2015
Call for Papers: Motherhood(s) and Polytheism
(The editors have expressed a particular interest in including work on/from Africa.)
Our aim is to analyse some ways in which a polytheistic system builds and represents itself, focusing our attention on the issue of divine motherhood.
When a deity is represented in an anthropomorphic form, is it male or female? Why? Moreover, when it is represented as a female being, is it (also) mother? There is a long-lasting tradition that tries to define a female divine category based on women’s characteristics, by focusing especially on the most important aspect of women’s life, i.e. being mothers. However, this approach shows some significant limits, in particular the risk of considering anthropomorphic deities as they were actually human and “maternal” (without taking into account, for instance, that the meaning of an apparently universal concept as “mother” can significantly change depending on historical and geographical context). In fact, if biological motherhood is a matter of fact, social motherhood (activities, rights, responsibilities, relationships, social status, representations of motherhood) varies from culture to culture: what we, “Western” people, call “maternal” might not match with what ancient people and/or people from other geographical zones call “maternal”. On the one hand, we have the “woman as symbol”, on the other hand, we have “women as agents”: Distinction by Adrienne Rich between “Motherhood as institution” and mothering (women’s experience and relation to her own reproductive capacities) might be relevant at this regard. Everyday experience suggests that there is a gap between representation/construction of motherhood and actual practice.
If we look at the Greek and Roman polytheisms, we see that male “authors” could certainly think of the divine as female, and even as mothers, that is as having given birth, but many were not, and those that did are not particularly “motherly” towards their children. It is the “virgin” Artemis who is most associated with a protective and nourishing role towards children; otherwise, the most “maternal” deities are “minor” figures from an earlier time or “minor” divinities, such as Maia, Leto, and Thetis. The nymphs, in particular, are liminal (in many senses) deities with a peculiar relationship not only to motherhood, but also to breast-feeding. These maternal figures are closer to human world and human experience. “Major” goddesses tend to enact a more abstract and metaphorical approach to fertility, abundance, and the care and protection of infants, that is what we call “kourotrophia”.
How is it represented the divine motherhood in other polytheisms? Why? Can men engage onto maternal thinking and practice, too? As far as ritual practice is concern, are mothers and mother-like figures (such as nurses and grandmothers) involved in specific rituals?
The ultimate goal of this miscellaneous is to contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms used in the construction of polytheistic religions, whose rise, development and (real?) death is still a matter of heated debate. Generally speaking, we have perhaps focused our attention too much on polytheisms present in the Mediterranean Basin, too little on other polytheisms so far.
We especially welcome contributions that offer a glimpse of polytheisms outside the “classic” world and / or help to enrich the debate on the desirable theoretical encounter between religious studies, gender studies and motherhood studies. More specifically, along with the reflections on the mechanisms to represent the deities in polytheistic systems, by analyzing motherhood as an institution (represented by goddesses?), mothering and on real mothers in several religious traditions, it could be possible to uncover the interdisciplinary potential of motherhood studies with the studies of religions and reflect on new paths of research (women’s religious experience as mothers, women reflecting on or challenging the religiously defined norms of “the good mother”, religious perspectives in family planning, construction of gendered roles in the domain of parenting, in particular that informed by religious traditions).
The proposals, which should not exceed 500 words, must be received by December 31, 2014 to the following e-mail addresses: giulia.pedrucci@unibo.it; chiara.terranova1980@gmail.com. The accepted papers must be submitted in final form by September 2015. The final publication, from the publisher Aracne, is scheduled for the end of 2015.
We take this opportunity to extend our most cordial greetings.
Giulia Pedrucci and Chiara Terranova
2015
CfP African Studies Association annual meeting 2015
The AASR is an affiliate member of the African Studies Association. The AASR Executive encourages you to submit individual proposals and panels for the 2015 ASA annual meeting in San Diego on The State and the Study of Africa.
If you submit an individual paper proposals, please send a copy of the title and abstract to AASR President, Prof Elias Bongmba (bongmba@rice.edu), so that he can keep track of submissions. If you want to propose a fully arranged panel with selected members, please submit the proposal on the ASA website and make sure you put the sponsoring organization as The African Association for the Study of Religion.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
58th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association
November 19-22, 2015
Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, San Diego, CA
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSAL SUBMISSION: March 15, 2015
PROGRAM CHAIRS
Dismas A. Masolo, University of Louisville
Derek R. Peterson, University of Michigan
ABOUT THE MEETING
We are soliciting proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables. Presentations may focus on the theme of “The State and Study of Africa” or on broader social science, humanities, and applied themes relating to Africa. We strongly encourage the submission of formed panels. You can find more information on the theme and the guidelines for proposals at the ASA website.
