Call for Papers: Florida State University Department of Religion Graduate Student Symposium (February 2012)

Call for Papers:

The Florida State University Department of Religion
11th Annual Graduate Student Symposium

February 17-19, 2012 • Tallahassee, Florida

The Florida State University Department of Religion is pleased to announce its 11th Annual Graduate Student Symposium to be held February 17-19, 2012 in Tallahassee, Florida.

Last year’s symposium was a huge success, allowing over forty presenters from over twenty universities and departments as varied as Religion, Geography, Psychology, and Philosophy to share their research, learn from one another, and meet many of their peers and future colleagues.

This year’s symposium will be centered on the theme “Beyond Borders: Constructing, Deconstructing and Transgressing Boundaries.”

Dr. Manuel A. Vásquez, of the University of Florida, will deliver this year’s keynote address. His lecture is tentatively titled “Beyond the Fetishism of Commodities? Hyper-Animism and Materiality in the Present Age.” Also, we are pleased to host Dr. Kathryn Lofton of Yale University as a guest respondent.

Due to our commitment to collaborative scholarship, students from all fields with interdisciplinary interests in the study of religion and at all levels of graduate study are encouraged to submit paper proposals.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: Building and Maintaining Identities; Communities, both Local and Global; Scholars Manufacturing Subjects; Strategies of Empowerment and Subjugation; Limits of Embodiment; Political, Ethical and/or Gender Conflicts; Discourses of (In)Justice.

Presentations should be approximately 15 to 20 minutes in length and will receive faculty responses. In addition, every year respondents select the best graduate paper to receive the Leo F. Sandon Award, an endowed award named for the Religion Department's former chair.

Proposals including an abstract of approximately 300 words, a list of key terms, and a one-page CV should be submitted by December 1, 2011 for review. Final papers must be submitted by January 15, 2012. Please send proposals to Michael Graziano at fsureligionsymposium@gmail.com.

Thank you for your interest. We look forward to hearing from you or your students and seeing you at the 2012 Graduate Student Symposium at Florida State University.

CFP: Religion and American Culture Caucus (ASA) Best Paper Prize

Call for Papers

The Religion and American Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association is pleased to announce its 8th annual best paper prize competition. Any paper presented at the 2011 ASA meeting in Baltimore, Maryland is eligible for consideration. The prize will be awarded to the paper that makes the most significant and creative contribution to the study of religion (broadly construed) and American culture.

For consideration, please submit your paper to Kelly Baker at kbaker27 (at) utk (dot) edu by Friday, October 7.

The winner will be selected by a national jury of scholars in the field, and announced at the Caucus business meeting at the ASA.

CFP: Love and Romance

International Association for the Study of Popular Romance

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is looking for essays, interviews, and pedagogical materials on love and religion in global popular culture, for a special issue guest-edited by Lynn S. Neal (Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction). How do film, fiction, popular music, and other media represent the complex relationships between love and religion? How do these representations compare across national, cultural, and theological divides, and what happens when they cross those boundaries? How have they changed over time? What can a sophisticated understanding of love in religious discourse—from whatever tradition—teach us about individual songs, films, novels, or other popular texts?

Topics of particular interest include:

• Theologies of love in popular song: Leonard Cohen, U2, Richard Thompson, Al Green, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Niyaz, Shye Ben-Tzur, etc.
• Sacred and secular love in popular culture: drawing boundaries, blurring distinctions
• Interfaith romance (Jewish / Christian, Hindu / Muslim, etc.) in popular culture
• Love, Religion, and Politics in popular culture
• Romance vs. Religion: warnings, advice literature, debates over idolatry, etc.
• Romantic love as a surrogate or secular religion
• Christian inspirational romance fiction, and its non-Christian equivalents: studies of individual novels, publishing lines, reader behavior, etc.
• Crossover texts and figures: Rumi, the Song of Songs, etc.
• God as lover and beloved in popular culture
• Sacred love stories in popular culture (Krishna / Radha, Majnun / Layla, Adam / Eve, etc.)
• One Love, or many? Rastafari, Wiccan, and other traditions of love in popular culture

Published by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), the peer-reviewed Journal of Popular Romance Studies is the first academic journal to focus exclusively on representations of romantic love across national and disciplinary boundaries. Our editorial board includes representatives from English, Comparative Literature, Ethnomusicology, History, Religious Studies, African American Studies, and other fields. JPRS is available without subscription at http://jprstudies.org.

Please submit scholarly papers of no more than 10,000 words by June 1, 2012, to An Goris, Managing Editor managing(dot)editor(at) jprstudies(dot)org. Longer manuscripts of particular interest will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Submissions should be Microsoft Word documents, with citations in MLA format.

The Historical Society Announces a Competitive RFP-Based Research Program

Randall Stephens

I posted this notice at the HS blog the other day. A very relevant request for proposals for this blog as well!

Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs: Exploring the Role of Religion in the Origins of Novelty and the Diffusion of Innovation in the Progress of Civilizations

With generous funding from the John Templeton Foundation, the Historical Society is launching a major interdisciplinary grants program in September 2011. It will provide $2.0 million in research support for empirical, conceptual, and interpretive work exploring the role religion may play as a driving force of innovation in human affairs.

The competitive RFP-based research program will award approximately 15 two-year grants of $100,000 each and a few larger grants of $250,000 to support archaeological fieldwork and traditional social science and historical investigation, as well as conceptually-oriented analysis.

Donald A. Yerxa will serve as the Program Leader for Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs. And a distinguished board of advisers will be announced this summer.

A request for proposals will be forthcoming later this summer. For more information, visit the RIHA website (under construction) at www.bu.edu/historic/riha

The John Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org) serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. It encourages civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights. The Foundation’s vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring “new spiritual information” and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. Its motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies its support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

2012 Southern Historical Association Meeting

Randall Stephens

I'm serving on the program committee for the Southern Historical Association meeting, Mobile, Alabama, November 1-4, 2012. Paul tells me this will involve looking over an avalanche of proposals in a sealed bunker ten miles under the 2011 conference hotel. But he says it is fun, and I believe him. I'll do my utmost to get some good religion panels into the mix.

Here's the CFP:

SHA 2012, Mobile, Alabama:

The Program Committee invites proposals on all topics related to the history of the American South from its pre-colonial era to today. In addition, for the 2012 meeting in Mobile it extends a special welcome to proposals relating to:

* Mobile and the Gulf South
* International, transnational, or comparative approaches
* 2012 as an anniversary of major historical events, publications, etc.

The Program Committee accepts proposals for single papers but encourages session proposals that include two or three papers. Individuals interested in using the SHA website to organize a session with complementary papers may send an e-mail to Sheree Dendy with their name, e-mail address, and proposed paper topic. She will post this information on the SHA website, which others seeking compatible co-panelists may consult. Click here to view current postings of those seeking related proposals.

According to SHA policy, no one who appeared on the previous two programs, those at Charlotte and Baltimore, can be part of the program in Mobile.

Those submitting proposals should include suggestions of people who would be appropriate as commentators/chairs but not issue invitations. The Program Committee will select and invite a chair and usually two commentators. Note: this policy is new for the 2012 program.

No two people from the same institution can be on the same session.

See instructions for submitting proposals online, click here.

The deadline for proposals for the 2012 program is September 1, 2011.

Proposals in Latin American and Caribbean should be submitted to the section sub- committees. Click here.

2012 Program Committee Co-Chairs: Don Doyle and Marjorie Spruill University of South Carolina

CFP: The King James Bible and the World It Made

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Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion

Invites you to a conference celebrating the

The King James Bible and the World It Made, 1611-2011

April 7-9, 2011

Baylor University

Click Here for Call for Papers, due December 31, 2010 (this has been extended from the original November 15th deadline)

King James 2011

In 1611, England issued its official translation of the complete Bible, a masterful work that laid the foundation for an emerging Christian culture in the English-speaking world. At the time, it was not obvious that the new translation would have the impact that it did, but it was soon clear that the King James Bible would overcome its competitors, as it provided a magnificent new standard by which all later works would be judged. It would indelibly mark the literature and culture of England, America, and all regions across the globe touched by Britain’s empire. From small rural churches to great halls of power, the ideas and words of the King James Version helped form a new culture rooted in the Bible: the modern culture of the English-speaking world.

To celebrate and reflect upon the incomparable influence of the King James Bible, Baylor University will host “The King James Bible and the World It Made, 1611-2011,” on April 7-9, 2011. Organized by Baylor’s Institute for Click for Call for Papers due December 31, 2010 (this has been extended from the original November 15th deadline)
Call for Papers King James 2011

The year 2011 marks the four hundredth anniversary of one of the landmark events in the history of Christianity: the publication of the King James Bible.

Studies of Religion, this conference will be one of the preeminent international events recognizing this auspicious moment in the history of Anglo-American and world Christianity. It will assemble distinguished scholars from around the globe to consider the history and ramifications of the Bible in English.

Major conference themes will include the way that the King James Bible created a common literary and religious culture in the English-speaking world; the significance of vernacular translation for Christian growth and development; and the challenges posed by recent declines in biblical literacy and the end of the King James’s dominance as the Bible translation for English-speaking Christians.

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley)

David Bebbington (University of Stirling)

Philip Jenkins (Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion)

Laura Knoppers (Penn State University)

Alister E. McGrath (Kings College, London)

Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame)

Lamin Sanneh (Yale University)

N.T. Wright (University of St. Andrews)