Apologies for any cross-posting.
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*FROM*: The Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), College of
Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University
*TOPIC*: Religion and Locality in the Chinese World
27-28 August 2013
Canberra, Autralia
Convenors: Dr Benjamin Penny, Mr Paul Farrelly
This workshop will explore histories of how religion is created,
transmitted, embodied and changed in specific locations in late
imperial, modern and contemporary China and Taiwan. Taking not only
temples, mosques, churches, schools, tea houses, festival sites, burial
grounds and shrines as the locus of research, but also cities,
neighbourhoods, counties and districts, it will explore the rich, and
often overlooked, details that populate the lived experience of
religious activity. Seeking to focus on interactions between place, text
and individual agency, we aim to reflect on the layered and specific
histories that develop as a consequence of this interplay. Through
reducing the scale to a specific locale, phenomena such as religious
change, conversion practice, and individual transformation can be
reappraised.
Questions to consider may include: How do the particular circumstances
of time and place shape religious experience? What is specific to a
location that influences the nature of religious practice there? What
religious power is embodied in a place? How is the power created or
maintained? How are narratives created around a location? How are
locations represented in oral and printed media? What is characteristic
of the religious world in a particular place? How do the defining
religious features of a locality originate?
Seeking to enhance scholarship about place and religion in China and
Taiwan, we request work informed by microhistory and theories of the
everyday that offer alternative perspectives on the sacred world. In
doing this, we will explore the idea that religious experience is not
homogenous across geography, and that even comparatively small distances
can produce meaningful differences in institutions and practices.
Through sharpening the focus of research to a county, district,
neighbourhood, or particular numinous site we also hope to examine the
relations between particular places and institutions of authority based
locally or distantly.
Interested participants should submit a paper title, abstract with
keywords (300 words maximum) along with brief biographical information
(name, affiliation) to [log in to unmask] by 1 MAY 2013.
CIW may be able to provide some financial assistance for the travel and
accommodation expenses for successful applicants. The conference will be
conducted in English and we plan to publish the proceedings in a special
edition of East Asian History <http://www.eastasianhistory.org/>.
*LINK:*
http://ciw.anu.edu.au/events/event_details.php?searchterm=cap_631463962&semyear=2013
<http://ciw.anu.edu.au/events/event_details.php?searchterm=cap_631463962&semyear=2013>
*
CONTACT:* [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
_________________________________________________________________
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Dr Sarah Dauncey
Lecturer in Chinese Studies
Careers, Alumni and Marketing
School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield (Times Higher Education University of the Year)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/seas/
Honorary Secretary, British Association for Chinese Studies
Commissioning Editor of JBACS
http://www.bacsuk.org.uk/
6-8 Shearwood Road
Sheffield, S10 2TD
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)114 22 28436
Fax: +44 (0)114 22 28432
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