PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Madisun

Hi everyone,

Please see below invitation for PHD scholarships information. Send on behalf of Dr Halafoff.

With best wishes,

Milad.

Dr Milad Milani | Lecturer in Islamic history and the study of religion

Western Sydney University

The Australian Association for the Study of Religion | Executive Member

Communications Officer

PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

The University of Tasmania has a long and distinguished history of innovation and research excellence. Building on our distinctive island environment and intellectual capacity to solve global challenges, we have cemented a position within the top 2% of research institutions worldwide. The College of Arts, Law & Education, School of Social Sciences is offering a 3-year fully funded PhD scholarship for an Honours or equivalent graduate in Sociology and Criminology. This scholarship provides $27,082 per annum (2018 rate) living allowance for 3 years, with a possible 6 month extension.

The research project
This project is one part of a larger ARC Discovery project on religious diversity in Australia led by Douglas Ezzy (University of Tasmania), Gary Bouma (Monash University), Greg Barton and Anna Halafoff (both from Deakin University). The PhD project involves a study of the interfaith movement in Australia, focusing on evaluating their impact on responses to religious diversity. Interfaith organisations play significant roles in promoting respect for religious diversity, community policing, prison and health care chaplaincy, responses to disasters, and advancing the social cohesion that is crucial to countering violent extremism. The project involves research with leaders and activists in the Australian interfaith movement about the benefits of and challenges faced in their activities and their experience of liaising with state actors, including police and the media. The PhD is at the University of Tasmania and will be supervised by Professor Douglas Ezzy and Dr Anna Halafoff.

Eligibility
The following eligibility criteria apply to this scholarship:

The scholarship is open to domestic (Australian and New Zealand) and international candidates;
The degree must be undertaken on a full-time basis;
Applicants must already have been awarded a First Class Honours degree or hold equivalent qualifications or relevant and substantial research experience in an appropriate sector;
Applicants must be able to demonstrate strong research and analytical skills.
Candidates from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Knowledge and skills that will be ranked highly include: Sociology and/or Religious Studies and experience in qualitative and/or quantitative methods.

How to apply
Applicants should contact Professor Douglas Ezzy at the School of Social Sciences (Douglas.Ezzy@utas.edu.au) for more information and to discuss their suitability for the project. Suitable applicants will then be asked to complete an application via the University of Tasmania’s Online Application System

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Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities in Oceania

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Madisun

Dear all,
I’d like to invite you to submit abstracts to the interdisciplinary symposium *Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities in Oceania.* More information below and in the attached flyer. Please circulate this widely.
Date: 17-18 of August, 2018

Venue: Alphacrucis College, Parramatta

Abstracts due: 30 April, 2018 (title, 250-word abstract, short bio)

Submit to: ingrid.ryan@ac.edu.au

Keynote Speaker: Debra McDougall (Melbourne University)

‘Crashing waves: The transnational force of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in Oceania and beyond’

Symposium Theme

This symposium will explore the growth, movement and influence of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities in Oceania. It will consider PCCs as a powerful cultural force within Australasian and Oceanic communities and their role in reconfiguring spatial, social, political and cultural relationships. While the causative influences of PCCs in Oceania are contemplated, the symposium will also look at the overarching cultural, economic and political milieus in which PCCs are embedded. Additionally, a consideration of PCC’s broader transnational scope of influence will enrich this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Possible topics:

· Historical developments

· Transnational Networks

· Settler colonial/Postcolonial studies

· Missionary activities

· Cultural translation, negotiation, adaptation

· Politics in Oceania and beyond

· Media, music, Information Communication Technologies

· Branding and marketing

· Late modernity and global capitalism

· Material culture and lived experiences

· Aesthetics and embodied practices

· Social justice movements/activism

· Migration and (im)mobility

· Gender, class, ethnicity

· Youth cultures

Cristina

Associate Professor Cristina Rocha|ARC Future Fellow

Director of Religion and Society Research Cluster

Western Sydney University

President: Australian Association for the Study of Religion

Editor: Journal of Global Buddhism

Editor: Religion in the Americas series, Brill

http://www.uws.edu.au/religion_and_society/people/researchers/dr_cristina_rocha

New book: John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing (OUP, 2017)

PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Madisun

PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

Eligibility
The following eligibility criteria apply to this scholarship:

The scholarship is open to domestic (Australian and New Zealand) and international candidates;
The degree must be undertaken on a full-time basis;
Applicants must already have been awarded a First Class Honours degree or hold equivalent qualifications or relevant and substantial research experience in an appropriate sector;
Applicants must be able to demonstrate strong research and analytical skills.
Candidates from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Knowledge and skills that will be ranked highly include: Sociology and/or Religious Studies and experience in qualitative and/or quantitative methods.

