American Academy of Religion, Western Region 2025 Conference 
"Performing Religions, Faith, and Spirituality" -- Arizona State University March 14-16, 2025
https://www.aarwr.com/call-for-papers.html
Proposals Due October 31, 2024

Religious Studies intersects with every aspect of our lives: political, spiritual, pastoral, creative,  performative, and relational. The study of religious life, thought, and practice touches upon our identities, responsibilities, and cultures. It can help us to explore our own selves as we acknowledge the diversity of religious expression across time and space

The American Academy of Religion-Western Region has always embraced the diversity of such expressivity -- whether through academics, artistry, leadership, or other praxis domains. This year at Arizona State University March 14-16, 2025, we would like to continue in that tradition.

Innovation is an endemic aspect of the ASU culture. This year, AAR-WR takes inspiration from its location for its 2025 theme, acknowledging both the exciting prospects and serious concerns that the future holds, and broadcasting a vision of hope about new opportunities for appreciating one another as individuals and communities.

Attendees at the 2024 University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conference made clear their preference: Expand our acknowledgement of diverse religious expression and take inspiration from our roots as we tackle the religious dimensions of new frontiers in science and technology. We encourage you to share with us your work relating to the varieties of eclectic, particular, indigenous, diasporic, ancient, and novel religious practices.

Religious expression as interactive and technologically-innovative performance was viscerally realized in 2024 at UNLV in Anna Hennessey’s immersive Re-Birth installation. We hope to build on that by encouraging further performative expressions of faith and joy, such as drumming, call & response, singing, dancing, all of which will be part of a unique session.

We also want to examine the complex intersections of religion with technology and science. Science and technology have always grown out of human performance and imagination. Mythology around science, grounded in different religious orientations, continues to fuel innovation and interaction with the novel and unexplored. Science-fiction and fantasy are also part of this vision and its intersections with religious ideation. We invite similar explorations into the future and the unknown.

We encourage you to use contemporary media, performance, and scholarship to share your discoveries with us at ASU in 2025. We encourage you to reach out to other units to co-sponsor and collaborate in developing robust and innovative calls for papers.

See the entire CFP for the American Academy of Religion, Western Region conference ""Performing Religions, Faith, and Spirituality" here.

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Psychology, Culture, and Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion, Western Region

Keeping with the annual theme of "Performing Religions, Faith, and Spirituality," the Psychology, Culture, and Religion Unit invites papers that explore how religion is "performed" and how these performances affect the interior and social worlds of believers and the larger society.

• How do you differentiate between "frontstage" (public behavior) and "backstage" (private behavior) in a religious context? Does one support or undergird the other, or is one more indicative of "true" religious observance? Or is religion all just a performance?
• How does religious ritual, with its repeated acts, gestures, and behaviors, serve to construct and maintain cultural norms? How does this, in turn, influence theology and religious belief?
• What does it mean to create a "subversive" performance? What examples do we have of marginalized or oppressed communities creating dissenting or innovative religious rituals? What role do these performances play in the evolution of religious practices and beliefs as well as how these communities assert their identity and agency?
• How do religious performances intersect with other forms of cultural resistance (e.g., art, music, literature)? What role do performances and innovation play in the diversity of religious expression, especially novel religious practices?
• How has the intersection between science, technology, psychology, and religion evolved? What role does the rapid evolution of AI and other technologies play in religious practice and belief?
• How has religious performativity changed in the 21st Century, and how has that changed the way we conceive of religion?

We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and welcome contributions from a range of disciplines: religious studies, psychology, pastoral counseling, sociology, cultural studies, and related fields.

Submit your Proposal Form (Word or PDF) to Casey Crosbie and Katherine Kunz by October 31, 2024.

Contact Information

Casey Crosbie, Scripps College, caseygcrosbie@gmail.com
Katherine Kunz, Center for Religion and Cities, katherine@katherinekunz.com

American Academy of Religion Western Region

Contact EmailKatherine@katherinekunz.comURLhttps://www.aarwr.com/call-for-papers.html