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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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Books
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Conferences
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Call for papers
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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
Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief vol 9 no 4 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bloomsbury/mar;jsessionid=1b6hatc7xpp21.alice
Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JEF) has recently published its latest issue Vol. 7, No. 1 at http://www.jef.ee/index.php/journal
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology http://explore.tandfonline.com/page/ah/international-journal-philosophy-theology-new-collection
BOOKS
Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand, Southern Africa 1850-1890 (Brill, 2013)
Ingie Hovland
Abstract: Christian communities sometimes seem to say one thing and do another. One example is the nineteenth-century missionaries in Southern Africa. While they (often) spoke powerfully of equality, they (often) set up practices and institutions that normalized the opposite. Why did they play such an ambivalent role in South Africa’s history? Should we point to their affinity to Western ways of thinking and acting, or their limited historical perspective and agency, – or their Christianity? In Mission Station Christianity, Ingie Hovland presents an anthropological history of the ideas and practices that evolved among a group of Norwegian missionaries on the colonial frontier as they sought to “make God present” on their mission stations. She examines how the mission station spaces influenced the missionaries’ daily Christianity, and vice versa, drawing on the anthropology of Christianity. Words and objects, missionary bodies, problematic converts, and the utopian imagination are discussed, as well as how the Zulus made use of (and ignored) the stations. The majority of the Norwegian missionaries had become practical and theological cheerleaders of white colonialism by the 1880s, and Ingie Hovland argues that this situation was prepared and made thinkable by the everyday patterns of Christianity they had set up and become familiar with on the mission stations since the 1850s. The missionaries’ contradictory effects in South Africa’s history followed from their everyday Christian choices.
Chapter 1 is available for download (pdf) at http://www.ingiehovland.net/christianity–colonialism-mission-station-christianity.html
Hardcover: ISBN 9789004254886 http://www.brill.com/mission-station-christianity
E-book: E-ISBN 9789004257405 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004257405
CONFERENCES
All interested students and scholars are cordially invited to attend a workshop of the series “Comparative anthropology of Buddhism”, devoted to the theme:
*Monasticism and its place in Buddhist religious fields*, (Paris — Friday, 20 Dec. 2013)
This will be a primarily anglophone session.
Location: CNRS, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France (a 12 minutes walk from the nearest Paris metro station — for a GoogleMaps view, click here: http://bit.ly/W9Jav8)
All participants are invited to a buffet lunch; if you would like to attend, please kindly inform us (by email to: drolland@vjf.cnrs.fr) by *2 Dec. 2013*, to leave us time for the organization.
For all details (timing, programme, abstracts…), please see here: http://himalayas.hypotheses.org/1619
1st Global Conference: Sacred Journeys: Pilgrimage and Beyond (July 2014: Oxford, United Kingdom)
Date: 2014-07-09
Description: 1st Global Conference: Sacred Journeys: Pilgrimage and Beyond Wednesday 9th July Friday 11th July 2014, Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom Call for Presentations Pilgrimage is one of the most ancient practices of humankind and is associated with a great variety of religious and spiritual trad …
Contact: sj1 [at] inter-disciplinary.net
URL:
www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/sacred-journeys/call-for-presentations/
Announcement ID: 208516
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208516
“Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality & Visual Culture” (International Conference, 17-18 March 2014, University of Cambridge)
See the conference website for more details http://www.visionsofenchantment.com/ and facebook https://www.facebook.com/enchantment2014?ref=ts&fref=ts
CALLS FOR PAPERS
Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University welcomes applications for the 2014 summer school “Eurasian Religions in Contact”. All advanced students (graduate and postgraduate) with a specialisation in religious encounters are encouraged to apply. A limited number of scholarships is also available.
Please consult the attached poster and our website for more details: www.eric.ceres.rub.de
With this year’s conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) over, the planning for next year’s conference have begun. Pls consider submitting paper proposals to next year’s conference (see call for papers below).