CfP on “cosmopolitan enclaves”, EASA 2018

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Madisun

We would like to invite papers for our panel “Cosmopolitan enclave. Tensions and paradoxes” at the EASA Conference in Stockholm (Aug 14-17).

https://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6639

Short abstract

This panel will discuss the concept of ‘cosmopolitan enclaves’ in its spatial, economic and social dimensions. In particular, it will address the theoretical and empirical relevance of rearticulating mobility and space for understanding the paradoxes of cosmopolitan enclavement.

Long abstract

This panel will offer theoretical and ethnographic insights into the concept of ‘cosmopolitan enclaves’. In particular, it will address the telling tensions and scholarly potential of combining the transnational ideal of cosmopolitanism (e.g. Hannerz, 1990; Vertovec & Cohen, 2002) with the exclusive segregation implied by the concept of spatial, economic or social enclaves (e.g. Portes & Manning, 1985; Ferguson, 2005; Ballif, 2009). It will address the paradoxical localization of these social spaces, and discuss how far certain actors rely on cosmopolitan enclaves as a resource for (im)mobility and territorial claims. The panel will further consider which stances are developed from within these enclaves towards outsiders—so-called non-cosmopolitan locals—and how practices of inclusion and exclusion reinforce enclaves’ boundaries.

Possible questions for individual papers include: What practices and representations of geographic mobility support the creation and reproduction of cosmopolitan enclaves? What are the specific attributes of such spaces, what are their underlying territorial claims, and what are their implicit ‘admission criteria’? How do they favor (unequal) access to specific resources? How far do these cosmopolitan enclaves participate to (counter)hegemonic narratives? How are enclave boundaries created and maintained?

Through both theoretical inputs and a range of case studies (involving, for example, international schools, transnational social activism, expat communities, multinational companies, expert communities, high end resorts, NGOs, religious communities…), this panel will shed light on how a localized cosmopolitan stance can both reinforce and undermine the formation of enclavement, keeping a keen eye on its political and social implications.

Deadline is April 9 2018.

Best wishes,

Jeanne

Dr. Jeanne Rey

Research fellow

SNSF Grant holder Ambizione

Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2
Case Postale 136
CH-1211 Genève 21

Beyond the Islamic Revolution Perceptions of Modernity and Tradition in Iran before and after 197

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Madisun

Ed. by Sheikhzadegan, Amir / Meier, Astrid

Series:Welten des Islams – Worlds of Islam – Mondes de l’Islam

Aims and Scope

The volume contributes to a better understanding of Iranian history since 1953, with a focus on societal change and its reflection in intellectual discourse. The papers explore the attitudes of Iranians toward modernity and tradition before and after the Revolution of 1979. With insights from Oriental studies, history, sociology, literature and social anthropology, the volume offers a cross-disciplinary perspective on the intellectual, political, and social history of Iran.

Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Madisun

Pilgrimage Studies Network

EASA2018 conference: Staying, Moving, Settling
Stockholm University, 14-17th August 2018

PILNET panel: Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

Convenors
– John Eade (University of Roehampton and University of Toronto)
– Mario Katić (University of Zadar)

Short abstract
In this panel we want to examine intellectual contributions and debates involving the anthropological study of pilgrimage both across Europe and further afield. We want to locate the region within a global context where research draws on both European and non-European traditions.

Long abstract
In the rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field of pilgrimage studies, which covers not just religious pilgrimage but other key forms such as secular pilgrimage, spiritual pilgrimage, dark tourism, the relationship between travel, tourism and pilgrimage, many of the theoretical debates, methodological approaches and researchers have focused on the European context and most contributors are European in origin. In contemporary Europe the influence of different types of migration and tourism is becoming evident at some major Christian shrines and has also led to the emergence of non-Christian sites (primarily Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim). The diversity and complexity of pilgrimage practices is also apparent at more local shrines in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, for example, as members of trans-local communities return to their native countries during the summer holidays or re-settle. The growth of spiritual and secular pilgrimage and religious tourism adds to this diversity and complexity. Battlefield tourism and military pilgrimage illustrate the importance of cultural heritage since Europe continues to act as a magnet to non-European visitors, such as Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, who feel connected through a shared past. In this panel we want to examine intellectual contributions and debates involving the anthropological study of pilgrimage (religious, spiritual, secular etc) both across Europe and further afield. We want to locate the region within a global context where research draws on both European and non-European traditions. We want to discuss not only the issues of reflexivity and autobiography but also discursive traditions linked to political and cultural systems.
To propose a paper:
https://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6479

RC-22 Newsletter #18

Posted on March 13, 2018 by Jim S

Issue #18 of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Religion’s newsletter is now available on our website or by clicking the picture below. The newsletter contains information about the upcoming World Congress of Sociology. Our Program Coordinators — Anna Halafoff, Carolyn Starkey, and Sam Han — have done a wonderful job putting together an exciting program. I hope that you will be able to join us in Toronto next summer.

