Another Slice of Life
Some of the more interesting groups in the upcoming American Academy of Religion National Conference. First up, lest you think the study of religion is a general field, I present you with:
The group invites proposals on: 1) The Religious Experience of Families with a Disability. Robert Orsi's 1994 essay, ‘’Mildred, Is It Fun To Be a Cripple?’: The Culture of Suffering in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Catholicism,’ will serve as touchstone for examination of the religious and spiritual experience of families with disabilities and/or the experience of family and related members with disabilities within the home and faith community. 2) Disability and the Cosmic Order. Works of literature, art, or film that represent disability as part of a religious-cosmic order. Topics: disability in canonical texts; inversions of the conventional disability/ ability hierarchy; the implicit theology of monstrosity in western literary texts; and the role of literature or the arts in the self-understanding of disabled persons.
This next group embodies all that we know and love about higher education and its own self-caricature:
We invite proposals on the following themes: 1) distinctions, differences, and dialogue between the ecology movement and the animal protection movement in any country or cultural sphere; 2) spiritual direction and animals, or animals and religious well-being; 3) movement/ dance as reflected/ embodied in religion and animal themes; 4) sacred texts and animals; 5) religio-ethical status of animals as individuals v. species; 6) vegetarianism as a choice and the religious, spiritual and/or ethical issues of relevance to the practice or study of religion. We emphasize a diversity of approaches to the study of animals and religion.
And last, the name-dropping group -- there's one in at every conference, just like there's one in every circle of friends:
Submissions are invited on the following themes: 1) religion as communication: do we need a new paradigm? (between Niklas Luhmann’s ‘communicational turn’ and Hartmut Esser’s ‘situational logic’); 2) forgotten classics: reappreciating neglected approaches (e.g., Simmel, Veblen, Achelis, Troeltsch, C. W. Mills); 3) relations between cognitive and neuro-physiological approaches to religion; 4) potential contributions of Bruno Latour (actor-network theory; Jubiler: ou les tourments de la parole religieuse); (5) Talal Asad’s Formations of the Secular. [ed. And then, from out of nowhere at all . . .] Consistent with the international focus of the 2003 meeting, proposals addressing Japanese issues in and approaches to the study of religion are especially welcome. [Whaaaa?]
Oh goodie, it's going to be a fun winter weekend in Atlanta!!
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