The theme of next year’s conference is ‘Building Bridges’—the idea is to build bridges between disciplines and cultures, so scholars from different areas of study and geographical regions are strongly encouraged to attend. This includes post-graduate students!
For those who need funding, have a look at the SSSR’s web site (http://www.sssrweb.org<file://localhost/owa/redir.aspx>) which includes details about available travel funds.
CFP: Religion in California conference at UC Berkeley, April 24-25 on California Paganism. For this panel, I am particularly interested in papers that address: California’s role in modern Pagan movement, California’s emergent Pagan traditions*, politics and activism (social and environmental), migrant communities and California Paganism, and work that integrates the writings of Dr. Lorentzen and Dr. Sutton, keynote speakers of the conference. (Conference prefers papers that interact with the work of Sutton (Aimee Semple McPerson and the Resurrection of Christian America) and Lorentzen (Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana: Politics, Identity, and Faith in New Migrant Communities). If your work intersects with theirs, that is great, but I am more interested in authentic academic papers about California Paganism than analyses that are forced.)
*I expect to present my research on Church of All Worlds, so papers on Reclaiming, Dianic Witchcraft, and others are encouraged.
To participate, please submit a 30-100 word abstract and any other information available (sample, outline or bibliography) to mmueller05@gmail.com.
Send to me by Dec. 1. (You can also send your own paper proposals directly to the conference planners according to the attachment. Send to mmueller05@gmail.com if you want to be part of a California Paganism panel. I will have responses ready by Dec. 8.)
Include “California Paganism Panel” in subject line.
Direct any questions about this panel to me at mmueller05@gmail.com. Michelle Mueller
CFP: Tombs, Mausoleums, Shrines and Memorials of Religious/Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East (1980-2011)This is a call for papers for one or several panels on “Tombs, Mausoleums, Shrines and Memorials of Religious/Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East (1980-2011)” which will be held during the Fourth World Congress for Middle East Studies (WOCMES), 18th-22nd August 2014 in Ankara (Turkey).
http://www.wocmes2014.org/
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980), Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeyni (1902-1989), Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953-2001), Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-2011) and Osama Bin Ladan (1957-2011) were all political, religious or pious leaders of important countries and movements of the contemporary Middle East during the last two decades of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries. Their deaths and funeral ceremonies, their burial places, and their tombs and mausoleums are the main topics of our panel(s). We are interested in receiving proposals which present new and unpublished researches on topics such as (but not limited to):
– Death and funeral ceremonies as national and state formation;
– Funeral architecture and national identity;
– Memorials and mausoleums as a mechanism of symbolic legitimation;
– Significance of memorials and mausoleums in urban topography and the creation of sacred public space;
– The role of memorials and mausoleums in collective memory and constructing the narrative of the past;
– The role of memorials and mausoleums in innovation and the creation of new rituals and performances;
– The death of political and religious leaders and the creation of new saints and sanctity;
– Creation of new sites of worship and political-religious pilgrimage;
– Formation of religious-political tourism.
We are primarily interested in receiving proposals which focus on case or comparative studies related to the above mentioned leaders. All branches of disciplines are welcome.
