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In this issue:
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Seeking Your Help
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Amazon
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Journals
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Conferences
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Call for papers
- Jobs & Fellowships
SEEKING YOUR HELP
Given that the RSP has been running for nearly 2 years now, and in light of the website redesign, David and Chris thought it was about time to have another major publicity push. The email at the link below has already been circulated around the DOLMEN, BASR, and NSRN lists. If you are a member of any other vaguely relevant mailing list – particularly of academic associations – please considering copying it and circulating among friends, colleagues, and interested parties.
Here’s the link: https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/october-2013-publicity/
AMAZON
You can help to financially support the RSP simply by shopping on Amazon – and at no additional cost to you!
The Religious Studies Project is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk. We are also a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ref=as_li_tf_mfw?&linkCode=wey&tag=therelistudpr-21
http://www.amazon.com/ref=as_li_tf_mfw?&linkCode=wey&tag=therelistudpr-20
If you click through to Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com through these links, and buy ANY product during your visit, the RSP will earn referral fees. There will be no additional cost. Why not add a shortcut to your bookmarks bar and use these links every time you shop?
JOURNALS
Journal of Religion in Japan (JRJ) http://www.brill.com/jrj
Theology and Science vol 11, no 4 http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtas20/11/4#.UrQDGeJzqBs
Sociology of Religion http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent?papetoc
CONFERENCES
ICONIC RELIGION: HOW IMAGINARIES OF RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER STRUCTURE URBAN SPACE
17-19 February 2014 | FNO 02/40-46
Conveners: Volkhard Krech, Kim Knott, Susanne Lanwerd, Birgit Meyer
Within ongoing processes of religious pluralisation across Europe materialized religion, in the form of icons in public space, is becoming increasingly important. Whenever religious icons, such as sacred buildings and sites, clothing, and public events, are associated with religious traditions that beholders are unfamiliar with, they comprise or generate imaginaries about how different religions should co-exist. Iconic Religion focuses on religious icons and icons of religious encounter in the metropoles Amsterdam, Berlin and London. In order to consider the complex nature of icons and to analyse how the religious dimension may become dominant over other dimensions of meaning, Iconic Religion combines spatial, material-aesthetic, visual analysis, and communicative-semiotic approaches with discourse analysis and reception studies. As a measure to maximise knowledge exchange and transfer, a photo exhibition will be prepared. With about 100 photos and texts from interviews illustrating religious encounters, the exhibition will be shown in Bochum, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London.
MONDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2014
17:00 Arrival and Registration
17:30 Welcome Address and Introduction to the Conference’s Topic Volkhard Krech (Bochum) KEYNOTE SPEECH
18:00 Iconic Presence: Anthropology and/as Iconology Hans Belting (Karlsruhe)
19:30 Reception Dinner at Strätlingshof, Bochum
TUESDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2014
9:00 Coffee
9:30 Other Ways of Knowing: About Research on Urban Ghosts and Spirits Anne Huffschmid (Berlin)
10:30 Urban Imaginaries and Religious Icons: How Religion Takes Place in the City Birgit Meyer (Utrecht) Discussion moderated by Esther Voswinckel (Istanbul)
11:30 Coffee break
11:45 Visible Religion: Developments in Visual/Material Culture Studies and Aesthetics of Religion Christoph Uehlinger (Zurich) Discussion moderated by Sven Wortmann (Bochum)
13:00 Lunch at Beckmanns Hof, Bochum
15:00 Faith in Suburbia: A Shared Photographic Journey Claire Dwyer (London)
16:00 Iconic Religion: Spatial Issues and Methods Kim Knott (Lancaster) Discussion moderated by Alexander-Kenneth Nagel (Bochum)
17:00 Coffee Break
17:15 Projekt, Serie, Werkkomplex:
Weltbetrachtung im Medium zeitgenössischer Fotografie Andrea Gnam (Vienna) Discussion moderated by Ulf Plessentin (Bochum)
19:30 Dinner at Livingroom, Bochum
WEDNESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2014
9:00 Coffee
9:30 Exploring Religion through Contemporary Art Nika Spalinger (Lucerne)
10:30 How to Exhibit Religion?
