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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
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Fellowships
- Jobs
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
Contemporary Buddhism, vol 14, no. 2 http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcbh20/14/2#.UphK1-L9qBs
CONFERENCES
Languages of the People: A Romanian-Jewish Linguist on Yiddish and French
Location: New York
Date: 2013-12-04
Description: Wednesday, December 4, 6-7:30 p.m. Columbia Maison Francaise East Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University Main campus entrance at Broadway and 116th st Natalie Zemon Davis A Distinguished Eugene J. Sheffer Lecture Introduction by Madeleine Dobie Lazӑr Șӑineanu (1859-1934) was a pio …
Contact: ll2787 [at] columbia.edu
URL: www.maisonfrancaise.org
Announcement ID: 208671
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208671
2nd International Conference on the Development Philosophy of Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe
Date: 2014-02-05
Description: 2nd International Conference 5th 7th February, 2014 In pursuance of their mandate (the Department of philosophy, University of Ibadan, Nigeria and the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation, Nigeria with its affiliate Africa Institute for Leadership, Research and Development, South Africa, to employ the or …
Contact: amy4ibe [at] yahoo.com
URL: osigwedp.org.ng/node/27
Announcement ID: 208660
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208660
2-day seminar -Making Sense of Religion: Performance, Art and Experience
Date: 2014-01-15
Description: Re-centralizing the importance of sensory perception, we call for ethnographic and/or theoretical contributions that: a) make sense of religion through performance and art and b) approach performative and artistic action as religion in a variety of sociocultural, political, and spiritual contexts. W …
Contact: clarasaraiva [at] fcsh.unl.pt and povedakistvan [at] gmail.com
Announcement ID: 208340
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208340
Schisms, Ciphers & Sprengel:Introducing resources about the Golden Dawn and related groups at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry
The recently catalogued archives of the Golden Dawn provide a fascinating glimpse into the development of hermetic thought and ideas between the 1880’s and the 1920’s.Come and see documents relating to the Order’s founders, successor and associated bodies including regalia, ritual manuscripts and correspondence. This free half day workshop aims to provide an overview of the Golden Dawn collections and how to find and access relevant Library and Museum resources.
Thursday 19 December 2013 10.30am to 1pm
Thursday 19 December 2013
Grand Officers’ Robing Room, Freemasons’ Hall,
Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ
Programme:
10.30 Introduction and welcome
10.45 Introducing the Library and Museum collections update on the SRIA Library: Martin Cherry, Librarian
11.15 The Golden Dawn collection: introduction, Susan Snell, Archivist and Records Manager
11.45 Members of the Golden Dawn: details of the latest research, Sally Davis
12.15 Display of selected items from the Golden Dawn Collection, introduced by Susan Snell & Martin Cherry
13.00 Conclusion and closing remarks Personal research can be undertaken in the Library on
Thursday afternoon or Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm — please pre-order items from the collection.
Please complete a Reader Registration Form and bring identification (eg driving licence, passport) to register as a reader – see:
http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/library/
Details for items in the Golden Dawn Collection are included in the Library and Museum’s on-line catalogue at: www.freemasonry.london.museum
Search the Collections [Ref: GBR 1991 GD series]
To come to this free event, please return the form below, or email Susan Snell by Monday 16 December 2013 with the following information:
Name:
Your contact address, email or phone number:
Reading, Writing and Religion 1660-1830
Saturday 7th December -Queen Mary, University of London
Details of the day’s programme are available below. Attendance is free, but places are limited so please register by emailing writingreligion [at] gmail.com by Tuesday 3rd December.
Princeton University – Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faith and Work/Workplace Spirituality <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48070
CALLS FOR PAPERS
“Islamism versus Post-Islamism? Mapping topographies of Islamic political and cultural practices and discourses” that will be held at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main from December 13th to 15th, 2013.
The aim of the conference is to elucidate the complexities and ambiguities of competing Islamic discourses and efforts of cultural and political reform and to identify and contextualize some recurring features of the political landscapes currently undergoing transformation in the Islamic World. Thus, the conference seeks to link empirical research with theoretical debates about contemporary social, political and legal changes in the Muslim World, including developments in Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.