The newsletter also contains a call for nominations for the next President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Board Members. See the newsletter for details.

Best,
Jim Spickard
RC-22 President

Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Madisun

Pilgrimage Studies Network

EASA2018 conference: Staying, Moving, Settling
Stockholm University, 14-17th August 2018

PILNET panel: Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

Convenors
– John Eade (University of Roehampton and University of Toronto)
– Mario Katić (University of Zadar)

CFP Divine Mobilities: How Gods and Spirits Move Through the World (P102)

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Madisun

Dear Colleagues,

We are now inviting papers for our panel at the EASA Conference:
Divine Mobilities: How Gods and Spirits Move Through the World (P102)

https://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6325

Conveners:

Stephan Palmie (University of Chicago)
Roger Canals (University of Barcelona)
Ruy Blanes (University of Gothbnburg)

Short Abstract:

This panel seeks a debate on mobility in religious/spiritual contexts beyond the usual tropes of “diaspora” or “de/reterritorialization”. Calling for papers based on current ethnographies in the anthropology of religion, we aim to explore new approaches to religious mediation and transmission.

Long Abstract:
Ever since the time of Imperial Roman complaints about invasive cults from Asia Minor (such as Christianity) making their home in the metropole as a result of population movements, the notion that deities follow their worshipers has been an established trope in aiming to understand what we, today, are wont to call the religious concomitants of globalization. It is a view of the movement of numinous entities based on what we might call a paradigm of endemic range (in the zoological sense), and the effects of “invasive” collective representations on prior human-divine ecologies. Tired of concepts such as diaspora or de/reterritorialization, this panel aims to rethink how deities, spirits, and other entities move through, and transform in, space and time. It does so by focusing on how their devotees not only think such movements occur, but how they actively bring these into being. We ask how people imagine numinous entities to move in time/space/http, what storage media they use, how they are activated, and what may stand in the way of doing so. Drums, relics, possessed bodies, amulets, books, prayer, images, audio or video recordings, apps and social media – and other techniques and media platforms to work the gods into presence in new surroundings – are all par for the course: as “low” or “high tech” as the case may be. We invite ethnographically grounded analyses of divine mobilties, but also historical case studies.

*To propose a paper:*
https://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2018/conferencesuite.php/paperproposal/6325

*Deadline: *

9 April 2018

We look forward to receiving your paper proposals!

All best wishes,

Stephan Palmié

Ruy Blanes

Roger Canals

CAPEGOATS, VIOLENCE, AND MIMETIC THEORY − 21st International Summer School in Cultural Studies (Jyväskylä, Finland, June 4−6, 2018)

Posted on March 10, 2018 by Madisun

Extended deadline for applications: March 15

Please distribute freely!

SCAPEGOATS, VIOLENCE, AND MIMETIC THEORY

21^st INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN CULTURAL STUDIES

University of Jyväskylä, Finland, June 4−6, 2018

Society for Cultural Studies in Finland and the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture

https://kultut.fi/summer-school/

In the present times, the media landscape is loaded with representations of violence in which a group attacks another group or an individual. Also, venomous and inculpatory ways of speaking are common especially in social media such as Twitter. Understanding violence in a broad sense, the increase of hate speech and the strong presence of violence in the media as well as popular culture challenge interpretations of the decrease of violence in the present times. Rather, it could be proposed that the ways of violence have multiplied as it nowadays entails also various forms of verbal, indirect or latent as well as mediated forms of violence. Occasionally violence also seeps into practices that at first glance seem to be fighting against it.

Although the phenomena described above vary from direct violence to aggressive ways of commenting on it, a common factor can be pointed, i.e. scapegoat mechanism. Scapegoat mechanism occurs when a community or a group of people seeks release of its violent tensions by projecting them into a victim chosen from the margins of the community that the group believes to be the origin of its anguish. However, being innocent of the actual cause of the group’s hostile feelings, the victim is a surrogate victim i.e. a scapegoat. René Girard’s mimetic theory serves as a frame for studying scapegoat mechanism. According to Girard, violence touches everybody as it is the side effect of universally operating mimetic desire which leads to mimetic rivalry and violent tensions that seek their release through scapegoat mechanism, as well as sacrificial rituals, its mimetic siblings. As a tool for the regulation of violence, scapegoat mechanism is of course paradoxical as it operates through violence thus producing violence at the same time as it aims at preventing its escalation.

