University, Porto; Centre of Social Studies, University of Coimbra). The workshop in arranged in cooperation with the research Programme The Impact of Religion: challenges for society, law and democracy, a Centre of Excellence at Uppsala University 2008-2018.

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CFP: “Intersections of the Popular and the Sacred in Youth Cultures”

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YOUNG (Nordic Journal of Youth Research) Special Edition Open Call Intersections of the Popular and the Sacred in Youth Cultures

Recent years have seen a growing interest in ”re-scripting the sacred” through popular culture. Although ”youth” as an age-based category has lost its privileged status within such studies of popular culture, young people remain vital (sub)cultural agents. There has also been renewed interest in the ubiquitous contestations and ambiguities around the notion of the ”popular” in light of the increasing commodification and standardisation of culture, the opposition this engenders, and the cultural drift into virtual worlds.

The special edition of YOUNG focusses on the interrelations between popular culture, the youth and the category of the sacred. The aim is to interrogate understandings of popular and youth cultures in relation to the contested phenomena of (post)secularisation, re-enchantment and the emergence of alternative spiritualities. Seeking to analyse the social and cultural changes accompanying these phenomena, the special issue will facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue between youth studies, cultural studies, religious studies and the broader social sciences.

The journal invites submissions that locate themselves at the intersection of the three contested concepts, seeking to re-examine and re-evaluate the dynamics within and between cultural phenomena prefixed with ”popular”, ”sacred” and ”youth”. This general theme may be approached from within any discipline or methodology.

The special edition will contain five articles of 5000-8000 words with a separate 3-5,000 word introduction written by the editors.

Manuscripts should be submitted in electronic form online at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/young

Start the procedure by clicking the REGISTER button. We only accept articles (in English) that have not been published elsewhere and that have been anonymised. References in both the text and end notes should follow Harvard style whereby references should be cited in the text as (author, date: page) and an alphabetical references section follows the text.

Deadline for papers The deadline for submissions for this special edition is 31st May 2015.

Guest editors The Guest Editor will be Antti-Ville Kärjä.
Responsible journal editor: Anders Sjöborg.

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CFP: Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence

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COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO RELIGION AND VIOLENCE BEYOND TEXTS
CALL FOR PAPERS 2015

For the 2015 conference of the American Academy of Religion in Atlanta Nov 21-24, we seek papers that examine the intersections of religion and violence, with attention to the condition in which religion lends itself to the justification and/or promotion of violence. Papers should demonstrate comparative or theoretical approaches. Below are recommended themes within this framework: 
Comparative Ethics of Violence beyond Texts: We seek studies that trace the way that religious authority becomes enacted outside of traditional scriptural mandates, such as by cultural leaders, rituals, pictures, narratives and media.

If you would like to submit a paper proposal, please contact Torkel Brekke at the University of Oslo (torkel.brekke@ikos.uio.no).

We are proud to announce that the Comparative Approaches to Religion and Violence has joined with the Journal of Religion and Violence. Future submissions to the AAR program unit will be considered for publication in the journal.

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CFP: Conference on “Sacred Literature, Secular Religion

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The Le Moyne College Religion and Literature Forum

Sacred Literature, Secular Religion: A Conference on Cultural Practices
October 1-3, 2015
http://lemoyne.edu/tabid/3464/Default.aspx

Call for Papers:

Charles Taylor recently claimed that we live in “a secular age,” one in which a wide range of religious practices – and ways to opt out of those practices – are available. Today we might follow traditional forms of observance, establish new kinds of worship that are not strictly religious, or reject devotional pursuits altogether. Is Taylor right, or have these options always existed in varying degrees, in various periods and places?

This conference explores how religious and secular concerns overlap and inform modes of belief and forms of pious (and impious) expression. Rather than approach the sacred and the secular in dualistic terms, we seek ways to understand how the categories intersect and criss-cross. Rather than simply map religion onto literature or vice versa, we invite papers that conceptualize and describe the interrelation between the two. We welcome diverse ways of framing and pursuing the conference theme and hence encourage contributions from scholars not only in literary and religious  studies, but also from visual studies, history, philosophy, psychology, archeology, and elsewhere, both within and across religious traditions and in the public sphere.

We welcome papers from graduate and undergraduate students.

Send 300-word proposals to:

  • Jennifer Gurley, Department of English, Le Moyne College (gurleyja@lemoyne.edu) and
  • William Robert, Department of Religion, Syracuse University (wrobert@syr.edu)

Deadline for proposals: March 1, 2015
Notification: April 1, 2015
Conference Schedule

  • Thursday, October 1 at 4 p.m. through Saturday, October 3 at 9 p.m. 

  • Central New York Wine Country Tour (optional) on Sunday, October 4 from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

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CFP: Conference on Challenges and Opportunities: Religious Freedom Development in the Sphere of Law

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Challenges and Opportunities: Religious Freedom Development in the Sphere of Law

Conference, Yerevan, May 14-16, 2015

Call for Papers

This international conference will be dedicated to the challenges and opportunities regarding religious freedom in the experience of Eastern European countries. A quarter of century since the collapse of Soviet Union, there are still many issues in the development of law and legal procedures in the religious sphere as well as their application in practical life in many of the former Soviet Republics.  We anticipate that the academic discussion of these challenges will have practical significance not only for scholars but also for practitioners and lawyers in the development of comprehensive draft laws and other legal tools.

The local organizing committee is pleased to announce a conference on law and religion which will be held in Yerevan, Armenia at the American University of Armenia, Thursday May 14-Saturday, May 16, titled “Challenges and Opportunities: Religious Freedom Development in the Sphere of Law.”  The conference will predominantly focus on legal and policy issues affecting religious freedom in Eastern Europe. 

All scholars interested in the study of Law and Religion (preference shall be given to scholars from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Republics) are invited to submit proposals of no more than 250 words and short bios by 15 March 2015. These can be submitted electronically to hovhannes.hovhannisyan@gmail.com

The language for presentations is English, Russian, or Armenian. A number of speakers will be commissioned for the program.

Travel support may be available for those whose papers are selected.

Participants will present their papers in panel sessions (20 minutes in English) and will afterwards submit an article to for possible inclusion in a publication. The aim of the organizer is to publish a selection of articles presented at the conference.

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