The 2018 General Call for Papers

Imagining Life After Death: Past, Present, and Future

The Fourth Graduate Conference on Religion

Thursday and Friday, May 10-11, 2018

University of California, Los Angeles

DEADLINE EXTENDED until February 2, 2018

The UCLA Center for the Study of Religion announces its fourth annual graduate student conference on religion. This graduate conference aims to bring together students from various academic disciplines who work on topics in the study of religion and welcomes various methodological approaches and need not be exclusively within the study of religion.

Conceptions, perceptions, and imaginations of life after death reflect continued interest in theories of reward, punishment, and postmortem existence. Studies range from the ancient to modern periods and, as Ernest Becker points out in his seminal work The Denial of Death, "one of the great discoveries of modern thought [is] that of all things that move man, one of the principal ones is his terror of death". How are ideas of death and life after death conveyed across human history, and how are they applied in society and practice? Life after death continues to be a topic that persists in its significance for humans of the past, present, and likely future.

Paper topics may engage texts, theologies, histories, artifacts, and practices that express a particular view, experience, or connection to the afterlife. Papers offering interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged and may include fields such as psychology, philosophy, and anthropology.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-    Textual transmission pertaining to the afterlife

-    How afterlife mythology is communicated through literature and/or art

-    Ancestral veneration

-    Thanatology

-    Mourning and burial practices

-    Group thought vs. individual thought regarding consciousness in the afterlife

-    Theologies of immortality, resurrection, and/or deification

The conference will consist of two days of thematically organized panel sessions. Faculty will serve as respondents for each of the panels. Participants are afforded ample opportunity to receive constructive feedback on their research projects.

Guidelines for Submitting Proposals:

Please visit http://religion.ucla.edu/conference/religion-conference-2018/

to access and fill out the proposal form. Paper presentations should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length, and we expect all presenters to participate in both days of the conference

February 2, 2018 -  EXTENDED Deadline for proposal submission

February 16, 2018 - Notification of your proposal's acceptance status

April 20, 2018 - All accepted participants must submit copies of their final papers to ensure that our faculty respondents have sufficient time to compose their responses

For more information, please visit our website

http://religion.ucla.edu/conference/religion-conference-2018/

Questions about the conference should be directed to UCLAreligionconference@gmail.com

Conference Coordinators: Megan Remington, Aaron Samuels

Faculty Advisor: Carol Bakhos