CFP Roundup: American Religion and Global Affairs

Lauren Turek

Presbyterian Conference, Chicago, 1871
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

I have come across several CFPs recently for conferences on topics pertaining to U.S. foreign
relations or international affairs that include specific requests for papers on religion or aspects of American religious history. I have included the full descriptions and CFPs for these opportunities that may be of interest to readers of this blog, with particularly relevant potential topic areas in bold, after the break.

The 9/11 Legacy
“History is Not Was, History Is”

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and New York University

Location/Date: National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, June 15-16, 2017
CFP Deadline: April 1, 2017

Description: This conference to be held at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on the former World Trade Center site will explore the broader legacy of 9/11. We seek panel and paper proposals – both traditional and novel, empirical and conceptual – that consider the myriad ways that the events of September 11, 2001, continue to inform the past, the present and the future: both in the United States and around the world.

This was the most globally witnessed event in history and one that led to the longest war in the history of the United States. What, then, are the legacies that ripple out from the memorial fountains here in lower Manhattan across the city, the country, and the globe? As William Faulkner observed, “History is not was, history is.” How has the event of “9/11” reverberated in our understanding of the past and in more contemporary social, political, and cultural life; in the economy, in war and peace, surveillance and security, the geopolitics of the Middle East, the refugee crisis and in the debates over identity, memory and sacred space? What historical processes might we trace – either backwards or forwards – from September 11, 2001? What news headlines can we connect to 9/11 in meaningful and instructive ways: Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, the Arab Spring, Aleppo, the death of Syrian refugee child Alan Kurdi, Edward Snowden, Russia, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the list goes on…

We welcome proposals that consider the ways in which, to quote Mark Redfield in The Rhetoric of Terror, a “new history begins here at this calendrical ground zero.”

Topics might include (but are not limited to):

• 9/11 and historiography
• 9/11 and periodization
• Memory and memorialization
• Sacred and contested spaces
• “America in the world”
• The conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia
• Acts of terror around the globe since 9/11
• The changing face of terrorism
• The changing face of warfare and nation-building
• Intelligence, surveillance and counter-terrorism
• Para-legality, states of exception and rendition
• Nationalism, identity, “self “and “other”
• Human rights, civil liberties and conceptions of “freedom”
• Shifts in cultural production and representation since 9/11
• The media, social media and the “image” of terror
• The academy, museums and cultural institutions
• The return of religion
• The refugee crisis
• Discussions of time and space; home and homeland

We especially seek interdisciplinary panel and paper proposals that draw on the intersections between these topics and themes in order to explore the ways in which they might (or might not be) traced back to, or through, 9/11. Do they have a narrative coherence shaped by the forces created that day in September? Or do they operate outside the event, as part of some other inevitable geopolitical shift that we now know only by that name-date even if that shift might have happened anyway?

We invite paper and panel proposals from scholars, practitioners, curators, graduate students and other professionals who can speak to the conference theme. Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and CV to the conference organizers at 2017conference@911memorial.org by April 1, 2017. Panel proposals should include an additional abstract for the theme of the panel. Some financial assistance will be available to help offset the cost of attendance. Selected papers may be included in a follow-up edited volume/special edition.

Contact Info:
Dr. Andrew Hammond

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow/New York University Visiting Scholar, c/o National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 200 Liberty Street, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10281, ahammond@911memorial.org/ah3880@nyu.edu

Intolerance, Discrimination and Terrorism - International Interdisciplinary Conference

Organized by the University of Gdańsk (Poland), the University of São Paulo (Brazil), and In Mind Support (Poland)

Date/Location: May 11, 2017 to May 12, 2017, University of Gdańsk, Wita Stwosza Street No. 55, Gdańsk, Poland
CFP Deadline: March 12, 2017

Description: Our world becomes more and more dangerous. Populists come to power, people all around the globe support xenophobic dictators, and the future of humankind goes in an unpredictable direction. Therefore, during our interdisciplinary conference we would like to discuss some crucial questions: What is the source of intolerance and discrimination in the contemporary world? Is terrorism a “natural” consequence of intolerance? How should we react to acts of intolerance, discrimination and terrorism?

