*Call for Papers: Religion, Gender and Body Politics*
Post-secular, post-colonial and queer perspectives
International conference on behalf of the international research project
“Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender:
Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives”, at Utrecht University,
The Netherlands, 12-14 February 2015.
*Introduction*
As sign and site of individual and collective identity profiling the human
body has gained increasing importance and attention in today’s culturally
and religiously diverse societies. Worldwide many ideological conflicts on
the management of diversity and the role of religion in the public sphere
are being played out on ‘the body’. This is especially the case in the
aftermath of 9/11, when religion re- appeared in the public arena in an
unexpected and controversial form, often related to disputes about the role
and place of Islam in Western societies. Subjects of debate have not only
become religious dress (hijab, burqa, kippa), but also other body-related
cultural and religious practices, such as male and female circumcision,
food regulations (e.g., ritual slaughter and religious fasting),
conventional gendered social behaviour in the public sphere (e.g., physical
greeting gestures) and daily religious practices (e.g., the presence of
prayer rooms for Muslims in public buildings such as schools). Also the
integrity and possible violation of the human body figure as important
signposts in controversies over the acceptability of religious conventions
and behaviour (e.g., sexual abuse, corporal punishments). Finally, in
public expressions of feminist activism, sometimes against the religious
establishment (e.g., Femen, Pussy Riot), the body is – again – an important
messenger, tool or sign.
The fierceness of debates concerning the public bodily expression of
religion – in particular Islam – conceals the fact that bodies in
present-day society are governed, regulated, shaped and represented in many
ways, often unrelated, or even in opposition, to religion. For instance, by
subjecting oneself to ‘self-care regimes’ (Bauman 1992) by visiting gyms,
spas and organic food stores, one can acquire the ‘physical capital’
(Bourdieu 1998) necessary to display the fit and healthy body that has
become the dominant model of our times and that is encouraged through
government-sponsored sports programs, television commercials and real-life
shows (e.g. My Big Fat Diet Show). As Schilling (1993) argues, the central
position of the body within contemporary ‘somatic society’ (Turner 1992)
reflects a number of social insecurities. Women’s emancipation has led to
uncertainty about gender roles and, consequently, the over-emphasis of
traditional expressions of masculinity and femininity; medical
interventions prolong life but lead to insecurities about death and the
struggle against mortality and its effect on the body; and technological
innovation leads to questions about the limits and boundaries of what
actually constitutes the human body. Not only does the earlier mentioned
excessive focus on religious bodily practices conceal the fact that there
are more general cultural insecurities about embodiment at work, it also
conceals the fact that in practice the boundaries between “religious” and
“secular” bodily practices are often blurred.
*Conference Description: Aims and Perspectives*
In this conference we want to explore why and how the gendered body has
become a highly contested and constitutive site of dynamic secular and
religious (identity) politics, ideologies and practices in contemporary
societies worldwide. In this we suggest to regard the body as
simultaneously an empirical entity (e.g., the human or animal body), a
discursive practice (e.g., the body politics or the body of Christ), and a
focus of technologies of the self (e.g., ecstatic or ascetic bodies).
The body as a contested site in contemporary societies is often the body of
a gendered, sexual, religious or ethnic other (e.g., women, LGBT’s,
migrants, or colonial others). These discursive practices of “othering”
presuppose a clearly defined “we” superior to the “other”, thereby
reinforcing related dichotomies (e.g., West-East, male-female,
religious-secular, straight-gay) and their power relations. The
disciplining of bodily practices appears to take place mainly at the level
of institutionalised religion and secularism where ideologies and politics
of gender, sexuality and ethnicity are imposed. However, when we look at
how people live their bodies, creative and non-normative body practices can
be identified that question, resist or inform these ideologies and
politics. The deconstruction of the normative regulation and representation
of the body should therefore not be investigated along the lines of the
public-private divide, but in a manner that questions this divide and that
is attentive to the ways in which lived religion and lived secularism
permeate the until recently virtually uncontested boundaries between the
visible, public and institutional on the one hand and the invisible,
private and personal on the other.