The ASA is excited to announce that this year we have a new category for submissions! In addition to submitting a panel, roundtable, or paper, you may also submit a proposal for an “Author Meets Critic” roundtable. You can find more information on the ASA website.
The ASA has another new initiative that we hope will help individuals utilize the ASA network to find potential panelists. You will now be able to post a “call for panelists” on the ASA website. If you have a proposed panel abstract, you will be able to request that it is posted on the ASA website prior to the close of the CFP along with a call for potential panelists under that theme. More information can be found on the ASA website. Please note that panel organizers must still submit an organized panel proposal by March 15, 2015.
HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL
Instructions for submitting proposals can be found online on the ASA website.
PLEASE NOTE: If your proposal is accepted, the conference pre-registration fee must be paid by May 15, 2015 by ALL participants. Payment of the pre-registration fee will result in a final acceptance. Failure to pay the pre-registration fee by May 15, 2015, will result in an automatic rejection.
JOIN THE ASA OR RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP
Join the ASA or renew your membership. ASA membership can be purchased through Cambridge University Press. If you have any difficulties registering, please contact Cambridge at usmemberservices@cambridge.org.
ABOUT THE AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION
Established in 1957, the African Studies Association is the largest organization in the world devoted to enhancing the exchange of information about Africa. Our members include scholars, students, teachers, activists, development professionals, policy makers, donors and many others. We encourage interdisciplinary interactions with Africa. We provide access to pathbreaking research and key debates in African studies. We bring together people with scholarly and other interests in Africa through our annual meeting and seek to broaden professional opportunities in the field of African studies. The organization publishes two leading interdisciplinary journals on Africa, African Studies Review and History in Africa and promotes an informed understanding of Africa to the public and in educational institutions as well as to businesses, media, and other communities that have interests in Africa.
For general questions regarding the meeting and/or registration please contact members@africanstudies.org. For questions regarding the submission process, guidelines, or program theme please contact asameeting2015@gmail.com.
We welcome your participation in this exciting conference and in the ASA!
2014
Religion, Gender and Body Politics Conference
Religion, Gender and Body Politics: Post-secular, Post-colonial and Queer perspectives
International conference on behalf of the international research project “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives”, at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 12-14 February 2015. Please find the Call for Papers below or here in pdf.
Introduction
As sign and site of individual and collective identity profiling the human body has gained increasing importance and attention in today’s culturally and religiously diverse societies. Worldwide many ideological conflicts on the management of diversity and the role of religion in the public sphere are being played out on ‘the body’. This is especially the case in the aftermath of 9/11, when religion re- appeared in the public arena in an unexpected and controversial form, often related to disputes about the role and place of Islam in Western societies. Subjects of debate have not only become religious dress (hijab, burqa, kippa), but also other body-related cultural and religious practices, such as male and female circumcision, food regulations (e.g., ritual slaughter and religious fasting), conventional gendered social behaviour in the public sphere (e.g., physical greeting gestures) and daily religious practices (e.g., the presence of prayer rooms for Muslims in public buildings such as schools). Also the integrity and possible violation of the human body figure as important signposts in controversies over the acceptability of religious conventions and behaviour (e.g., sexual abuse, corporal punishments). Finally, in public expressions of feminist activism, sometimes against the religious establishment (e.g., Femen, Pussy Riot), the body is – again – an important messenger, tool or sign.
The fierceness of debates concerning the public bodily expression of religion – in particular Islam – conceals the fact that bodies in present-day society are governed, regulated, shaped and represented in many ways, often unrelated, or even in opposition, to religion. For instance, by subjecting oneself to ‘self-care regimes’ (Bauman 1992) by visiting gyms, spas and organic food stores, one can acquire the ‘physical capital’ (Bourdieu 1998) necessary to display the fit and healthy body that has become the dominant model of our times and that is encouraged through government-sponsored sports programs, television commercials and real-life shows (e.g. My Big Fat Diet Show). As Schilling (1993) argues, the central position of the body within contemporary ‘somatic society’ (Turner 1992) reflects a number of social insecurities. Women’s emancipation has led to uncertainty about gender roles and, consequently, the over-emphasis of traditional expressions of masculinity and femininity; medical interventions prolong life but lead to insecurities about death and the struggle against mortality and its effect on the body; and technological innovation leads to questions about the limits and boundaries of what actually constitutes the human body. Not only does the earlier mentioned excessive focus on religious bodily practices conceal the fact that there are more general cultural insecurities about embodiment at work, it also conceals the fact that in practice the boundaries between “religious” and “secular” bodily practices are often blurred.
