Reminder: Deadline approaching!
Call for Papers: Spring 2013 University Seminar in the Anthropology of Religion
The joint program in Applied Anthropology and Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University invites faculty and graduate students to submit abstracts addressing the theme of religious responses to failure.
People in all walks of life inevitably encounter failure at one time or another, and have developed ways of coping when things go wrong. Failure—a disruption, or inflection point, at which someone’s worldview or belief system is questioned, upended, challenged, re-synthesized, or even ignored—can offer a vantage point to assess the human experience.
Though the seminar is offered by the Applied Anthropology program, our goal is to bring together a range of interdisciplinary scholarship from the social sciences and humanities, examining the question of how religious persons or communities have dealt with failure in their lives, or in the lives of those close to them. Topics may range from the ordinary and everyday to the extraordinary and sensational. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
Understanding coping or wayfinding mechanisms among religious individuals or communities in response to unexpected or traumatic events
Seeking specifically religious or supernatural explanations or solutions to misfortune, whether an individual or community self-identifies as “religious” or not; and why a non-religious person would seek religious guidance
Adaptations to organized religion in order to mitigate a perceived risk of failure (whether in terms of finances, orthodoxy, relevance to the community, or anything else)
Seeking a new way forward after a crisis of faith, where the faith itself is what has failed
The seminar will be held over 12 weeks in the spring of 2013 at Teachers College, Columbia University. One paper will be discussed each week; the aim of the seminar is to produce an edited volume of work. Professor George Clement Bond and PhD students Elaine Christian and Daniel Souleles will administer the seminar. Course credit is available for participation.
Abstracts should be 300-500 words in length and submitted via email to Daniel Souleles and Elaine Christian by November 9, 2012. Those invited to participate should submit a 10-15 page draft paper by February 1, 2013. Acceptance is open to students and faculty from any institution or department; preference will be given to those who are able to present their paper at Teachers College in person. Contact Daniel and Elaine with submissions or questions at [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
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