In recent years, critical Indigenous studies has challenged the Western European and colonial episteme that has shaped academic disciplines and fields such as anthropology, history, philosophy, and religious studies. Indigenous studies scholars and activists have long tested the limits of unitive epistemological and ontological thinking by deploying Indigenous situated knowledges/onto-epistemologies as a valid and valuable scholarship. 

For this special issue, we invite contributors to consider what possibilities engagement with critical Indigenous studies might present for the study of religion. How might the field be regarded if Western/European epistemology and ontology are not assumed to be a unitive framework and the academic norm? The category of “religion” itself, as many scholars have observed, emerged from very specific European imperial and colonial histories as well as the Enlightenment project. The term “religion” has been adopted and adapted and sometimes rejected by Indigenous nations/peoples who live with and negotiate colonialism and colonization in traditional territories across the globe. What would the study of religion look like—in terms of theory and method, approaches, and themes—when, if, and how scholars of religion ground their work in “making kin” with Indigenous collective knowledges and ways of relating?

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion invites article submissions for a proposed special issue on Indigenous Epistemologies and the Study of Religion co-edited by Paul Gareau (Métis; Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta) and Molly Bassett (white settler; Department of Religious Studies, Georgia State University). Please submit a short proposal (up to 1,000 words) to mbassett@gsu.edu  by July 15, 2024. If invited to submit, your final article (8,000-12,000 words) would be due by January 15, 2025 through the submission portal at Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.