Author Archives: SISR/ISSR General Secretary

Northwestern University: Associate or Full Professor – Islam in African Societies

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Northwestern University’s Program of African Studies is accepting applications for a full-time tenured appointment at the rank of Associate or Full Professor with an active research agenda that focuses on the role of Islam in African societies.
The appointment will be contingent upon a successful tenure review.
The appointment will be in a home department in the College of Arts & Sciences (including but not limited to Religious Studies, Anthropology, Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Literature, or History) and will be associated with the interdisciplinary Program of African Studies. The ability to engage across disciplines and the capacity to provide leadership for interdisciplinary collaboration to support the study of Islam at Northwestern University is highly desirable.

Applicants should submit
(1) a letter of intent describing their current research agenda and teaching experience/interests,
(2) representative written work,
3) a curriculum vitae, and
(4) the names and contact information for three referees via the application system found at
https://facultysearch.weinberg.northwestern.edu/apply/index/NjY.
Only electronic application materials will be accepted. The internal review process for applications will begin immediately and continue until October 1, 2013.
Questions can be directed to african-studies@northwestern.edu.
We strongly encourage women and minorities to apply. AA/EOE.
http://www.northwestern.edu/african-studies/position-available—islam-in-african-societies.html

The Word and the World: Public Theology in an Age of GlobalMedia

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Call for Papers
THE WORD AND THE WORLD: PUBLIC THEOLOGY IN AN AGE OF GLOBAL MEDIA
Global Network for Public Theology

Riverside Innovation Centre, University of Chester
Sept 2nd – 6th, 2013
Plenary Keynotes:
Prof. Jolyon Mitchell (Edinburgh)
Prof. Linda Woodhead (Lancaster)
Dr Heidi Campbell (Texas A&M)

GNPT’s 2013 triennial meeting considers the relationship between the media and global public theology. In particular, the conference will explore the extent to which media, information and communication technologies have become a new, largely autonomous, ‘public’ sphere with global reach and an increasingly influential (and not necessarily benign) role to play in mediating religious and spiritual concerns and representing religion to a wider public. The consultation will explore the ways in which electronic media function as powerful means by which religious organizations mediate their presence and message into wider society; and some of the ethical and theological dimensions of the production and consumption of media and popular culture.

Topics for the Consultation will include:
* How established and emerging forms of media and mass communication shape the ways in  which religious organizations and movements communicate with the wider public sphere;
* How electronic media shape public perceptions of religious belief, practice and representation;
* How mainstream media – news and entertainment – report and represent religious belief, practice and affiliation in pluralist, secularising and multi-cultural societies;
* The role of media in impeding or facilitating wider ‘religious literacy’ within societies;
* How media technologies are working to reconfigure the very relationship between ‘private’ and ‘public’, and reshaping our concepts of selfhood, privacy, community;
*How new media assist in developing what Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors term the ‘alternative politics of belonging’ – within or alongside conventional structures of democratic participation
*The re-emergence of the idea of ‘the sacred’ as applied to public discourse, especially within fields of popular culture, media and popular spiritualities;
* Issues of media ethics: sex and violence, ownership and control, freedom and censorship, representation of minorities, commercialism and the use and abuse of information and communications technologies;
* How patterns of globalisation affect the theory and practice of communication; how new forms of broadcast, network and social media affect practices of faith amongst global diasporas.

Short papers will be grouped into the following themes:
1. Media, Public Life and Public Theology
2. Globalization and Public Theology
3. Learning, Teaching and Researching in Public Theology: methods, innovations and case studies
4. Theological Sources and Resources for Global Public Theology

Proposals for short papers are invited on any aspects or themes related to the above. Papers should be 30 minutes in length with an additional 15-20 minutes discussion.
Applications to submit a paper should include:
* Proposer’s name, institutional affiliation and contact details (preferably email);
* Title of the paper;
* 200-word abstract;
* Details of any audio-visual equipment you will need to deliver your paper.
Applications to be sent to: trs@chester.ac.uk
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 April 2013.

