AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION WESTERN REGION (AAR/WR)
2024 ANNUAL CONFERENCE | CALL FOR PAPERS
In-Person Conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)| March 15-17, 2024
Click here to download the program participant form.
The American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR), is delighted to announce its annual Call for Papers (CFP) for its 2024 Conference, which will be held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Our region is grateful for UNLV’s wonderful support of our annual conference and look forward to this opportunity at sharing the exciting research, scholarship, and publication taking place within AAR’s Western Region!
Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs, AAR'WR's 2023-2024 Vice President and Program Chair, has created the region’s 2024 theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.
This year, the deadline for abstract submission to AAR/WR is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to the relevant unit chairs (listed below) and include an abstract of 250 words and a Program Participant Form, which may be found under “Guidelines” through AAR/WR’s website here.
Participants at an AAR/WR conference must be members of the AAR. AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org. Submission of an abstract alone, however, does not require membership.
Please refer to all individual Calls for Papers (CFPs) below, which are listed in chronological order according to unit name and include all Unit Chair contact information. CFPs are included for 21 units, with 4 more CFPs forthcoming.
This is a fully in-person conference with some hybrid capabilities.
We look forward with great enthusiasm to this conference and to seeing everyone at UNLV in March 2024!
Sincerely,
2023-2024 Executive Committee and Board of Directors
American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR)
AAR/WR CFPs BY UNIT
CFP: ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Shannon Toribio, University of California, Santa Barbara
Laura Snell, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Asian American Religious Studies Unit invites papers for the American Academy of Religion, Western Region Annual Meeting to take place at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from March 15-17, 2024.
Focusing on the definition and redefinition of religious/secular, the unit wishes to explore how these categories are shifted and created through media and politics across boundaries geographical and otherwise. How are Asian American religions affected by movement in these categories? How has transnationalism shaped debates around what is and is not religion? How has it shaped the lived experience of Asian American communities? This year we seek papers concerned with the following themes:
• Transnationalism
• Materiality
• Space/Place
• Categories of Religion and the Secular
• New Religious Movements
• Media and Religion
Scholars of all levels are invited to participate in this dialogue. Interested parties may send abstracts (250 words) to Shannon Toribio (shannon_toribio@ucsb.edu) or Laura Snell (laurasnell@ucsb.edu). The deadline for submission is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org.
CFP: BLACK RELIGION AND THEOLOGY UNIT (NEW! 2024 launch!)
Unit Chair: Aaron Grizzell, NorCal MLK Foundation
We are very excited to launch our new Black Religion and Theology Unit at AARWR 2024, and we look forward to an exciting future together.
The religious experience is of significant and acute concern among our varied African diasporic communities and is worthy of close academic exploration and study. The Black Religion and Theology Unit’s mission is to further the development of scholarly research and discussion about the black religious experience; encourage the broadening of Black religion as an academic endeavor; and engage in discourse, from the African diasporic perspective, about religious and theological expression.
Following along with this year’s theme, which focuses on the role religion, and religious studies, play in helping to tap into the potentiated hope of an (re) imagined future, we welcome proposal submissions for two unit panels. The selected panelists can expect 15 minutes for presentation to enable time for questions and audience responses.
Panel A: Artificial intelligence and generative technologies are changing the landscape of the modes and definitions of communication, imagination, connectivity, and, arguably, reality. Both religion and theology in African diasporic expressions have much to say on these matters. We welcome papers that delve into the challenges, opportunities, and innovative expressions that are being forged in this space.
Panel B: In many ways, the Black religious expression has been the vanguard through which social justice movements have forged new rights under law, and Black religious scholarship has been vital to building a bulwark against theoretical and methodological pushback in the academy regarding the grounding of these movements in the Black experience. We welcome papers that take an innovative look at modes of Black scholarship at the fulcrum of movements for justice, civil and human rights.
Keynote presentation: To launch the Black Religion and Theology Unit, we are excited to host a keynote presentation entitled Theology in the Mode of Monk, presented by Dr. Raymond C. Carr, the incoming president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion and the founding director of the Codex Charles H. Long Project at the MesoAmerican Archive at Harvard University. Dr. Carr’s current scholarship focuses on the comparative theologies of James Hal Cone and Karl Barth.
Please send abstract submissions and Program Participant Forms to Aaron Grizzle (aaron.grizzell@gmail.com). The deadline for submission is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) and be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org.
CFP: BUDDHIST STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Alina Pokhrel, University of Virginia
Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Buddhist Studies Unit welcomes papers in line with this year’s theme that focus on the role religion (and religious studies) plays to tap into the potentiated hope of a (re) imagined future. We seek papers and presentations that address how Buddhist teachings, art, architecture, and poetry might help reimagine community/belonging as well as offer an alternative hermeneutic in the way of framing and addressing crises that we face globally. In addition, the unit also encourages papers that confront enduring problems in the study of Buddhism, open up new vistas of theoretical and methodological exploration, reimagine geographical relations and/or canons and canonicity, as well as bring different traditions into conversation with one another.
As always, topics of interest unrelated to the conference theme will also be considered as space permits.
Please send an abstract of 250 words as well as a completed participant form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to Buddhist Studies co-chairs: Alina Pokhrel (alina.pokhrel@virginia.edu), Jake Nagasawa (jnagasawa@ucsb.edu)
CFP: CATHOLIC STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Samantha Kang, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nathan McWeeney, University of Southern California
We welcome papers that relate our conference theme (“Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Time”) to Catholic traditions, past, present, and future. We are open to papers from all methodological and disciplinary standpoints (including religious studies, anthropology, history, philosophy and theology), and we are particularly interested in papers that explore tensions, conflicts and debates surrounding the role of images and the imagined. How has/does religious imagining capacitate concrete change (social, religious, political, economic)? Other topics of interest might include Catholic responses to AI, climate change, psychedelics, human sexuality, and the idea of hope as a theological virtue, and more.
Please email abstracts (approximately 250 words) and participant forms (Click here to download the program participant form) to Unit Chairs Nathan McWeeney (mcweeney@usc.edu) and Samantha Kang (SamanthaKang@ucsb.edu) by November 15, 2023. For more information, please visit: https://www.aarwr.com. Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR.
CFP: CHRISTIANITY UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University
French historian François Hartog has portrayed our time as “presentism.” We live in a constant, never ending present. The past is no longer of use since we perceive our time as an interminable revolution, that constantly makes obsolete the experience of the past. As far as the future is concerned, we build the future now, so that the future is embedded in the present. In other words, we live in a time of now. And the time of now is not a good time: nihilism, human indignities, steep decline in mutual respect, war, increased mental illness, and the destruction of the environment. These are only some of the existential risks we face.
How can we imagine a better future if we are locked in a permanent present? Perhaps religion, and particularly Christianity, can mobilize eschatological, eventually messianic forces to recover a sense of temporality that gives us time to face the imminent adversities. Or rather Christianity must recover an apocalyptic tone, but still a religious tone, to confront a secular apocalypse, a negative end of the world, an end without God and hope.
How can we imagine a better future? Your paper can engage this timely topic. Or, it can engage the topic of the conference. Or it can be completely disconnected from the conference topic. You are free to submit a proposal on any topic you like, as long as it engages the Christian religion.
We welcome papers written from a variety of methods: historical, social, anthropological, theological, philosophical, and biblical. We encourage papers that deal with Christianity anywhere in the world, including here in the USA.
Please send submissions as an attachment to Dyron Daughrity at dyron.daughrity@pepperdine.edu and Enrico Beltramini at ebeltramini@yahoo.com.
The maximum length of abstracts is 250 words.
The deadline for submission of paper abstracts is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here: https://www.aarweb.org/membership/join-or-renew.
Thank you for all of your time and effort as we gear up for our 2024 conference!
CFP: DISABILITIES STUDIES
Unit Chairs: Elizabeth Staszak, Fuller Theological Seminary
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Saint Louis University
In line with the 2024 General Call for Papers, the Disability Studies Unit is looking for papers, panels, or presentations to address one of the following:
• To consider “art and imagination and their forging of footprints of faith or interreligious discourse,” how do we dream about disability acceptance? What does an accessible world mean for scholars, activists, and faith practitioners?