We aim to question the ways in which intersecting ideologies of religion,
secularism and gender materialise through individual and collective
body-politics drawing from a range of contemporary critical perspectives in
the humanities and qualitative social sciences, such as postcolonial
criticism, post- secularism and queer theories. With these critical
perspectives, we want to challenge persisting dichotomies in the study of
religion and gender, like the public/private and religious/secular
binaries, and Western and heteronormative dominant models of knowledge.
Attached to this email and on the website of the international research
project “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion and Gender:
Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives”, the project this
conference is part of, you can find the call for papers with a more
detailed discussion of these critical perspectives in the study of religion
and gender: http://projectreligionandgender.org/callforpapers
*Key-notes*
Minoo Moallem, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of
California, Berkeley
Yvonne Sherwood, Professor of Biblical Studies and Politics, University of
Kent
Ulrike Auga, Professor of Theology and Gender Studies, Humboldt University,
Berlin
Scott Kugle, Associate Professor of South Asian and Islamic Studies, Emory
University, Atlanta
Sarojini Nadar, Professor of Gender and Religion, University of
KwaZulu-Natal
Please find the preliminary program with key-note lectures attached to this
email and on our website: http://projectreligionandgender.org/programme
*Call for papers*
At this conference we welcome contributions that:
· use theoretical approaches drawing from insights in post-secular,
postcolonial, queer and gender theories, clarifying body practices as a
contested site of religious and secular practices;
· either theoretically or empirically challenge the secular/religious and
public/private binaries in understanding contemporary body politics;
· do not only explore expressions and accounts of ideal religious and
secular practices and norms, but also their manifold articulations with all
the lived ambiguities and ambivalences;
· suggest, imagine or develop innovative methodologies in order to
understand the complex ways in which religious and secular identities are
formed through bodily practices.
Moreover, at this conference we encourage an interdisciplinary approach,
welcoming insights from, amongst others, gender studies, men and
masculinity studies, disability studies, theology, religious studies,
anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies and media studies.
*Organisers*
This conference is organised as the final event of the international
research project “Interdisciplinary Innovations in the Study of Religion
and Gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives”. This
project was initiated and coordinated by prof. dr. Anne-Marie Korte
(Utrecht University) and dr. Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds). The
conference will also host the celebratory launch of the newly established
‘International Association for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion and
Gender’ (IARG).
*Practical Information*
*Panel sessions*· Paper or panel proposals need to be submitted on the
project website before 1 December 2014 (
http://projectreligionandgender.org/submission). The conference
organisation will inform all applicants about its decision before 15
December 2015.
· Individual paper proposals should include your name and institutional
affiliation, the title of your paper and an abstract of max. 250 words.
· Besides individual papers it is also possible to submit proposals for a
pre-arranged panel session of one and a half hour. A panel consists of
maximum three to four paper presentations. Please provide the following
information (max. 1.000 words): title of the panel session; name of the
chair of the panel session; names, titles and abstracts of the papers.
*Poster sessions*· There is also the possibility to present your research
via a poster presentation. Poster proposals need to be submitted on the
project website before 1 December 2014 (
http://projectreligionandgender.org/submission). The conference
organisation will inform all applicants about its decision before 15
December 2015.
· Poster proposals should include your name and institutional affiliation,
the title of your poster and an abstract of max. 100 words.
· During the ceremony on the second day (see programme), a prize of €200,-
will be awarded for the best poster presentation.
*Finances*
· The conference fee is €200,- and includes an annual membership of the
International Association for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion and
Gender (IARG).
· For students or researchers with a low budget, we can provide a small
reduction of the conference fee.
*Contact*
· For more information you can contact the project assistant Jorien Copier (
[log in to unmask]).
Dr Adriaan van Klinken
<http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20049/theology_and_religious_studies/person/1956/adriaan_van_klinken/ds.leeds.ac.uk/Staff/staff9/humav/Contacts>
| Lecturer in Religious Studies | School of Philosophy, Religion and
History of Science | University of Leeds | Hopewell House room G.08 | 173
Woodhouse Lane | LEEDS LS2 9JT | United Kingdom | T: 0044 (0)113 3433646 |
E: [log in to unmask] | Managing editor of *Religion and Gender* |
www.religionandgender.org
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