Conference Description: Aims and Perspectives
In this conference we want to explore why and how the gendered body has become a highly contested and constitutive site of dynamic secular and religious (identity) politics, ideologies and practices in contemporary societies worldwide. In this we suggest to regard the body as simultaneously an empirical entity (e.g., the human or animal body), a discursive practice (e.g., the body politics or the body of Christ), and a focus of technologies of the self (e.g., ecstatic or ascetic bodies).
The body as a contested site in contemporary societies is often the body of a gendered, sexual, religious or ethnic other (e.g., women, LGBT’s, migrants, or colonial others). These discursive practices of “othering” presuppose a clearly defined “we” superior to the “other”, thereby reinforcing related dichotomies (e.g., West-East, male-female, religious-secular, straight-gay) and their power relations. The disciplining of bodily practices appears to take place mainly at the level of institutionalised religion and secularism where ideologies and politics of gender, sexuality and ethnicity are imposed. However, when we look at how people live their bodies, creative and non-normative body practices can be identified that question, resist or inform these ideologies and politics. The deconstruction of the normative regulation and representation of the body should therefore not be investigated along the lines of the public-private divide, but in a manner that questions this divide and that is attentive to the ways in which lived religion and lived secularism permeate the until recently virtually uncontested boundaries between the visible, public and institutional on the one hand and the invisible, private and personal on the other.
We aim to question the ways in which intersecting ideologies of religion, secularism and gender materialise through individual and collective body-politics drawing from a range of contemporary critical perspectives in the humanities and qualitative social sciences, such as postcolonial criticism, post- secularism and queer theories. With these critical perspectives, we want to challenge persisting dichotomies in the study of religion and gender, like the public/private and religious/secular binaries, and Western and heteronormative dominant models of knowledge.
At the crossroads: post-secular, post-colonial and queer perspectives
This conference is organised within the international research project “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender”. After having explored the three perspectives in separate workshops, the research project’s final conference strives towards integrating the three perspectives, culminating in innovative research questions and methodologies in the study of religion and gender. The three perspectives refer to three major social changes which have an impact on the contemporary representation, role and practice of religion, gender and the body, as well as the academic reflection thereof:
- Post-colonial criticism aims to challenge and deconstruct Western dominant models of knowledge, also in the study of religion and gender. It seeks to unmask colonial epistemological frameworks, unravel Eurocentric logics, and interrogate stereotypical cultural representations (Pui-Lan 2005). However, still today, Western dominant regimes of knowledge are (un)consciously incorporated in academic works on religion and gender, consisting of hierarchically ordered binaries such as West/East, enlightened/backward and sacred/secular. Postcolonial theory aims to deconstruct these binaries of hierarchical oppositions and inequality and pays attention to different experiences of people across geographical, ethnical, racial, religious and sexual divides, and the power relations involved. Postcolonial criticism aims to analyse and interrogate the intricate relationships between post-coloniality, gender, sexuality and religion which are reflected in colonial, neo-colonial and imperial practices and body politics. It thus draws attention to the intersectionality of religion, gender and other categories of social ordering such as race, culture and ethnicity, something also apparent in post-secular and queer studies.
- From a post-secular perspective the secularisation thesis, stating that religion is in decline or even that it is bound to disappear completely, is being questioned and criticised. “Traditional” forms of religion, while constantly changing and shifting, are still very much present in people’s lives as well as in the public sphere. Moreover, new forms of religion emerge in the form of spiritual movements or the “new” religions societies are confronted with in an age of global migration. Rather than speaking of a decline of religion, therefore, it would be more accurate to speak of a changing landscape of religious practices and presence. This means that not only the role of religion and religious ideology in the public sphere needs to be rethought, but also the (gendered) construction of religious selves (Peumans & Stallaert 2012) in societies that have been perceived to be secular and liberal. A post-secular perspective may rethink (1) the role of women both in “established” religious traditions and within new spirituality, where they seem to be overrepresented; (2) the effect of the religious-secular dichotomy on women who in this dichotomy have been associated with the spiritual and the private rather than the rational and the public; and (3) the conceptions of religious agency that have been produced within secular gender theory (Braidotti 2008, Bracke 2008). Post-secular research, then, is marked both by the intention to deconstruct the oppositional pairing of secularity and religion and by the urge to investigate the paradoxical present-day condition in which currents of ongoing secularisation and religious revival seem to co-exist, together with the implications this has on gender and body politics.
