An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
University of Chicago Divinity School
April 15-16, 2016
Keynote Speaker: Professor Thomas Tweed

The University of Chicago Divinity School is pleased to announce its first annual Graduate Student Conference, to be held on April 15th and 16th, 2016. This year’s theme is “Religion and Movement.” We understand the definitions of the conference’s constitutive categories—“religion” and “movement”—to be highly contingent and contestable, and therefore to be open to a multitude of varied interpretations. We invite papers that consider these topics from all disciplinary and methodological orientations. Papers may address any number of traditions, geographies, or historical time periods, but should involve sustained and self-conscious theoretical reflection on the conference themes.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: immigration and/or migration; diaspora; pilgrimage; dance; ritual performance; spirit possession; movement within/between public and/or private spaces; embodied engagement with architecture or other material objects; the movement of capital or material culture.

Graduate students interested in applying to the conference should submit a CV and a paper abstract of 300-500 words to [uchidivinitygradconference@gmail.com] by January 15th, 2015. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 31st, 2016. We encourage students from all fields and all levels of graduate study with interdisciplinary interests in the study of religion to submit proposals. We are eager to support and engage the work of students who identify as members of groups typically under-represented in academia. Some financial support may be available to those students who require aid in order to attend.

We welcome any questions applicants might have and invite you to communicate directly with the organizing committee, which is made up of doctoral students from a number of the Divinity School’s subfields. Questions may be sent to us at [uchidivinitygradconference@gmail.com].