Religious Studies Opportunities Digest – 23 Aug 2013

We are not responsible for any content contained herein, but have simply copied and pasted from a variety of sources. If you have any content for future digests, please contact us via the various options on our ‘contact’ page.wordle 2013

In this issue:

  • Journals

  • Books

  • Coonferences

  • Call for papers

  • Jobs

JOURNALS


Anthropology in Action

This issue seeks to investigate the dynamic nature of boundaries arising from historical and social contexts. Peacock’s article challenges preconceived and ethnocentric assumptions regarding agency, while Gatt’s article traces how activists experience power inside their organizations. Kao’s article offers a look at how care is manufactured in a long-term care facility in the American Midwest. Finally, Dickson’s article focuses on sustainability and housing in a London borough council office. This issue also features a freestanding article, as well as book reviews and books for review.

Please visit the Berghahn website for more information about the journal:

http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/aia

Volume 20, Issue 2, Summer 2013


BOOKS


Digital Ethnography<http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/27054-digital-ethnography.html>

Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media

Natalie M. Underberg & Elayne Zorn

Digital ethnography can be understood as a method for representing real-life cultures through storytelling in digital media. Enabling audiences to go beyond absorbing facts, computer-based storytelling allows for immersion in the experience of another culture. A guide for anyone in the social sciences who seeks to enrich ethnographic techniques, Digital Ethnography offers a ground-breaking approach that utilizes interactive components to simulate cultural narratives.  Integrating insights from cultural anthropology, folklore, digital humanities, and digital heritage studies, this work brims with case studies that provide in-depth discussions of applied projects. Web links to multimedia examples are included as well, including projects, design documents, and other relevant materials related to the planning and execution of digital ethnography projects. In addition, new media tools such as database development and XML coding are explored and explained, bridging the literature on cyber-ethnography with inspiring examples such as blending cultural heritage with computer games.

University of Texas Press

12 b&w photographs

May 2013 127pp 9780292744332


CONFERENCES


Graduate Conference – Public Sociology

Location: Virginia

Date: 2013-10-12

Description: Public sociology is an approach to engaging social problems and sociological topics that transcends the academy. It is not aligned with any particular theory, method, or subject. Rather, it is situated on the borderlands of academia, activism, and policy, reaching beyond the audience of professional …

Contact: gmusocgrads [at] gmail.com

URL: gmupublicsoci.wordpress.com/public-soci-grad-conference/

Announcement ID: 205890

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=205890

 


This is my Body

Date: 2013-11-18

Description: The relationship between the mind and the body raises innumerable challenging questions across the arts, humanities, and social science disciplines. For those who come into professional contact with the human body every day in the National Health Service, the mind and the body are usually considered …

Contact: conferences [at] crassh.cam.ac.uk

URL: www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2476/

Announcement ID: 205880

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=205880

 


2nd Faculty of Arts International Conference ON The Humanities and the Dynamics of African Culture in the 21st Century

Date: 2014-03-11

Description: That Africa is at crossroads in an increasingly globalised world is indisputable. Equally indisputable is the fact that the Humanities as a broad field of intellection, research and learning in Africa appears to have been pigeonholed or at best given the backseat in the development  aspirations of ma …

Contact: omoera [at] yahoo.com

Announcement ID: 205984

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=205984

 


CALLS FOR PAPERS


RSP Psychology of Religion Participatory Panel Special – Invitation to Submit Questions

Would you like to participate in a special episode of the RSP that lets YOU steer the conversation and ask tough questions on the psychology of religion to a panel with some of the worlds top psychologists of religion? Thanks to The Religious Studies Project team, you now have that opportunity!

In a one-of-a-kind special edition of The Religious Studies Project we want to invite you to join us at the International Association for the Psychology of Religion 2013 world conference. On the 28th of this month a panel comprised of world-renowned psychologists of religion await to hear from you and answer your questions in the social scientific study of religion in general and the psychology of religion in specific. The Psychology of Religion Participatory Panel Special will be video recorded and published through our website soon after.

You may submit your questions to RSP assistant editor Dr. Christopher F. Silver and panel moderator Thomas J. Coleman III by emailing us at editors@religiousstudiesproject.com, Twitter (@ProjectRS), Facebook,

https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2013/08/13/rsp-psychology-of-religion-participatory-panel-special-invitation-to-submit-questions/?fb_source=pubv1


CFP: Jewish Women Writers: Witnesses to Injustice (NeMLA)

Location: Pennsylvania

Date: 2013-09-30

Description: 45th Annual Convention Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) April 3-6, 2014 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Host: Susquehanna University Maxine Kumin asserts, “I now feel that we poets have to serve as witnesses at least to the injustices around us.” Echoing the intentions of many Jewish women wri …

Contact: lxr5 [at] psu.edu and rjablon [at] umd.edu

URL: www.nemla.org/convention/2014/cfp.htm

Announcement ID: 205977

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=205977

 


CFP; Applied Epistemology in Ancient Philosophy and Science International Conference at the University of Trier