• What are ways which the disability rights movement offers disabled and nondisabled people hope, including scholars and faith practitioners?
• How do religious traditions encourage or discourage the disability rights movement? Have faith traditions or beliefs been harmful to the disability community or disabled identity?
• “Can religion play a part in helping marginalized communities forge their own pathways as collectives or within the sacred skin of their own individual identities?” Can faith traditions offer freedom to disabled people? How do our disabled identities intersect with our spiritual or religious beliefs?
• Given recent Supreme Court decisions to reverse affirmative action and reproductive rights, is there cause for concern about laws and policies technically safeguarding disability rights?
• In terms of current and future environmental policy, where do disability rights and climate change intersect? What are the challenges of balancing eco-consciousness and medical care? What do we do when natural disasters affect and impact caregivers and care receivers?
Our unit welcomes all work including presentations (in and outside of the academy) or mixed-media. We accept both in-person and online presentations as a hybrid unit to ensure accessible participation. We are striving to make our unit and conference fully inclusive, so please let us know how we can fulfill this endeavor.
Please email your 250-word abstract proposal submissions and Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) before November 15, 2023 to the Disability Studies Unit Chairs, Elizabeth Staszak, elizabeth.staszak@gmail.com and Anjeanette LeBoeuf, anjeanette.leboeuf@slu.edu.
CFP: EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY UNIT
Unit Chair: Peter Romaskiewicz, University of California, Santa Barbara
This year, the Education and Pedagogy unit is interested in receiving proposals that focus on the 2024 conference theme of “Envisioning our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.” In particular, we encourage prospective participants to reflect on how the are using their pedagogy to help students “still find ways to hope and ‘do the work our souls must have’ amid the reality quakes of daily life,” as articulated in the conference theme. As educators, we function as ‘transformative agents’ (also from the conference theme) in awakening our students to the reality of our painful local and global realities. How do you engage your students in the classroom around these themes and how do you support them in the emotional labor this requires? What pedagogical tools do we use in the classroom that relate to the challenge of helping our students envision the future when the future can seem so bleak?
In addition to this focus, we also welcome papers on pedagogy in Religious Studies that relate directly to the broader call of the conference which is Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.
Please note that the deadline for submission of paper abstracts to unit chairs is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to unit chair Peter Romaskiewicz at pmr01@ucsb.edu and include an abstract of 250 words and a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here: https://www.aarweb.org/membership/join-or-renew.
CFP: ETHICS UNIT
Imagining and Creating Ethical Future(s):
Unit Chairs: Mahjabeen Dhala, Graduate Theological Union
Sheryl Johnson, Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Ethics Unit invites papers that engage the overall conference theme, one with deep ethical ties. The overall question we pose is, “how can religious and theological ethics assist in the formation of a more just, inclusive, and livable future for humans, communities, and all species on Earth?” Papers are invited to consider the AARWR conference theme (described in detail below), the questions posed at the end, or any topic relevant to ethical consideration.
This year we have witnessed several systemic efforts and actions of nihilism, death, and destruction to human life, human rights, and to our global environment within which humanity lives. In 2023, the world is literally burning. And yet we, as religious scholars, still find ways to hope and “do the work our souls must have” amid the reality quakes of daily life.
Oftentimes as religious scholars, we have the audacity and dare to believe we can be transformative agents. We stare into the face of the multilayered forms of human blight and seek religious and spiritual remediation. The economic blight, the blight of global disparities and injustice, the blight of indifference and ambivalence to human suffering, and its subsequent toll on creation. How do we stare into the blight and move beyond the blight in 2024?
For example, we might consider the following:
· Can religion play a part in helping marginalized communities forge their own pathways as collectives or within the sacred skin of their own individual identities?
· How have art and imagination forged footprints of faith or interreligious discourse to address human injustice and environmental destruction and decay?
· Can religious scholarship play a role as we grapple with these questions?
· What place does religion hold in the discourse surrounding future environmental policy and advocacy for habitats and human displacement? How has the Anthropocene been imagined and/or can be reimagined from a position of faith and religious scholarship?
· In what ways can religious scholars influence or have remained silent in the preservation of or destruction of human hope or in priming human nihilism?
· What is the world we are helping to create and what options do religious traditions offer for transformation in a world unceasingly grappling existentially?
· How can the past guide us and memory lead us in the creation of new modalities of an imagined future?
What table we are setting for the next generation with new technologies and AI?
· What are sites where the sense of imagined hope can provide glimpses into possible futures?
Where can art, imagination, and interreligious cooperation guide us to new solutions and creative collaborative outcomes?
· Where can identity, intelligence, and personal freedom to dream culminate...if only temporally? What are places of joy that are life-giving rather than death-dealing? What are temporal spaces where can we find them to strategize or to create spaces to thrive? What do they look like? Who and how can they be inhabited?
The deadline for submission of paper abstracts to unit chairs is November 15, 2023.
All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here. The length of an abstract is typically 250 words. Please submit your abstract to both sjohnson@ses.gtu.edu and mdhala@gtu.edu.
CFP: GODDESS STUDIES UNIT
Healing and the Divine Feminine Across Traditions
Unit Chairs: Kali Tanikella, Graduate Theological Union
Anna Hennessey (interim chair), Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Goddess Studies unit invites papers related to the AAR/WR’s 2024 conference theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. Of special interest is a look at the Divine Feminine and its relationship to spiritual remediation, growth, and religion in turbulent times. How have goddesses across religious traditions intersected with the role of religion, human suffering, and/or global, personal, or communal injustices? We encourage the submission of papers that utilize interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and nontraditional approaches to research. Other topics and themes of interest to the Goddess Studies unit include religion and representations of goddesses in art, music, material culture, and ideology; goddesses and sacred spaces; goddesses, gender and religion; goddesses and storytelling or oral traditions. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) as email attachments to Anna Hennessey dr.amhennessey@gmail.com and Kali Tanikella mtanikella@ses.gtu.edu by November 15, 2023. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Unit Chair: Kimberly Diaz, University of California, Riverside
From early on in graduate school, many religious studies graduate students situate their academic journeys as a dumpster fire - “a situation…that is disastrous and out of control” (Urban Dictionary). Theoretically, professional development aims to help control this dumpster fire by connecting students with a community of professionals who have relevant experience and knowledge. But in reality, professional development normatively encourages graduate students to peripheralize their own various needs and cater to the demands of the field as an unstable and brutal job market. This encouragement reveals that professional development fundamentally divides the human experience into a strict binary of the academic and the personal. Those who primarily focus on the “academic” are positively and/or negatively reinforced to continue doing so, meanwhile those who concentrate on the “personal” or attempt to obliterate the binary altogether are exiled. Whatever the case may be, all must pay the price in some way under neoliberal academia, such as severe exploitation of labor and/or job insecurity.
With religious studies being in such an abysmal state, both in terms of higher education and as an academic field, is there any way this being can be transformed into a becoming of decolonized knowledges and practices? Who is responsible for this transformation? Who is leading this transformation? Can professional development be a catalyst?
The Graduate Student Professional Development Unit invites scholars to submit proposals that (in-)directly relate to the aforementioned topics/questions or propose a new theme. The deadline for proposals and participant forms to unit chairs is November 15, 2023. Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Click here to download the program participant form. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. Please submit abstracts to the attention of the chair, Kimberly Diaz (kdiaz038@ucr.edu).
CFP: INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS
Unit Chair: Delores Mondragón, University of California, Santa Barbara
This year, the Indigenous Religions Unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates to Indigenous Religions. We furthermore encourage papers and panels that incorporate art, music, poetry, ritual, or other forms of representation in their format. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Delores Mondragón (mondragon@ucsb.edu). We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: ISLAMIC STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chair: Souad Ali, Arizona State University, Tempe
This year, the Islamic Studies Unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We invite proposals addressing questions such as:
How do you envision Islamic Studies future in comparative religion, spirituality, scholarship in shifting times? Within a genuine interpretation of Islam's sacred Texts, how can Muslims guard against violence advocated by fanatics and radicals? If Islam advocates peace evidenced by many Verses in the Qur'an, what role can Muslim scholarship play to deconstruct these misconceptions promoting violence in the name of the religion?