Inspirations from Three Contemporary Approaches Susanne Lanwerd (Bochum/Berlin) Discussion moderated by Alexandra Grieser (Dublin)
11:30 Response
Alexandra Grieser (Dublin)
12:00 Final Discussion and Conclusions moderated by Jessie Pons (Bochum)
13:00 Lunch at Trattoria Falcone, Bochum
Church Growth and Decline in a Global City: London, 1980 to the Present~
A Colloquium organised by the Centre for Church Growth Research
Cranmer Hall, St Johns College, Durham University and by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Date: 2 May 2014, 10 am to 4 pm
Venue: Room 349 Senate House, University of London
Cost: £50 (£35 for post- and under-graduate students)
Speakers include:
Professor David Martin (LSE)
Professor John Wolffe (Open University)
Dr Peter Brierley (Brierley Consulting)
Dr Lois Lee (University College, London)
Dr Alana Harris (Lincoln College, Oxford)
Dr Andrew Rogers (University of Roehampton)
Rev Dr Babatunde Adedibu (RCCG)
For detailed information and to book a place, visit: www.durham.ac.uk/churchgrowth.research
CALLS FOR PAPERS
Popular Religious Rituals and Folkloric Beliefs among Pastoral Nomads of the Middle East and Central Eurasia
This is a call for papers for a panel on “Popular Religious Rituals and Folkloric Beliefs among Pastoral Nomads of the Middle East and Central Eurasia” which will be held during the Fourth World Congress for Middle East Studies (WOCMES), 18th-22nd August 2014 in Ankara (Turkey).
Among the anthropological studies of Pastoral Nomads of the Middle East and Central Eurasia, popular religious rituals and folkloric beliefs are the most neglected topics (Peters 2008). As Tapper (2008) states: “In the ethnography of Middle Eastern societies, settled or nomadic, tribal or peasant, perhaps the most neglected area of life is the whole realm of religion, ritual, symbolism and ideology, particularly at the level of local community. Many ethnographers of nomads, for example Cunnison (1966); Asad (1970); Bates (1973); Ahmad (1973); Irons (1975); Glatzer (1977), pursuing their main interest in economics, kinship, social structure and politics are content to record that their subjects are Muslims and to note ways in which their customs differ from Islamic prescriptions.”
In this regard we are interested in receiving proposals which present new and unpublished researches on any topics related to the anthropological studies of popular religious rituals and folkloric beliefs among Pastoral Nomads of the Middle East and Central Eurasia.
Please send the title of your proposal, your discipline, a 500-word abstract and your full academic affiliation including your e-mail address as an attached file (Office Word) by 15th Jan. 2014 to:
Dr.P. Khosronejad
Department of Social Anthropology
University of St. Andrews
(pedram.khosronejad [at] st-andrews.ac.uk)
If you are currently working on a paper relevant to New Religions and Alternative Spirituality, please consider submitting it to the International Journal for the Study of New Religions (IJSNR):
https://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/IJSNR
Published in cooperation with Equinox Publishing since 2009, the IJSNR is the official journal of the International Society for the Study of New Religions.
The call for papers for next year’s Eurel conference can be found here
http://www.eurel.info/IMG/pdf/cfp_eurel_2014.pdf
Eurel Conference 2014
Religion in floating territories
Lublin, Poland, 23-24 October 2014
Scholars wishing to present a paper should send an abstract and a brief CV (no more than 2 pages) by January 10, 2014 to Anne-Laure Zwilling (eurel[at]misha.cnrs.fr)
CFP: The Self in South Asia
University of Chicago April 1719
The University of Chicago Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS) is pleased to invite paper submissions for the Eleventh Annual South Asia Graduate Student Conference (SAGSCXI), which will take place April 17–19, 2014 at the University of Chicago. Graduate students from all over the world, working in all disciplines, and at all stages of study, are welcome to present their latest research to a supportive yet critical audience.
We are very happy to announce that Dr. Donald S. Lopez, Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan will be our keynote speaker. We will also be welcoming a second distinguished faculty speaker, Dr. Leela Prasad, Associate Professor in Religion and Faculty Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Duke University.