- From a queer perspective, the entanglement of religion, gender and sexuality is viewed with distrust towards heteronormative schemes. These schemes are not limited to religious ideology (for instance religious moral claims of traditional family values), but also in, for example, secular forms of LGBT-rights discourse framing same-sex marriage as the ultimate goal of emancipation. A queer perspective on religion, gender and sexuality is sensitive to the ways in which shifting shapes of religion in the context of post-colonial and post-secular societies, can be constitutive of heteronormative religious subjectivities, but can also be a source of rituals, practices and discourses that challenge heteronormativity. Therefore, they can be creatively employed to imagine religious subjectivities outside of heteronormative frames (Wilcox 2013). Queer studies draw attention to the complexity and ambiguity of sexual and gender identities as they are constructed in social, cultural, and religious discourses and (body) politics as well as in (homo)nationalist ideologies.
Key-notes
Minoo Moallem, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Yvonne Sherwood, Professor of Biblical Studies and Politics, University of Kent
Ulrike Auga, Professor of Theology and Gender Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin
Scott Kugle, Associate Professor of South Asian and Islamic Studies, Emory University, Atlanta
Sarojini Nadar, Professor of Gender and Religion, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Please find the preliminary programme with key-note lectures here.
Call for papers
At this conference we welcome contributions that:
• use theoretical approaches drawing from insights in post-secular, postcolonial, queer and gender theories, clarifying body practices as a contested site of religious and secular practices;
• either theoretically or empirically challenge the secular/religious and public/private binaries in understanding contemporary body politics;
• do not only explore expressions and accounts of ideal religious and secular practices and norms, but also their manifold articulations with all the lived ambiguities and ambivalences;
• suggest, imagine or develop innovative methodologies in order to understand the complex ways in which religious and secular identities are formed through bodily practices.
Moreover, at this conference we encourage an interdisciplinary approach, welcoming insights from, amongst others, gender studies, men and masculinity studies, disability studies, theology, religious studies, anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies and media studies.
Organisers
This conference is organised as the final event of the international research project “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives”. This project was initiated and coordinated by prof. dr. Anne-Marie Korte (Utrecht University) and dr. Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds). The conference will also host the celebratory launch of the newly established ‘International Association for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion and Gender’ (IARG).
Practical information
Panel sessions
- Paper or panel proposals need to be submitted on the project website before 1 December 2014 (http://projectreligionandgender.org/submission). The conference organisation will inform all applicants about its decision before 15 December 2015.
- Individual paper proposals should include your name and institutional affiliation, the title of your paper and an abstract of max. 250 words.
- Besides individual papers it is also possible to submit proposals for a pre-arranged panel session of one and a half hour. A panel consists of maximum three to four paper presentations. Please provide the following information (max. 1.000 words): title of the panel session; name of the chair of the panel session; names, titles and abstracts of the papers.
Poster sessions
- There is also the possibility to present your research via a poster presentation. Poster proposals need to be submitted on the project website before 1 December 2014 (http://projectreligionandgender.org/submission). The conference organisation will inform all applicants about its decision before 15 December 2015.
- Poster proposals should include your name and institutional affiliation, the title of your poster and an abstract of max. 100 words.
- During the ceremony on the second day (see programme), a prize of €200,- will be awarded for the best poster presentation.
Finances
- The conference fee is €200,- and includes the annual membership for 2015 of the International Association for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion and Gender (IARG).
- For students or researchers with a low budget, we can provide a small reduction of the conference fee.
Contact
- For more information you can contact the project assistant Jorien Copier (projectreligionandgender@gmail.com)
2014
CALL FOR PAPERS – Africa-Related Papers, Panels and Roundtables American Academy of Religion
American Academy of Religion Annual Meetings, Nov. 22-25, 2014, San Diego
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the largest professional organization for scholars of religious studies, history, the social sciences, literature, and other disciplines who study religion.
The AAR will meet in San Diego from Saturday, Nov. 22 to Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014. The AAR’s African Religions Group seeks papers for panels or roundtables on (1) religious dimensions of violence in Rwanda and the DRC, (2) religious dimensions of international development and climate change, (3) LGBTIQ women in Africa, (4) mental health and religion in Africa, (5) African religions and agriculture, and (6) aspects of law, ethics, and religion in relation to homophobia on the continent. The full CFP (see http://papers.aarweb.org/content/african-religions-group) follows below; please distribute widely.