We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates to Islamic Studies. We welcome both individual and/or panel proposals.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Dr. Souad Ali (Souad.ali@asu.edu). We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: JEWISH STUDIES UNIT
Jewish Interfaith, Intercultural, and Intersectional Engagements
Unit Chairs: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Alexander Marcus, University of Pennsylvania
This year, the Western Region conference of the American Academy of Religion is examining the role of religion, and religious studies, in responding to injustice and the destruction of life, human rights, and our global environment, inviting us to consider “the religious, spiritual, and comparative religious ways in which the human experience can forge a future as scholar-practitioners in the present times.” Scholars of Jewish Studies have much to contribute to these topics. Jewish history includes experiences of marginalization, isolation, displacement, martyrdom, and genocide. Yet Jewish life and traditions are also filled with life-affirming dynamics – expressed e.g. through art, scholarship, political participation, and religious expression. Intercultural, interreligious, and intersectional viewpoints have marked the history of Jews and Jewish tradition throughout the ages. Analysis of past interfaces, whether in action, text, or art, can inspire our reactions to present and future challenges.
The Jewish Studies Unit of the AAR-WR welcomes papers responding to the above topics, from all disciplines pertaining to the study of Jews and Judaism.
The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to the Jewish Studies chairs – Roberta Sabbath (roberta.sabbath@unlv.edu) and Alexander Marcus (alexandermarcus@gmail.com) – and should include an abstract of 250 words, a short bio as well as a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form).
CFP: LATINX RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUALITIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Marlene Ferreras, La Sierra University
Jacob Perez, Pacific School of Religion
The Latinx Religions and Spiritualities Unit welcomes paper proposals related to the role of Latinx spiritualities and the study of religion in re-visioning and/or constructing preferred futures. We encourage an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach as well as a broad range of methodologies. We recognize the complexities of Latinx and Latin American religious experience, so we encourage scholars to exercise their creativity.
The 2023 AAR WR theme, Envisioning Our Futures, we invite proposals that consider how Latinx religions and spiritualities assist communities from imaging to embodying a preferred future. Liberation theologies have long advocated for historical projects linked to belief, faith and theological doctrine that support a future that is present. Where is liberation to be found in everyday living necessities such as healthcare, food, housing, education and labor (workforce and unpaid labor)? How do Latinx spiritualities, cosmologies, and anthropologies shape the future that is emerging in the present? What resources assist our communities to move beyond discussions about liberation and into liberative praxis?
We welcome proposals that discuss:
• Exemplars or religious movements contributing to the transformation of communities
• Contributions and critiques made by Latinx religious scholars in discussions on the relationship between hope and the object hoped for (in other words, the doctrine of Christian hope and material reality)?
• Interdisciplinary reflections and constructive proposals about the future of the universe and well-being of planetary life.
• Ecclesiologies that wrestle with the nature and task of the living church. What is the task? How is that task being accomplished and by who?
• Revolutionary movements in the global south and their connections to religions and spiritualities that foment their visions for a more just society.
• Cosmologies and anthropologies that provide alternative economies to global capitalism.
• Where do we find liberation and revolutionary praxis in the mundane? What are examples of community and familial-centered acts of justice that hold within a de-centralized vision of hope and future not informed by or aimed at neoliberal constructions of progress?
• How do we celebrate and center the stories of the families, the abuelas, the homes, the workers without grandiose or romanticized framings that are currently in vogue within academia?
Please send a 250-word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Marlene Ferreras (mferrera@lasierra.edu) and/or Jacob Perez (jacobmatthewperez@gmail.com).
CFP: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dane Sawyer, University of LaVerne
Mitchel Hickman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shakir Stephen, University of California, Santa Barbara
We welcome all papers engaging with this year’s conference theme (“Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Time”), as well as additional topics of interest in contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Topics of interest might include:
• How have philosophers historically utilized nostalgic or idealized versions of religion(s) to help envision alternate futures, the place philosophers envision (or fail to envision) for religion in their utopian futures, and the future of Philosophy of Religion as a discipline.
• What is or should be the relationship between philosophy, technology, and religion? How is or does popular culture influence or affect philosophy of religion directly or indirectly, and how can (or cannot) philosophers of religion utilize these mediums to discover or uncover philosophical and religious “truth”? How are these mediums transforming what it means to study “religion” in contemporary culture, particularly since these mediums appear to be transforming what religion “is”?
• We invite experts on non-Western philosophies of “religion” (Native American, African, and other Indigenous and First Nations worldviews) to identify, on the one hand, ways that such systems address fundamentally different questions, categories, or problems than those typically attended to in (Western) "philosophy of religion." On the other hand, we would also love to see scholars engage in attempts, in spite of such disconnects and biases, to dialogue with western philosophical categories as a way to further philosophical progress, knowledge, or debate, as well as cultivate cross-cultural empathy and understanding.
• What new, ignored, or disregarded topics, issues, or subjects deserve attention from those in the field of philosophy of religion today? Explore one of these topics, issues, or subjects.
• We also welcome proposals that investigate particular or individual philosophers, religious thinkers, theologians, or prominent social or political figures in terms of their insights, reflections, or ideas that contribute to the study of religion, or topics within the field of philosophy of religion.
Please email abstracts (approximately 250 words) and participant forms (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to Dane Sawyer (dsawyer@laverne.edu) by November 15, 2023. For more information, please visit: https://www.aarwr.com. Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR.
CFP: PSYCHOLOGY, CULTURE, AND RELIGION UNIT
Unit Chairs: Casey Crosbie, Scripps College
Katherine Kunz, Center for Cities and Religions, Baltimore
Kevin Whitesides, University of California, Santa Barbara
Keeping with the annual theme of “reimaging a better future,” the Psychology, Culture, and Religion section considers the ways in which both internal motivators and external social and cultural ideals can aid in the creation of new and better visions of humanity. We invite papers that explore this issue through a range of lenses:
• How do specific religious/cultural claims shape a community’s utopic imagination? Within these utopias, who is included, and who is left on the margins? What factors lead to a more inclusive or pluralistic utopia? What is the role of the past and memory in shaping utopic visions?
• How do communities navigate competing visions of the good, especially in situations where there is an undue power imbalance between groups?
• What ought to be religion’s primary mechanism to create positive social change? Inculcating positive values? Peace-making and mediation between conflicting parties? Prophetic witness against power? Transformative conversion experiences? All of these? None of them? Why?
• How do virtues and aims that typically guide therapeutic practice (self-awareness, individuation, self-actualization, resiliency, etc.) relate to broader conversations about joint human flourishing? Where do they come into conflict?
• How do understandings and experiences of hope, or related practices, create change and shape the future for individuals and communities?
In addition, we also welcome interesting submissions that connect with the intersections of psychology, culture, and religion, even if they do not directly interface with this year's theme.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) to the attention of the section co-chairs, Kevin Whitesides (kevinwhitesides@ucsb.edu), Katherine Kunz (katherine@katherinekunz.com), and Casey Crosbie (caseygcrosbie@gmail.com) by November 15, 2023. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation.
We look forward to receiving your proposals!
CFP: QUEER STUDIES IN RELIGION UNIT
“Exploring Queer Bodies and Queer Faiths”
Unit Chairs: Marie Cartier, California State University, Northridge
John Erickson, Independent Scholar
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Saint Louis University
The Queer Studies in Religion Unit welcomes proposals for papers, panels, presentations, and mixed media works. We are looking to explore reclaiming identities, genders, and bodies in how religion and social media affect these embodied and personified contexts. We are also interested in works on the queer rainbow spectrum which focuses on how meeting spaces are created, maintained, or are disappearing including the fluidity between body and space.
Papers are also welcome which deal with queer magic(k) and how queer bodies are sanctified or de-sanctified. How queer bodies are becoming normative or how they are pushing back against normative ideals.