If you are interested in participating in the conference, please have a participation request send to Mr. Oliver Bertrand (o.bertrand [at] em.uni-frankfurt.de) by December 8th, 2013. As we have only limited capacities for conference observers, please wait for the confirmation before transferring the conference fee. Please see the attached/linked conference program for more details as well as registration procedures and fees.
http://www2.uni-frankfurt.de/48820035/Conference-Islamism-versus-Post-Islamism-Program.pdf
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Thanatos vol. 3 1/2014
Theme issue: Death, mourning and the internet
Computer and mobile technologies have now provided a new space and medium to connect and share at the time of loss and bereavement. People seek out for places of ritualised actions, such as lighting candles, writing eulogies, visit memorials during anniversaries and feeling the sense of community at the time of loss. Internet provides a new space for rituals, feeling of co-presence and communality, where memorials are being erected in various online environments. This new way of expressing mourning and honoring are rising interesting questions about value, family, identity, friendship and love. Who is allowed to create a virtual memorial? Who has access and ownership to the material we leave online? Is it only the young people, the Web 2.0 generation, and the digital natives, who are appropriating internet technology to cope with loss and bereavement? What are the problems of using the internet in hospice care? How virtuality, death and/or the after world are being conceptualised through the Web?
Thanatos (www.thanatos-journal.com) is a peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary and a scientific online journal published by the Finnish Death Studies Association (www.kuolemantutkimus.com).
We publish twice a year a journal that consists of articles, short and long research reports, book reviews, columns and seminar reports. The primary publication language is Finnish, but we do accept manuscripts in English and Swedish as well, however, the costs of proofreading are the responsibility of the author.
We now invite abstracts in English, Swedish or Finnish (max 400 words) for articles (max 8000 words) and research reports (max 5000 words) from the following example themes:
• Digital afterlife
• Internet and hospice care
• Space and spatiality in virtual memorials
• Identity and virtual memorials
• Online memorials and heritage
• Memorials and online gaming
• Death and Facebook
• Memorial videos in Youtube (Vimeo etc.)
• Online funerals
The above mentioned topics are only examples and we encourage you to send your own ideas as well. Abstracts are to be sent to anna.haverinen [at] utu.fi by 3rd of January 2014.
Schedule:
• 3.1.2014: Abstract deadlines (max 400 words)
• 28.2.2014: Full manuscript deadlines (articles max 8000 words, research reports max 5000 words)
• 15.4.2014: Writers receive referee and editorial comments on their first drafts
• 31.5.2014: Deadline for second drafts
• June/July: Journal publication
The head editor of the first issue in 2014 will be doctoral student of digital culture, Anna Haverinen (M. Phil.), who has studied virtual memorials and online death rituals extensively since 2007 in her thesis Virtual Memorials – death and mourning rituals in online environments (Forthcoming, 2014).
CFP: Interdisciplinary conference: Images of Afterlife
22–24 October 2014, University of Turku, Finland
Images of death and afterlife are rich and manifold in various religious contexts, as well as in artistic, media and other symbolic expressions. Representations of afterlife reflect cultural values, fears and hopes. In the contemporary West collective religious representations are challenged and completed by individual conceptions and beliefs, which, in turn, derive from various cultural sources. How has afterlife – the life and existence of souls and minds (or bodies) after death – been imagined in different contexts and how is it imagined today? What are the contexts in which these images are expressed? Where do afterlife conceptions come from and what is their significance in the societies of the living?
The interdisciplinary conference Images of Afterlife aims to discuss the cultural imagery of death and afterlife from various perspectives, such as anthropology, history, linguistics, religious studies, arts studies, social sciences, health care, psychology and psychiatry, in various cultural and historical contexts. We welcome a broad spectrum of papers, which illustrate and analyze theoretical approaches to cultural representations as well as to individual experiences of death and afterlife. The representations can include stories, beliefs, conceptions, customs and rituals, as well as works of art and literature. We are also interested in various methodologies that can be applied in the study of the images, including multidisciplinary methodologies.