This year’s conference will be on the theme of “The Self in South Asia”. We encourage presenters to consider the self—variously conceived in terms of subjectivity, collective or individual identity, narrative or historical agency or authorship, religious or political selfhood, etc.—as both a site for and a product of all manner of discursive and other practices. We hope that various interdisciplinary concerns will converge around these and other concepts. In the same vein, with the phrase “South Asia”, we wish to include parts of Central and Southeast Asia in addition to the Indian subcontinent. We welcome, then, papers that engage “The Self in South Asia” from a range of regional and disciplinary perspectives.
For those coming from outside of Chicago, we may be able to offer small reimbursements for travel and lodging, but we encourage all conference participants to seek support from their home institutions as well. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and refreshments will be provided on conference days.
We invite graduate students at all stages to submit abstracts for individual paper presentations. Panel proposals will not be considered. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should be sent to sagsc2014 [at] gmail.com <mailto:sagsc2014@[at] gmail.com> in PDF format no later than 31 January 2014. Applicants will be notified of a decision by 15 February 2014. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions about accommodations, travel, or other concerns.
CFP: Transformations: A Journal of Myth and Fairy Tale Studies
Date: 2014-01-08
Description: We are in the process of establishing a brand new web-based, peer-reviewed journal in English, in the field of myth and fairy tale studies. We are currently accepting proposals for the first two issues. PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Wednesday, January 8th, 2014 Journal Description: Transformations is designed …
Contact: weeksj [at] iupui.edu
Announcement ID: 208829
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208829
CFP: Chinese History in a Global World: An International Conference on New Approaches to Chinese Historical Studies,June 6-8, 2014, Shanghai
Date: 2013-12-15
Description: Chinese History in a Global World: An International Conference on New Approaches to Chinese Historical Studies, June 6-8, 2014, Shanghai Sponsored by Eastern China Normal University () and the Chinese Historians in the United States
The study of Chinese history across the globe has matured significa …
Contact: DLi [at] fairfield.edu
Announcement ID: 208877
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208877
Ghosts in the Flesh: Call for Articles
Following the recent success of Ghosts in the Flesh, a two day postgraduate conference held at the University of Kent, we are calling for contributions to a future issue of Skepsi, the online interdisciplinary research journal, run by postgraduate students of the University of Kent’s School of European Culture and Languages, and now in its sixth year.
While ghosts in the Western tradition have often been associated with other-worldliness or liminality, the aim of this issue is to examine critically discourses and texts which emphasise the corporeality and physicality of ghosts and the ghostly. Allowing ghosts to occupy the centre rather than the periphery challenges, and allows us to reconsider anew, a number of key oppositions such as:life and death, inside and outside, corporeality and incorporeality, self and other, present reality and past memory, and so on.
Some of the questions in which we are interested include: In what ways can a ghost embody a material or corporeal presence? What is the impact of viewing the figure of the ghost as a non-liminal entity in theory and culture? How does our understanding of ghosts as a material presence challenge our perceptions of the ghostly?
Bearing in mind ideas such as these, we are looking for articles that explores issues of ghostliness and in/corporeality in a number of fields, including but not limited to the following:
Ghosts in Literature and Cinema (Gothic Literature and its critiques, Magical Realism, the double) Virtual Reality and Digital Arts (virtual space, digital performance theory, MMO RPG?s, simulation games) Memory and Architecture Memory and Archaeology or History Theatre (repetition, embodiment) Philosophy and Theology (mind-body dualisms and their critiques, difficult atheism? in continental philosophy) Critical theory (psychoanalytic theory, literary theory)
Submissions are invited from academic staff, postgraduate students and independent scholars. Any of the submitted articles selected by the Editorial Board after peer review will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal, to be published in Spring 2014.
Articles, which should not exceed 5,000 words, should be sent, together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief biographical details about the author, to:
skepsi[at]kent.ac.uk
The deadline for submission is 15/01/14
EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 1 JANUARY 2014, 5pm
British Association for the Study of Spirituality
Third International Conference Spirituality in a Challenging World
19-21 May 2014
Ashridge House, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, UK
(only 30 minutes by train from London Euston)
http://www.basspirituality.org.uk
We are pleased to announce that the new BASS website is now operational and we have extended the deadline for receipt of Abstracts for the 2014 International Conference to 5pm on 1 January 2014. The availability of spaces for presentations is limited so you are advised to send in your Abstract ASAP!
