2024 Call for Papers!

Interlocutions

The 2024 NAASR Annual Meeting will provide a space to explore contemporary theoretical gains that have a bearing on and/or implications for academic studies of religion. Doing so will not only diversify our conversational points of analysis but also demand a sharper focus on NAASR’s own specific theoretical commitments. Inasmuch as religious studies is a necessarily interdisciplinary field, we should think about and discuss scholarly inroads and debates that newly energize our analyses of discourses on religion. Many of us engage with such discourses in our own work, but bringing them to bear more directly on the NAASR program will hopefully refocus our organization as a hub for scholarly interlocutions by way of publication and analysis. The motivation for doing so is a drive to make our scholarly critiques all the clearer, expanding our critical canon by remembering that theory is not a defensive response but a generator of new knowledge. To that end, let’s not recapitulate academic “greatest hits” within social theory but instead think about the current work that is exciting us but which may be unfamiliar to our colleagues within NAASR.

We thus invite submissions that invoke contemporary scholarship (published within the last ten years) from a discourse outside the disciplinary constraints of religious studies and discuss its utility for academic studies of religion as such. Possible areas of emphasis—whether applied to ancient or present-day contexts—include but are not at all limited to:

Submissions for individual presentations should consist of a brief (500-word max) abstract identifying a particular area of emphasis, presenting the basic arc of a contemporary thread of scholarship (whether a specific thinker, text, or discussion/debate), and explaining its significance for discourse on “religion.”

In lieu of submitting full papers in advance of the meeting, participants will submit an outline of key ideas from this thread of scholarship and a brief annotated bibliography (which may consist only of one text depending on the presentation’s focus) in early October 2024. Panels will consist of presenters and discussants selected by the program committee, talking together about how and why they find a certain text/scholar/discussion useful to their work in religious studies.

Ultimately, the aim is to publish these sessions as an edited volume within the NAASR Working Papers series with Equinox. Therefore, by submitting a proposal for the annual meeting, you are agreeing to contribute a version of your remarks as a chapter in said volume.

Proposals are due by March 15 at 5pm EST! Click here to submit a proposal.

Direct any questions about this process to Merinda Simmons.