We welcome papers that engages the general 2024 Conference CFP with Queer Studies in Religion. We are interested in any and all works which can include poetry, performance art, ritual making, and presentations inside and outside of the academy.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to the Queer Caucus. The Queer Caucus includes Marie Cartier ezmerelda@earthlink.net John Erickson jerickson85@gmail.com and Anjeanette LeBoeuf anjeanette.leboeuf@slu.edu
CFP: RELIGION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIT
Unit Chair: Greg Cootsona, CSU Chico
Reed Metcalf, Fuller Theological Seminary
The Religion, Science, and Technology unit invites papers for this year’s AAR Western Regional Conference that relate issues of science and technology to the main conference theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. Many challenges of the present day are directly tied to technology or humankind’s (ab)use of science and tech. From the gifts and dangers of AI to the implications of gene editing, from anthropogenic climate change to augmenting the human body with computer technologies: contemporary discussions revolving around science and technology more and more need the insight of religious and philosophical traditions. These traditions can help us navigate and grapple with the things we make that weigh heavily on our future and those of coming generations. We invite papers that discuss how these traditions give us clarity, charity, and hope in dealing with the challenges of today and the uncertainty of tomorrow.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Greg Cootsona greg@cootsona.net and Reed Metcalf reedmetcalf@fuller.edu.
CFP: RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES UNIT
Unit Chair: Meghan Tiller, University of Southern California
This year, the Religion and Social Sciences unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relate to Religion and Social Sciences. Please send a 250-word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Meghan Tiller tiller@usc.edu. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: RELIGION AND THE ARTS
Rebirth and Regeneration Amid Fracturing & Destruction
Unit Chairs: Anna Hennessey, Graduate Theological Union
Tamisha Tyler, Art, Religion, Culture (ARC)
In line with AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times, which relates to hope amid the destructions taking place in our physical and social worlds, as well as within the hardships of individual daily life, the Religion and the Arts unit this year explores rebirth following trauma in the context of art and religion. How are people reborn in their personal lives through their experiences of art and religion? How do the arts and religion coalesce, giving hope of a re-imagined future, united present, or healed past? How does art serve as a religious and/or non-religious form of the sacred that brings people together or rebirths them as a group when they are living in times of political, social, or personal upheaval, uncertainty and destruction? We encourage the submission of papers that utilize interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and nontraditional approaches to research, as well as a traditional format for paper delivery, and are always open to coverage of topics unrelated to the conference theme.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Anna Hennessey dr.amhennessey@gmail.com and Tamisha Tyler tamishatyler@fuller.edu. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: RELIGIONS OF ASIA
Unit Chair: Adam Tyson, University of California, Riverside
This year, the Religion of Asia unit seeks to promote inclusivity and excellence in scholarship, inviting individual papers from a variety of religious and cultural traditions that explore all aspects of Religions of Asia. We will consider topics related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. However, we also encourage research on other topics and themes related to the Religions of Asia, including both interdisciplinary and nontraditional approaches to research. Papers that address any of the following broad topics in the context of religions of Asia are always of interest: interactions between art, music, religion, material culture, and ideology; rites of passage (birth, marriage, death, etc.); sacred spaces; the body as location for religious experience or ideology; religious and/or secular rituals or performances; gender and religion; global and transnational flows of people, ideas, and material culture; religion and ecology; sacred text; or storytelling and oral tradition.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Adam Tyson adam.tyson@email.ucr.edu. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: SIKH STUDIES
Unit Chairs: Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal, University of California, Riverside
Nirinjan Khalsa, Independent Scholar
The Sikh Studies Unit invites scholars, community leaders, artists, and activists into conversation at AAR Western Region to discuss Sikh responses to Human Rights topics related to the Sikh life-world such as the farmer’s protest, the California bill banning caste-based discrimination, and the recent killing of Sikh advocates. In the face of injustices, how can the Sikh commitment to live as sant-sipahi (saint-warriors) and the ever-rising spirit of chardi kala serve as a call to action, advocacy, service, and love? How might Sikh ethics inform Human Rights engagements within multilingual, multireligious, multiracial, and multicultural life-worlds? What role can art, imagination, interreligious cooperation and scholar-activist collaboration play in guiding us to new solutions and creative outcomes.
Please send your abstract of 250 words and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to unit co-chairs Nirinjan Khalsa and Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal (nirinjan.khalsa@lmu.edu and tbain001@ucr.edu). We look forward to reading your abstracts.
CFP: WOMANIST/PAN-AFRICAN UNIT
Unit Chairs: Valerie Miles-Tribble and Sakena Young-Scaggs
This group provides a forum for religious scholarship that engages theoretically and methodologically 1) the four-part definition of a Womanist as coined by Alice Walker, and 2) the worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diasporic ethnic groups of African descent. We nurture interdisciplinary scholarship, encourage interfaith dialogue, and seek to engage scholars and practitioners in fields outside the study of religion. We are particularly concerned with fostering scholarship that bridges theory and practice to address issues of public concern in church and society.
For the upcoming 2024 AARWR conference in Las Vegas, the Womanist / Pan African unit offers two sessions inspired by the theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. To link to a full theme description:
https://www.aarwr.com/conference-themes.html
-Womanist Session
Womanist approaches explore ethical and theological intersections of narrative using creative genres of literary voices and artistic pathways weaving theoethical messages of cultural survival into spoken word, story, music lyrics, and visual art forms. Interactive use of dialogue and audio-visual resources offer a look at varied religious and societal responses to a survival ethic found in a womanist lens of faith and self-love. Use of narrative and memoir are effective methodological tools of self-reflection and moral biography to express the culturally affirming underpinnings of lived experiences as valid approaches to identity, faith, and justice stances. Applicants are encouraged to submit abstracts adopting comparative forms of resistance and resilience and to creatively craft papers for presentation with rhetorical expressions, including Afro-Futurism. What role does religion play in political action, the discourses and activities of social change, and the “beyond” which is our now and the future of our children and planet?
-Pan African Session
The 2023 AARWR Program Chair writes: “This year we have witnessed several systemic efforts and actions of nihilism, death, and destruction to human life, human rights, and to our global environment within which humanity lives. . . the world is literally burning. And yet we, as religious scholars, still find ways to hope and “do the work our souls must have” amid the reality quakes of daily life” . . . We invite submissions to the Pan African Unit to consider experiences of degradation in economic / environmental crises amid the pillaging of land, waters, and people. What are motivating factors among different cultures to engage in ecological public protest? What are global and moral ramifications that arise in the misuse of religion (mission, doctrine, praxis) to mediate, i.e. tamp down the outcries of righteous indignation by theologizing suffering as God’s will? What voices and agency do indigenous women and communities have in determining new possibilities for ecojustice amid the plurality of religious traditions. How do eco-justice activists and co-conspirators help them to imagine their future and articulate their constructions of communal justice for global change?
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We are eager and excited to embark on another transforming year in Womanist and Pan African scholarship in the Western Region. We invite papers that align with broader AARWR call having a particular focus on either Womanism, Pan Africanism or both. Please submit both a 250-word proposal and the Program Participant form found at the AARWR website - https://www.aarwr.com/call-for- papers.html to Womanist/Pan African Unit Chair: Rev. Valerie Miles-Tribble, PhD at vmiles-tribble@bst.edu or macsvmt@gmail.com
Proposal Submission Note: The deadline for abstract submission to AAR/WR is November 15, 2023.
• Individuals whose proposals are accepted must be members of the AAR
before the conference date in order to present.
• Process: Proposals are anonymous to steering committee during the review, but visible to Chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection
• You will receive notification regarding the status of your proposal on or before December 2023.
• To submit or to request additional information, please contact the Unit Chair
CFP: WOMEN AND RELIGION UNIT AND JEWISH FEMINISMS UNIT (JOINT SESSION)
Unit Chair: Emily Silverman, Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Women and Religion unit will be holding a joint session with Jewish Feminisms and is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates either to Women and Religion or to Jewish Feminisms. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Emily Silverman ebinah@gmail.com. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
FORTHCOMING CFP
CFP: PAGAN STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dorothea Kahena, Cal Poly Pomona
Jeffrey Albaugh, Independent Scholar
2024 ANNUAL CONFERENCE | CALL FOR PAPERS
In-Person Conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)| March 15-17, 2024
Click here to download the program participant form.
The American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR), is delighted to announce its annual Call for Papers (CFP) for its 2024 Conference, which will be held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Our region is grateful for UNLV’s wonderful support of our annual conference and look forward to this opportunity at sharing the exciting research, scholarship, and publication taking place within AAR’s Western Region!
Dr. Sakena Young-Scaggs, AAR'WR's 2023-2024 Vice President and Program Chair, has created the region’s 2024 theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.
