Call for Proposals

This Group seeks paper proposals representing scholarship of diverse traditions, religions, and time periods, which explore the function of religious space and/or place as a constitutive component of religious systems. We seek papers that employ theoretically or methodologically self-conscious and innovative approaches to understanding the relationships between space and religious meaning. We are particularly interested in the following topics:

• Mediated interpretations and constructions of religious space, whether through text, narrative, photography, digitalization, performance, or other artistic media or expressive culture


• Localities throughout the world, particularly outside of North America

Mission

This Group seeks to bring together scholars of diverse traditions, religions, and time periods who explore the function of space or place as a constitutive component of religious experience, practice, thought, institutions, and communities. We support scholarship that employs methodologically-innovative approaches for understanding the relationships between space and religious meaning within specific traditions, and we encourage comparative work that investigates these topics across traditions and time periods. In particular, we seek to encourage analysis of the structures of power embedded in notions of sacred space and in the social formations mapped onto religious spaces, in how hierarchies are maintained and challenged within religious spaces and places, and in the materiality and physical experience of space. We wish to encourage examination of how contests over physical space and place function over time and how divergent meanings associated with individual places are negotiated, both peaceably and (all too frequently) violently.

Anonymity of Review Process

Proposer names are anonymous to Chairs and Steering Committee members during review, but visible to Chairs prior to final acceptance or rejection.

Questions?

David Bains
Samford University
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Leonard Norman Primiano
Cabrini College
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Method of Submission