CALL FOR PAPERS

Risk and Rapture: Apocalyptic Imagination in Late Modernity
Centre for Faiths and Public Policy, University of Chester
Wednesday 11th September 2013
Keynote Speaker: Professor Scott Lash (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Apocalypse captivates the human imagination. Once synonymous with ‘end of the world’ scenarios and confined largely to the religious, the term is part of vernacular language in the West and is used to describe a myriad of events from the fiscal difficulties of the Eurozone to nuclear war, from environmental disaster to the dangers of digital technology.
The advancement of science and technology has assisted in expediting anxiety with regard to apocalyptic catastrophe because such ‘progress’ has produced unforeseen hazards and risks. Critical theories of risk have been developed that harness and organise responses to scientific developments in an attempt to provide solutions to possible catastrophe. It is suggested that in order to prevent global catastrophe, modern society must be reflexive. Moreover, the advent of such hazards has served as a recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist religious groups who have clear and explicit eschatologies. Rather than viewing possible risks and hazards as by-products of late modernity-‘signs of the times’, they are re-interpreted as ‘signs of the end times’. Consequently, one strand that runs through the above is the political implications of apocalyptic ideology and theories of risk. Whether this is the focus some Christian dispensationalist groups put on the role of the state of Israel in the Middle East, or the so-called catastrophic acceleration of global-warming, decisions based on interpretations of these inevitably have political ramifications.
The purpose of this inter-disciplinary conference is to investigate and evaluate some of the variety of apocalyptic discourse that exists in contemporary popular western culture along with critical theories of risk.

Papers are invited that explore both the secular and religio-political dimensions of apocalyptic language in contemporary society and include, but not restricted to, the following themes:
* Secular interpretations of apocalypse;
* Religio-political apocalyptic discourse;
* Critical theories that seek solutions to contemporary notions of risk;
* Correlations between critical theories of risk and apocalyptic ideology;
* The growth of fundamentalisms as a reaction to risk culture(s).

Proposals for short papers are invited on any aspects or themes related to the above. Papers will be 20 minutes in length with an additional 10 minutes discussion. Applications to submit a paper should include:
* Proposer’s name and affiliation;
* Title of the paper;
* 250-word abstract;
* Details of any audio-visual equipment you will need to deliver your paper.
Short paper proposals should be submitted to Riskraptureconf@chester.ac.uk by no later than 4pm on Friday 6th April 2013. Conference costs: £50 (£25 unwaged and students) inclusive of lunch and refreshments. Conference registration will open in due course.

ESSWE4 Gothenburg 26-29 June 2013
Western Esotericism and Health
26-29 June 2013, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

http://www.esswe.org/#p/esswe-4-2013.html

Issues relating to health (understood in a broad sense) can be seen as an intrinsic part of the field of esotericism, but surprisingly little attention has been given to how health is understood and construed in esoteric discourses. The conference is thus as an attempt to fill an important lacuna in the study of Western esotericism. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to), esoteric notions and discourses on health, sexuality and well-being, “occult” causes for disease, “occult medicine”, notions of therapeutic benefits of magic and meditation, alchemical approaches to health, alternative forms of medicine, etc.

Keynote lecturers include:
Catherine L. Albanese (University of California) Peter Forshaw (University of Amsterdam) James R. Lewis (Tromsø University) Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University) Andrew Weeks (Illinois State University) Alison Winter (University of Chicago)

Papers are invited in English. Proposals for 20 minutes’ papers (title and short abstract of approximately 250 words) should be sent to Henrik Bogdan (henrik.bogdan@religion.gu.se), with your name and academic affiliation, by January 15, 2013.Conference Chairman: Henrik Bogdan (University of Gothenburg)

Conference Committee: Egil Asprem, Henrik Bogdan, Olav Hammer, Kennet Granholm, Asbjørn Dyrendal and Jesper Aa. Petersen