This year, the deadline for abstract submission to AAR/WR is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to the relevant unit chairs (listed below) and include an abstract of 250 words and a Program Participant Form, which may be found under “Guidelines” through AAR/WR’s website here.
Participants at an AAR/WR conference must be members of the AAR. AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org. Submission of an abstract alone, however, does not require membership.
Please refer to all individual Calls for Papers (CFPs) below, which are listed in chronological order according to unit name and include all Unit Chair contact information. CFPs are included for 21 units, with 4 more CFPs forthcoming.
This is a fully in-person conference with some hybrid capabilities.
We look forward with great enthusiasm to this conference and to seeing everyone at UNLV in March 2024!
Sincerely,
2023-2024 Executive Committee and Board of Directors
American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR)
AAR/WR CFPs BY UNIT
CFP: ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Shannon Toribio, University of California, Santa Barbara
Laura Snell, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Asian American Religious Studies Unit invites papers for the American Academy of Religion, Western Region Annual Meeting to take place at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from March 15-17, 2024.
Focusing on the definition and redefinition of religious/secular, the unit wishes to explore how these categories are shifted and created through media and politics across boundaries geographical and otherwise. How are Asian American religions affected by movement in these categories? How has transnationalism shaped debates around what is and is not religion? How has it shaped the lived experience of Asian American communities? This year we seek papers concerned with the following themes:
• Transnationalism
• Materiality
• Space/Place
• Categories of Religion and the Secular
• New Religious Movements
• Media and Religion
Scholars of all levels are invited to participate in this dialogue. Interested parties may send abstracts (250 words) to Shannon Toribio (shannon_toribio@ucsb.edu) or Laura Snell (laurasnell@ucsb.edu). The deadline for submission is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org.
CFP: BLACK RELIGION AND THEOLOGY UNIT (NEW! 2024 launch!)
Unit Chair: Aaron Grizzell, NorCal MLK Foundation
We are very excited to launch our new Black Religion and Theology Unit at AARWR 2024, and we look forward to an exciting future together.
The religious experience is of significant and acute concern among our varied African diasporic communities and is worthy of close academic exploration and study. The Black Religion and Theology Unit’s mission is to further the development of scholarly research and discussion about the black religious experience; encourage the broadening of Black religion as an academic endeavor; and engage in discourse, from the African diasporic perspective, about religious and theological expression.
Following along with this year’s theme, which focuses on the role religion, and religious studies, play in helping to tap into the potentiated hope of an (re) imagined future, we welcome proposal submissions for two unit panels. The selected panelists can expect 15 minutes for presentation to enable time for questions and audience responses.
Panel A: Artificial intelligence and generative technologies are changing the landscape of the modes and definitions of communication, imagination, connectivity, and, arguably, reality. Both religion and theology in African diasporic expressions have much to say on these matters. We welcome papers that delve into the challenges, opportunities, and innovative expressions that are being forged in this space.
Panel B: In many ways, the Black religious expression has been the vanguard through which social justice movements have forged new rights under law, and Black religious scholarship has been vital to building a bulwark against theoretical and methodological pushback in the academy regarding the grounding of these movements in the Black experience. We welcome papers that take an innovative look at modes of Black scholarship at the fulcrum of movements for justice, civil and human rights.
Keynote presentation: To launch the Black Religion and Theology Unit, we are excited to host a keynote presentation entitled Theology in the Mode of Monk, presented by Dr. Raymond C. Carr, the incoming president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion and the founding director of the Codex Charles H. Long Project at the MesoAmerican Archive at Harvard University. Dr. Carr’s current scholarship focuses on the comparative theologies of James Hal Cone and Karl Barth.
Please send abstract submissions and Program Participant Forms to Aaron Grizzle (aaron.grizzell@gmail.com). The deadline for submission is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) and be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found at aarweb.org.
CFP: BUDDHIST STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Alina Pokhrel, University of Virginia
Jake Nagasawa, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Buddhist Studies Unit welcomes papers in line with this year’s theme that focus on the role religion (and religious studies) plays to tap into the potentiated hope of a (re) imagined future. We seek papers and presentations that address how Buddhist teachings, art, architecture, and poetry might help reimagine community/belonging as well as offer an alternative hermeneutic in the way of framing and addressing crises that we face globally. In addition, the unit also encourages papers that confront enduring problems in the study of Buddhism, open up new vistas of theoretical and methodological exploration, reimagine geographical relations and/or canons and canonicity, as well as bring different traditions into conversation with one another.
As always, topics of interest unrelated to the conference theme will also be considered as space permits.
Please send an abstract of 250 words as well as a completed participant form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to Buddhist Studies co-chairs: Alina Pokhrel (alina.pokhrel@virginia.edu), Jake Nagasawa (jnagasawa@ucsb.edu)
CFP: CATHOLIC STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Samantha Kang, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nathan McWeeney, University of Southern California
We welcome papers that relate our conference theme (“Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Time”) to Catholic traditions, past, present, and future. We are open to papers from all methodological and disciplinary standpoints (including religious studies, anthropology, history, philosophy and theology), and we are particularly interested in papers that explore tensions, conflicts and debates surrounding the role of images and the imagined. How has/does religious imagining capacitate concrete change (social, religious, political, economic)? Other topics of interest might include Catholic responses to AI, climate change, psychedelics, human sexuality, and the idea of hope as a theological virtue, and more.
Please email abstracts (approximately 250 words) and participant forms (Click here to download the program participant form) to Unit Chairs Nathan McWeeney (mcweeney@usc.edu) and Samantha Kang (SamanthaKang@ucsb.edu) by November 15, 2023. For more information, please visit: https://www.aarwr.com. Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR.
CFP: CHRISTIANITY UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dyron Daughrity, Pepperdine University
Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University
French historian François Hartog has portrayed our time as “presentism.” We live in a constant, never ending present. The past is no longer of use since we perceive our time as an interminable revolution, that constantly makes obsolete the experience of the past. As far as the future is concerned, we build the future now, so that the future is embedded in the present. In other words, we live in a time of now. And the time of now is not a good time: nihilism, human indignities, steep decline in mutual respect, war, increased mental illness, and the destruction of the environment. These are only some of the existential risks we face.
How can we imagine a better future if we are locked in a permanent present? Perhaps religion, and particularly Christianity, can mobilize eschatological, eventually messianic forces to recover a sense of temporality that gives us time to face the imminent adversities. Or rather Christianity must recover an apocalyptic tone, but still a religious tone, to confront a secular apocalypse, a negative end of the world, an end without God and hope.
How can we imagine a better future? Your paper can engage this timely topic. Or, it can engage the topic of the conference. Or it can be completely disconnected from the conference topic. You are free to submit a proposal on any topic you like, as long as it engages the Christian religion.
We welcome papers written from a variety of methods: historical, social, anthropological, theological, philosophical, and biblical. We encourage papers that deal with Christianity anywhere in the world, including here in the USA.
Please send submissions as an attachment to Dyron Daughrity at dyron.daughrity@pepperdine.edu and Enrico Beltramini at ebeltramini@yahoo.com.
The maximum length of abstracts is 250 words.
The deadline for submission of paper abstracts is November 15, 2023. All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here: https://www.aarweb.org/membership/join-or-renew.
Thank you for all of your time and effort as we gear up for our 2024 conference!
CFP: DISABILITIES STUDIES
Unit Chairs: Elizabeth Staszak, Fuller Theological Seminary
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Saint Louis University
In line with the 2024 General Call for Papers, the Disability Studies Unit is looking for papers, panels, or presentations to address one of the following:
• To consider “art and imagination and their forging of footprints of faith or interreligious discourse,” how do we dream about disability acceptance? What does an accessible world mean for scholars, activists, and faith practitioners?
• What are ways which the disability rights movement offers disabled and nondisabled people hope, including scholars and faith practitioners?
• How do religious traditions encourage or discourage the disability rights movement? Have faith traditions or beliefs been harmful to the disability community or disabled identity?
• “Can religion play a part in helping marginalized communities forge their own pathways as collectives or within the sacred skin of their own individual identities?” Can faith traditions offer freedom to disabled people? How do our disabled identities intersect with our spiritual or religious beliefs?