We will describe the phenomena of intolerance, discrimination and terrorism in political, social, psychological, cultural and many other terms. We also want to devote considerable attention to how these phenomena are represented in artistic practices: in literature, film, theatre or visual arts.

We invite researchers representing various academic disciplines: history, politics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, law, literary studies, theatre studies, film studies, fine arts, memory studies, migration studies, consciousness studies, dream studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, medical sciences, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, cognitive sciences etc.

Different forms of presentations are encouraged, including case studies, theoretical investigations, problem-oriented arguments, and comparative analyses.

We will be happy to hear from both experienced scholars and young academics at the start of their careers, as well as doctoral and graduate students. We also invite all persons interested in participating in the conference as listeners, without giving a presentation.

We hope that due to its interdisciplinary nature, the conference will bring many interesting observations on and discussions about intolerance, discrimination and terrorism in the past and in the present-day world.

Our repertoire of suggested topics includes but is not restricted to:

Intolerance
Intolerance and race
Intolerance and religion
Intolerance and nationalism
Intolerance and gender
Intolerance and age
Intolerance at school
Intolerance in family
Tolerance towards intolerance
Discrimination
Discrimination against elderly people
Discrimination against children
Discrimination against women
Discrimination against men
Discrimination against people with disabilities
Discrimination against the mentally ill
Discrimination against the addicts
Discrimination against the rich
Discrimination against the poor
Discrimination against animals
Economic discrimination
Genetic discrimination
Discrimination based on sexual preferences
Nationalism
Antisemitism
Racism
Colorism (discrimination based on skin color)
Sizeism (discrimination based on a person’s size)
Reverse discrimination (affirmative action, positive discrimination)
Terrorism
Political terrorism
Ideological terrorism
Religious terrorism
State terrorism
Intimate terrorism
Terrorism and fundamentalism
Terrorism and mental health
Terrorism and freedom
Cultural aspects of terrorism
Finding solutions
Anti-discrimination law
Anti-terrorist law
Human rights organizations
Humanitarian missions
Democratic education
Pro-tolerance campaigns
Literature, film and the arts
Literature and art about intolerance, discrimination and terrorism
Artists engaged in fighting intolerance, discrimination and terrorism
Artists-terrorists
Artists as victims of discrimination
Literature and art engaged in ideologies
Terrorism in the media

Please submit abstracts (no longer than 300 words) of your proposed 20-minute presentations, together with a short biographical note, by 12 March 2017 to:  intolerance2017@gmail.com

Contact Info:
Prof. Wojciech Owczarski

Contact Email:
wowczarski1@tlen.pl
URL:
http://intoleranceterrorism.ug.edu.pl/

Panel Call for Papers for American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting: Global Catholic Media: Between the Intimate and Imperial

Panel co-organizers: Dr. Marc Roscoe Loustau (Catholics & Cultures Fellow and Visiting Lecturer, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA) and Dr. Eric Hoenes del Pinal (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Charlotte)

Date/Location: November 18-21, 2017, Boston, MA

Overview: Over the past decade, research on Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian communities have made major contributions to the study of media, religion, and subjectivity. Emphasizing concepts such as “aesthetic formations,” “sensational forms,” “habitus,” and “orientation,” this literature has illuminated how mass mediate communication technologies including film, television, and radio contribute to the processes of self-transformation that allow Protestant Christian imaginaries to extend across subjects’ spheres of activity and lifetimes. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the equally vibrant field of Catholic media. What might attention to how specific communities of Catholics engaging in the production and consumption of self-consciously Catholic media spheres reveal?