The 2013 International Conference

CHANGING RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN A CHANGING WORLD
Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden
June 21-24, 2013

Term for submitting paper proposals expiring soon
Due to various requests connected to the season’s holidays, we are pushing the term for submitting paper and session proposals for CESNUR 2013 in Sweden to January 20, 2013.
See the call for papers at http://www.cesnur.org/2013/swe-cfp.htm.
The location and program are very exciting and we will urge you to submit your proposals on time.
Happy New Year
CESNUR

Call for Papers
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 5pm, 28th February 2013

Collaborative partnerships between universities and Muslim institutions: dismantling the roadblocks

23rd May 2013, Senate House, London
27th June 2013, Birmingham University, Birmingham

Funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
http://www.derby.ac.uk/collaborative-partnerships-project

This is a call for papers for two conferences that are being organised as part of an ESRC funded follow-on project exploring Collaborative Partnerships between universities and Muslim institutions. This project builds on previous research around Muslim faith leadership, Islamic Studies in pluralist British contexts, women’s education and learning Arabic. Our research findings indicate that it is possible to address these issues at higher education level, focusing particularly on ways to forge a more cohesive society for Muslims and other Britons. This work will bring together Islamic Studies academics, scholars and practitioners (including professionals who may have aspects of Islamic studies in their work) to facilitate increased collaborative partnerships and linkages between UK universities and Muslim institutions, and is aimed both at academia and Muslim communities. We hope to publish a selection of these papers.

We welcome papers that explore any aspect of Islamic education at the HE (Higher Education) and FE (Further Education) levels, both in validated and non-validated sectors in Britain and beyond. We are particularly keen to include papers that incorporate the following themes:
1.      Islamic Education for cohesion, pluralism and inter-faith dialogue
2.      Collaborative educational models in the UK and beyond
3.      Barriers to collaborative partnerships and possible solutions
4.      International and local best practice
5.      Approaches to theological training in other faiths
6.      Teaching and learning Arabic

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a short biography (150 words) to
Dr Sariya Contractor (s.contractor@derby.ac.uk) and Dr. Alison Scott-Baumann (alisonscottb@gmail.com) by 5pm on Thursday 28th February, 2013. Non-academics are welcome to submit abstracts. To enhance the accessibility of our work particularly to community groups we are running conferences in two different venues. Papers will be allocated thematically to each venue, if however you have a venue preference, please indicate this in your e-mail. For further details please visit our website –
http://www.derby.ac.uk/collaborative-partnerships-project or contact the Project
Administrator Michelle Wood by email on
m.wood@derby.ac.uk or by phone on 01332 592896.

The 11th Conference of the European Sociological Association will be held 28-31 August, 2013 in Torino, Italy.

The Research Network Sociology of Religion (RN34) has issued its call for papers.
The call includes joint sessions with Sociology of Culture, Society and Sports, Sociology of Emotions, Qualitative Methods, and Sociology of Migration.
(Visit http://www.esareligion.org/)

Abstract submission opens on 12 December 2012 and closes 1 February 2013.

Call for Papers
RN34 – Sociology of Religion
Coordinators:
Anne-Sophie Lamine  anne-sophie.lamine@misha.fr
University of Strasbourg, France
Heidemarie Winkel  hwinkel@uni-potsdam.de
University of Postdam, Germany