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 30th Nov. 2013 to:
Dr. P. Khosronejad
Department of Social Anthropology
University of St. Andrews
Email: pedram.khosronejad [at] st-andrews.ac.uk
The instructions for applying to the 2014 bursary program for attending the conference in Groningen are now available online on the EASR website: http://easr.org/home/easr-bursaries.html?PHPSESSID=80e6161a847374da320cbed093e7ef97. You will see there the timeline for submissions and notification of results
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Harvard East Asia Society Conference 2014
Location: Massachusetts
Date: 2013-11-22
Description: Crossroads of East Asia: The 17th Annual Harvard East Asia Society Conference Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA February 21 – February 23, 2014 The Harvard East Asia Society invites currently enrolled graduate students from around the world, working across all disciplines to submit papers for i …
Contact: heas.conference [at] gmail.com
URL: www.hcs.harvard.edu/~heas/conference/faq.html
Announcement ID: 208541
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208541
CFP: Asian Studies National Conference 2014
Location: Texas
Date: 2014-03-13
Description: The Asian Studies Development Program 20th annual national conference will be held in Houston, Texas from March 13-15, 2014. The conference welcomes undergraduate faculty from community colleges, universities and private liberal arts colleges. The deadline for the call for papers is November 15 alth …
Contact: Manoabuck [at] aol.com
URL: www.eastwestcenter.org/node/34048
Announcement ID: 208467
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208467
Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Spirituality & Visual Culture” (17-18 March 2014, University of Cambridge)
Date: 2014-03-17
Description: This major international conference at the University of Cambridge brings together an impressive range of papers that consider visual, symbolic and material aspects of the esoteric tradition. Topics range from Egyptian tomb magic, amulets and protective charms, to alchemical illustrations, witchcraf …
Contact: enchantment2014 [at] gmail.com
URL: www.visionsofenchantment.com
Announcement ID: 208436
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208436
Proposals are invited for the open panel on ‘Transformations of Religion Through Economic Knowledge’ at the European Association for the Study of Religion “Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge”. University of Groningen, Netherlands, 11-15 May 2014.
Abstract:
Economization penetrates all segments of culture since some decades. In its wake come severe subversions that have not yet been sufficiently understood or that are not even foreseeable. Economic knowledge has infiltrated religion in this process and by this brings in a total system of mainly neoliberal anthropological, moral and political assumptions and applications: A reign of management takes over charisma and common forms of religious authority. Knowledge on cult branding, marketing and building up distribution systems is applied as “naturally” to religion in this course. Believers appear as „demand side“ and „consumer clientele“. Religious market competition is said to pluralize religion and help it grow.
All papers are welcomed that consider: – how diverse forms and specializations of economic knowledge exert these converting effects on religion; – how economic knowledge supersedes, competes or even exceeds religious practices and institutions in past or contemporary religion.
Contact: anne.koch [at] lmu.de
for more information: http://www.godsdienstwetenschap.nl/index.php?page=conference-2014
Abstracts have to be submitted until 1st of December!
5th ETHNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CONFERENCE
V CONVEGNO DI ETNOGRAFIA E RICERCA QUALITATIVA
Bergamo, June 5-7, 2014
http://www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it/?p=162
Detailed descriptions of the workshop sessions are listed here: http://www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it/?p=1
For further information and updates: www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it
Submissions are now open for “Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal” Vol. 5 No. 1 (January 2014).
See www.paranthropology.co.uk for past issues.
Articles can be on any topic relating to:
Paranormal/Supernatural/Spiritual/Religious belief/experience, Magic, Parapsychology, Afterlife Research, etc., Mediumship, Shamanism, Occultism, Esotericism, etc., Psychedelic experience, Extraordinary encounters in the field (particularly focussing on the ethnographic interpretation and presentation of extraordinary experiences), General issues in the anthropology of consciousness, religion and experience…
Although anthropological and ethnographic approaches are central to the journal (and it would be nice to see more ethnographic submissions), we also welcome contributions from other disciplines including folklore, history, sociology, psychology, parapsychology and indeed any discipline which has an interesting contribution to make.
If you have an idea for an article that you think would be suitable for the journal, or have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the editor via discarnates [at] googlemail.com
Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for the panel on ‘New Approaches to the Study of Religion and Peace’ to be presented at the Joint conference of the Dutch Association for the Study of Religion (NGG) and the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), also ranked as special conference of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) “Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge”. University of Groningen, 11-15 May 2014.
Short Abstract:
The study of the religious involvement in conflict, peacemaking and peacebuilding has mainly focused on the role of religion in good governance issues, such as state building in the so-called track II or non-official diplomacy. In addition, interreligious dialogue, faith-based diplomacy, and the role of religion in restorative justice and reconciliation have been some of the main concerns in the field. The majority of these studies have considered religion as an ally to liberal peacebuilding models.