• Given recent Supreme Court decisions to reverse affirmative action and reproductive rights, is there cause for concern about laws and policies technically safeguarding disability rights?
• In terms of current and future environmental policy, where do disability rights and climate change intersect? What are the challenges of balancing eco-consciousness and medical care? What do we do when natural disasters affect and impact caregivers and care receivers?
Our unit welcomes all work including presentations (in and outside of the academy) or mixed-media. We accept both in-person and online presentations as a hybrid unit to ensure accessible participation. We are striving to make our unit and conference fully inclusive, so please let us know how we can fulfill this endeavor.
Please email your 250-word abstract proposal submissions and Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) before November 15, 2023 to the Disability Studies Unit Chairs, Elizabeth Staszak, elizabeth.staszak@gmail.com and Anjeanette LeBoeuf, anjeanette.leboeuf@slu.edu.
CFP: EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY UNIT
Unit Chair: Peter Romaskiewicz, University of California, Santa Barbara
This year, the Education and Pedagogy unit is interested in receiving proposals that focus on the 2024 conference theme of “Envisioning our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.” In particular, we encourage prospective participants to reflect on how the are using their pedagogy to help students “still find ways to hope and ‘do the work our souls must have’ amid the reality quakes of daily life,” as articulated in the conference theme. As educators, we function as ‘transformative agents’ (also from the conference theme) in awakening our students to the reality of our painful local and global realities. How do you engage your students in the classroom around these themes and how do you support them in the emotional labor this requires? What pedagogical tools do we use in the classroom that relate to the challenge of helping our students envision the future when the future can seem so bleak?
In addition to this focus, we also welcome papers on pedagogy in Religious Studies that relate directly to the broader call of the conference which is Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times.
Please note that the deadline for submission of paper abstracts to unit chairs is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to unit chair Peter Romaskiewicz at pmr01@ucsb.edu and include an abstract of 250 words and a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here: https://www.aarweb.org/membership/join-or-renew.
CFP: ETHICS UNIT
Imagining and Creating Ethical Future(s):
Unit Chairs: Mahjabeen Dhala, Graduate Theological Union
Sheryl Johnson, Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Ethics Unit invites papers that engage the overall conference theme, one with deep ethical ties. The overall question we pose is, “how can religious and theological ethics assist in the formation of a more just, inclusive, and livable future for humans, communities, and all species on Earth?” Papers are invited to consider the AARWR conference theme (described in detail below), the questions posed at the end, or any topic relevant to ethical consideration.
This year we have witnessed several systemic efforts and actions of nihilism, death, and destruction to human life, human rights, and to our global environment within which humanity lives. In 2023, the world is literally burning. And yet we, as religious scholars, still find ways to hope and “do the work our souls must have” amid the reality quakes of daily life.
Oftentimes as religious scholars, we have the audacity and dare to believe we can be transformative agents. We stare into the face of the multilayered forms of human blight and seek religious and spiritual remediation. The economic blight, the blight of global disparities and injustice, the blight of indifference and ambivalence to human suffering, and its subsequent toll on creation. How do we stare into the blight and move beyond the blight in 2024?
For example, we might consider the following:
· Can religion play a part in helping marginalized communities forge their own pathways as collectives or within the sacred skin of their own individual identities?
· How have art and imagination forged footprints of faith or interreligious discourse to address human injustice and environmental destruction and decay?
· Can religious scholarship play a role as we grapple with these questions?
· What place does religion hold in the discourse surrounding future environmental policy and advocacy for habitats and human displacement? How has the Anthropocene been imagined and/or can be reimagined from a position of faith and religious scholarship?
· In what ways can religious scholars influence or have remained silent in the preservation of or destruction of human hope or in priming human nihilism?
· What is the world we are helping to create and what options do religious traditions offer for transformation in a world unceasingly grappling existentially?
· How can the past guide us and memory lead us in the creation of new modalities of an imagined future?
What table we are setting for the next generation with new technologies and AI?
· What are sites where the sense of imagined hope can provide glimpses into possible futures?
Where can art, imagination, and interreligious cooperation guide us to new solutions and creative collaborative outcomes?
· Where can identity, intelligence, and personal freedom to dream culminate...if only temporally? What are places of joy that are life-giving rather than death-dealing? What are temporal spaces where can we find them to strategize or to create spaces to thrive? What do they look like? Who and how can they be inhabited?
The deadline for submission of paper abstracts to unit chairs is November 15, 2023.
All participants must submit a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form). Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR. The AAR membership information is found here. The length of an abstract is typically 250 words. Please submit your abstract to both sjohnson@ses.gtu.edu and mdhala@gtu.edu.
CFP: GODDESS STUDIES UNIT
Healing and the Divine Feminine Across Traditions
Unit Chairs: Kali Tanikella, Graduate Theological Union
Anna Hennessey (interim chair), Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Goddess Studies unit invites papers related to the AAR/WR’s 2024 conference theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. Of special interest is a look at the Divine Feminine and its relationship to spiritual remediation, growth, and religion in turbulent times. How have goddesses across religious traditions intersected with the role of religion, human suffering, and/or global, personal, or communal injustices? We encourage the submission of papers that utilize interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and nontraditional approaches to research. Other topics and themes of interest to the Goddess Studies unit include religion and representations of goddesses in art, music, material culture, and ideology; goddesses and sacred spaces; goddesses, gender and religion; goddesses and storytelling or oral traditions. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) as email attachments to Anna Hennessey dr.amhennessey@gmail.com and Kali Tanikella mtanikella@ses.gtu.edu by November 15, 2023. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: GRADUATE STUDENT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Unit Chair: Kimberly Diaz, University of California, Riverside
From early on in graduate school, many religious studies graduate students situate their academic journeys as a dumpster fire - “a situation…that is disastrous and out of control” (Urban Dictionary). Theoretically, professional development aims to help control this dumpster fire by connecting students with a community of professionals who have relevant experience and knowledge. But in reality, professional development normatively encourages graduate students to peripheralize their own various needs and cater to the demands of the field as an unstable and brutal job market. This encouragement reveals that professional development fundamentally divides the human experience into a strict binary of the academic and the personal. Those who primarily focus on the “academic” are positively and/or negatively reinforced to continue doing so, meanwhile those who concentrate on the “personal” or attempt to obliterate the binary altogether are exiled. Whatever the case may be, all must pay the price in some way under neoliberal academia, such as severe exploitation of labor and/or job insecurity.
With religious studies being in such an abysmal state, both in terms of higher education and as an academic field, is there any way this being can be transformed into a becoming of decolonized knowledges and practices? Who is responsible for this transformation? Who is leading this transformation? Can professional development be a catalyst?
The Graduate Student Professional Development Unit invites scholars to submit proposals that (in-)directly relate to the aforementioned topics/questions or propose a new theme. The deadline for proposals and participant forms to unit chairs is November 15, 2023. Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Click here to download the program participant form. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. Please submit abstracts to the attention of the chair, Kimberly Diaz (kdiaz038@ucr.edu).
CFP: INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS
Unit Chair: Delores Mondragón, University of California, Santa Barbara
This year, the Indigenous Religions Unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates to Indigenous Religions. We furthermore encourage papers and panels that incorporate art, music, poetry, ritual, or other forms of representation in their format. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Delores Mondragón (mondragon@ucsb.edu). We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: ISLAMIC STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chair: Souad Ali, Arizona State University, Tempe
This year, the Islamic Studies Unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We invite proposals addressing questions such as:
How do you envision Islamic Studies future in comparative religion, spirituality, scholarship in shifting times? Within a genuine interpretation of Islam's sacred Texts, how can Muslims guard against violence advocated by fanatics and radicals? If Islam advocates peace evidenced by many Verses in the Qur'an, what role can Muslim scholarship play to deconstruct these misconceptions promoting violence in the name of the religion?