CFP: SYMPOSIUM: IRISH WOMEN, RELIGION AND DIASPORA

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Irish Women, Religion and the Diaspora: A Symposium
Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
Saturday 18th January 2014

The Women on Ireland Research Network invite paper proposals for a symposium on Irish Women, Religion and the Diaspora. This Symposium seeks to understand not only the shifting role that religion has played in the lives of Irish women but the role that Irish women themselves have undertaken in religious institutions and organisations and how this role has changed over time. Although the idea of diaspora assumes a shared experience, Irish migrants were of different social, economic, political and even religious backgrounds.
Their experiences were coloured by their end destinations which included the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, India and continental Europe. This symposium aims to tease out the significance of religion to Irish women at home and abroad.
Within this framework of Irish women, Religion and Diaspora, topics could include, but are not limited to:
* Religious and social networks and the significance of place
* Religion and cultural transfer
* Material culture and Irishness
* Experiences of religion expressed through literature
* Irish women’s religious institutes and diaspora
* Irish lay women and faith-based organisations
* Irish women and global religious dynamics
* Diaspora, place and missions
* National and transnational religious networks

Each paper should be no longer than 20 minutes and 300 word proposals should be send to both Dr Maria Power (m.c.power@liv.ac.uk) and Dr Carmen Mangion (c.mangion@bbk.ac.uk) by 30th June 2013.

Nationalism, religion and tradition in the Muslim world

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CALL FOR PAPERS
“Nationalism, religion and tradition in the Muslim world”

The 31ST Annual Conference of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies

GEORGIA REGENTS UNIVERSITY
Augusta, GA
April 4-5, 2014

Suggestions for proposals include all of the following:
– The role of religion in the foundation of states (Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia).
– The role of religion in legitimating governance in Muslim majority countries.
-The relationship between religious and national identities in specific Muslim communities (majority and minority).
– Notions of citizenship in Islam.
– Political, economic and social relations within and between the Muslim world and other communities.
– Political, economic, social and philosophical movements within the Muslim world.
– The impact of globalization on the Muslim world.
– The interplay of the religion of Islam with commerce, finance, technology and education.
– Religious minorities in the Muslim world and Muslims as minority groups.
– The press, social networks and communication within the Muslim world.
– Other topics not specifically mentioned.

Please note that Muslim world includes any place where Muslims reside. Scholars from all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences are encouraged to submit proposals. Please include full name, title, and institutional affiliation with your proposal.

Please email your proposal (max. 250 words) to Robert Hazan at hazanr@msudenver.edu (Professor of Political Science and Chair, Metro State University of Denver)
* Deadline for submission of proposal: January 15, 2014.
* Notification of acceptance of papers: February 10, 2014.
* Participants must submit e-copies of their paper to mbishku@gru.edu by March 15, 2014.
Michael B. Bishku (Professor of History, Georgia Regents University)
* Participants must register for the conference at www.acsis.us by March 15, 2014.

Scientology in Scholarly Perspective

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Call for Papers
SCIENTOLOGY IN SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVE
First International Conference on the Study of Scientology (and Antoinism)

24-25 January 2014

Venue: Faculty of Comparative Studies of Religions (FVG) – Wilrijk (Antwerpen) Belgium Sponsor: Observatoire Européen des religions et de la Laïcité (The European Observatory of Religion and Secularism)

Compared with other New Religious Movements, Scientology was largely ignored by religious studies scholars for decades. Following the groundbreaking work of Roy Wallis, The Road to Total Freedom (1976), and Harriet Whitehead, Renunciation and Reformulation (1987), one had to wait more than two decades for the next academic volumes on the Church to appear, Scientology (2009), edited by James R. Lewis, and The Church of Scientology (2011), by Hugh B. Urban. There are now positive signs that more and more researchers are involved in researching issues raised by various aspects of Scientology.

The Observatory thus feels it is time to hold a major international conference to bring this new scholarship to light. We seek to bring together researchers working on Scientology in the fields of theology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, literature, film et cetera, whether established academicians, doctoral students or master’s students. This will be the first academic conference devoted exclusively to Scientology.

The topics listed below are meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive:
– Doctrinal characteristics
– Healing and therapy
– Sociological status: where does Scientology fits into the typology of religious groups?
– Judicial issues addressing Scientology’s religious status and ex-member lawsuits
– Membership: numbers, growth, sociological profile
– Recruitment, missions
– Organization of the Church and its networks
– Social and political conflict and exposés
– Media coverage
– Human rights and humanitarian programs run by the Church, etc.

The language of the conference will be English.

Organizing Committee: Chris Vonck, Professor of Religious Studies and Dean of the faculty of Comparative Studies of Religion at the University of Antwerp (Belgium); Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, Professor of North American Studies and Director of the Master’s Program in Religious Studies at the Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 (France); James R. Lewis, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø (Norway); Regis Dericquebourg, Université de Lille-France, Group on the Sociology of Religion and Secularism-CNRS-Paris (France).

