<apologies for cross-postings>

The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, a referred academic journal dedicated
to publishing cultural studies scholarship from both established and
emerging scholars, is currently soliciting submissions for an upcoming
special issue on:

RELIGION, SECULARISM, AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Guest Editors: Lori Branch and Everett Hamner

Culture may be, as Raymond Williams informs us, "everyday," but as it is
reified in cultural studies practice, it is rarely religious. The
Blackwell Companion to Cultural Studies (2001), for instance, uncovers not
a hint in 579 pages or a detailed index that religion operates in culture
at all: no prayer, no yoga, no Religious Right, abstinence campaigns,
televangelism, no daily practice of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism,
Christianity, or Islam. And this, despite the daily news, world politics,
and a cadre of critics hailing the "return of the religious" to critical
discourse. In her Presidential Address to the Modern Language Association
in December 2003, Mary Louise Pratt proclaimed the urgency of the
interdisciplinary study of religion in our literature departments. "Who
can doubt today," she asked, "the need to study secularism and religiosity
from every viewpoint we can muster?" As Stanley Fish has recently pointed
out in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the distinctions between reason
and faith, truth and belief, have been increasingly called into question in
culture and academia, and religion promises, in his words, to "succeed high
theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of
intellectual energy in the academy."

This special issue of The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies seeks to speak
in and to cultural studies' silence on religion and secularism, and to gain
a critical perspective on that silence and the reasons it has
existed. This issue will explore the conversations that can take place
between cultural studies and highlight the new outpouring of work from a
variety of critical perspectives that points toward vibrant engagement in
the coming years with the historical study of the mutual transformation of
religion and secularism in modernity.

We solicit submissions on any aspect of religion, secularism, and cultural
studies, from any time period, literature, or media, and particularly those
that implicitly or explicitly address the following questions: What would a
cultural studies approach to religious texts, behaviors and artifacts look
like? How would this affect or challenge "secular" cultural studies? What
is at stake in the secular portrayal of everyday life created by the
silence surrounding religion in cultural studies? How can recent critical
studies of the emergence of secularism in modernity?

Please submit papers no later than 7/1/05 to:

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies
308 English-Philosophy Building
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-1492

Two hard copies of the manuscript and a disk, preferably in Microsoft Word,
should be provided. Manuscripts cannot be returned unless a self-addressed
envelope with US postage is provided. Submissions should be no longer than
30 pages and should be prepared following the MLA Style Manual.

For more information about contributing or subscribing to this journal,
please contact the managing editor at <ijcs_at_uiowa.edu>. The journal's web
site, which includes excerpts from previous issues, editorial board and
other information, is at: <www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs>.

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Received on Mon Feb 14 2005 - 11:52:27 EST