We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates to Islamic Studies. We welcome both individual and/or panel proposals.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Dr. Souad Ali (Souad.ali@asu.edu). We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: JEWISH STUDIES UNIT
Jewish Interfaith, Intercultural, and Intersectional Engagements
Unit Chairs: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Alexander Marcus, University of Pennsylvania
This year, the Western Region conference of the American Academy of Religion is examining the role of religion, and religious studies, in responding to injustice and the destruction of life, human rights, and our global environment, inviting us to consider “the religious, spiritual, and comparative religious ways in which the human experience can forge a future as scholar-practitioners in the present times.” Scholars of Jewish Studies have much to contribute to these topics. Jewish history includes experiences of marginalization, isolation, displacement, martyrdom, and genocide. Yet Jewish life and traditions are also filled with life-affirming dynamics – expressed e.g. through art, scholarship, political participation, and religious expression. Intercultural, interreligious, and intersectional viewpoints have marked the history of Jews and Jewish tradition throughout the ages. Analysis of past interfaces, whether in action, text, or art, can inspire our reactions to present and future challenges.
- How have Jews affected and been affected by national, cultural, or religious encounter?
- How have Jews adapted to different historical, cultural, and religious moments?
- What can the Jewish tradition share with others regarding violence and injustice, the destruction of natural and human environments, and issues of theology, spirituality, sociocultural difference, and inclusivity in contemporary life?
The Jewish Studies Unit of the AAR-WR welcomes papers responding to the above topics, from all disciplines pertaining to the study of Jews and Judaism.
The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2023. Submissions should be sent to the Jewish Studies chairs – Roberta Sabbath (roberta.sabbath@unlv.edu) and Alexander Marcus (alexandermarcus@gmail.com) – and should include an abstract of 250 words, a short bio as well as a Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form).
CFP: LATINX RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUALITIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Marlene Ferreras, La Sierra University
Jacob Perez, Pacific School of Religion
The Latinx Religions and Spiritualities Unit welcomes paper proposals related to the role of Latinx spiritualities and the study of religion in re-visioning and/or constructing preferred futures. We encourage an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach as well as a broad range of methodologies. We recognize the complexities of Latinx and Latin American religious experience, so we encourage scholars to exercise their creativity.
The 2023 AAR WR theme, Envisioning Our Futures, we invite proposals that consider how Latinx religions and spiritualities assist communities from imaging to embodying a preferred future. Liberation theologies have long advocated for historical projects linked to belief, faith and theological doctrine that support a future that is present. Where is liberation to be found in everyday living necessities such as healthcare, food, housing, education and labor (workforce and unpaid labor)? How do Latinx spiritualities, cosmologies, and anthropologies shape the future that is emerging in the present? What resources assist our communities to move beyond discussions about liberation and into liberative praxis?
We welcome proposals that discuss:
• Exemplars or religious movements contributing to the transformation of communities
• Contributions and critiques made by Latinx religious scholars in discussions on the relationship between hope and the object hoped for (in other words, the doctrine of Christian hope and material reality)?
• Interdisciplinary reflections and constructive proposals about the future of the universe and well-being of planetary life.
• Ecclesiologies that wrestle with the nature and task of the living church. What is the task? How is that task being accomplished and by who?
• Revolutionary movements in the global south and their connections to religions and spiritualities that foment their visions for a more just society.
• Cosmologies and anthropologies that provide alternative economies to global capitalism.
• Where do we find liberation and revolutionary praxis in the mundane? What are examples of community and familial-centered acts of justice that hold within a de-centralized vision of hope and future not informed by or aimed at neoliberal constructions of progress?
• How do we celebrate and center the stories of the families, the abuelas, the homes, the workers without grandiose or romanticized framings that are currently in vogue within academia?
Please send a 250-word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Marlene Ferreras (mferrera@lasierra.edu) and/or Jacob Perez (jacobmatthewperez@gmail.com).
CFP: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dane Sawyer, University of LaVerne
Mitchel Hickman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shakir Stephen, University of California, Santa Barbara
We welcome all papers engaging with this year’s conference theme (“Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Time”), as well as additional topics of interest in contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Topics of interest might include:
• How have philosophers historically utilized nostalgic or idealized versions of religion(s) to help envision alternate futures, the place philosophers envision (or fail to envision) for religion in their utopian futures, and the future of Philosophy of Religion as a discipline.
• What is or should be the relationship between philosophy, technology, and religion? How is or does popular culture influence or affect philosophy of religion directly or indirectly, and how can (or cannot) philosophers of religion utilize these mediums to discover or uncover philosophical and religious “truth”? How are these mediums transforming what it means to study “religion” in contemporary culture, particularly since these mediums appear to be transforming what religion “is”?
• We invite experts on non-Western philosophies of “religion” (Native American, African, and other Indigenous and First Nations worldviews) to identify, on the one hand, ways that such systems address fundamentally different questions, categories, or problems than those typically attended to in (Western) "philosophy of religion." On the other hand, we would also love to see scholars engage in attempts, in spite of such disconnects and biases, to dialogue with western philosophical categories as a way to further philosophical progress, knowledge, or debate, as well as cultivate cross-cultural empathy and understanding.
• What new, ignored, or disregarded topics, issues, or subjects deserve attention from those in the field of philosophy of religion today? Explore one of these topics, issues, or subjects.
• We also welcome proposals that investigate particular or individual philosophers, religious thinkers, theologians, or prominent social or political figures in terms of their insights, reflections, or ideas that contribute to the study of religion, or topics within the field of philosophy of religion.
Please email abstracts (approximately 250 words) and participant forms (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to Dane Sawyer (dsawyer@laverne.edu) by November 15, 2023. For more information, please visit: https://www.aarwr.com. Participants at AARWR must be members of the AAR.
CFP: PSYCHOLOGY, CULTURE, AND RELIGION UNIT
Unit Chairs: Casey Crosbie, Scripps College
Katherine Kunz, Center for Cities and Religions, Baltimore
Kevin Whitesides, University of California, Santa Barbara
Keeping with the annual theme of “reimaging a better future,” the Psychology, Culture, and Religion section considers the ways in which both internal motivators and external social and cultural ideals can aid in the creation of new and better visions of humanity. We invite papers that explore this issue through a range of lenses:
• How do specific religious/cultural claims shape a community’s utopic imagination? Within these utopias, who is included, and who is left on the margins? What factors lead to a more inclusive or pluralistic utopia? What is the role of the past and memory in shaping utopic visions?
• How do communities navigate competing visions of the good, especially in situations where there is an undue power imbalance between groups?
• What ought to be religion’s primary mechanism to create positive social change? Inculcating positive values? Peace-making and mediation between conflicting parties? Prophetic witness against power? Transformative conversion experiences? All of these? None of them? Why?
• How do virtues and aims that typically guide therapeutic practice (self-awareness, individuation, self-actualization, resiliency, etc.) relate to broader conversations about joint human flourishing? Where do they come into conflict?
• How do understandings and experiences of hope, or related practices, create change and shape the future for individuals and communities?
In addition, we also welcome interesting submissions that connect with the intersections of psychology, culture, and religion, even if they do not directly interface with this year's theme.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) to the attention of the section co-chairs, Kevin Whitesides (kevinwhitesides@ucsb.edu), Katherine Kunz (katherine@katherinekunz.com), and Casey Crosbie (caseygcrosbie@gmail.com) by November 15, 2023. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation.
We look forward to receiving your proposals!
CFP: QUEER STUDIES IN RELIGION UNIT
“Exploring Queer Bodies and Queer Faiths”
Unit Chairs: Marie Cartier, California State University, Northridge
John Erickson, Independent Scholar
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, Saint Louis University
The Queer Studies in Religion Unit welcomes proposals for papers, panels, presentations, and mixed media works. We are looking to explore reclaiming identities, genders, and bodies in how religion and social media affect these embodied and personified contexts. We are also interested in works on the queer rainbow spectrum which focuses on how meeting spaces are created, maintained, or are disappearing including the fluidity between body and space.
Papers are also welcome which deal with queer magic(k) and how queer bodies are sanctified or de-sanctified. How queer bodies are becoming normative or how they are pushing back against normative ideals.