Topics for papers may include but are not limited to:
o Religious and spiritual images of afterlife
o Images of afterlife in art
o Mythic topographies of the otherworld
o Secular conceptions of afterlife
o Afterlife conceptions as sources of comfort and hope
o Beliefs about persistence of the mind after death
o Mind, soul and consciousness
o “Good” and “bad” death
o Suicide and afterlife
o Euthanasia
o Organ transplantation
o Death, afterlife and multiculturalism in health care
o Agency in afterlife
o Marginalized discourses of afterlife
o Interaction with the spaces and agents of the afterlife
o Spirits, souls, ghosts, wraiths, apparitions, revenants
o Near-death experiences and deathbed visions
o Afterlife: popular (pseudo-scientific) discourses vs. legitimized
doctrines
The conference is organized by the research project Mind and the Other – An Interdisciplinary Study on the Interactions of Multiple Realities (funded by the Academy of Finland) in collaboration with the Finnish Death Studies Association. The invited keynote lecturers are:
Professor Altti Kuusamo, Art History, University of Turku
Professor Eija-Liisa Ahtila, The Academy of Fine Arts (tbc)
Professor Emerita Margaret Lock, Social Studies of Medicine, McGill
University (tbc)
Professor Samuel Scheffler, Philosophy, New York University (tbc)
Professor Jussi Kotkavirta, Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä (tbc)
Those who wish to present a paper in the conference are kindly requested to
send an abstract of no more than 300 words (in .rtf, .doc or .docx format)
to imagesofafterlife [at] gmail.com by February 28, 2014. Please send with the abstract your name, affiliation, contact information and field of specialization. Notices of acceptance will be sent by April 30, 2014.
Further information about the conference, social programme, travel and accommodation in Turku will be soon available on our web page http://imagesofafterlife.wordpress.com
CFP for ‘Skulls, faces and being human’ panel
Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth
ASA2014: Decennial Conference
Edinburgh- 19th-22nd June 2014
Deadline for paper abstract submission is 5th January 2014.
*Paper abstracts of 250 words* maximum *submitted via the web link below*.
None members and students are welcome to submit a paper abstract to our panel. For further information see:
Papers invited from social and cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, forensic anthologists, museologists, historians etc., anyone with an interest in skulls and the ways we and others interpret skulls.http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2014/panels.php5?PanelID=2653
Call for Papers for the Panel: Marxism Reloaded or Philosophy in Times of Poverty
Date: 2013-11-15
Description: Call for Papers for the Panel: Marxism Reloaded or Philosophy in Times of Poverty (As part of the Second Global Forum of Critical Studies organized by Euroacademia in Prague, Czech Republic) Deadline 15 November 2013 Panel Description: Horatio, speak to it, thou art a scholar! In his essay, Marxism …
Contact: application [at] euroacademia.eu
URL:
euroacademia.eu/conference/the-second-global-forum-of-critical-studies/#t6
Announcement ID: 208309 http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208309
CFP: ‘Writing Womens Lives: Auto/Biography, Life Narratives, Myths and Historiography Symposium. Yeditepe
University, Istanbul. April 19 20, 2014.
Date: 2013-11-30
Description: The symposium calls for papers from a broad, interdisciplinary field of women’s life writing including biography and autobiography, letters, diaries, memoirs, family histories, case histories and other ways in which women’s lives have been recorded. The call is open to various genres and national, r …
Contact: symposium [at] kadineserleri.org
URL: www.wwl-symposium.org
Announcement ID: 208341
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208341
Association for Gravestone Studies 2014 Conference Call for Papers & Participation Sessions
Location: Indiana
Date: 2014-02-01
Description: CALLS FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION SESSIONS The Association for Gravestone Studies National Conference, Franklin College, Indiana JUNE 17-22, 2014 Proposals are solicited for scholarly papers, 20 minutes in length, to be presented during the Evening Lectures. Please send your proposal and a 250-word a …
Contact: jgiguere [at] ivytech.edu
URL: gravestonestudies.org
Announcement ID: 208313
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208313
The call for papers has been announced for the Nineteenth Joint Postgraduate Conference on Religion and Theology at the University of Bristol (see below for more details). I am putting together a small panel on Spirit Mediumship, and am looking for abstract submissions, which must be submitted via the links on this page:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/gradschool/conferences/thrs/
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Jack Hunter
‘Spiritual Exercises’
*Friday 7 and Saturday 8 March 2014*
Keynote Speaker: Professor Rupert Gethin
This conference seeks to bring together postgraduates and early-career academics working on the study of religions from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, creating a space for them to share their work and to further encourage research and collaboration within the University of Bristol (the host institution), and among members of other universities within the UK and Europe.