This panel proposes that thick ethnographic descriptions of collective engagements with global Catholic media will illuminate how the Church negotiates its conflicting tendencies towards the imperial and the intimate. The Catholic Church’s aspiration to unity and universality imply that its institutional reach aspires to be imperial, ideally covering all humanity. Yet likewise its claim to apostolic succession implies that this imperial aspiration is of necessity carried out through intimate encounters between subjects. How then are the imperial and the intimate reconciled? How is the shift in scales between the institutional and the intersubjective achieved and experienced? And how might a focus on mediation help us better understand how these two dimensions come together in the lives of practicing Catholics?

We invite papers that look to experience-near, ethnographically- and/or biographically-rich accounts of lives and intimate relationships as potential starting points for examining the relevance of religious media to human experience, and which consider the following questions: How do individuals plumb the possibilities offered by Catholic media to find a workable balance between ambivalent attractions to domestic ties (the intimate) and global aspirations (the imperial)? What insights about Catholicism as an institution might we gain by examining how media circulates among communities of Catholics? What can theories of media consumption help us understand about Catholic subjectivities? How might the production and consumption of Catholic media help subjects shape the scope their aspirations? How do Catholic media intensify subjects’ awareness of moral or experiential paradoxes inherent in the practice of Catholicism? How do the producers of Catholic media, which is linguistically, if not also culturally, specific, reconcile that specificity with the concept of a “global Catholic Church”? Finally, how does the shared project of creating a mass mediated Catholic imaginary, also work to help individuals and communities negotiate other, perhaps less visible, aspirations and fears in the intimate relationships between human and divine beings?

Please send abstracts (250 words max.) of proposed papers to Marc Roscoe Loustau (mloustau706@gmail.com) and Eric Heones at (ehoenes@uncc.edu) ASAP. If you have questions, please email the organizers in advance. Circulate the CFP widely at your discretion.

2017 Power and Struggle Conference (Graduate Student Conference)

Sponsors: The Department of History at The University of Alabama 

Date/Location: September 22-23, 2017, University of Alabama

CFP Deadline: April 25, 2017

Overview: The Department of History at The University of Alabama is pleased to announce its Ninth Annual Graduate Student Conference on Power and Struggle, to be held at the UA campus on September 22-23, 2017. The conference will feature a keynote banquet at the Alabama Museum of Natural History by Professor Kate Brown, a Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  Professor Brown has published widely on the subjects of environmental history and European and American history. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (2004) and Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (2013). Her latest book is Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten (2015). We are honored to have Dr. Brown as our keynote speaker.

Our conference encourages graduate students to submit proposals that engage the conference theme by examining power relations in all historical fields and time periods. The theme addresses new approaches of historical analysis that focus on the relationship between struggle and power, especially people who struggled to break, transform, or reclaim the boundaries constructed by those in power. The Conference seeks proposals employing innovative approaches, interdisciplinary methods, comparative perspectives, and multi-archival research bases. At the conclusion of the Conference, one presenter will earn recognition as the recipient of the Best Paper Prize. The University of Alabama’s graduate history journal, the Southern Historian, is also sponsoring an award for the Best Paper in Southern History. 

The GHA Conference seeks submissions concerning, but not limited to, the following topics:

Power in institutions, society, and religion

Struggle in cultural expression, social relationships, and belief systems

Power in discourse on gender, race, and class

Struggle against labels in nationalism, ethnicity, sub-culture, or sexual identity

Power in traditional structures such as politics, diplomacy, imperialism, and war

Struggle in resistance such as crime, protest, liberation, and revolution 

Single papers should include a 300-word abstract and a one-page CV of the presenter. Full-panel proposals will be accepted.  All submissions should be sent in Word format via email to the committee using ghaconference@gmail.com. 

The deadline for proposal submission is April 25, 2017. Final papers should be submitted to commentators by September 1, 2017.  For more information please email the committee at ghaconference@gmail.com.

Contact Info: 

University of Alabama 2017 Power and Struggle Conference Committe Chair, Sarah Craddock 

sacraddock@crimson.ua.edu

or

ghaconference@gmail.com