In the 21^st summer school of cultural studies the approach to the topic is multidisciplinary. The research may focus for example on a media text, online discussion, television series, or a literary work. Methodologically, various analytic tools may be applied such as discourse analysis, ethnography, narratology, and semiotics. Especially pivotal in Girard’s theory in this context are the questions connected to scapegoats and violence but perspectives focusing more generally on mimetic desire, violence, crisis, sacrifice, or religion are welcome as well. The topics to be explored include: scapegoats and media, scapegoats and politics, religion and scapegoats, mimesis of violence, mimetic desire and violence, gender and scapegoat mechanisms, and scapegoats and literature/art. Also, the core questions can be approached from other theoretical perspectives such as in the contexts of the work of Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwach, or Georges Bataille. Like Girard’s, their thinking can be traced back to the legacy of Émile Durkheim.

The summer school addresses the questions of scapegoats, violence, and mimetic theory through lectures and seminar presentations based on the latest research. Acknowledged experts serve as teachers, and they will deliver open lectures on the topic, and provide commentary on and feedback to the student papers presented. The Summer School is a three-day intensive period of supervising doctoral candidates and discussing research projects in a multidisciplinary group, within the joint framework of cultural studies in a broad sense of the term.

All papers will be commented upon and discussed by the distinguished summer school teachers:

Tiina Arppe is adjunct professor in Sociology specialized in French social theory. In her scientific publications, she has studied problematics related to the sacred, community, and affect in the work of Rousseau, Durkheim, Bataille, Baudrillard, and Girard. Her major works include Pyhän jäännökset (Tutkijaliitto 1992), Affectivity and the Social Bond (Ashgate 2014), and Uskonto ja väkivalta. Durkheimin perilliset (2016). Currently, in a project funded by Kone Foundation, Arppe looks into the connections of economy and death in French social theory. Arppe has also translated French theory classics as well as for example Thorsten Veblen’s The Leisure Class into Finnish.

Hanna Mäkelä is University Lecturer of Comparative Literature (fixed term) at the University of Helsinki where she took her PhD, which was co-supervised at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, in 2014. Her doctoral thesis, Narrated Selves and Others: A Study of Mimetic Desire in Five Contemporary British and American Novels, combines René Girard’s philosophical anthropology with the field of narratology in order to demonstrate how Girard’s mimetic theory can be employed as a narrative poetics of its own in the context of more mainstream literary studies.

Mäkelä is currently working on a postdoctoral monograph on the subject of inner change in narrative film. She has published the following peer-reviewed articles: “Horizontal Rivalry, Vertical Transcendence: Identity and Idolatry in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodieand Donna Tartt’s The Secret History” (The Poetics of Transcendence, Rodopi / Brill, 2015), “Player in the Dark: Mourning the Loss of the Moral Foundation of Art in Woody Allen’s Match Point” (Turning Points. Concepts and Narratives of Change in Literature and Other Media, de Gruyter, 2012) and “Imitators and Observers: Mimetic and Elegiac Character Relationships in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved” (Genre and Interpretation, 2010, the University of Helsinki Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies / The Finnish Graduate School of Literary Studies).

HOW TO APPLY

Please send your application by Thursday, March 15, 2018 to

minna.m.nerg[at]jyu.fi

Or by post to

Kulttuurintutkimuksen seura
PL 35
40014 Jyväskylän yliopisto

Society for Cultural Studies in Finland
P.O. Box 35
FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä
Finland

Your application should include

An abstract of 500 words, based on the paper you will be presenting.
A short presentation of yourself and your research topic with its theoretical orientation, methods, and materials.

The applicants will be notified of the decision shortly after March 15.

Deadline for papers is Monday, May 21. Length of the papers is 10–15 pages. More information on them will be sent out later.

There is a participation fee of 100 euros per person. Fee covers coffee/tea and snacks during the seminar.

For more information e-mail minna.m.nerg[at]jyu.fi (or eeva.rohas[a]jyu.fi), phone +358 (0)50 599 8842, or visit http://kultut.fi

SISR / ISSR News and Events :: Nouvelles et Evénements

A list of conferences, calls-for-papers, etc. of interest to our members. Une liste des congrès, appels à communication, etc.

PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

Pentecostal Charismatic Christianities in Oceania

PhD Opportunity – Interfaith Movement in Australia

CfP on “cosmopolitan enclaves”, EASA 2018

Beyond the Islamic Revolution Perceptions of Modernity and Tradition in Iran before and after 197

Aims and Scope

Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

RC-22 Newsletter #18

Changing Face of European Pilgrimage

CFP Divine Mobilities: How Gods and Spirits Move Through the World (P102)

CAPEGOATS, VIOLENCE, AND MIMETIC THEORY − 21st International Summer School in Cultural Studies (Jyväskylä, Finland, June 4−6, 2018)