The purpose of this panel is to challenge some of the dominant views in the study of religion and peace by proposing alternative paths of analysis. The papers will enhance the field through the proposal of critical analysis of concepts and theories through theoretical, historical, and empirical contributions. Papers include research on grassroots experiences of peacebuilding, religion and transformative reparation, religion and social justice, and religion and transitional justice from below.
More information about the panel can be found at http://www.godsdienstwetenschap.nl/media/images/Open%20proposals%20EASR14/New%20Approaches%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20Religion%20and%20Peace.pdf
Details about the conference here http://www.godsdienstwetenschap.nl/index.php?page=conference-2014
The deadline is 1 December 2013. Please email to the following address if you are interested in participating:smroyola[at] abdn.ac.ukl or sriosoyola [at] gmail.com
JOBS
New York University – Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48051>
University of Oxford – University Lecturer, Chinese History <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48068>
Aarhus University – Assistant Professorship in Islam <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48027>
Brooklyn College – Assistant Professor – American Jewish Studies (Judaic Studies) <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48057>
Princeton University – Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faith and Work/Workplace Spirituality <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48070>
University of California – Riverside – Assistant Professor of Transnational Buddhism <http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=48045>
University of Illinois — Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of American Indian Studies
The American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (http://www.ais.illinois.edu) invites applications for an assistant, associate, or full professor position (full time tenure-track or tenured position).
American Indian Studies is searching for a scholar in interdisciplinary American Indian or Indigenous Studies with an emphasis on Native peoples from regions of North America where our campus is located, including the Lower Great Lakes, the Upper Mississippi, and the Mississippi cultural regions. The successful candidate will have a record of research excellence and publication in American Indian or Indigenous studies (tenured) or demonstrate potential to develop such a record (tenure-track). Along with research and publication, the position requires significant contributions to undergraduate teaching, graduate mentoring, in addition to program, university, and other forms of professional service. Current faculty in our unit conduct interdisciplinary research in a range of fields including comparative indigenous studies, media studies, expressive culture, intellectual history, literary history, educational history, sports, social and political theory, language revitalization, museum studies, governance, health, militarization, and performance. Candidates from all disciplinary backgrounds will be considered; however, the search committee is interested in candidates who complement the expertise of our current faculty, and we are particularly interested in candidates whose research focuses on design and fine arts, linguistics, language revitalization, environmental studies, landscape architecture, critical geographies, and disability studies. A joint appointment or teaching arrangement with another academic unit on campus is also likely.
Minimum qualifications include the PhD or equivalent by the start of appointment, clear knowledge and experience in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, scholarly achievement and promise, and evidence of teaching excellence. Experience working with American Indian or other Indigenous communities is a plus.
To ensure full consideration, create your candidate profile through http://go.illinois.edu/AISfaculty13 and submit your letter of application detailing current research plans, curriculum vitae, and contact information for three professional references by December 15, 2013.
The search committee may contact the applicant about soliciting letters of reference at a later point, after a first review of the files. For inquiries regarding the position, contact search committee chair, Jodi Byrd (jabyrd@illinois.edu). Target start date of August 16, 2014. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.
Illinois is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity. (www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu)
Applications are now invited for admission to the Religious Roots of Europe Master’s Programme 2013. This is a joint programme taught in collaboration by the religion and theology departments of six Scandinavian universities and carries a focus on the formative periods of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The language of instruction is English. For more information, check out http://religiousroots.b.uib.no/, http://www.teol.ku.dk/english/religious_roots/, or http://religiousroots.au.dk/
Applicants should hold a Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies, Theology or other relevant fields of study before beginning the programme. They should have at least 20 ECTS of Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew or Arabic.
Application for admission is made to one of the six host institutions: Aarhus, Bergen, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Lund or Oslo (http://religiousroots.au.dk/hostuniversities/). The deadline for application varies according to the individual institution. In Bergen, the deadline for students resident abroad is December 1, 2013. (See http://religiousroots.b.uib.no/admission/)