The deadline for proposals is 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday, March 3. Directions for submitting proposals may be found at http://papers.aarweb.org/content/general-call-instructions. Please contact Joseph Hellweg (jhellweg@fsu.edu) and/or Mary Nyangweso (wangilam@ecu.edu) with any questions you might have.
We invite individual papers, paper sessions, and roundtable proposals on the following six themes from scholars in all academic disciplines relevant to these topics:
1. Religious dimensions of violence, displacement, and politics in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo 20 years after the Rwandan genocide: Two decades after the Rwandan Genocide, President Kagame still leads Rwanda. Rwanda’s gacacha courts that judged genocide perpetrators only closed recently in 2012. And violence continues just beyond Rwanda’s border in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. We seek contributions that explore the gendered, political, ritual, transnational and other dimensions of the current situation in relation to religion and ethics, broadly construed, in either or both countries.
2. Religious responses to and reflections on the ecological and environmental impact of international development and climate change: As apocalyptic scenarios for climate change and its impacts on the Global South gain attention, religious authorities and ethicists are interpreting changing climate patterns in moral terms or taking ritual action to address them, giving scholars of religion opportunities to assess the religious and ethical aspects of the current situation. We seek contributions that focus on such issues on the African continent in autochthonous, Christian, Muslim, or other religious or ethical contexts.
3. LGBTIQ women in Africa: Although the lives of LBGTIQ persons are receiving increasing international attention by scholars and the media, the focus is more often on men than on women. We seek insights into how women in specific communities on the African continent fashion their gendered and sexual lives in light of various religious and ethical dynamics and contexts—in cities and villages, in Christian and Muslim communities, and in light of autochthonous religious logics and practices, etc. We also welcome contributions that evaluate Western notions of LBGTIQ identity and queer theory in light of local categories of gender and sexuality—including critiques of the concepts of gender and sexuality themselves and of other theoretical frameworks—as they affect these women’s lives.
4. Mental health and religion in Africa: As state resources for the treatment of mental illness continue to dwindle across Africa, ritual and religious sources of treatment come into greater public view, having long coexisted with biomedicine. We invite contributions that explore the coexistence of these healing systems; the treatment of mental illness by religious (including missionary) institutions; religious or ritually grounded etiologies of mental illness (including etiologies prevalent in Islam); ethical dimensions of mental health and illness on the continent; and the impacts of shamanism, spirit possession, divination, or other ritual practices on mental health. Related topics are also welcome.
5. African religions and agriculture: Agricultural work in Africa has long involved ritual action to assure the intervention of ancestors and spirits in providing rain and for the fertility of the land. We seek contributions that explore intersections among ritual, ethics, and farming—from ethnographies of agricultural rituals to studies of cooperatives organized by religious practitioners to assessments of state policies linked to the redistribution or commodification of land in ways that reveal socialist or capitalist cosmologies, to the ethics of land ownership and the use of genetically modified crops. We welcome related topics as well.
6. Homophobia, Law, and Religion in Africa: This session will critically examine the wave of legalized homophobia across the continent that has recently garnered attention in Uganda and Nigeria with respectively failed and successful attempts to outlaw homosexuality with the imprimatur of religious authorities. We seek papers that focus on specific national, regional, or continental aspects legalistic attempts to marginalize LGBTIQ persons in Africa. We also seek papers that engage relationships between religious and legal authorities or theology and law in these efforts. Above all we seek detailed presentations that explore precise dimensions of the wave of homophobia on the continent in relation to law and religious or ethical concerns at whatever scale the author chooses.
2013
Call for Papers: Public Religion and Issues of Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa
—Call for Papers—
Public Religion and Issues of Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa
edited by Ezra Chitando (University of Zimbabwe) & Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds)
Issues of same-sex relationships and gay and lesbian rights are subject of public and political controversy in many African societies today. Frequently, these controversies receive widespread attention both locally and globally. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently pending in the Ugandan parliament is a well-known example, but many other examples could be given. In the international media, these cases tend to be presented as revealing a deeply-rooted homophobia in Africa fuelled by religious and cultural traditions on the continent. But so far little energy is expended in understanding these controversies in all their complexity and the critical role religion plays in them. This book volume seeks to address this gap and to enhance such an understanding, exploring issues of religion and homosexuality from various disciplinary perspectives, including religious studies, anthropology and theology, informed by critical social and cultural theory such as postcolonial and queer perspectives.
