AASR Members Presented with Prestigious Award from the American Academy of Religion

Dr. Afe Adogame (University of Edinburgh, UK) and Dr. Damaris Parsitau (Egerton University, Kenya) were presented with an American Academy of Religion Collaborative Research Grant last evening at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, CA, for their project on ‘The Feminization of New Immigrant African Pentecostal Diasporic Religious Cultures.’ Dr. Adogame accepted the award on their behalf. FullSizeRenderFullSizeRender 2

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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)

Call for Panel Proposals for the XXIst IAHR Congress at Ehrfurt, Germany, August 23-29, 2015

 

The Organizers of the 21st IAHR World Congress on the Dynamics of Religions Past and Present, 23-29 August 2015, at the University of Erfurt, Germany, invite paper proposals on one of the four thematic congress areas

  • Religious communities in society: Adaptation and transformation
  • Practices and discourses: Innovation and tradition
  • The individual: Religiosity, spiritualities and individualization
  • Methodology: Representations and interpretations

The deadline for submission of panel proposals is Sunday, September 14, 2014. All proposals must be submitted electronically via the IAHR 2015 website. This site will be available for submissions from Sunday, September 1, 2013 through Sunday, September 14, 2014. As part of the submission process, you will be asked to indicate the area in which you would like your proposal considered. Your proposal will then be forwarded to the appropriate member of the Academic Program Committee.

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.

Contribution to AASR Students Award 2014

We wish to invite you to make a financial donation towards the inaugural AASR Student Awards. The initiative aims primarily to stimulate beneficial intellectual activities among post-graduate students in African universities and to encourage their fuller participation in AASR activities, particularly our conferences.

The inaugural awards will take place during the 6th AASR conference in Cape Town, South Africa, from July 30 to August 3, 2014. The first prize will be awarded for a paper that makes an outstanding contribution to the conference theme. The awardee will receive a cash prize of $500 and a return ticket to Cape Town from an African country. He or she will also be invited to present a lecture during the conference, and the paper will be published in AASR Bulletin. Awards will also be made to the first runner-up ($300), and the second runner-up ($200). Detailed criteria for assessing the papers have been agreed and a judging panel consisting of four senior scholars, who are also AASR members, has been established.

We would appreciate your generous financial support to make the awards happen and to establish a worthy legacy for the AASR. You can make a donation by direct transfer to AASR using these details:
Account Name: African Association for the Study of Religions
Branch: The Mound, Edinburgh, UK
Branch Code: 80-20-00
Account No. 00208442
BIC: BOFSGB21168
IBAN: GB05 BOFS 8020 0000 2084 42

You can also make a donation using credit/debit cards or PayPal. To do so please log on to https://www.a-asr.org// and click on donate at the bottom of the page. Please specify that your donation is for the Student Awards and also send an email to the treasurer (a.ugba@uel.ac.uk) when you have made a donation.

We appreciate your swift and wholehearted support for this initiative.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Gerrie ter Haar, Dr Frans Dokman, Dr Afe Adogame, Dr Rose Mary Amenga-Etego and Dr Abel Ugba
The AASR Fund Raising Committee

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