An inaugural meeting of the BASS Doctoral Student and Early Career Researcher Support Network in the Study of Spirituality will be held at the Conference. Abstracts are warmly invited from potential members of this group.
Full details are available on the BASS website.
JOBS & FELLOWSHIPS
Funded PhD Opportunity – Religious Literacy and Religious Studies
Professor Adam Dinham, Faiths & Civil Society Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London is seeking initial expressions of interest in undertaking funded PhD research, to start September 2014, in the field of Religious Studies, broadly interpreted.
Outline proposals should reflect Prof Dinham’s research interests in religious literacy for professional practice, public policy and faith based social action and welfare. For further information on current and previous projects and approaches, see www.gold.ac.uk/faithsunit and www.religiousliteracty.org
Outlines should be submitted to a.dinham [AT] gold.ac.uk by midday on 31 December 2013, and should consist of a 500 word abstract setting out the research problem, a brief account of methods and a rationale for the study. Candidates should also submit a CV.
Open Theology journal – call for Section Editors
Description: A new peer-reviewed, open access academic journal Open Theology (http://www.versita.com/opth ) is now looking for Editors. The journal is published by Versita, part of De Gruyer group, one of the world’s leading publishers of open access scientific content; please see over 350 journals at www.versit …
Contact: ktempczyk [at] versita.com
Announcement ID: 208473
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208473
5-year Polonsky Postdoctoral Scholarships in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Date: 2014-02-01
Description: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute proposes to award up to six Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellowships in any field of the Humanities or Social Sciences for a period of up to five years, beginning October 10, 2014. The Fellowship offers an annual stipend of $40,000. Yearly renewal of the Fellowship will be …
Contact: polonsky [at] vanleer.org.il
URL: www.vanleer.org.il
Announcement ID: 208472
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208472
2014-2015 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Center for the Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Date: 2014-02-01
Description: The Center for the Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem invites applications for a postdoctoral research fellowship in one of the following areas of study: New Testament, Early Christianity, its literature and Jewish context Eastern Christianity Chri …
Contact: csc [at] mail.huji.ac.il
URL: csc.org.il/news/new.aspx?NewId=93
Announcement ID: 208518
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208518
Tenure Track (Open Rank) Faculty Position in Hebrew Bible
Department: Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies
Rank: Tenure/Tenure Track
The Penn State Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and the Jewish Studies Program in the College of the Liberal Arts seek applicants for an open-rank, tenure-track appointment in Hebrew Bible, to begin in August, 2014. This appointment is divided between the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and the Jewish Studies Program; the tenure home will be in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies. Senior scholars may be eligible for appointment to a named chair in Jewish Studies.
Applications are welcome from candidates with active research in any area of Hebrew Bible.
The department embraces the entire Mediterranean world in antiquity within its purview and therefore welcomes candidates who can contribute to dialogue across the fields of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Jewish Studies. The successful applicant should demonstrate an active research agenda and teaching excellence.
Requirements include teaching experience for at least three years beyond the Ph.D. and evidence of scholarly publications. Ability to teach lower-level survey courses is also essential. The capacity to contribute to the Humanities in a Digital Age (HDA) Initiative in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State is also desirable, though not required. For information on the HDA Initiative, go to:
http://sites.psu.edu/humanitiesda/.
Submit online (http://www.la.psu.edu/facultysearch) a letter of application, a curriculum vitae (including contact information for three references), a sample of scholarly writing (no more than thirty pages), and evidence of teaching accomplishments. Three letters of recommendation should be sent to the Biblical Studies Search Committee, c/o Sandra Moyer, at <sjm1@psu.edu>. Applications received by January 31, 2014 are assured of consideration; however, all dossiers will be accepted until the position is filled. Employment will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies.
Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce.
Bates College – Postdoctoral Fellowship in East Asian Studies <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48201>
Nanyang Technological University – CLASS Postdoctoral Fellowships <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48209>
Yale University – Henry Chauncey Jr. ’57 Postdoctoral Fellowship <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48137>
Rutgers University – Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48210>
Nanyang Technological University – CLASS Postdoctoral Fellowships <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48209>