This year’s special theme is ‘Spiritual Exercises’, which is to be understood broadly as including asceticism, mysticism, soteriology, religious experience, and contemplative practices, but we welcome proposals on any research in religious or theological studies, as well as in cognate areas.
CFP: “Science Fiction and the Bible” ISBL/EABS 2014 (Vienna)
The research group “Science Fiction and the Bible” meets for the second time at ISBL/EABS in Vienna (July 6th-10th). We invite proposals for papers which engage with the possibilities of discussing biblical literature informed by Science Fiction (SF) or closely related genres. Proposals for papers are invited that apply specific works, tropes, or theories from SF to consider whether new insights can be derived from applying concepts of SF to biblical concepts or passages.
Using the concept of SF is a multidisciplinary approach. We encourage proposals from Bible scholars with an interest in SF, but also particularly from scholars in disciplines such as cultural studies, literature, sociology, film/media studies or even engineering and physics. In 2014 we expand our scope to also include considerations about religion and ethics, which may not be directly linked to a specific biblical passage or concept.
Paper prize for students: graduate students, whose papers are accepted for the ISBL/EABS annual meeting, can choose to enter the student paper competition that is held in connection with this meeting (2 cash prizes of 250 Euros).
Abstract deadline: January 31st, 2014.
More information and abstract submission:
or by email: f.uhlenbruch [at] derby.ac.uk
Imagining Death and the Afterlife in the Middle East (c. 500-1800 CE) Middle East Association (MESA) Annual Meeting 2014 Washington, DC, 22-25 November 2014
Organizers: Patricia Blessing and Ali Yaycioglu
Abstract are requested for a panel on Imagining Death and the Afterlife in the Middle East (c. 500-1800 CE).
Please send a 300-400 word abstract and a CV to pblessin [at] stanford.edu by January 15, 2014.
Authors of selected papers will be notified by January 25, 2014 and will have until February 15, 2014 to upload their abstract on the Middle East Studies Association’s conference website. MESA membership is required to submit an abstract to the MESA online system. The MESA program committee will decide on the acceptance of the entire panel.
For more information on the conference, see: http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/annual-meeting/index.html
CFP: EASR Annual Conference, Groningen, Netherlands
11-15 May, 2014
We invite submissions to our panel Connected with God: ‘Spiritual senses’, Knowledge and Christianity to be held at the 2014 EASR conference. Deadline for submissions is 1 December, 2013.
Connected with God: ‘Spiritual senses’, Knowledge and Christianity
Convenors: Dr. Minna Opas (University of Turku) and MA Anna Haapalainen (University of Turku)
Contact: minna.opas [at] utu.fi and anna.haapalainen [at] utu.fi
Abstract
It is common among Christian believers to describe their relation with God through the use of sensory and corporeal language: it is people’s hearts that ‘see’ God, and God may ‘touch’ upon a person. It is in and through the processes thus described that Christians also claim to gain knowledge of God. This raises a question of the relation between senses, corporeality, epistemology and knowledge: what is the nature of the knowledge gained through the senses, and are we here even dealing with the five human senses in the first place? This panel will examine Christian ways of knowing God in and through senses and the body, and the methodological, epistemological and ontological problems these pose. We will employ the term ‘spiritual senses’ as an umbrella term to talk about the Christian ways of perceiving and knowing God. We welcome papers examining the intertwinement of knowledge, the spiritual, and the material in human–God interaction.