We welcome papers that engages the general 2024 Conference CFP with Queer Studies in Religion. We are interested in any and all works which can include poetry, performance art, ritual making, and presentations inside and outside of the academy.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to the Queer Caucus. The Queer Caucus includes Marie Cartier ezmerelda@earthlink.net John Erickson jerickson85@gmail.com and Anjeanette LeBoeuf anjeanette.leboeuf@slu.edu
CFP: RELIGION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIT
Unit Chair: Greg Cootsona, CSU Chico
Reed Metcalf, Fuller Theological Seminary
The Religion, Science, and Technology unit invites papers for this year’s AAR Western Regional Conference that relate issues of science and technology to the main conference theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. Many challenges of the present day are directly tied to technology or humankind’s (ab)use of science and tech. From the gifts and dangers of AI to the implications of gene editing, from anthropogenic climate change to augmenting the human body with computer technologies: contemporary discussions revolving around science and technology more and more need the insight of religious and philosophical traditions. These traditions can help us navigate and grapple with the things we make that weigh heavily on our future and those of coming generations. We invite papers that discuss how these traditions give us clarity, charity, and hope in dealing with the challenges of today and the uncertainty of tomorrow.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Greg Cootsona greg@cootsona.net and Reed Metcalf reedmetcalf@fuller.edu.
CFP: RELIGION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES UNIT
Unit Chair: Meghan Tiller, University of Southern California
This year, the Religion and Social Sciences unit is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relate to Religion and Social Sciences. Please send a 250-word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Meghan Tiller tiller@usc.edu. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: RELIGION AND THE ARTS
Rebirth and Regeneration Amid Fracturing & Destruction
Unit Chairs: Anna Hennessey, Graduate Theological Union
Tamisha Tyler, Art, Religion, Culture (ARC)
In line with AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times, which relates to hope amid the destructions taking place in our physical and social worlds, as well as within the hardships of individual daily life, the Religion and the Arts unit this year explores rebirth following trauma in the context of art and religion. How are people reborn in their personal lives through their experiences of art and religion? How do the arts and religion coalesce, giving hope of a re-imagined future, united present, or healed past? How does art serve as a religious and/or non-religious form of the sacred that brings people together or rebirths them as a group when they are living in times of political, social, or personal upheaval, uncertainty and destruction? We encourage the submission of papers that utilize interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and nontraditional approaches to research, as well as a traditional format for paper delivery, and are always open to coverage of topics unrelated to the conference theme.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Anna Hennessey dr.amhennessey@gmail.com and Tamisha Tyler tamishatyler@fuller.edu. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: RELIGIONS OF ASIA
Unit Chair: Adam Tyson, University of California, Riverside
This year, the Religion of Asia unit seeks to promote inclusivity and excellence in scholarship, inviting individual papers from a variety of religious and cultural traditions that explore all aspects of Religions of Asia. We will consider topics related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. However, we also encourage research on other topics and themes related to the Religions of Asia, including both interdisciplinary and nontraditional approaches to research. Papers that address any of the following broad topics in the context of religions of Asia are always of interest: interactions between art, music, religion, material culture, and ideology; rites of passage (birth, marriage, death, etc.); sacred spaces; the body as location for religious experience or ideology; religious and/or secular rituals or performances; gender and religion; global and transnational flows of people, ideas, and material culture; religion and ecology; sacred text; or storytelling and oral tradition.
Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Adam Tyson adam.tyson@email.ucr.edu. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
CFP: SIKH STUDIES
Unit Chairs: Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal, University of California, Riverside
Nirinjan Khalsa, Independent Scholar
The Sikh Studies Unit invites scholars, community leaders, artists, and activists into conversation at AAR Western Region to discuss Sikh responses to Human Rights topics related to the Sikh life-world such as the farmer’s protest, the California bill banning caste-based discrimination, and the recent killing of Sikh advocates. In the face of injustices, how can the Sikh commitment to live as sant-sipahi (saint-warriors) and the ever-rising spirit of chardi kala serve as a call to action, advocacy, service, and love? How might Sikh ethics inform Human Rights engagements within multilingual, multireligious, multiracial, and multicultural life-worlds? What role can art, imagination, interreligious cooperation and scholar-activist collaboration play in guiding us to new solutions and creative outcomes.
Please send your abstract of 250 words and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 to unit co-chairs Nirinjan Khalsa and Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal (nirinjan.khalsa@lmu.edu and tbain001@ucr.edu). We look forward to reading your abstracts.
CFP: WOMANIST/PAN-AFRICAN UNIT
Unit Chairs: Valerie Miles-Tribble and Sakena Young-Scaggs
This group provides a forum for religious scholarship that engages theoretically and methodologically 1) the four-part definition of a Womanist as coined by Alice Walker, and 2) the worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diasporic ethnic groups of African descent. We nurture interdisciplinary scholarship, encourage interfaith dialogue, and seek to engage scholars and practitioners in fields outside the study of religion. We are particularly concerned with fostering scholarship that bridges theory and practice to address issues of public concern in church and society.
For the upcoming 2024 AARWR conference in Las Vegas, the Womanist / Pan African unit offers two sessions inspired by the theme: Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. To link to a full theme description:
https://www.aarwr.com/conference-themes.html
-Womanist Session
Womanist approaches explore ethical and theological intersections of narrative using creative genres of literary voices and artistic pathways weaving theoethical messages of cultural survival into spoken word, story, music lyrics, and visual art forms. Interactive use of dialogue and audio-visual resources offer a look at varied religious and societal responses to a survival ethic found in a womanist lens of faith and self-love. Use of narrative and memoir are effective methodological tools of self-reflection and moral biography to express the culturally affirming underpinnings of lived experiences as valid approaches to identity, faith, and justice stances. Applicants are encouraged to submit abstracts adopting comparative forms of resistance and resilience and to creatively craft papers for presentation with rhetorical expressions, including Afro-Futurism. What role does religion play in political action, the discourses and activities of social change, and the “beyond” which is our now and the future of our children and planet?
-Pan African Session
The 2023 AARWR Program Chair writes: “This year we have witnessed several systemic efforts and actions of nihilism, death, and destruction to human life, human rights, and to our global environment within which humanity lives. . . the world is literally burning. And yet we, as religious scholars, still find ways to hope and “do the work our souls must have” amid the reality quakes of daily life” . . . We invite submissions to the Pan African Unit to consider experiences of degradation in economic / environmental crises amid the pillaging of land, waters, and people. What are motivating factors among different cultures to engage in ecological public protest? What are global and moral ramifications that arise in the misuse of religion (mission, doctrine, praxis) to mediate, i.e. tamp down the outcries of righteous indignation by theologizing suffering as God’s will? What voices and agency do indigenous women and communities have in determining new possibilities for ecojustice amid the plurality of religious traditions. How do eco-justice activists and co-conspirators help them to imagine their future and articulate their constructions of communal justice for global change?
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We are eager and excited to embark on another transforming year in Womanist and Pan African scholarship in the Western Region. We invite papers that align with broader AARWR call having a particular focus on either Womanism, Pan Africanism or both. Please submit both a 250-word proposal and the Program Participant form found at the AARWR website - https://www.aarwr.com/call-for- papers.html to Womanist/Pan African Unit Chair: Rev. Valerie Miles-Tribble, PhD at vmiles-tribble@bst.edu or macsvmt@gmail.com
Proposal Submission Note: The deadline for abstract submission to AAR/WR is November 15, 2023.
• Individuals whose proposals are accepted must be members of the AAR
before the conference date in order to present.
• Process: Proposals are anonymous to steering committee during the review, but visible to Chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection
• You will receive notification regarding the status of your proposal on or before December 2023.
• To submit or to request additional information, please contact the Unit Chair
CFP: WOMEN AND RELIGION UNIT AND JEWISH FEMINISMS UNIT (JOINT SESSION)
Unit Chair: Emily Silverman, Graduate Theological Union
This year, the Women and Religion unit will be holding a joint session with Jewish Feminisms and is accepting all papers related to AAR/WR’s 2024 Conference Theme, Envisioning Our Future: Religion, Spirituality, and Scholarship in Shifting Times. We are also open to other paper topics or interdisciplinary research that relates either to Women and Religion or to Jewish Feminisms. Please send a 250 word abstract and your Program Participant Form (Click here to download the program participant form) by November 15, 2023 as email attachments to Emily Silverman ebinah@gmail.com. Presenters must be members in good standing of the American Academy of Religion and register for the conference prior to their presentation. We look forward to receiving your proposals.
FORTHCOMING CFP
CFP: PAGAN STUDIES UNIT
Unit Chairs: Dorothea Kahena, Cal Poly Pomona
Jeffrey Albaugh, Independent Scholar