The committee will select papers based on their scholarly quality and non-partisan approach. Papers will be considered for publication, with editorial details provided during the conference.Keynote Speakers will be announced at a later date. Additionally, Information on housing, transportation and tours will be provided later.

Deadline for proposal submissions: 30 September 2013.

Send a 10 line abstract, with a 5 line résumé of your previous work to:
regis.dericquebourg@univ-lille3.fr

[Antoinism – In order to benefit from the meeting of international scholars in Antwerp, the local organizers also plan a workshop on a major therapeutic new religion, Antoinism, which originated in Belgium at the beginning of the 20th century. To submit a proposal for the workshop, follow the same guidelines as set forth above.]

New book: Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality

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Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality
Ethnographic Approaches
Edited by Anna Fedele and Kim Knibbe

http://genderandpowerincontemporaryspirituality.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/image-cover.jpeg

This book contains captivating descriptions of the entanglements of gender and power in spiritual practices and detailed analyses of the strategies spiritual practitioners use to attain what to social scientists might seem an impossible goal: creating spiritual communities without creating gendered hierarchies.
Contemporary spiritual practitioners tend to present their own spirituality as non-hierarchical and gender equal, in contrast to ‘established’ religions. Current studies of these movements often reproduce their selfdescription as empowering, while other literature reacts polemically against these movements, describing them as narcissist and irrelevant and/or in league with capitalism. This book moves between these two poles, recognizing that gender and power are always at work in any socio-cultural situation.
What strategies do people within these networks use to attain gender equality and gendered empowerment? How do they try to protect and develop individual freedom? How do gender and power nevertheless play a role?
The contributions collected in this book demonstrate that in order to understand contemporary spirituality the analytical lenses of gender and power are essential. Furthermore, they show that it is not possible to make a clear distinction between established religions and contemporary spirituality:
the two sometimes overlap, at other times spirituality uses religion to play off against while reproducing some of the underlying interpretative frameworks. While recognizing the reflexivity of spiritual practitioners and the reciprocal relationship between spirituality and disciplines such as anthropology, the authors do not take the discourses of spiritual practitioners for granted. Their ethnographic descriptions of lived spirituality span a wide range of countries, from Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands to Mexico and Israel.

“An important and original contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of gender and power in alternative forms of spirituality.” – Sabina Magliocco, California State University, Northridge, USA

“Central to spirituality is a desire for personal liberation, we hear again and again. Yet this rich collection of ethnographies demonstrates that it is deeply shaped by performances ofgender and power.” – Dick Houtman, Erasmus University, Netherlands

https://genderandpowerincontemporaryspirituality.wordpress.com/

New book on youth and religion

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Flàvio Munhoz Sofiati, Religião e juventude. Os novos carismàticos, Editora Ideias&Letras, São Paulo 2013².

O estudo aqui apresentado percorre a maneira como a vitalidade carismática coloniza a o cotidiano de seus jovens seguidores, vertebrando propostas aparentemente “estranhas” à juventude, que oscilam da rigidez doutrinal, no campo sexual, a integração das mais avançadas tecnologias e performances musicais. Numa narrativa fluída, o livro revela insuspeitados mecanismos sociológicos que tecem as tramas do religioso, irrigando o mundo urbano nas grandes cidades. Além disso, o livro de Flávio Sofiati oferece uma compreensão das crises da juventude, em geral, e de suas aspirações religiosas, em particular.

International Workshop: The Future of Religious Pluralism in Europe

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International Workshop: The Future of Religious Pluralism in Europe
Friday, May 17th – Saturday, May 18th 2013

Academic Direction: Volker Heins (KWI), Riem Spielhaus, (EZIRE)
Location: Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI), Gartensaal, Goethestr. 31, 45128 Essen, Germany
Organizer: Research Unit “Interculturality” at the KWI & Erlangen Centre for Islam & Law in Europe (EZIRE)

Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center indicate that globalization and migration are changing the relations between the state and religion, because the world population, with the notable exception of Europeans, is becoming more religious and devout. Through immigration, particularly from Muslim-majority countries, the ramifications of this trend are increasingly felt in Europe too. With regard to Muslims, we are witnessing new combinations of well-known forms of xenophobia and racism with a more subtle and insidious anti-religious impulse of the “enlightened” sections of the population. These new ideological combinations have found expression in recent public controversies about Muslim headscarves, halal/kosher butchering, the ritual circumcision of Jewish and Muslim boys and, more generally, on the place and visibility of religion in European society. Overall, these controversies – and the policies they inspire – have a tendency to restrict the freedom of cultural and religious minorities and to favour a shift from a “passive” or “open” to a more “coercive” or “fundamentalist” type of secularism, in line with the broader European trend away from multiculturalism.
However, this trend doesn’t go unchallenged. As forces from both ends of the political spectrum join hands to restrict the space for minorities, other unlikely coalitions are forming to reshape European societies in the light of more inclusive ideals of civil solidarity. While we acknowledge that the “backlash against multiculturalism” is real, we believe that not enough attention has been given to the meaning of the intellectual and political responses and contributions of relevant minorities themselves to the current situation.
The forthcoming conference at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) will address this gap. Focusing on Muslim and Jewish communities in Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark, the conference will explore various aspects of the triangular relationship between those two paradigmatic minorities and mainstream society. What are the available cultural strategies and spaces to express religious minority identity within late modern Western Europe? What significance does the activism of Muslims and Jews have on their mutual perception as well as on the perception of their situation within society? What strategies are available to groups that are historically perceived in terms of their stigmatized ethno-religious practices or cultural heritage? Are there structural similarities between exclusivist tendencies towards Jews and Muslims (“Islamophobia” and Antisemitism)? Do we see connections between an emergent European identity and new forms of ethno-religious hierarchization of non-European populations within Europe?

Academic Direction:
Volker Heins<http://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/en/home/profil-vheins.html>, Senior Fellow and Head of the Research Unit “Interculturality” at the KW
Riem Spielhaus<http://uni-erlangen.academia.edu/RiemSpielhaus>, Research Fellow at the Erlangen Centre for Islam & Law in Europe (EZIRE)

Contributors (et al.):
Michal Bodemann (Dept of Sociology, University of Toronto)
Gerdien Jonker (Erlangen Centre for Islam & Law in Europe, EZIRE)
Riva Kastoryano (CERI, Paris) Brian Klug (Dept of Philosophy, Oxford University)
Tariq Modood (Dept of Sociology, University of Bristol)
Yasemin Shooman (Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin)

Contact:
Volker Heins, Senior Fellow and Head of the Research Unit “Interculturality” at the KWI, volker.heins@kwi.-nrw.de
Please register (until May 10th 2013) at:
Maria Klauwer, KWI, Tel. 0201 7204-153, maria.klauwer@kwi-nrw.de

Event-Link: http://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/en/home/event-509.html

Lecturer or Senior Lecturer or Reader in the Anthropology of Religion

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Lecturer or Senior Lecturer or Reader in the Anthropology of Religion – A8/AAT/341/13-JM

Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London

The Department of Theology & Religious Studies seeks an appointment in the Anthropology of Religion, at Lecturer, Senior Lecturer or Reader level, to join King’s College London with effect from September/October 2013 (with a preferred start date of 1 September 2013). The successful candidate will teach in the field of the anthropology of religion, and will have a strong research background in the classical approaches to theory and method in the social anthropological study of religion, as well as in more recent and cutting-edge theoretical and methodological innovations. Regional and thematic focus is open.

The Department of Theology & Religious Studies at King’s is a large, thriving and highly multi-disciplinary Department, specialising in the study of both mainstream and new religions from a variety of perspectives. Areas of particular strength are the study of conviviality and conflict involving religions in contemporary societies, including issues of religious diversity and secularism, and the study of religion in the arts, literature and film.

The successful candidate will teach undergraduate courses (modules) for the new BA degree in Religion, Politics and Society, and for the MA programme Religion in Contemporary Society. S/he will be expected to attract PhD students and will participate in the intellectual life of the Department and School. Teaching experience and evidence of a strong research and publications record are required, as is the commitment to the academic and institutional development of the social scientific study of religions in the Department.

All candidates should have completed a PhD degree, and be in a position to make a strong submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). They should be prepared to teach both specialist undergraduate and MA modules in their area of expertise.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 15 May 2013

Equality of opportunity is College policy.

The appointment will be made, dependent on relevant qualifications, within the Grade 6 to Grade 8 scale, currently £31,331 to £54,826, per annum plus £2,323 per annum London Allowance.

For an informal discussion of the post please contact Dr. Marat Shterin on 0207 848 2637, or via email at marat.shterin@kcl.ac.uk<mailto:marat.shterin@kcl.ac.uk>.

Further details and application packs are available on the College’s website at www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs. All correspondence should clearly state the job title and reference number A8/AAT/341/13-JM. If you have any queries please contact your Recruitment Co-ordinator at recruitmentteam3@kcl.ac.uk

To apply click http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/pers_detail.php?jobindex=13073