Call for Papers: Religion and the Natural Elements

[marXian]

Friends, my department hosts a graduate student conference every other year. Below is the CFP for next school year's conference. The conference is intended for any current graduate students at either the masters or Ph.D levels.  We are also a department open to a wide range of approaches and methodologies in religious studies (as the CFP hopefully makes clear.) It has been planned and will be hosted by a committee of graduate students from the department (myself included), and is a great opportunity for those looking for conference experience in a friendly, supportive environment. I hope that you will submit an abstract for consideration! I'm happy to answer questions, but as I am on the committee, they can't be about your specific abstract. Please feel free to share with friends and colleagues!

 

 

RELIGION AND THE NATURAL ELEMENTS

 

Northwestern University Department of Religious Studies

Graduate Conference

October 24-26, 2014

 

Keynote Speakers

Leigh Schmidt (WUSTL)

Marilyn McCord Adams (Rutgers)

Dyan Elliott (Northwestern)

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

The Religious Studies Department of Northwestern University invites graduate papers for a conference on “Religion and the Natural Elements,” to be held in Evanston, Illinois on October 24-26, 2014. We request abstracts by May 16, 2014.

 

Through this conference, we aim to cultivate new ways of thinking about religion and the natural world. We focus on religion’s intersections with aspects of nature, from the environment, climate, flora, and fauna, to human interactions with the natural, in the form of spirits, gods and goddesses, and miracles. This conference will explore the relationships among ecosystems, religious practice, and religious thought. Conference participants will examine how people experience religion in and through nature, and they will reflect on the modes by which humans interact with the natural world, in ritual practice, in religious text, and in theological inquiry. For example, papers might engage with pressing issues of the 21st century, such as the financial and theological responses of international religious organizations to the devastation of Typhoon Hayian in the Philippines in 2013.  Papers might also address contemporary and/or historical issues of environmental change, cosmology, bioethics, evolution, or natural symbolism, among other topics that contemplate the natural environment, lived religion, and religious reflection.

 

All of these topics deserve thorough exploration in an interdisciplinary setting, and thus the Northwestern University Religious Studies Department seeks papers from across the humanities and social sciences. The intersections of religion and the natural world offer rich points of discussion for graduate students who approach religion from a number of different fields, including religious studies, theology, philosophy, anthropology, history, gender studies, political science, sociology, and psychology.

 

Papers should not exceed fifteen minutes in length and may approach the topic from any discipline or methodology.

 

Please send a 500-word abstract, along with your name, institution, and year of study to nureligiousstudiesconference@gmail.com by May 16, 2014.  Decisions will be communicated by the end of June.

[marXian]

Sorry for the shameless bump!

 

The conference now has a website: http://sites.northwestern.edu/religionandnaturalelements/

 

Also, due to some funding circumstances, we've had to move the dates of the conference back one week to Oct. 31 - Nov. 2. Nothing else has changed though, including the keynotes!

[marXian]

One more update!

 

We're extending the submission deadline to June 1!

 

Now that your spring term is over or ending soon (unless you're on awful quarters like I am), you can write an amazing proposal and submit it!