(Germany), July, 3-5 2014

Date: 2013-10-31

Description: Applied Epistemology in Ancient Philosophy and Science International Conference at the University of Trier (Germany), July, 3-5 2014 ► Conference theme Adapting to epistemology the well-known distinction between general ethical theory and applied ethics, one could say that it is the job of app …

Contact: epistemologie-tagung [at] uni-trier.de

Announcement ID: 205910

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=205910

 


CFP: Exploring the Extraordinary 6th Conference

21st-23rd March, 2014

Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, USA

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: **Dr Julie Beischel

<http://www.windbridge.org/>

Since its inception in 2007, members of Exploring the Extraordinary have organised four successful academic conferences that have brought together researchers from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds. The purpose of these events has been to encourage a wider dissemination of knowledge and research, and an interdisciplinary discussion of extraordinary phenomena and experience. By ‘extraordinary’ we refer to phenomena and experiences that are considered to be beyond the mundane, referring to those that have been called supernatural, paranormal, mystical, transcendent, exceptional, spiritual, magical and/or religious, as well as the relevance of such for human culture.

We are looking for submissions for our sixth conference, and would like  to invite presentation proposals on topics related to the above. Please submit a 300-500 word paper abstract to *Dr Madeleine Castro* and *Dr Hannah

Gilbert* (ete.network [at] gmail.com) by the 18th October, 2013. Accepted papers should be on powerpoint, no longer than 20 minutes in length, and intended for an interdisciplinary audience. Please include contact information and a brief biographical note.


CFP: Interpreting Experience – Experiencing Interpretation: Im/Possibilities of a Hermeneutics of Religious Experience Interdisciplinary and International Conference

3-6 April 2014, St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford

The international and interdisciplinary conference ‘Interpreting Experience — Experiencing Interpretation: Im/Possibilities of a Hermeneutics of Religious Experience’ explores the connections and the disconnections between religious experience and expressions of religious experience. What is a religious experience? First and foremost, a religious experience is a puzzle. The ‘religious’ in religious experience is often characterised in terms of the experience’s inherent inexpressibility. Yet taking into account the vast variety of textual and non-textual expressions articulated and interpreted in the past and present of religions, the notion of inexpressibility itself is puzzling. This puzzle is already apparent in William James’s ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature’, published in 1902. James defined religious experience as inexpressible encounter with transcendence; however, the material in which his definition was grounded consisted of nothing but expressions of these encounters. Through James’s study, the puzzle of religious experiences spawned itself into an array of theological and non-theological disciplines with  dazzling diversity.

Within the current context of these disciplines, the watchword ‘spirituality’ stresses the significance of religious experience. Frequently, these experiences are marshalled to critique the traditionalism and institutionalism of religions such as Christianity. However, one might argue that traditions and institutions are precisely the sites that preserve and perpetuate religious experience. Both experience and expressions of experience seem to bemutating. Since cultural artefacts and archives, such as the Bible, play a prominent part in the politics of demarcating the religious from the non-religious in secular or post-secular societies, manifestations and modifications of religious experience within biblical and non-biblical literature are of importance. The demarcations of religion and non-religion impinge on the issue of the epistemology of religious experience. Since a religious experience is always already  entangled with its expression, it appears to be relative — historically and culturally. However, the cognitive sciences seem to point to a common core of religious experiences through their cerebral correlates. Yet, these accounts of experience need to be articulated and interpreted as well. Hence, theological and non-theological studies of religion cannot escape the puzzle of religious experience.

Exploring both the possibilities and the impossibilities of a hermeneutics of religious experience is crucial for the disciplines revolving around religion. We invite presentations from different disciplines including theology, philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology, as well as cultural, biblical, and literary studies. We are interested in investigations of questions such as: What is a religious experience? What parts do articulation and interpretation play in a religious experience? Does the experience determine the expression or does the expression determine the experience? Do experience and expression condition each other? How does the contested contradistinction between the public and the private affect religious experience and expressions of religious experience? And what is the significance of religious experiences in contemporary cultures which are characterised by processes such as secularisation, sacralisation, pluralisation, individualisation, and globalisation?

Please submit your abstract (500 words maximum) and a brief biographical note to ulrich.schmiedel [at[] theology.ox.ac.uk by 1 November 2013. For further information, please see http://www.ertegun.ox.ac.uk/news-events/interpreting-experience


JOBS


Reed College – Tenure-Track Position in Sociocultural Anthropology

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47129>

Columbia University – Sheng Yen Chair in Chinese Buddhism (Assistant or Associate Professor)

http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47124>

Ohio University – Assistant Professor, Southeast Asian History

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47125>

Illinois State University – Assistant Professor, Chinese History

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47100>

The University of Melbourne – LECTURER / SENIOR LECTURER IN CHINESE STUDIES

http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47110>

University of Denver – Assistant Professor, Chinese History

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47018>

Sewanee:  University of the South – Assistant Professor, modern Islamic world

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47091>

College of Charleston – Middle East/Arabic-Speaking/Islamic World

<http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47090>

New York University – The Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies has extended its search for a historian of the modern Middle East and invites applications for an open-rank position to begin September 1, 2014, pending budgetary and administrative approval.

http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=47092>