As editors we share, on the one hand, a concern about the apparent rise of anti-homosexual rhetoric and politics in African contexts, and on the other hand about the image of a generally homophobic Africa that is popular in the West (Awondo, Geschiere & Reid 2012). Through this book project we aim to explore how and why issues related to homosexuality recently have become so central in public and political debates in Africa, examining the trajectories of the ‘politicisation’ of the issue (Awondo 2010) in different countries in relation to both global discourses and politics and local social, cultural and political factors and developments. The project particularly examines the role of religion (religious beliefs, worldviews and sensitivities, sacred texts, religious leaders and organisations, faith communities, faith-based activism, etcetera) in these dynamics—a role that most likely is more ambiguous and multifaceted than often is suggested. We propose a focus on the notion of ‘public religion’, as this enables an analysis of the conflation of religion with politics and public life that is characteristic of the configuration of religion—specifically the major religions, Christianity, Islam and traditional or indigenous religions—in contemporary African societies (Ellis & Ter Haar 2007; Englund 2011) and that is clearly reflected in the debates about homosexuality. Not only does the notion of public religion mean that religion in Africa is highly visible in public and political spheres, but also that it relates in dynamic and complex ways to secular regimes of knowledge, power and politics both nationally and globally—something that is particularly relevant to the contemporary debates about issues related to homosexuality in Africa (Van Klinken 2013; Togarasei & Chitando 2011).
We envision this project as contributing, on the one hand, to the critical analysis and deconstruction of the various myths and popular perceptions—both in Africa and in the West—concerning homosexuality and religion in Africa, and of the local and global dynamics of power in which African debates on the issue are entangled, and on the other hand, to the rethinking of issues of homosexuality from African religious perspectives in relation to broader questions of human rights and social justice (Epprecht 2013).
As editors we solicit papers that either present case studies on public religion and controversies about homosexuality in specific African countries, or explore key themes and perspectives relevant to the understanding of dynamics and debates concerning religion and homosexuality in Africa more generally. We consider young African scholars as important contributors to the proposed debate and would like to encourage them to submit a proposal.
The book is likely to be published in the new Ashgate series Religion in Modern Africa edited by Professor James L. Cox (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Gerrie ter Haar (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague).
Submitting a proposal
Proposals for contributions can be submitted to the editors (see email addresses below) until 31 October 2013. Proposals should include the title, an abstract (400-500 words) and a biographic statement indicating the author’s affiliation, research interests and key publications (100 words).
Authors will be informed about acceptance by November 2013. The deadline for full versions of articles will be July 2014, after which they will go through a process of review and revision.
The editors
Ezra Chitando is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy of the University of Zimbabwe. He also serves as theological consultant for the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA) of the World Council of Churches. He has widely published on religion in Africa, in recent years mostly focusing on issues of religion and HIV/AIDS and religion and masculinities. Email: chitsa21@yahoo.com.
Adriaan van Klinken is Lecturer in African Christianity in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds (UK). His research focuses on Christianity and issues of gender, (homo)sexuality and public life in Africa. He recently published Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS (Ashgate 2013). Email: a.vanKlinken@leeds.ac.uk.
Bibliography
Awondo, Patrick. 2010, “The Politicisation of Sexuality and Rise of Homosexual Movements in Post-colonial Cameroon”, Review of African Political Economy, vol. 37, no. 125, pp. 315-328.
Awondo, Patrick, Geschiere, Peter & Reid, Graeme. 2012, “Homophobic Africa? Toward A More Nuanced View”, African Studies Review, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 145-168.
Englund, Harri. 2011, Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, Athens: Ohio University Press.
Epprecht, Marc. 2013, Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking Homophobia and Forging Resistance, London: Zed Books.
Togarasei, Lovemore & Chitando, Ezra. 2011, “‘Beyond the Bible’: Critical Reflections on the Contributions of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies on Same-Sex Relationships in Africa”, Journal of Gender and Religion in Africa, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 109-125.
Ellis, Stephen & Ter Haar, Gerrie. 2007, “Religion and Politics: Taking African Epistemologies Seriously”, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 385-401.
Van Klinken, Adriaan S. 2013, “Gay Rights, the Devil and the End Times: Public Religion and the Enchantment of the Homosexuality Debate in Zambia”,Religion,http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0048721X.2013.765631#
