RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Manchester: 26-28 August 2009
(www.rgs.org/AC2009)
2nd Call for papers:
GEOGRAPHY AND RELIGION IN THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY
Co-sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group and the History and
Philosophy of Geography Research Group
Organised by Dr Diarmid Finnegan (Queen’s University, Belfast) and Dr Edwin
Aiken (Queen’s University, Belfast)
How important is religion to our understanding of the history of geographical
knowledge? Although we are now better equipped to answer this question
thanks to important work on the religious concerns which animated
geographical endeavour in the past (e.g. Driver 2001; Livingstone 1992;
Mayhew 2000) religion has rarely been taken as a central problematic in the
historiography of geography. Taking the long nineteenth century as a
temporal frame, this session seeks to evaluate further the significance of past
connections between religious and geographical knowledge and praxis. Papers
are invited which resist anachronistic applications of ‘geography’ and ‘religion’
to the past while avoiding overly circumscribed definitions of those frequently
conjoint and contested enterprises. Participants might also work towards a
rapprochement between historical geographies of religion (e.g. Brace et al
2007) and a spatialised history of geographical knowledge (e.g. Withers
2001). More generally, highlighting the interplay between religion and
geography might be used as a basis for more extensive explorations of the
relations between geography, knowledge and society during the long
nineteenth century.
The following list of sub-themes provides an indication of the session’s
intellectual scope:
- Theologies of nature and geographical knowledge
- Darwinism, geography and natural theology
- ‘Disciplinary’ history and secularisation
- Scriptural geography and Orientalism
- Christian missions and geography
- Travellers, ethnography and comparative religion
- The persistence of ‘Renaissance’ geography and its theological correlates
- The religious lives of geographers
- Spiritualism, mysticism and _fin de siècle_ geography
- Text books, school geography and religion
- Popular geographical knowledge in religious contexts
- Imperialism and ‘religious geopolitics’
- Mapping religion: nineteenth-century cartographic projects
If you are interested in presenting a paper on these or related themes please
contact either Dr Diarmid Finnegan ([log in to unmask]) or Dr Edwin Aiken
([log in to unmask]).
The deadline for abstracts is 3 February 2009 and the following information is
required:
Name:
Affiliation:
Contact email:
Title of proposed paper:
Abstract (250 words max.):
Any technical requirements (video, data projector, sound, etc.):
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