Religion has often been understood as a response to personal, social or cultural crisis. Classical scholars, such as Peter L. Berger and Max Weber, pointed out that it provides a theodicy of good and evil – an account that gives ultimate meaning in a meaningless world. Religions, Stark and Bainbridge (1985) contend, are other-worldly compensators for individuals in crisis – for those who are deprived from this-worldly rewards. Even advocates of the secularization thesis often acknowledge that crisis and rapid social change in society temporarily motivate the popularity of religion (Bruce 1997).
But religion, once considered to be in crisis under the secularizing powers of modernity, is alive and well in Europe. More than that: religion seems to thrive on what can now be called the crisis of modernity. Modern science, the nation state, capitalism, unrestricted consumption and the globalizing economy, have lost much of their credibility and plausibility in many European countries. In this cultural climate, the voices of traditional religious groups grow louder whereas, some say, we are witnessing a massive turn to holistic forms of spirituality (e.g., Campbell 2007). The atheist-secular worldview is more than ever contested by a fraction of Muslims, Christian creationists, Buddhists and other religious groups while a mirror-like process of anti-identification gives rise to alarmist discourses about the return of religions and particularly on the danger of the “islamization of Europe”. Religion has once again become salient in the re-formation of identity and the construction of imagined communities: uprooted from tradition, modern individuals in identity crisis search for new (religious) values and meanings whereas some European nation states align themselves with their Christian heritage, long-standing traditions and religious pasts. Religion, then, can not easily be understood as the ‘irrational’ Other of modernity – it is instead a common and valid response to the growing crisis of modernity. Jurgen Habermas (2005), once a furious critic of religion, argued from this perspective that intellectuals should include religious partners in the ‘rational’ conversation about modernity since both share a growing critique on the maladies of modernity.
Motivated by these observations, the Research Network Sociology of Religion calls for papers on crisis, critique and change in relation to religion.

Particularlypapers are welcomed that discuss the following topics:
01RN34.
Studies dealing with religion in crisis, i.e. the way religious traditions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and the like – re-structure their organizations, beliefs, and practices and adopt, negotiate or resist processes of modernization, secularization and disenchantment.

02RN34.
Studies dealing with the ways religion provides answers to existential crisis and, particularly, the crisis of modernity – i.e. how and why Islam, Christianity and other religious-spiritual groups formulate a critique of and alternative to modern science, capitalism, mass-consumption and individualism.

03RN34.
Studies dealing with the way crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization, i.e., in what particular ways religion gives meaning in everyday life and if, how and why religious identity-formations induce processes of inclusion and exclusion; social cohesion and religious conflict.

04RN34.
Studies focusing on the way religion changes the modern world in Europe and beyond, i.e., how rapid social changes motivate the appeal and popularity of religion and if, how and why such religions transform private and public domains in Europe.

05RN34.
Sociology of religion (open)

07JS28JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture and RN28 Society and Sports
Sport and religion/spirituality
(Chairs: Davide Sterchele; Stef Aupers & Hubert Knoblauch)

Whereas the analogy between sport and religion has been criticized by many scholars mainly because of the lack (or low relevance) of the transcendent dimension in traditional sport practices, the recent sociological elaborations of the concept of spirituality seems to provide new interesting tools for interpreting the emerging forms of bodily movement. At the same time, the study of the analogies between traditional sports and institutionalized religions still generates relevant sociological insights.

In order to contribute to these streams of analysis and to open new horizons for further studies, the ESA research networks ‘Sociology of Culture’, ‘Society and Sports’, and ‘Sociology of Religion’, invite potential contributors to submit abstracts to the joint session on ‘Sport and religion/spirituality’. The session will thus provide a forum for exchange and sharing among sociologists of culture, sport and religion, who deal with these themes from different but overlapping perspectives.

RN34 web-page : http://www.esareligion.org/ 07JS34.
RN34 Joint session with RN07 Sociology of Culture Cultures of Religion – Religious Cultures (Chairs: Hubert Knoblauch & Regine Herbrik) “Religious Culture is quite frequently used, particularly in the French context (“culture religieuse”) relating both, to the general as well as to the specific religious patterns of culture. It may serve well not only to address empirical questions concerning the increasing cultural significance of religion within Europe as well as globally; it may also connect recent theoretical approaches in the sociology of culture on the one hand with approaches in the sociology of religion. For the joint session we invite, therefore, contributions addressing both empirical as well as theoretical issues concerning “religious cultures”.

11JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN11 Sociology of emotions Affects and Emotions in the Field of Religion (Chairs: Stef Aupers & Cécile Vermot) Generations of scholars of theology and religious studies have viewed affects, emotions, and religion as closely related issues. What can be said about the certain shapes, characteristics and forms of this relationship in present times? How far is the research on emotions especially crucial for the understanding of religious life in Europe and for the coexistence, or even living together, of different confessions? What role do “emotional regimes” (Riis/Woodhead) or “feeling rules” (Hochschild) play with regard to the formation of emotional cultures both in religious groups and communities and with regard to the quest for salvation or spirituality of individual persons?

20JS34. RN34 Joint session with RN20 Qualitative Methods Qualitative Research on Religion(Chairs: Regine Herbrik & Bernt Schnettler) We also encourage participants to present papers concerned with methodological questions related to the specific problems of empirical research in the Study of Religions. Can we transfer methods from other fields of research to the sociology of religion or do we need special, field-specific methods? What can we learn from methods used in neighbouring disciplines? Which sets of methods can be recommended for empirical analyses targeting micro-macro issues in understanding religion? What role does the gender issue play in this? We are especially interested in papers reporting empirical research finding in the sociology of religion using qualitative research methods in combination with methodological reflections.

34JS35. RN34 Joint session with RN35 Sociology of Migration Migrant religions as a challenge to European identities (Chairs: Berta Alvarez-Miranda & Heidemarie Winkel) Already in classical sociological theory, religion functioned as a looking glass of change in times of crisis. At present, migrant religions are challenging and contributing to a critique of European identities. How do various European contexts accommodate migrant religions? What are the experiences, attitu­des and demands of their followers? How does the treatment of matters related to Islam inform on European identities and their current transformations? What conceptual and empirical tools does socio­logical analysis offer for the understanding of the varieties of internal and external religious critique?

*Second annual conference of the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR), *

*At The Clinton Centre, University College Dublin, 10th-12^th May 2013*

Conference theme:
*Ireland, America and Transnationalism: studying religions in a globalised world*

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: http://isasr.wordpress.com/. The Conference will take place *Fri-Sun May 10^th -12^th , 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 19^th and 20^th 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 22^nd February, 2012*. Notification of abstract acceptance will be given by Friday March 15th, 2012.*_

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
* Children’s Subjectivities and the Experience of Religious Educations
* Gender and Religion

If you wish to submit an abstract for these panels please indicate this in your abstract submission_*

Further information on the ISASR Conference 2013 will be posted at:
*http://isasr.wordpress.com/ **

The conference is hosted by ISASR in collaboration with The Clinton Institute, UCD.

A Call for Papers

The Fourth Annual International Conference on the Study of Islamophobia
University of California, Berkeley Booth Auditorium, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Law)
April 19th and 20th, 2013

This international conference sponsored by the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley is a multi-disciplinary and academic gathering focused on the systematic study of the “Othering” of Islam, the racialization of Muslims, and its institutional effects domestically and worldwide. From its inception in 2008, the conference is a forum for scholars, researchers and community activists who are engaged in the study of, and the collective attempt to, deconstruct the ideological, discursive, political, economic, social, and religious forces of Islamophobia. While there is an abundance of scholarly works available across many academic fields, our goal is to provide a dedicated intellectual space for an increasingly interdisciplinary and multi-collaborative platform for a global network of individuals and institutions working on issues about Islamophobia.

Papers presented at the conference will have the possibility of being published in the bi-annual Islamophobia Studies Journal published through as a collaborative effort between the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley, the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative for the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University; the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia, and Zaytuna College.

This is an open call for papers for our fourth annual conference to be held on April 19th and 20th, 2013 at Boalt Law School at UC Berkeley. The deadline for paper abstracts is January 10th, 2013. Please email proposals or for more information contact: Professor Hatem Bazian at hatemb@berkeley.edu. Include name, paper topic, academic title, and institutional affiliation.