CFP: 2015 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture: The Spirit of Sports


Seth Dowland

I wanted to pass along this call for proposals about a fall conference that looks fascinating -- Baylor's Symposium on Faith and Culture. This year's topic is "The Spirit of Sports." 


Quick Facts
Dates: Thursday, November 5-Saturday, November 7
Location: Baylor University, Waco, Texas
Deadline for Proposals: July 31, 2015
Web Sitewww.baylor.edu/ifl/sports

Conference Description and Call for Proposals 

The love of play and the desire for competition are woven deeply into human experience. From vacant lots-turned-playing fields to modern stadiums, from pick-up games to professional leagues, from Olympic record seeking to fantasy-league deal making, sports have become a defining feature of our culture.

Sports provide us with heroes and villains, role models, platforms for social commentary, and even pulpits for evangelism. Sports cut across social barriers, uniting people from diverse ethnic, financial, and religious backgrounds. Sports also reveal the best and worst of who we can become. Through sports we can develop self-discipline and virtues of character like courage, perseverance, and honesty, or we can cultivate baser human traits like vainglory, greed, and the desire to dominate at all costs.
The 2015 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture, The Spirit of Sports, invites participants to explore, from the perspective of religious faith, the significance of sports in our lives, especially the ways that contemporary sports both support and compromise the cultivation of human excellence and our relationships with others and God.

We seek reflection from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives. Presentation proposals are welcome from athletes, coaches, and chaplains as well as scholars in human performance, philosophy, theology, biblical studies, political science, business, sociology, literature, the arts, psychology, and cross-disciplinary programs.
Proposals for individual papers, panel discussions, and responses to current books are welcome. Abstracts of no more than 750 words should be submitted by July 31, 2015 using the online form. Call 254-710-4805 or email ifl@baylor.edu for more information.

Please share news of this announcement with your colleagues via email and social media. We hope to see you in the fall.


Comments

Paul Putz said…
If anyone would like to join a panel proposal, I'm looking for one more panelist. Topics can be broad, but should take a historical approach to some issue related to religion & sports in the 20th century. paul dot putz at gmail if you're interested.

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