Outline
What is contact with God like? How do people ’know’ God? It is common among Christian believers to describe their relation to God through the use of sensory language: it is people’s hearts that ‘see’ God, and God may ‘touch’ upon a person, for instance. Also a personal revival of faith and religious experience is often described by using corporeal imagery. The encounter with God can be described even visceral. Believers shiver, sense warmth, see light, hear angelic voices and feel presence of divine, connection with God permeates the body. It is in and through the processes thus described that Christians also claim to gain knowledge of God. This raises a question of the relation between senses, corporeality, epistemology and knowledge: what is the nature of the knowledge gained through the senses, and are we here even dealing with the five human senses in the first place?
This panel will examine Christian ways of knowing God in and through senses and the body, and the methodological, epistemological and ontological problems these pose. To begin with, as Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley have noted in their book on theological anthropology titled ‘Spiritual senses’ (2012), the whole question of knowing God is built on epistemologically and metaphysically problematic premises. In encounters with God people claim to perceive something that cannot be perceived through the normal senses. God becomes something that is no longer transcendent and metaphysically different from humans. Yet, people’s ontological understandings of God do emphasize transcendence, omnipotence and eternity, all of which do not belong to the realm of man. Also methodologically the question of knowing God is challenging: can we talk about the human relationship with God with sensory language when in people’s descriptions it clearly points toward a supra-sensory mode of perception?
Following Gavrilyuk and Coakley, this panel will employ the term ‘spiritual senses’ as an umbrella term to talk about the Christian ways of perceiving and knowing God. The term, first found in the works of Origen in the third century AD, is understood to mean loosely the domain of (supra-) sensorial perceptions of the spiritual realm. We welcome papers examining the intertwinement of knowledge, the spiritual, and the material in human–God interaction. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:
-Materiality and immateriality of ‘spiritual senses’
-Epistemology of knowledge gained through religious experience
-Corporeality and knowledge
-Hierarchies of knowledge in Christian communities
-The nature of the connection between God and human
-The relation between spiritual senses and the five human senses
-Meanings given to ‘spiritual senses’ in different Christianities
-Interplay of different forms of knowledge in Christian communities
-The methodological problems the notion and Christian experiences of ‘spiritual senses’ pose to research
We do not delineate Christianity in this panel. Papers concerning any form of Christian faith, be it be institutionalized or free from institutions, are welcome.
Submission guidelines: Individual papers
Proposals for individual papers need to consist of an abstract of no more than 150 words (to be used in the program book, should the paper be accepted) and an outline of the proposed paper with no more than 500 words. Please indicate whether this is an open submission, or a submission to a particular panel. If your paper is submitted to a panel, please send your proposal to the convenors of that panel directly. They will review the submission.
Deadline: 1 December 2013
FELLOWSHIPS
Woolf Institute Visiting Fellowship 2015
Description: The Woolf Institute, which specializes in the study of relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims from a multidisciplinary perspective, invites applications for its annual visiting fellowship. The Fellowship is tenable for a two to three month period that overlaps one of the Cambridge terms 2015 …
Contact: bs411 [at] cam.ac.uk
URL: www.woolf.cam.ac.uk
Announcement ID: 208376
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208376
JOBS
University of California – Riverside – Assistant Professor of Transnational Buddhism <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48045>
Indiana University – Bloomington – Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) Postdoctoral Fellowship <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48075>
Quest University Canada – Full-time Continuing Faculty: Contemporary Cultural Life <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48097>
University of Pittsburgh – Postdoctoral Fellowship in Japan-Korea Studies <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48109>
Aarhus University – Associate Professor in Experimental Philosophy of Cognitive Science <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48116>
Memphis Theological Seminary – Tenure Track Faculty <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48098>
10 POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS FOR ACADEMIC YEAR 2014/15 in Berlin
(Location: Berlin / Closing Date: 15 January 2014)
The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien invites scholars to apply for up to ten postdoctoral fellowships for the research program
Please find the call for applications below this message or as a PDF document
via the following link: http://www.eume-berlin.de/en/call-for-application-ausschreibung.html